36. The Lord will send you and the king that you appoint over you far away to a nation that neither you nor your ancestors have known. There you will worship other gods made of wood and stone.
37. You will become a horror, fit only for use in proverbs and in insults by all the nations where the Lord drives you.
38. You might scatter a lot of seed on the field, but you will gather almost nothing because the locusts will eat it all.
39. You might plant lots of vineyards and work hard in them, but you won’t drink any wine or harvest the grapes because worms will devour them.
40. You might have many olive trees throughout your territories, but you won’t cover yourself with their oil because your olive trees will fail.
41. You might have sons and daughters, but they won’t be yours for long because they will be taken away as prisoners.
42. Crickets will take over all your trees and your soil’s produce.
43. The immigrants who live among you will be promoted over you, higher and higher! But you will be demoted, lower and lower!
44. They will lend to you, but you will have nothing to lend to them. They will be the head of things; you will be the tail.
45. That’s how all these curses will come over you, pursuing you, reaching you until you are completely wiped out, because you didn’t obey the Lord your God’s voice by keeping his commandments and his regulations that he gave you.
46. These things will be a sign and a wonder on you and your descendants forever.
47. Because you didn’t serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly above all else,
48. you will serve your enemies—the ones the Lord will send against you—during famine, drought, nakedness, and total depravation. God will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has wiped you out.
49. The Lord will bring a distant nation—one from the far ends of the earth—against you as fast as the eagle flies: a nation that speaks a language you can’t understand,
50. a stern nation that doesn’t go easy on the very old or show pity to the very young.
51. That nation will devour your livestock’s offspring and your soil’s produce until you yourselves are destroyed because you will have no grain, wine, or oil left—nor any young from your cattle or offspring from your flocks—that is, until that nation annihilates you.
52. That nation will attack you in all your cities until your high, reinforced walls that you thought were so safe fall down across your entire countryside. That nation will attack you in all your cities throughout the land the Lord your God has given you.