Blessings Conditional

Still the great leader was filled with fear that the people would stray from God. In a lofty and thrilling address he set before them the blessings that would be theirs on condition of obedience, and the curses that would follow transgression:BOE 231.3

“If you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you this day,” “blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country,” in “the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds. ... Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. ... The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face. ... The Lord will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand.”BOE 231.4

“But it shall come to pass, if you do not ... observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you,” “and you shall become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations where the Lord shall drive you.” “Then the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other. ... And among those nations you shall find no rest, nor shall the sole of your foot have a resting place; but there the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and anguish of soul. Your life shall hang in doubt before you; you shall fear day and night, and have no assurance of life. In the morning you shall say, ‘Oh, that it were evening!’ And at evening you shall say, ‘Oh, that it were morning!’”BOE 231.5

By the Spirit of Inspiration, looking far down the ages, Moses pictured the terrible scenes of Israel’s final overthrow as a nation and the destruction of Jerusalem by the armies of Rome. The horrible sufferings of the people centuries later during the siege of Jerusalem under Titus were vividly portrayed: “They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land. ... You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters ... in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you.” “The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and sensitivity, shall refuse, to the husband of her bosom ... her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of everything in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates.”BOE 231.6

Moses closed with these impressive words: “I call heaven and earth as witnesses this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them” (Deuteronomy 30:19, 20).BOE 232.1

To impress these truths more deeply on all minds, the great leader put them into sacred verse. The people were to commit this poetic history to memory and teach it to their children and grandchildren, so that it would never be forgotten.BOE 232.2

In the future, when their children would ask, “What is the meaning of the testimonies, the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord our God has commanded you?” then the parents were to repeat the history of God’s gracious dealings with them—how the Lord had acted to deliver them so that they might obey His law: “The Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is at this day. Then it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to observe all these commandments before the Lord our God, as He has commanded us.”BOE 232.3