But if you will not obey me and do not observe all these commandments... I will bring terror upon you, consumption and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away.
The curses are as detailed and devastating as the blessings. Disobedience leads to actual, material consequences: failed crops, disease, military defeat, exile, abandonment.
I've struggled with this passage - it feels cruel and fatalistic. But I think what it's actually doing is removing moral evasion. You can't follow some laws and ignore others and expect it all to work out. There are real consequences to violating the structure.
It's like a warning label: this is how people actually collapse. This is what happens to societies that abandon covenant. It's not punishment so much as description of reality.
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