Leviticus 26
1 I am the Lord your God: you shall not make to yourselves any idol or graven thing, neither shall you erect pillars, nor set up a remarkable stone in your land, to adore it: for I am the Lord your God.
“Don't make yourselves idols anywhere in your land and bow down to worship them, whether they are images or sacred pillars or stone sculptures. For I am the Lord your God.
2 Keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.
Keep my Sabbaths and show respect for my sanctuary. I am the Lord.
3 If you walk in my precepts, and keep my commandments, and do them, I will give you rein in due seasons.
If you follow my rules and keep my regulations,
4 And the ground shall bring forth its increase, and the trees shall be filled with fruit.
I will make sure it rains at the right time so that the ground will grow good crops and the fruit trees will be productive.
5 The threshing of your harvest shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land without fear.
Your time of threshing will last right up to the grape harvest, and the grape harvest until the time you have to sow again. You will have more than enough to eat and you will live in safety in your land.
6 I will give peace in your coasts: you shall sleep, and there shall be none to make you afraid. I will take away evil beasts: and the sword shall not pass through your quarters.
I will make sure your land is at peace. You will be able to sleep without being afraid of anything. I will get rid of dangerous animals from the land, and you will not suffer from any violent enemy attacks.
7 You shall pursue your enemies, and they shall fall before you.
You will chase your enemies, and kill them with the sword.
8 Five of yours shall pursue a hundred others, and a hundred of you ten thousand: your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.
Five of you will kill one hundred, and one hundred of you will kill ten thousand. You will destroy your enemies.
9 I will look on you, and make you increase: you shell be multiplied, and I will establish my covenant with you.
I will come to help you, so you will reproduce and increase in numbers, and I will confirm my agreement with you.
10 You shall eat the oldest of the old store, and, new coming on, you shall cast away the old.
You'll still be eating your old stock of grain when you need to get rid of it so you can store the new grain.
11 I will set my tabernacle in the midst of you, and my soul shall not cast you off.
I will come and live with you—I certainly won't reject you.
12 I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people.
I shall always be right there with you. I will be your God, and you will be my people.
13 I am the Lord your God: who have brought you out of the land of the Egyptians, that you should not serve them, and who have broken the chains of your necks, that you might go upright.
I am the Lord your God, who led you out of Egypt so you wouldn't have to be slaves to the Egyptians any longer. I smashed the yoke that kept you bent down and helped you to stand up straight.
14 But if you will not hear me, nor do all my commandments,
But if you don't pay attention to me and do what I tell you;
15 If you despise my laws, and contemn my judgments so as not to do those things which are appointed by me, and to make void my covenant:
if you reject my laws, hate my regulations, and refuse to follow my commandments, and consequently break my agreement,
16 I also will do these things to you: I will quickly visit you with poverty, and burning heat, which shall waste your eyes, and consume your lives. You shall sow your seed in vain, which shall be devoured by your enemies.
then this is what I am going to do to you: I will make you panic, and suffer from diseases like tuberculosis and fever that make you blind and drain your life away. It will be pointless for you to sow seed in your fields because your enemies will eat the harvest.
17 I will set my face against you, and you shall fall down before your enemies, and shall be made subject to them that hate you, you shall flee when no man pursueth you.
I will turn against you, and you'll be defeated by your enemies. People who hate you will rule over you, and you'll run away even when there's no one chasing you!
18 But if you will not yet for all this obey me: I will chastise you seven times more for your sins,
If after all this you still refuse to obey me, I will move to punishing you seven times over for your sins.
19 And I will break the pride of your stubbornness, and I will make to you the heaven above as iron, and the earth as brass:
I will break your self-reliant strength you're so proud of, and make your sky hard as iron and your land hard as bronze.
20 Your labour shall be spent in vain, the ground shall not bring forth her increase, nor the trees yield their fruit.
Your strength will be completely wasted because your land won't produce crops, and your trees won't produce fruit.
21 If you walk contrary to me, and will not hearken to me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you for your sins:
If you go on opposing me and refusing to do what I tell you, I will make your punishments seven times worse, based on your sins.
22 And I will send in upon you the beasts of the held, to destroy you and your cattle, and make you few in number, and that your highways may be desolate.
I will send wild animals to kill your children, wipe out your livestock, and make you so few in number that there won't be anyone on your roads.
23 And if even so you will not amend, but will walk contrary to me:
However, if in spite of all this correction you still don't change but go on opposing me,
24 I also will walk contrary to you, and will strike you seven times for your sins.
then I will take action against you. I will punish you seven times over for your sins.
25 And I will bring in upon you the sword that shall avenge my covenant. And when you shall flee into the cities, I will send the pestilence in the midst of you, and you shall be delivered into the hands of your enemies,
I will send enemies with swords to attack you in retaliation for breaking the agreement. Even though you retreat into your towns for defense, I will plague you with disease, and you will be handed over to your enemies.
