10.We’ll take ten men out of every hundred from all the tribes of Israel, and a hundred from a thousand, and a thousand from ten thousand, to get provisions for the army. Then, when the army arrives at Gibeah20:10 One Hebrew manuscript; most Hebrew manuscripts Geba, a variant of Gibeah in Benjamin, it can give them what they deserve for this outrageous act done in Israel.”
Blessings for Obedience
1.If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. 2.All these blessings will come on you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God:
3.You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.
4.The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
5.Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.
6.You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.
7.The Lord will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven.
8.The Lord will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.
9.The Lord will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the Lord your God and walk in obedience to him. 10.Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they will fear you. 11.The Lord will grant you abundant prosperity—in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground—in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you.
12.The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. 13.The Lord will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the Lord your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom. 14.Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other gods and serving them.
Curses for Disobedience
15.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:
16.You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.
17.Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.
18.The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
19.You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.
20.The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.28:20 Hebrew me 21.The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. 22.The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. 23.The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. 24.The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.
25.The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. 26.Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. 27.The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. 28.The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. 29.At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.
30.You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. 31.Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. 32.Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. 33.A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. 34.The sights you see will drive you mad. 35.The Lord will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.
36.The Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. 37.You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where the Lord will drive you.
38.You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. 39.You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. 40.You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off. 41.You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity. 42.Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land.
43.The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. 44.They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail.
45.All these curses will come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. 46.They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever. 47.Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, 48.therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.
49.The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50.a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. 51.They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or olive oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined. 52.They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the Lord your God is giving you.
53.Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. 54.Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, 55.and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. 56.The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter 57.the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.
58.If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God— 59.the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. 60.He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. 61.The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. 62.You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the Lord your God. 63.Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.
64.Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. 65.Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. 66.You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. 67.In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening, “If only it were morning!”—because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see. 68.The Lord will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.
1.In the days when the judges ruled,1:1 Traditionally judged there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. 2.The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.3.Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons.
4.They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, 5.both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.6.When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. 7.With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.8.Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. 9.May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”
Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud 10.and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”11.But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? 12.Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13.would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”14.At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.15.“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”16.But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17.Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 18.When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
Ruth and Boaz at the Threshing Floor
1.One day Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi said to her, “My daughter, I must find a home3:1 Hebrew find rest (see 1:9) for you, where you will be well provided for. 2.Now Boaz, with whose women you have worked, is a relative of ours. Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. 3.Wash, put on perfume, and get dressed in your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. 4.When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.”
5.“I will do whatever you say,” Ruth answered. 6.So she went down to the threshing floor and did everything her mother-in-law told her to do.
7.When Boaz had finished eating and drinking and was in good spirits, he went over to lie down at the far end of the grain pile. Ruth approached quietly, uncovered his feet and lay down. 8.In the middle of the night something startled the man; he turned—and there was a woman lying at his feet!
9.“Who are you?” he asked.
“I am your servant Ruth,” she said. “Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a guardian-redeemer3:9 The Hebrew word for guardian-redeemer is a legal term for one who has the obligation to redeem a relative in serious difficulty (see Lev. 25:25-55); also in verses 12 and 13. of our family.”
10.“The Lord bless you, my daughter,” he replied. “This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor. 11.And now, my daughter, don’t be afraid. I will do for you all you ask. All the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character. 12.Although it is true that I am a guardian-redeemer of our family, there is another who is more closely related than I. 13.Stay here for the night, and in the morning if he wants to do his duty as your guardian-redeemer, good; let him redeem you. But if he is not willing, as surely as the Lord lives I will do it. Lie here until morning.”
14.So she lay at his feet until morning, but got up before anyone could be recognized; and he said, “No one must know that a woman came to the threshing floor.”
15.He also said, “Bring me the shawl you are wearing and hold it out.” When she did so, he poured into it six measures of barley and placed the bundle on her. Then he3:15 Most Hebrew manuscripts; many Hebrew manuscripts, Vulgate and Syriac she went back to town.
16.When Ruth came to her mother-in-law, Naomi asked, “How did it go, my daughter?”
Then she told her everything Boaz had done for her 17.and added, “He gave me these six measures of barley, saying, ‘Don’t go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed.’ ”
18.Then Naomi said, “Wait, my daughter, until you find out what happens. For the man will not rest until the matter is settled today.”
14.Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15.and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
