Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion dictates that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In simpler terms, actions have consequences—a lesson we learned as children. The nation of Israel learned this lesson painfully. But because God orchestrated their discipline, justice was accomplished—and ultimately, reconciliation will prevail.
The Abominable Golden Idol
When God gave Moses the Law, He explicitly forbade the Israelites to worship idols with His first two commandments to them: “You shall have no other gods before Me,” and “You shall not make for yourself a carved image” (Exodus 20:3–4).
When Moses returned to the people and told them the words of the Law God had spoken, the Israelites answered in a unified voice, “All the words which the Lᴏʀᴅ has said we will do” (24:3). Then, Moses wrote the words in the Book of the Covenant. When he later read the words of this book to the Israelites, again they affirmed that they would do what God said “and be obedient” (v. 7).
Spoken both from Moses’ memory and in writing, God’s message was delivered clearly. The people of Israel could not plausibly deny a thorough understanding of God’s explicit commands to reject any hint of idolatry.
Unfortunately, as soon as Moses departed from them to ascend Mount Sinai, the Israelites failed their first test—a simple test of waiting in faith. During Moses’ first 40 days on the mountain, the people grew impatient. Trusting only what they could see, they demanded of Moses’ brother, Aaron, “Make us gods that shall go before us” (32:1). But what about Moses, who was on the mountain receiving instructions from the Lord at that moment? “As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him” (v. 1).
How quickly the Israelites lost faith! And similarly tragically, how quickly did Aaron acquiesce, offering his own solution: to use the people’s gold jewelry to fashion a graven image of a calf, directly disobeying the commands God had just given them through Moses. Meanwhile, God was appointing Aaron to the honorable position of high priest during that very same 40-day period when Moses was on the mountain (28:4).
When Moses returned and saw the calf, he was rightfully enraged and delivered a firm but just punishment: He burned the calf, “and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it” (32:20). Then, 3,000 men who did not commit to the Lord were killed (vv. 26–28). The Lord plagued the people and promised to “visit punishment upon them for their sin” (v. 34).
The Choice of Obedience
Moses set the tone with the Israelites immediately: God would chastise His people when they betrayed Him with false gods and idol worship. God expounded on this promise before allowing His people to enter the Promised Land. He promised to bless all their work and make them “the head and not the tail” that would gain preeminence over all the nations if they would obey Him and observe His commandments (Deuteronomy 28:1–14). However, God promised that disobedience to His commandments would bring curses upon them (v. 15). They would be scattered “from one end of the earth to the other” and serve other gods made of wood and stone (v. 64).
Just as our immutable, unchanging God is faithful to His promises to bless, He must also carry out His promises to curse when His people break their covenant with Him.
In summary, God told the Israelites “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live” (30:19). But as the Israelites prepared to take the Promised Land, they remained stubborn, failing to turn from their sinful ways and commit fully to the Lord God.
The Consequence of Curses
In the book of Judges, the nation followed a pattern: The people served false gods instead of the Lord, and God allowed them to suffer oppression. Then they cried out to Him for mercy, and He raised up judges to deliver them. When the judges died, they returned to their sin, and the cycle repeated.
At the root of Israel’s suffering was its failure to obey God’s order to flee from idolatry. Their hearts were easily drawn away from Adonai, their Lord and Master. Just as our immutable, unchanging God is faithful to His promises to bless, He must also carry out His promises to curse when His people break their covenant with Him.
And so He did. Though God allowed prosperity under the righteous rule of King David, the man after His own heart (Acts 13:22), and his son Solomon, the remainder of the kingly line of Israel largely drew the nation away from God and back into idol worship. God poured out the curses outlined in Deuteronomy 28, allowing His people’s kingdom to be overrun by a locust plague (Joel 1) and conquered by the invading armies of Assyria (722 BC) and Babylon (586 BC). As promised (Deuteronomy 28:64), God scattered His people in the Diaspora for thousands of years until the nation’s long-awaited rebirth in 1948 with the State of Israel’s establishment.
Israel’s disobedience and ensuing suffering reminds us to be diligent in our faithfulness to God above anything else that tries to steal our attention and affection, for He rewards those who seek Him.
God will not be mocked. Though He is “merciful and gracious, longsuffering … keeping mercy for thousands” (Exodus 34:6–7), He does everything that He promises He will do—and that includes delivering just curses. His Word does not return to Him void (Isaiah 55:11).
One day, the curses He delivered to chastise Israel will bear fruit, for “all Israel will be saved” when God takes away the sins of His people because of His covenant with them (Romans 11:26–27).
Israel’s disobedience and ensuing suffering reminds us to be diligent in our faithfulness to God above anything else that tries to steal our attention and affection, for He rewards those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). He must punish sin, which is why the curses He promised for disobedience were necessary. But through the Seed of Abraham, the Messiah, we have the most wonderful gift of all. Jesus, the Son of God, bore the sins of the world and died a gruesome death on a cross. In so doing, He defeated death’s grip on us. By God’s grace through faith in His Son, we can be saved from the penalty for our sin. The curse is broken and we are free because He lives.
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