26 After I shall have broken the staff of your bread: so that ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and give it out by weight: and you shall eat, and shall not be filled.
I will send a famine so bread is in short supply. One oven will serve the needs of ten women baking bread. It will be distributed by weight so that you'll eat but won't have enough.
27 But if you will not for all this hearken to me, but will walk against me:
However, if in spite of all this you don't obey me, but go on opposing me,
28 I will also go against you with opposite fury, and I will chastise you with seven plagues for your sins,
then I will take action against you in a rage of fury, and I will punish you myself seven times over for your sins.
29 So that you shall eat the flesh of your sons and of your daughters.
You will eat the bodies of your own sons and daughters.
30 I will destroy your high places, and break your idols. You shall fall among the ruins of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you.
I will destroy your high places of worship, smash your altars of incense, and pile up your dead bodies on what remains of your idols, which also have no life at all. I will really despise you.
31 Insomuch that I will bring your cities to be a wilderness, and I will make your sanctuaries desolate, and will receive no more your sweet odours.
I will demolish your towns and destroy your pagan sanctuaries, and I will refuse to accept your sacrifices.
32 And I will destroy your land, and your enemies shall be astonished at it, when they shall be the inhabitants thereof.
I will devastate your land myself, so that your enemies who come and live in it will be horrified at what has happened.
33 And I will scatter you among the Gentiles, and I will draw out the sword after you, and your land shall be desert, and your cities destroyed.
I'm going to scatter you among the nations. You will be chased out by armies with swords as your land is ruined and your towns are destroyed.
34 Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths all the days of her desolation: when you shall be
At least then the land will be able to enjoy its Sabbaths all the time it's abandoned while you are in exile in the land of your enemies. The land will finally be able to rest and enjoy its Sabbaths.
35 In the enemy’s land, she shall keep a sabbath, and rest in the sabbaths of her desolation, because she did not rest in your sabbaths when you dwelt therein.
The whole time it's abandoned the land will observe the Sabbaths of rest that it wasn't able to do while you were living there.
36 And as to them that shall remain of you I will send fear in their hearts in the countries of their enemies, the sound of a flying leaf shall terrify them, and they shall flee as it were from the sword: they shall fall, when no man pursueth them,
I will make those of you who survive so discouraged that as you live in the lands of your enemies even the sound of a leaf blowing in the wind will scare you into running away! You'll run away like you're being chased by someone with a sword, and fall down even though no one is after you.
37 And they shall every one fall upon their brethren as fleeing from wars, none of you shall dare to resist your enemies.
You'll trip over each other as you run away from the attack, then though no one's there. You'll have no power to resist your enemies.
38 You shall perish among the Gentiles, and an enemy’s land shall consume you.
You'll die in exile and you'll be buried in a foreign country.
39 And if of them also some remain, they shall pine away in their iniquities, in the land of their enemies, and they shall be afflicted for the sins of their fathers, and their own:
Those of you who do manage to survive in the countries of your enemies will wither away because of their guilt, decaying as they share the sins of their fathers.
40 Until they confess their iniquities and the iniquities of their ancestors, whereby they have transgressed me, and walked contrary unto me.
They need to confess their sins and those of their fathers, acting in such an unfaithful way towards me, opposing me.
41 Therefore I also will walk them, and bring them into their enemies’ land until their uncircumcised mind be ashamed: then shall they pray for their sins.
Because of this I took action against them and exiled them in the countries of their enemies. However, if they humbly give up their stubborn attitude and accept their punishment for their sins,
42 And I will remember my covenant, that I made with Jacob, and Isaac, and Abraham. I will remember also the land:
then I will fulfill the agreement I made with Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham, and I will not forget my promise about the land.
43 Which when she shall be left by them, shall enjoy her sabbaths, being desolate for them. But they shall pray for their sins, because they rejected my judgments, and despised my laws.
For the land will be left empty by them, and it will enjoy its Sabbaths being abandoned. They will pay for their sins, because they rejected my rules and regulations.
44 And yet for all that when they were in the land of their enemies, I did not cast them off altogether, neither did I so despise them that they should be quite consumed, and I should make void my covenant with them. For I am the Lord their God.
But despite all this, even while they are living in land of their enemies, I will not reject or hate them so much as to destroy them and break my agreement with them, because I am the Lord their God.
45 And I will remember my former covenant, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, in the sight of the Gentiles, to be their God. I am the Lord.
Because of them I will renew the agreement I made with their fathers, those I led out of Egypt as the other nations watched, in order that I might be their God. I am the Lord.”
46 These are the judgments, and precepts, and laws, which the Lord gave between him and the children of Israel in mount Sinai by the hand of Moses.
These are the rules, regulations, and laws that the Lord set up between himself and the Israelites through Moses on Mount Sinai.
