Leviticus 26

1 Ye shall not make yourselves any idols, and a graven image, or a standing image shall ye not rear up unto you, and any carved stone shall you not place in your land, to bow down upon it; for I am the Eternal 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 My sabbaths shall ye keep, and my sanctuary shall ye reverence: I am the Lord.

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

3 If in my statutes ye walk, and if my commandments ye keep, and do them:

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

4 Then will I give you rains in their due season, and the earth shall yield her products, and the tree of the field shall yield its 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 And the threshing shall reach with you unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto sowing-time; and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and ye shall dwell in safety 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 in the land, and ye shall lie down, with none to make you afraid; and I will remove evil beasts out of the land, and the sword shall not 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 And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.

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

8 And five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand; and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.

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 And I will turn myself unto 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 And ye shall eat very old store, and the old shall ye remove away because of 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 set my dwelling among you; and my soul shall not loath you.

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

12 And I will walk among you, and I will be to you a God, and ye shall be to me a people.

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

13 I am the Eternal your God, who have brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bond-men; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and caused you to walk upright.

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 But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments;

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

15 And if my statutes ye despise, and if my ordinances your soul loath, so as not to do all my commandments, in that ye 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 will I also do this unto you, and I will inflict on you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart; and ye shall sow in vain your seed, for your enemies shall 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, and ye shall be struck down before your enemies: and they that hate you shall bear rule over you; and ye shall flee while there is no one pursuing 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 with these things even ye will not yet hearken unto me: then will I chastise you yet more, 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 And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as copper:

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 in vain shall your strength be spent; for your land shall not yield her products, and the tree of the land shall not yield its 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 And if ye walk yet contrary unto me, and if you refuse to hearken unto me: then will I bring more plagues upon you, sevenfold 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 And I will send out against you the beasts of the field, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and diminish yourselves; so that your roads shall be 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 notwithstanding these things ye will not be reformed by me, and walk contrary unto 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 will I also walk contrary unto you, and I also will punish 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 over you the sword, avenging the quarrel of my covenant, so that ye shall be gathered together within your cities; and then will I send the pestilence among you, that ye shall deliver yourselves 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 break unto you the staff of bread; and ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver your bread again by weight; and ye shall eat, and 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 And if notwithstanding this ye will not hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me:

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

28 Then will I also walk contrary unto you in fury; and I, even I, will chastise 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 And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.

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

30 And I will destroy your high-places, and cut down your sun-images, and cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols; and my soul shall loath 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 And I will render your cities a waste, and I will make desolate your sanctuaries, and I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors.

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 surely make desolate the land: and your enemies who dwell therein shall be astonished at it.

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 And you will I scatter among the nations, and I will draw out after you the sword; and your land shall be a desolate wild, and your cities shall be a 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 shall the land satisfy its sabbaths, all the days of its desolation, when ye are in the land of your enemies: then shall the land rest, and satisfy 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 All the days of its desolation shall it rest, the time which it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon 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 And regarding those that are left of you, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a leaf shaken shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from the sword; and they shall fall with none pursuing.

“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 And they shall stumble one over the other, as before the sword, without one pursuing: and ye shall have no power to stand up before your enemies.

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

38 And ye shall be lost among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall consume you.

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

39 And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in the land of your enemies; and also through the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.

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 And they shall then confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, [that] through their trespass which they trespassed against me, and also that [because] they had walked contrary unto 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 I also had to walk contrary unto them, and to bring them into the land of their enemies; and then shall their uncircumcised heart be humbled, and then shall they satisfy their iniquity.

42 And I will then remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and the land will I remember.

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 shall be forsaken by them, and shall satisfy its sabbaths, while it lieth desolate without them, and they shall satisfy their iniquity; because, even because my ordinances they despised, and my statutes their soul loathed.

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 And yet for all that, though they be in the land of their enemies, will I not cast them away, neither will I loath them, to destroy them utterly, to 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 I will remember for their sakes the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations, that I might be unto them a 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 and ordinances and laws, which the Lord made between him and the children of Israel on mount Sinai, by the hand of Moses.

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].