“Adonai your God will put all these curses on your enemies, on those who hated and persecuted you; but you will return and pay attention to what Adonai says and obey all his mitzvot which I am giving you today.”-Deuteronomy 30:7-8
We next encounter a true mystery in terms of how God’s mind and actions operate.
We’re told in verses 7 and 8 of Deuteronomy 30 that the Lord will inflict upon those nations who persecuted Israel the same set of curses He inflicted upon Israel.
That’s right.
The very same gentile nations God raised up to use as His hand of judgement against Israel, He will now punish them for how they treated His Chosen people.
This is actually one of those hidden things reserved only for the Lord mentioned in chapter 29.
This mystery may be something He doesn’t want us to know or it may be something far beyond our mental capacities to know.
Looking back in history, what we can know is that in His divine providence, the Lord allows nations to grow in irrational hatred and seething jealousy against His People that eventually boils over into intense persecution.
And at the same time, He gives Israel the freedom to choose to be blessed or cursed by either obeying or disobeying His Torah.
If Israel chooses disobedience, the Lord will use a wicked nation to punish His people so that they will repent and come back into obedience.
Yet, and this is where it might seem illogical, because the nation the Lord used to punish Israel was evil in what they did, the Lord will punish them big time for the way they treated His people.
This may not seem fair or illogical but that’s what the Scripture says.
I’m done.
The Lord Thy God will punish those evil and wicked doctors and psychiatrists and hate preachers who heil Hitler and destroy innocent lives.
If DT 30 is tricky (possibly unfair or illogical in isolation) then consider more perspective from JDG 2:20-23 and ISA 10. These are two examples where the warnings of DT were less prophecy and more reality. Part of the trick is people have a habit of getting prideful when God blesses them, and that pride needs checked. Arguably the best example in the Bible is in 2KI 19. God gave us wonderful perspective on appropriate and inappropriate pride in JER 9:23-24.
The child in the hotel lobby plonks on the keyboard making an awful din. A man sits down next to him and plays at the same time on the same keyboard such that the sum of the child’s notes and his fathers is harmonious.
God sovereignly plays around our rebellious self determining racket & uses our rebellion for our benefit by humbling us with it and so affording us the opportunity to see our depravity. Looking full into the face of our sin we can realise that our only possible hope is in his mercy & grace & we can see the dark and cruel master that is our pride.
Israel & the nations weave large on the tapestry of history the truth that without the mercy & favour of God, we as individuals like Jacob are eternally & utterly lost to our deceiving nature. A nature which from it’s fall has been capable of deceiving us into believing that we can ascend the heavens and be seated on God’s throne.
Thus the judgement against the nations which God uses to punish Israel is logical, in the sense that he wants all to be saved and will reduce us as far as is neccesary for us to see our depravity in the patient hope of our salvation and His care for the glory of his name in the nations of people whom He created. Should not the created worship the creator? When his name is uppermost in our hearts we walk in the blessing of communion with God. A communion of which the doubting of his goodness robbed us.