Deuteronomy — Chapter 28

If thou wilt hear the voice of the Lord thy God, to do and keep all his commandments which I command thee this day, the Lord thy God will make thee higher than all the nations that are on the earth. Lapide: The blessings of obedience—abundance, victory, fruitfulness, supremacy—are described in glowing terms (vv. 1–14). The divine benediction is real, not verbal; it signifies every form of temporal and spiritual prosperity. God's blessing on the faithful king and people is the foundation of providential governance.

Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed in the field. Lapide: To bless here is to enrich with every good. The benediction of God is real, not merely verbal; it signifies all prosperity, both of body and soul, of fortune and family, of harvest and herds.

And all the people of the earth shall see that the name of the Lord is invoked upon thee, and they shall fear thee. Israel's greatness under God's favour was to be a witness to the nations of God's power and Providence. This is fulfilled in the Church: all the nations shall see the name of Christ invoked upon her, and shall be moved to faith.

The Lord will open his excellent treasury, the heaven, that it may give rain upon thy land in due season. God's treasury is heaven itself—the vast reservoir of rain that He opens or closes according to His Providence. The faithful nation receives rain and lends to many; the apostate nation borrows and becomes the tail, not the head.

But if thou wilt not hear the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep and to do all his commandments and ceremonies which I command thee this day, all these curses shall come upon thee. Lapide: Preachers should impress these threatened evils upon sinners, for they are the type and preamble of the punishments of hell. The litany of curses—famine, plague, madness, drought, defeat, exile, cannibalism—covers every form of temporal evil, and points beyond to eternal punishments.

The heaven that is over thee shall be of brass, and the ground under thee of iron. Lapide: The brazen sky gives no rain; the iron earth gives no fruit. This is the physical image of spiritual sterility—the soul that has hardened against God receives no dew of grace, and produces no fruit of virtue.

And thou shalt grope at midday as the blind gropeth in the dark. Lapide citing St. Augustine (in Ps. 37): 'Is the darkening of the heart no punishment? If someone sinned and immediately lost his eyes, all would say God had avenged Himself publicly. But he lost the eye of the heart, and people think God has spared him?' Jews and the impious grope at midday—for the noonday light of Christ's law illumines the whole Christian world, yet they are blind to things eternal.

The Lord shall bring thee and thy king, whom thou shalt have appointed over thee, into a nation which thou knowest not nor thy fathers. Lapide: This was fulfilled literally in the Babylonian captivity and in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. He sees also a spiritual typology: apostasy from God brings enslavement to the enemies of the soul.

The Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the farthest part of the earth to the end thereof. Lapide applies this to the Jewish dispersion: fulfilled first in Babylon, more completely in the Roman dispersion which continues to his day. He refutes the Jewish argument that this text requires a future Messianic gathering, noting that Nehemias (1:8-9) explicitly states the promise was fulfilled in the return from Babylon.