“However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you…”
Deuteronomy 28:15 (NIV)
Yesterday at breakfast, Wendy and I discussed an article she’d read about a string of women who became adulterous lovers of a serial adulterer. When later on life’s road the serial adulterer gained a certain amount of notoriety, the women determined to make their former lothario into their scapegoat. They are determined to ruin his life as they blame him for ruining theirs.
Fascinating.
As I meditated on the situation, what I saw in between the lines of the news article was the chaos and the unraveling of life that comes with journeying down the road of infidelity and adultery. The line I love to quote about the path of adultery is from Bob Dylan. He sings that it’s “like a bad motorcycle with the devil in the seat, going 90 miles-and-hour down a dead end street.”
Believe me, you don’t want that ride.
Today’s chapter is arguably as tough as it gets when it comes to harsh Old Testament language. It’s the kind of chapter that causes modern readers to close the book and walk away. There’s so much going on beneath the surface of this chapter that I could write an entire book unpacking it—but let me try to do it succinctly.
Today’s chapter follows a well-established pattern of what we call an Ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaty. A suzerainty was a dominant king who, in expanding his empire, would take over foreign cities and people groups. They became his vassals. The suzerainty treaty was one the king would make with vassals he’d conquered and who were now under his sovereignty and protection. These treaties had a distinct pattern they followed, and one of the pieces of that pattern was to briefly explain the blessings the vassals would experience by being faithful to their new king followed by a long host of agonizing consequences they would experience if they were unfaithful.
Today’s chapter follows the exact pattern of these suzerainty treaties, with God as the suzerain and the Hebrews as the people he’s entering into a covenant with. It was intended by the ancients to act like a prenuptial agreement. It briefly highlights the blessings the bride could expect in the relationship (life, abundance, provision, blessing) and then goes to great lengths describing in the harshest terms the unraveling that comes with infidelity and disobedience (death, destitution, poverty, chaos).
The suzerain was saying “You don’t want to hop on the back of that motorcyle.”
Now, hang with me because it gets better. I know that in the Great Story everything is connected, and today’s chapter is no different. The primary difference between typical suzerain treaties and today’s chapter is that the suzerain was typically a distant monarch sitting on his foreign throne. God has drawn up the covenant in the covenant language the Hebrews were used to, but He isn’t distant. He’s right there in the middle of their camp. He showed up and introduced Himself. He delivered them from Egypt then joined them on their wilderness journey. The blessings and curses presented are not from a distant, conquering foreign king but a divine suitor who for 40 years has been wooing them. God wants a good marriage with this people.
By the time you reach Deuteronomy 28, Israel already has a problem baked into the dough.
The covenant assumes:
A faithful people
A loyal vassal
A nation that listens, obeys, trusts
But Scripture immediately begins narrating the truth:
The Hebrews cannot sustain covenant faithfulness.
The blessings are glorious – but the curses become prophetic autobiography.
The Old Testament tension is not:
“Will God be faithful?”
It’s:
“Can Israel be?”
And the answer—generation after generation throughout the Great Story—is a weary, sheepish “no.”
When the Son of God appears on the scene, He doesn’t come as the suzerain King but as an every day carpenter — just another one of the vassals. As a human being, Jesus walks the same path as the Hebrews, but with fidelity.
Hebrews —> 40 years in the wilderness grumbling, testing God
Jesus —> 40 days in the wilderness, tempted but faithful
And when Jesus responds to the devil’s temptation, He quotes — wait for it — Deuteronomy.
He doesn’t invent a new covenant language. He fulfills the old one.
Suzerainty treaties assumed:
Loyalty
Exclusive allegiance
Submission to the greater king
Jesus refuses:
Political shortcuts
Coercive power
Empire without obedience
He won’t reach for an earthly throne.
He won’t grasp.
He won’t rebel.
That restraint?
That’s vassal faithfulness.
In today’s chapter:
Obedience earns blessing
Disobedience triggers curse
Jesus:
Lives perfect obedience
Deserves full blessing
Receives the curse anyway
Exile. Shame. Abandonment. Death outside the city. The faithful vassal takes the consequences of the unfaithful people. That’s not legal trickery.
That’s covenant love with skin on.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.”
Galatians 3:13
This means my relationship with God is not sustained by:
Perfect obedience
White-knuckled faithfulness
Fear of slipping into curse
It’s sustained by participation—showing up at the table, taking a seat, and choosing to stay.
It’s not about performance. I don’t earn blessing.
I inhabit it—because Jesus already stood where I couldn’t.
Obedience becomes response, not requirement.
Faithfulness becomes gratitude, not terror.
And Deuteronomy 28 stops sounding like a threat…
…and starts sounding like a story that finally found its hero.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
