“Adonai will bring on you a plague that will stay with you until he has exterminated you from the land you are entering in order to take possession of it.“-Deuteronomy 28:21
From verse 21 of Deuteronomy 28, we are introduced to the following three categories of curses:
-DISEASE
-DROUGHT
-WAR
And within the first category of “disease”, there are three Hebrew words listed to describe the types of human conditions that will strike the Israelites should they rebel against HASHEM.
The three Hebrew words are as follows:
SHAHEFET
KADDAHAT
DALLEKET
Now here’s the problem we face.
There is no one alive in the world today who has any idea what the modern equivalent of these human diseases are.
That’s why we’ll encounter a different list of diseases depending on which Bible translation we’re reading.
Heck, even the great Robert Alter in his commentary on the Torah totally skips over this verse in his commentary on this chapter.
Regardless, whatever types of diseases those Hebrew words are referring to, there’s no question they’re painful and deadly as all hell.
Next, let’s take a look at verse 22.
“Adonai will strike you down with wasting diseases, fever, inflammation, fiery heat, drought, blasting winds and mildew; and they will pursue you until you perish.”
Honestly, it’s hard to tell whether this verse is referring to just human beings or just crops or both.
The CJB translation says “fever” and other translations will saying “burning”.
So this could be referring to the fever humans come down with when they catch the flu for instance or this could be talking about a scorching heat that utterly destroys all the crops.
Let’s move on to verses 23-24.
“The sky over your head will be brass and the earth under you iron. Adonai will turn the rain your land needs into powder and dust that will fall on you from the sky until you are destroyed.”
We’re given quite a vivid description here.
The sky will become as “brass” and the earth as “iron”.
This incredible image of devastating sterility was actually borrowed from the treaty of the Assyrian emperor Assarhadon.
And there are other phrases in this chapter that were obviously inspired by that treaty such as the acts of cannibalism against one’s own near kin in a time of siege…
…or…
…the raping of the women during a time of war.
In verse 24 when it says “the land’s rain will turn into dust” it’s talking about what happens when intense winds whip up vast clouds of dust that would cover the land which is similar to one of the plagues that occurred in Egypt.
The nearest equivalent to this phenomenon us modern folks can probably relate to in history is probably the Dust Bowl Crisis which occurred in the early 20th Century (see the picture above).
I’m done.
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