Consumption

Consumption appears in the UPDV as one of the wasting diseases threatened against Israel under the covenant curses. It belongs to the language of Sinai and the plains of Moab, where breach of covenant is met not first with armies but with bodies that fail.

A Curse of the Covenant

In the long catalog at the close of Leviticus, the threat is delivered in the first person and aimed at the body itself: "I also will do this to you⁺: I will appoint terror over you⁺, even consumption and fever, that will consume the eyes, and make the soul to pine away; and you⁺ will sow your⁺ seed in vain, for your⁺ enemies will eat it" (Lev 26:16). The disease is named alongside fever, and its work is described in two stages — eyes consumed and soul pining — before the curse moves outward to the field, where seed sown is eaten by the enemy.

Deuteronomy widens the list. The same word stands first in a chain of afflictions: "[The Speech of] Yahweh will strike you with consumption, and with fever, and with inflammation, and with fiery heat, and with drought, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they will pursue you until you perish" (Deut 28:22). Here consumption opens a sequence that runs from the body's own heat through atmospheric extremes to the failure of the harvest, and the verse closes with pursuit "until you perish."

A Wasting That Pursues

Across both passages the disease is not pictured as a momentary affliction but as an active pursuer. In Leviticus it consumes the eyes and makes the soul pine away; in Deuteronomy it is paired with the verb "pursue" and tied to the language of perishing. The two verses together give the umbrella its shape — consumption as covenant-sanction, joined to fever, joined to crop failure, and aimed at a people who have broken faith.