39. You will plant vineyards and take care of them, but you will not gather their grapes or drink wine from them, because worms will eat the vines.
40. Olive trees will grow everywhere in your land, but you will not have any olive oil, because the olives will drop off.
41. You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, because they will be taken away as prisoners of war.
42. All your trees and crops will be devoured by insects.
43. “Foreigners who live in your land will gain more and more power, while you gradually lose yours.
44. They will have money to lend you, but you will have none to lend them. In the end they will be your rulers.
45. “All these disasters will come on you, and they will be with you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and keep all the laws that he gave you.
46. They will be the evidence of God's judgement on you and your descendants for ever.
47. The Lord blessed you in every way, but you would not serve him with glad and joyful hearts.
48. So then, you will serve the enemies that the Lord is going to send against you. You will be hungry, thirsty, and naked — in need of everything. The Lord will oppress you harshly until you are destroyed.
49. The Lord will bring against you a nation from the ends of the earth, a nation whose language you do not know. They will swoop down on you like an eagle.
50. They will be ruthless and show no mercy to anyone, young or old.
51. They will eat your livestock and your crops, and you will starve to death. They will not leave you any corn, wine, olive oil, cattle, or sheep; and you will die.
52. They will attack every town in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and the high, fortified walls in which you trust will fall.
53. “When your enemies are besieging your towns, you will become so desperate for food that you will even eat the children that the Lord your God has given you.
54-55. Even the most refined man of noble birth will become so desperate during the siege that he will eat some of his own children because he has no other food. He will not even give any to his brother or to the wife he loves or to any of his children who are left.
56-57. Even the most refined woman of noble birth, so rich that she has never had to walk anywhere, will behave in the same way. When the enemy besieges her town, she will become so desperate for food that she will secretly eat her newborn child and the afterbirth as well. She will not share them with the husband she loves or with any of her children.
58. “If you do not obey faithfully all God's teachings that are written in this book and if you do not honour the wonderful and awesome name of the Lord your God,