Leviticus 26

1 “You must not make idols for yourselves or set up a carved image or sacred pillar; you must not place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down to it. For I am the LORD your God.

[Yahweh also said this to Moses/me on Sinai Mountain]: “Do not make idols or set up statues of false gods or sacred stones [to worship other gods]. And do not put on your property a stone that has been shaped [to resemble a false god] and bow down to [worship] it. [You must worship only] me, Yahweh, your God.

2 You must keep My Sabbaths and have reverence for My sanctuary. I am the LORD.

“Honor the Sabbath days and revere my Sacred Tent, because I, Yahweh, [live there].

3 If you follow My statutes and carefully keep My commandments,

“If you carefully obey all my commands [DOU],

4 I will give you rains in their season, and the land will yield its produce, and the trees of the field will bear their fruit.

I will send rain for you at the proper/right times, in order that crops will grow on your land and there will be plenty of fruit on your trees.

5 Your threshing will continue until the grape harvest, and the grape harvest will continue until sowing time; you will have your fill of food to eat and will dwell securely in your land.

You will continue [harvesting and] threshing [grain] until it is time to harvest grapes, and you will continue to harvest grapes until it is time to start planting [things in the following year]. And you will have all the food that you want to eat, and you will live safely in your land.

6 And I will give peace to the land, and you will lie down with nothing to fear. I will rid the land of dangerous animals, and no sword will pass through your land.

“[If you obey all my laws], there will be peace in your country, and when you lie down [to sleep], nothing will cause you to be afraid. I will get rid of the dangerous animals in your country, and there will no wars [MTY] in your country.

7 You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you.

You will pursue your enemies and kill them with your swords:

8 Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.

Five of you will pursue 100 of them, and 100 of you will pursue 1,000 of them and kill them with your swords.

9 I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will establish My covenant with you.

“[If you obey all my laws], I will bless you and cause you to have many children [DOU]. And I will do what I said that I would do in the agreement that I made with you.

10 You will still be eating the old supply of grain when you need to clear it out to make room for the new.

When you are still eating food from the harvest from the previous year, it will be necessary for you to throw away some of it to make space for the new harvest.

11 And I will make My dwelling place among you, and My soul will not despise you.

I will live among you in my Sacred Tent, and I will never reject you.

12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people.

I will walk among you and continue to be your God, and you will continue to be my people.

13 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk in uprightness.

I am Yahweh your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt in order that you would no longer be slaves of the people of Egypt. [When you were there, you were treated as though you were animals that worked for the people of Egypt, but] [MET] I broke the bars of the (yokes/frames that were put around your necks) and enabled you to walk with your heads up.”

14 If, however, you fail to obey Me and to carry out all these commandments,

“But if you will not heed me and obey all these commands,

15 and if you reject My statutes, despise My ordinances, and neglect to carry out all My commandments, and so break My covenant,

and if you reject [DOU] my decrees and laws, and do not do [DOU] what I commanded you to do in the agreement that I made with you,

16 then this is what I will do to you: I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting disease, and fever that will destroy your sight and drain your life. You will sow your seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it.

these are the things that I will do to you: I will suddenly cause there to be disasters that will ruin you. You will have diseases that cannot be cured, and fevers that will cause you to become blind and will slowly kill you. It will be useless for you to plant seeds, because your enemies will eat the crops that grow.

17 And I will set My face against you, so that you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one pursues you.

I will reject/abandon you [IDM], with the result that you will be defeated by your enemies. Then those who hate you will rule you, and [you will be so terrified that] you will run away even when no one is pursuing you.

18 And if after all this you will not obey Me, I will proceed to punish you sevenfold for your sins.

“If you still will not heed me after all those things happen to you, I will continue to punish you again and again for the sins that you have committed.

19 I will break down your stubborn pride and make your sky like iron and your land like bronze,

I will cause you to no longer be stubborn and proud; I will cause [no rain to fall; it will be as though] [MET] the sky is made of iron; and the ground will be [as hard as] brass [MET].

20 and your strength will be spent in vain. For your land will not yield its produce, and the trees of the land will not bear their fruit.

You will uselessly work very hard [to plant seeds], because crops will not grow in the hard soil in your fields, and fruit will not grow on your trees.

21 If you walk in hostility toward Me and refuse to obey Me, I will multiply your plagues seven times, according to your sins.

“If you continue to oppose me and refuse to heed me, I will cause you to experience disasters again and again, like you deserve to experience because of your sins.

22 I will send wild animals against you to rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and reduce your numbers, until your roads lie desolate.

I will send wild animals to attack you, and they will kill your little children and destroy your cattle. There will be very few of you who will remain alive, with the result that there will be very few [HYP] people walking on the roads in your country.

23 And if in spite of these things you do not accept My discipline, but continue to walk in hostility toward Me,

“When you experience those things that I do to punish you, if you still do not pay attention to me, and if you continue to oppose me,

24 then I will act with hostility toward you, and I will strike you sevenfold for your sins.

I myself will oppose you, and I will punish you for your sins again and again.

