39. Though you plant and cultivate vineyards, you will not drink or store up the wine, for the worms will eat them.
40. Though you have olive trees throughout your country, you will have no oil for ointment, for your olives will drop off.
41. Though you beget sons and daughters, they will not remain with you, for they will go into captivity.
42. Buzzing insects will take possession of all your trees and the crops of your soil.
43. The resident aliens among you will rise above you higher and higher, while you sink lower and lower.
44. They will lend to you, not you to them. They will become the head, you the tail.
45. All these curses will come upon you, pursuing you and overwhelming you, until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord, your God, by keeping his commandments and statutes which he gave you.
46. They will be a sign and a wonder for you and your descendants for all time.
47. Since you would not serve the Lord, your God, with heartfelt joy for abundance of every kind,
48. in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and utter want, you will serve the enemies whom the Lord will send against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck, until he destroys you.
49. The Lord will raise up against you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, that swoops down like an eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand,
50. a nation of fierce appearance, that shows neither respect for the aged nor mercy for the young.
51. They will consume the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil, until you are destroyed; they will leave you no grain or wine or oil, no issue of herd, no young of flock, until they have brought about your ruin.
52. They will besiege you in each of your communities, until the great, fortified walls, in which you trust, come tumbling down all over your land. They will besiege you in every community throughout the land which the Lord, your God, has given you,
53. and because of the siege and the distress to which your enemy subjects you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your own sons and daughters whom the Lord, your God, has given you.
54. The most refined and fastidious man among you will begrudge his brother and his beloved wife and his surviving children,