You know what's really fun are curses. I've never been cursed myself like by a

witch or a soussayer or anything but I think people curse at me over bad driving and

things like that but no I mean like the juicy curses from history like the curse of the hope diamond where

Supposedly anybody who comes across it and touches it or owns it has some horrible tragedy befall them or the curse of unlocking King Tut's tomb or even the

fictional curses like the curse of the Maltese Falcon. I don't even know what that curse actually is. I don't know that story very well. I'm making stuff up now. But it's fun. It's it's Halloween fodder and it's mystery and all of this. And as much as it seems like pure fiction, the reality is that the curse thing actually has a basis in the Old Testament.

Anytime anybody would make a covenant or a deal, there would be a section of that legal document called a blessings and curses section and

predictably it would say if you do all the stuff the covenant says and you get this good stuff and if you blow

off the covenant and don't do what it says and you get this bad stuff.

One of the most significant covenants of the Old Testament

is the one between God and Moses.

And this is a conditional covenant where it really does come down

to what you do is what you're going to get.

And this is a distillation of like tons of chapters of Bible because there's not really one

singular smoking gun verse that gives you the whole of the covenant between God and Moses but it goes like this

I'm gonna be your God you're gonna be my people and you and the nations are all gonna know this

because when you get stuff right according to what I said I'm gonna bless you and when you do stuff right according to what I said I'm going to bless you and when you do stuff wrong according to what we agreed on I'm going to curse you

You can do whichever you want but either way the results will be steady and consistent and everybody will know that I am truly God

and that you are truly my people.

Now a lot of the Old Testament can really be summarized as the cycle of blessings and curses as God's chosen people get stuff right or screw stuff up.

And one of the really big examples of this happens at the end of Second Kings

when an 18-year-old king named Jekinaya or Jihoyachin, same guy, just two different names get used,

he comes to power in the southern kingdom of Judah.

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