Immerse: Beginnings Full Volume - Flipbook - Page 326
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IMMERSE
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BEGINNINGS
28:44-61
while you become weaker and weaker. They will lend money to you, but
you will not lend to them. They will be the head, and you will be the tail!
“If you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and to obey the commands
and decrees he has given you, all these curses will pursue and overtake you
until you are destroyed. These horrors will serve as a sign and warning
among you and your descendants forever. If you do not serve the Lord
your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have
received, you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against
you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The
Lord will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly until he
has destroyed you.
“The Lord will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the
earth, and it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose
language you do not understand, a fierce and heartless nation that shows
no respect for the old and no pity for the young. Its armies will devour
your livestock and crops, and you will be destroyed. They will leave you
no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves, or lambs, and you will starve to death.
They will attack your cities until all the fortified walls in your land—the
walls you trusted to protect you—are knocked down. They will attack all
the towns in the land the Lord your God has given you.
“The siege and terrible distress of the enemy’s attack will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom
the Lord your God has given you. The most tenderhearted man among
you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and
his surviving children. He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is
devouring—the flesh of one of his own children—because he has nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will
inflict on all your towns. The most tender and delicate woman among
you—so delicate she would not so much as touch the ground with her
foot—will be selfish toward the husband she loves and toward her own
son or daughter. She will hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby
she has borne, so that she herself can secretly eat them. She will have nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will
inflict on all your towns.
“If you refuse to obey all the words of instruction that are written in this
book, and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the Lord
your God, then the Lord will overwhelm you and your children with
indescribable plagues. These plagues will be intense and without relief,
making you miserable and unbearably sick. He will afflict you with all the
diseases of Egypt that you feared so much, and you will have no relief.
The Lord will afflict you with every sickness and plague there is, even
those not mentioned in this Book of Instruction, until you are destroyed.
