The Logic of the Curse Text: Deuteronomy 29:22-28
Introduction: Covenantal Cause and Effect
We live in an age that prides itself on its supposed sophistication, an age that has declared its independence from God. Modern man believes he can explain the world without reference to its Creator. He sees a nation crumble, a culture decay, a land become barren, and he will invent a thousand reasons for it, a thousand intricate explanations from sociology, economics, or political science. He will blame anything and everything, except the one thing that truly matters. He is like a man who finds his house burned to the ground and spends his days analyzing the wind patterns and the molecular structure of ash, all while refusing to acknowledge the arsonist who stands there holding a gas can and a match.
The modern mind is allergic to the concept of covenant. A covenant, put simply, is a solemn bond, sovereignly administered, with attendant blessings and curses. It is a relationship defined by God, not by us, and it comes with terms. Obedience brings blessing. Disobedience brings judgment. This is not complicated. It is the basic spiritual physics of the universe. And because our generation has rejected the very idea of a covenant with God, it is utterly incapable of understanding the world it lives in. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, the world is baffled. They see the effect, but they are willfully blind to the cause.
Here in Deuteronomy, on the plains of Moab, Moses is laying out the terms of the covenant for the second time. He is preparing a new generation to enter the Promised Land. He has detailed the blessings for faithfulness and the curses for apostasy. And in our text today, he paints a vivid, terrifying picture of what that curse looks like. It is a picture of national devastation so complete that future generations and foreign travelers will be stopped in their tracks, dumbfounded, asking what on earth could have happened here. And the answer, Moses says, will be simple. It will be theological. It will be covenantal.
This passage is not just a warning for ancient Israel. It is a permanent diagnostic tool for all nations, at all times. It teaches us how to read history. It teaches us how to interpret the headlines. When we see a land that is spiritually and culturally like a salt flat, a burning waste where nothing good grows, we are not to be confused. God is not mysterious in His judgments. He is telling us something. He is giving the answer to the question that the whole world will be asking.
The Text
“And the generation to come, your sons who rise up after you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, shall see the plagues of the land and the diseases with which Yahweh has afflicted it, and they will say, ‘All its land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown and nothing sprouting, and no grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in His anger and in His wrath.’ And all the nations will say, ‘Why has Yahweh done thus to this land? Why this great burning anger?’ Then men will say, ‘Because they forsook the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, which He cut with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt. And they went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they have not known and whom He had not apportioned to them. Therefore, the anger of Yahweh was kindled against that land, to bring upon it every curse which is written in this book; and Yahweh uprooted them from their land in anger and in fury and in great wrath, and He cast them into another land, as it is this day.’”
(Deuteronomy 29:22-28 LSB)
The Astonished Onlookers (vv. 22-23)
Moses begins by projecting into the future, describing a scene of utter desolation that will provoke questions from all who see it.
“And the generation to come, your sons who rise up after you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, shall see the plagues of the land and the diseases with which Yahweh has afflicted it, and they will say, ‘All its land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown and nothing sprouting, and no grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in His anger and in His wrath.’” (Deuteronomy 29:22-23)
Notice who the audience is for this devastation. It is "the generation to come," their own children, and "the foreigner who comes from a distant land." The judgment for covenant-breaking is not a private affair. It is a public spectacle. God intends for the ruins of a rebellious nation to be a history lesson for the entire world. The land itself becomes a witness against the people. The physical creation groans under the weight of man's sin, and in this case, it becomes a visible manifestation of God's judicial sentence.
The description of the land is stark: "brimstone and salt, a burning waste." This is not an ecological disaster in the modern, secular sense. This is a theological disaster. The language is a direct and intentional echo of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. That event was the archetypal judgment of God against a culture that had given itself over to utter depravity. By invoking Sodom, Moses is saying that when God's own covenant people rebel, their judgment will be of the same kind, and on a grander scale. They, who were given the light, will be plunged into a darkness so profound that their land will resemble that infamous monument to God's wrath.
The land becomes sterile, "unsown and nothing sprouting, and no grass grows in it." This is a systematic reversal of the creation blessing. God made the land to be fruitful and to multiply, to bring forth life. The curse of covenant-breaking turns a garden into a desert. This is a crucial principle. Sin has physical, tangible, agricultural consequences. A nation cannot thumb its nose at the Creator and expect the creation to continue serving them with gladness. When you worship idols, you get an idol's reward: sterility, barrenness, and death.
The Universal Question (v. 24)
The sight of this desolation leads to an inevitable question from the nations.
