Blessings for Obedience

28 “If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world. ² You will experience all these blessings if you obey the Lord your God:

⁷ “The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven!

⁸ “The Lord will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.

⁹ “If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, the Lord will establish you as his holy people as he swore he would do. ¹⁰ Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the Lord, and they will stand in awe of you.

¹¹ “The Lord will give you prosperity in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you, blessing you with many children, numerous livestock, and abundant crops. ¹² The Lord will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them. ¹³ If you listen to these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom. ¹⁴ You must not turn away from any of the commands I am giving you today, nor follow after other gods and worship them.

Curses for Disobedience

¹⁵ “But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you:

²⁰ “The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me. ²¹ The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy. ²² The Lord will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die. ²³ The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron. ²⁴ The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed.

²⁵ “The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but you will scatter from them in seven! You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. ²⁶ Your corpses will be food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no one will be there to chase them away.

²⁷ “The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy, and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. ²⁸ The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and panic. ²⁹ You will grope around in broad daylight like a blind person groping in the darkness, but you will not find your way. You will be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will come to save you.

³⁰ “You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house, but someone else will live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will never enjoy its fruit. ³¹ Your ox will be butchered before your eyes, but you will not eat a single bite of the meat. Your donkey will be taken from you, never to be returned. Your sheep and goats will be given to your enemies, and no one will be there to help you. ³² You will watch as your sons and daughters are taken away as slaves. Your heart will break for them, but you won’t be able to help them. ³³ A foreign nation you have never heard about will eat the crops you worked so hard to grow. You will suffer under constant oppression and harsh treatment. ³⁴ You will go mad because of all the tragedy you see around you. ³⁵ The Lord will cover your knees and legs with incurable boils. In fact, you will be covered from head to foot.

³⁶ “The Lord will exile you and your king to a nation unknown to you and your ancestors. There in exile you will worship gods of wood and stone! ³⁷ You will become an object of horror, ridicule, and mockery among all the nations to which the Lord sends you.

³⁸ “You will plant much but harvest little, for locusts will eat your crops. ³⁹ You will plant vineyards and care for them, but you will not drink the wine or eat the grapes, for worms will destroy the vines. ⁴⁰ You will grow olive trees throughout your land, but you will never use the olive oil, for the fruit will drop before it ripens. ⁴¹ You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, for they will be led away into captivity. ⁴² Swarms of insects will destroy your trees and crops.

⁴³ “The foreigners living among you will become stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker. ⁴⁴ They will lend money to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, and you will be the tail!

⁴⁵ “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. ⁴⁶ These horrors will serve as a sign and warning among you and your descendants forever. ⁴⁷ If you do not serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received, ⁴⁸ 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.

⁴⁹ “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, ⁵⁰ a fierce and heartless nation that shows no respect for the old and no pity for the young. ⁵¹ 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. ⁵² 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.

⁵³ “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. ⁵⁴ The most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children. ⁵⁵ 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. ⁵⁶ 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. ⁵⁷ 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.

⁵⁸ “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, ⁵⁹ 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. ⁶⁰ He will afflict you with all the diseases of Egypt that you feared so much, and you will have no relief. ⁶¹ 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. ⁶² Though you become as numerous as the stars in the sky, few of you will be left because you would not listen to the Lord your God.

⁶³ “Just as the Lord has found great pleasure in causing you to prosper and multiply, the Lord will find pleasure in destroying you. You will be torn from the land you are about to enter and occupy. ⁶⁴ For the Lord will scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone! ⁶⁵ There among those nations you will find no peace or place to rest. And the Lord will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair. ⁶⁶ Your life will constantly hang in the balance. You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will survive. ⁶⁷ In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were night!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ For you will be terrified by the awful horrors you see around you. ⁶⁸ Then the Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, to a destination I promised you would never see again. There you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will buy you.”

Jesus Sends Out His Disciples

10 The Lord now chose seventy-two^[a] other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places he planned to visit. ² These were his instructions to them: “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields. ³ Now go, and remember that I am sending you out as lambs among wolves. ⁴ Don’t take any money with you, nor a traveler’s bag, nor an extra pair of sandals. And don’t stop to greet anyone on the road.

⁵ “Whenever you enter someone’s home, first say, ‘May God’s peace be on this house.’ ⁶ If those who live there are peaceful, the blessing will stand; if they are not, the blessing will return to you. ⁷ Don’t move around from home to home. Stay in one place, eating and drinking what they provide. Don’t hesitate to accept hospitality, because those who work deserve their pay.

⁸ “If you enter a town and it welcomes you, eat whatever is set before you. ⁹ Heal the sick, and tell them, ‘The Kingdom of God is near you now.’ ¹⁰ But if a town refuses to welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ¹¹ ‘We wipe even the dust of your town from our feet to show that we have abandoned you to your fate. And know this—the Kingdom of God is near!’ ¹² I assure you, even wicked Sodom will be better off than such a town on judgment day.

¹³ “What sorrow awaits you, Korazin and Bethsaida! For if the miracles I did in you had been done in wicked Tyre and Sidon, their people would have repented of their sins long ago, clothing themselves in burlap and throwing ashes on their heads to show their remorse. ¹⁴ Yes, Tyre and Sidon will be better off on judgment day than you. ¹⁵ And you people of Capernaum, will you be honored in heaven? No, you will go down to the place of the dead.^[b]”

¹⁶ Then he said to the disciples, “Anyone who accepts your message is also accepting me. And anyone who rejects you is rejecting me. And anyone who rejects me is rejecting God, who sent me.”

¹⁷ When the seventy-two disciples returned, they joyfully reported to him, “Lord, even the demons obey us when we use your name!”

¹⁸ “Yes,” he told them, “I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning! ¹⁹ Look, I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy, and you can walk among snakes and scorpions and crush them. Nothing will injure you. ²⁰ But don’t rejoice because evil spirits obey you; rejoice because your names are registered in heaven.”

Jesus’ Prayer of Thanksgiving

²¹ At that same time Jesus was filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, and he said, “O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way.

²² “My Father has entrusted everything to me. No one truly knows the Son except the Father, and no one truly knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

²³ Then when they were alone, he turned to the disciples and said, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you have seen. ²⁴ I tell you, many prophets and kings longed to see what you see, but they didn’t see it. And they longed to hear what you hear, but they didn’t hear it.”

The Most Important Commandment

²⁵ One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”

²⁶ Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”

²⁷ The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”^[c]

²⁸ “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”

²⁹ The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Parable of the Good Samaritan

³⁰ Jesus replied with a story: “A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road.

³¹ “By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. ³² A Temple assistant^[d] walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.

³³ “Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. ³⁴ Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. ³⁵ The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins,^[e] telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’

³⁶ “Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.

³⁷ The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”

Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”

Jesus Visits Martha and Mary

³⁸ As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. ³⁹ Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.”

⁴¹ But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! ⁴² There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”