Bible Strands
Deuteronomy 28:48
you will serve your enemies the LORD will send against you in famine, thirst, nakedness, and destitution. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The LORD addresses Israel through Moses at the plains of Moab, concluding the covenant stipulations after warning that failure to serve Him with joy in abundance triggers the following curse.
The words — `עָבַדְתָּ` (avadta) = you will serve; `רָעָב` (ra'av) = hunger. The text states that deprivation and foreign subjugation replace covenant blessing.
The thread — The imagery of forced service and broken yokes appears in Jeremiah 28:13 and Nehemiah 9:35, where covenant failure shifts leadership from divine provision to human rebellion or foreign domination.
Why it lands — The text demands acknowledgment that covenant disobedience inverts privilege into subjugation, requiring readers to weigh present obedience against future displacement.
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
Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 28:13 “Go and tell Hananiah that this is what the LORD says: ‘You have broken a yoke of wood, but in its place you have fashioned a yoke of iron.’
- Nehemiah 9:35 For even while they were in their kingdom, with the abundant goodness that You had given them, and in the spacious and fertile land that You had set before them, they would not serve You or turn from their wicked ways.
- Jeremiah 44:17 Instead, we will do everything we vowed to do: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and offer drink offerings to her, just as we, our fathers, our kings, and our officials did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and good things, and we saw no disaster.
- Jeremiah 44:22 So the LORD could no longer endure the evil deeds and detestable acts you committed, and your land became a desolation, a horror, and an object of cursing, without inhabitant, as it is this day.
- Jeremiah 44:27 I am watching over them for harm and not for good, and every man of Judah who is in the land of Egypt will meet his end by sword or famine, until they are finished off.
- Lamentations 5:2 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to foreigners.
- Ezekiel 4:16 Then He told me, “Son of man, I am going to cut off the supply of food in Jerusalem. They will anxiously eat bread rationed by weight, and in despair they will drink water by measure.
- Ezekiel 17:12 “Now say to this rebellious house: ‘Do you not know what these things mean?’ Tell them, ‘Behold, the king of Babylon came to Jerusalem, carried off its king and officials, and brought them back with him to Babylon.
- 2 Chronicles 12:8 Nevertheless, they will become his servants, so that they may learn the difference between serving Me and serving the kings of other lands.”
- Isaiah 47:6 I was angry with My people; I profaned My heritage, and I placed them under your control. You showed them no mercy; even on the elderly you laid a most heavy yoke.