Bible Strands
Deuteronomy 28:18
The fruit of your womb will be cursed, as well as the produce of your land, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Moses addresses Israel on the plains of Moab, concluding a covenant speech that contrasts obedience with disobedience. He pronounces these curses immediately after listing the blessings of faithful compliance.
The words — The text states that the fruit of the womb and the produce of the land will be אָר֥וּר ('a.Rur), meaning [will be] cursed. This judgment explicitly extends to the young of herds and flocks, detailing total agricultural and familial loss.
The thread — This specific curse pattern runs parallel to the bread and sky judgments in Leviticus 26:19 and Leviticus 26:26. It also reinforces the Deuteronomic warning that covenant violation triggers the Lord’s jealous retribution, as outlined in Deuteronomy 5:9.
Why it lands — The passage demands acknowledgment that covenant failure produces tangible, systemic ruin rather than abstract displeasure. It requires the reader to treat obedience as a matter of concrete survival, not merely ritual compliance.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.
Cross-references
- Leviticus 26:26 When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and dole out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.
- Leviticus 26:19 I will break down your stubborn pride and make your sky like iron and your land like bronze,
- Deuteronomy 5:9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,
- Deuteronomy 28:4 The fruit of your womb will be blessed, as well as the produce of your land and the offspring of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
- Deuteronomy 28:16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.
- Job 18:16 The roots beneath him dry up, and the branches above him wither away.
- Psalms 109:9 May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
- Lamentations 2:20 Look, O LORD, and consider: Whom have You ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the infants they have nurtured? Should priests and prophets be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?
- Habakkuk 3:17 Though the fig tree does not bud and no fruit is on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though the sheep are cut off from the fold and no cattle are in the stalls,
- Lamentations 2:11 My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.