25 And I will bring a sword against you to execute the vengeance of the covenant. Though you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be delivered into the hand of the enemy.

I will send [foreign] [MTY] to punish you for not doing the things that I commanded you to do in the agreement that I made with you. If you [try to escape from your enemies by] shutting yourselves in your cities [that have walls around them], I will cause you to experience plagues, and I will allow your enemies to capture [IDM] you.

26 When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and dole out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.

When I cut off your food supply, there will be very little flour with which to make bread. As a result, ten women will be able to bake all their bread in [only] one oven. [When the bread is baked], each woman will divide it [among the members of her family, but there will be very little for each one], and when they have eaten all of it, they will still be hungry.

27 But if in spite of all this you do not obey Me, but continue to walk in hostility toward Me,

“After all those things happen, if you still do not heed me, if you still oppose me,

28 then I will walk in fury against you, and I, even I, will punish you sevenfold for your sins.

I will be very angry with you, and I will oppose you, and I myself will punish you for your sins again and again.

29 You will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters.

[You will be extremely hungry, with the result that] you will [kill] your sons and daughters and eat their flesh.

30 I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and heap your lifeless bodies on the lifeless remains of your idols; and My soul will despise you.

I will cause the shrines [where you worship idols] on hilltops to be destroyed. I will smash the altars where you burn incense [to worship your gods], and I will cause your corpses to be piled on the lifeless statues of your gods. And I will detest you.

31 I will reduce your cities to rubble and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will refuse to smell the pleasing aroma of your sacrifices.

I will cause your cities to become heaps of ruins, and I will cause the buildings that are dedicated to the worship of your gods to be smashed. And I will not be pleased at all with the aroma of your offerings [that are burned on the altar].

32 And I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who dwell in it will be appalled.

I will completely ruin your country, with the result that even your enemies who capture it will be shocked/appalled [when they see it].

33 But I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes desolate and your cities are laid waste.

I will enable [your enemies to kill you with] their swords, and I will cause the rest of you to be scattered among other nations. Your country will be ruined and your cities will become ruins.

34 Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths.

After that happens, as long as you are living in your enemies’ countries, your land will be allowed to rest, like you should have allowed it to rest every seven years.

35 As long as it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not receive during the Sabbaths when you lived in it.

All the time that your land is desolate, it will be able to rest, like you did not enable it to rest during all the years that you lived there.

36 As for those of you who survive, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, so that even the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. And they will flee as one flees the sword, and fall when no one pursues them.

“As for you people who will remain alive in the countries to which your enemies [will have taken you], I will cause you to become so afraid that when you hear the sound of leaves being blown by the wind, you will run away. You will run like [SIM] you are running from [a man carrying] a sword, and you will fall down, even though no one is pursuing you.

37 They will stumble over one another as before the sword, though no one is behind them. So you will not be able to stand against your enemies.

You will stumble over each other. So you will not be able to stand and fight your enemies.

38 You will perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies will consume you.

Many of you will die in the countries that belong to your enemies [DOU].

39 Those of you who survive in the lands of your enemies will waste away in their iniquity and will decay in the sins of their fathers.

And those of you who remain alive will slowly die and rot in the countries of your enemies because of your sins and because of the sins of your ancestors.

40 But if they will confess their iniquity and that of their fathers in the unfaithfulness that they practiced against Me, by which they have also walked in hostility toward Me—

“But your descendants must confess their sins and the sins that their ancestors committed. Their ancestors acted unfaithfully toward me and were hostile to me, with the result that I forced them to go to the countries that belonged to their enemies. But when your descendants humble themselves [SYN] and stop being very stubborn [IDM] and accept being punished for their sins,

41 and I acted with hostility toward them and brought them into the land of their enemies—and if their uncircumcised hearts will be humbled and they will make amends for their iniquity,

42 then I will remember My covenant with Jacob and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.

I will remember the agreement that I made with [your ancestors] Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and [what I promised them about] this land.

43 For the land will be abandoned by them, and it will enjoy its Sabbaths by lying desolate without them. And they will pay the penalty for their iniquity, because they rejected My ordinances and abhorred My statutes.

But [before that happens], you will be forced to leave your land, with the result that the land will be able to rest while it is desolate and while the people are being punished for rejecting my laws and hating my decrees [DOU].

44 Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject or despise them so as to destroy them and break My covenant with them; for I am the LORD their God.

But when that happens, I will still not reject them or hate them and destroy them completely. I will not cancel the agreement that I made with them; for I am still Yahweh their God.

45 But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their fathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the LORD.”

I will (remember/never forget) the agreement that I made with your ancestors when I brought them out of Egypt, in order that the people of all nations will know that I, Yahweh, [will continue to] be your God.”

46 These are the statutes, ordinances, and laws that the LORD established between Himself and the Israelites through Moses on Mount Sinai.

Those are the decrees, the laws, and the regulations [DOU] that Yahweh established on Sinai Mountain between himself and the Israeli people by [giving them to] Moses/me [to tell to them].