“And all the nations will say, ‘Why has Yahweh done thus to this land? Why this great burning anger?’” (Deuteronomy 29:24)
This is remarkable. The pagan nations, the foreigners, will look at the wasteland that was once Israel and they will know two things instinctively. First, they will know who did it: "Yahweh." They won't attribute it to bad luck, or a superior Babylonian military strategy, or climate change. They will know that this was a divine act. God's judgments are signed. His fingerprints are all over the crime scene. Second, they will know the motive behind it: "great burning anger." They will recognize that this level of destruction is not accidental; it is personal. It is judicial. It is the fury of a spurned husband against an adulterous wife.
The world is not as stupid as we sometimes think. When they see a Christian nation, a nation that once knew the blessings of God, descend into chaos and self-destruction, they know, on some level, what is happening. They may not use the right theological terms, but they can smell the wrath of God. They see the ruins of our Christian civilization, and even if they mock, they are still asking the same question: "Why?" Why is this happening to you people who claimed to have the answers?
The Covenantal Answer (vv. 25-28)
The question hangs in the air, and Moses provides the answer that will be on everyone's lips. The answer is not political, but theological. It is not about economics, but about worship.
“Then men will say, ‘Because they forsook the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, which He cut with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt. And they went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they have not known and whom He had not apportioned to them.’” (Deuteronomy 29:25-26)
Here is the charge sheet. The reason for the brimstone and salt is simple: "they forsook the covenant." This is the root of all national decay. It is not a failure of policy; it is a failure of faith. It is apostasy. They abandoned the relationship that defined them, the covenant that God "cut with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt." Notice the emphasis on God's prior grace. He saved them first. He redeemed them from slavery. The covenant was not a ladder for them to climb to God; it was the constitution for a relationship God Himself initiated in grace.
And what does it mean to forsake the covenant? It means you "went and served other gods." All apostasy is idolatry. You cannot serve two masters. To abandon Yahweh is, by definition, to embrace a substitute. And notice the description of these gods: "gods whom they have not known and whom He had not apportioned to them." These are illegitimate gods. They are manufactured gods, powerless nothings. Yahweh had revealed Himself to Israel. He was the God they knew. But they traded the glory of the known, living God for dumb, blind, impotent idols. This is the great folly of man. We trade the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns that can hold no water.
This covenant-breaking has its inevitable consequence, as Moses concludes:
“Therefore, the anger of Yahweh was kindled against that land, to bring upon it every curse which is written in this book; and Yahweh uprooted them from their land in anger and in fury and in great wrath, and He cast them into another land, as it is this day.’” (Deuteronomy 29:27-28)
The "therefore" here is the logic of the universe. Because they broke the covenant, therefore God's anger was kindled. The curses written in the book of the law are not empty threats. They are promises. God is as faithful to His warnings as He is to His blessings. When a nation chooses the path of rebellion, it is choosing to walk directly into the path of the promised curses.
The final judgment is exile. "Yahweh uprooted them from their land." The same God who planted them in the land with His grace now uproots them with His wrath. The language is intense: "in anger and in fury and in great wrath." This is not the action of an indifferent deity. This is the holy and just reaction of a covenant-keeping God against a covenant-breaking people. He casts them into another land, and they become a cautionary tale for all the world to see.
The Cross and the Curse
This is a grim and terrifying picture. And if the story ended here, we would have no hope. If the final word on covenant-breaking was a land of brimstone and salt, we would all be undone. For we, like Israel, have forsaken the covenant. We have all gone after other gods, the idols of self, and money, and power, and approval. Our hearts are little idol factories. Our nation, which was once dedicated to Christ, is now a smoldering ruin of its former glory, and the foreigners are looking on and asking, "Why?"
But the story does not end here. The covenant curses described in Deuteronomy are not the final word. They are a signpost pointing to a much greater curse, and a much greater deliverance. The Apostle Paul tells us that "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree'" (Galatians 3:13).
On the cross, Jesus Christ, the true Israel, absorbed the full measure of God's "great burning anger." He endured the ultimate exile, being cut off from the land of the living and from the presence of His Father. He cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He became the brimstone and salt. He took upon Himself "every curse which is written in this book." He was uprooted, so that we might be planted. He was cast out, so that we might be brought in.
Therefore, the logic of the covenant still holds, but now it works in our favor. Because Christ has taken the curse, therefore all the blessings of the covenant are ours in Him. Because He was faithful, therefore we are counted as faithful. The question for us, as a people and as a nation, is the same question that faced Israel. Will we trust in the covenant-keeping God? Will we turn from our worthless idols and cling to the one who became a curse for us?
The answer to our national decay is not a new political program. It is repentance. It is a return to the covenant. It is to look at the cross where God's great burning anger against sin was fully satisfied, and to say, "That is our only hope." Only then can our barren land begin to heal. Only then can we see the curse reversed and the blessing of God begin to flow once more.