ידבק השם בך את הדבר, "God will make the pestilence adhere to you, etc.⁠" The penalties introduced with this verse through verse 44 ending with the words: "you will be the tail,⁠" refer to your failure to observe the negative commandments. This is the reason verse 45 concludes appropriately with: "because you have failed to hearken to the voice of your God to observe His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you.⁠" Any intelligent student will realise that all these terrible curses are the result of the commission of sins. The reason the Torah uses the simile "God will make the pestilence adhere to you,⁠" is because we know that if one commits only a single transgression the spiritually negative force one has created thereby attaches itself to the personality of the guilty person and eventually becomes part of his soul. This is the mystical dimension of mental illness. This evil part of man is called דבר, pestilence, as we have learned in Chabakuk 3,5: "pestilence walks ahead of Him.⁠" Satan, here called "pestilence,⁠" is described as preceding God. All the forces of evil are branches of Samael i.e. Satan, and are called by his name. All the various diseases and afflictions mentioned in our chapter are variations of the theme. When Rabbi Ami in Shabbat 55 claims that there is no death which is not due to sin and that there are no afflictions which are not the result of sin, he meant that sin "gives birth" to a variety of bodily afflictions. Jeremiah 2,12 speaks of the bodily afflictions being the result of Israel's wickedness.

והיו שמיך אשר על ראשך נחשת, "And the sky above your head will turn to copper.⁠" We may understand this with the help of the Zohar volume one page 6 that the sources of God's goodness will be blocked through our sins. We have an allusion to this in Job 14,11 "that the river is destroyed and dries up.⁠"

יתנך השם נגף, "God will cause you to be struck down by your enemies, etc.⁠" This too is the direct result of your sins as hinted at in Kohelet 8,9: "when a man rules over another to his detriment.⁠" Solomon means that the reason man experiences another force ruling him is that he has sinned and the forces he created now try to control him. Similar considerations govern all the various curses written in this chapter. All of them are outgrowths of sinful conduct.

והיו בך לאות ולמופת, "They will be a sign and a wonder in you, etc.⁠" When a person commits even a single sin this is somehow engraved on his forehead.

ובזרעך עד עולם, "and in your offspring, forever.⁠" The reason for this is that the soul of man becomes evil, corrupt, through all the spiritually negative forces his sins have created and which become progressively more and more part of his personality. We described these outgrowths previously as being like children one sires or gives birth to. We have also explained in connection with Genesis 49,3 that the mystical element of death which God decreed upon Adam and all his descendants is due to the fact that all his descendants have at least indirectly tasted the sin which Adam tasted. The transformation in Adam's character brought about by his eating from the forbidden fruit became part of his genes, and therefore, albeit in a less intense form, part of the genes of his descendants. [Seeing that both Eve and Adam transmitted this, it could easily not become diluted through subsequent matings of one human being with a guilt-free and therefore unpolluted human being. Ed.] This is what the Torah means here when it writes: "and in your offspring, forever.⁠"