Deuteronomy 28

Writer Dante Alighieri's best known work is The Divine Comedy, which consists of three parts (called "cantinas"): Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Each follows a fictionalized version of the author as he receives a pleasant little tour of hell, purgatory, and heaven, respectively. Pop culture contains innumerable references to Inferno and its seven circles of hell, as well as a healthy number of allusions to Purgatorio's seven terraces of purgatory, but you don't hear people talk too much about Paradiso. As humans, we seem fascinated by the variegated forms of torment, torture, and tribulation. Hollywood has no dearth of horror movies, action blockbusters, or dramas in which people inflict emotional trauma on each other. When was the last time you read a good book or saw a good movie that had no conflict whatsoever, where everyone was as happy as clams?

This truly gargantuan chapter of Deuteronomy contains 14 verses on blessing for obedience but devotes a whopping 54 to curses for obedience. It's like those high school handbooks that no one read except me: Nearly the entire handbook contains rules and regulations as well as the punishments for violating those regulations. The blessings in this chapter paint a lovely, somewhat pastoral picture of the kind of life we should be living. I certainly know that I enjoy many of these blessings and all to often take them for granted. However, the curses portray a truly dismal landscape with horrors that even the most hardened author of post-apocalyptic fiction would be hard-pressed to top.

Most of the curses are truly harrowing, and I don't think I'd add anything by writing something like, "People will resort to cannibalism. Isn't that awful?" I'm hoping you know that already. Instead, I'll point out some of the more bizarre curses. First, we have the image of an army coming in one direction but fleeing in seven (verses 7, 25). Good fodder for a farce, if only because it reveals how utterly panicked the fleeing army becomes in its retreat as it creates a kind of impromptu heptagon. Though I guess that makes it harder for the pursuing army to completely vanquish them because they too have to split into seven groups.

Verses 30-33 relate how one will labor but not be able to enjoy its fruits. Amidst the depressing examples--33 and the first part of 30 are especially heart-wrenching--is the rather odd, "Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and not returned." Well, shoot, my kids are slaves to some far-off nation and my ox is dead, but my donkey not being returned? That's the last straw!

Verse 40 also contains a little gem: "You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off." Bummer. (Reminds me a little of the apple "tree" at our house.)