< Leviticus 26 >
1 [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.
“‘You shall make for yourselves no idols, and you shall not raise up a carved image or a pillar, and you shall not place any figured stone in your land, to bow down to it; for I am the LORD your God.
2 “Honor the Sabbath days and revere my Sacred Tent, because I, Yahweh, [live there].
“‘You shall keep my Sabbaths, and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am the LORD.
3 “If you carefully obey all my commands [DOU],
“‘If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments, and do them,
4 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.
then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
5 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.
Your threshing shall continue until the vintage, and the vintage shall continue until the sowing time. You shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.
6 “[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.
“‘I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one will make you afraid. I will remove evil animals out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land.
7 You will pursue your enemies and kill them with your swords:
You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.
8 Five of you will pursue 100 of them, and 100 of you will pursue 1,000 of them and kill them with your swords.
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.
9 “[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.
“‘I will have respect for you, make you fruitful, multiply you, and will establish my covenant with you.
10 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.
You shall eat old supplies long kept, and you shall move out the old because of the new.
11 I will live among you in my Sacred Tent, and I will never reject you.
I will set my tent among you, and my soul won’t abhor you.
12 I will walk among you and continue to be your God, and you will continue to be my people.
I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you will be my people.
13 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.”
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. I have broken the bars of your yoke, and made you walk upright.
14 “But if you will not heed me and obey all these commands,
“‘But if you will not listen to me, and will not do all these commandments,
15 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,
and if you shall reject my statutes, and if your soul abhors my ordinances, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant,
16 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.
I also will do this to you: I will appoint terror over you, even consumption and fever, that shall consume the eyes, and make the soul to pine away. You will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will eat it.
17 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.
I will set my face against you, and you will be struck before your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you; and you will flee when no one pursues you.
18 “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.
“‘If you in spite of these things will not listen to me, then I will chastise you seven times more for your sins.
19 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].
I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your sky like iron, and your soil like bronze.
20 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.
Your strength will be spent in vain; for your land won’t yield its increase, neither will the trees of the land yield their fruit.
21 “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.
“‘If you walk contrary to me, and won’t listen to me, then I will bring seven times more plagues on you according to your sins.
22 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.
I will send the wild animals among you, which will rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number. Your roads will become desolate.
23 “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,
“‘If by these things you won’t be turned back to me, but will walk contrary to me,
24 I myself will oppose you, and I will punish you for your sins again and again.
then I will also walk contrary to you; and I will strike you, even I, seven times for your sins.
25 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.
I will bring a sword upon you that will execute the vengeance of the covenant. You will be gathered together within your cities, and I will send the pestilence among you. You will be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
26 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.
When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver your bread again by weight. You shall eat, and not be satisfied.
27 “After all those things happen, if you still do not heed me, if you still oppose me,
“‘If you in spite of this won’t listen to me, but walk contrary to me,
28 I will be very angry with you, and I will oppose you, and I myself will punish you for your sins again and again.
then I will walk contrary to you in wrath. I will also chastise you seven times for your sins.
29 [You will be extremely hungry, with the result that] you will [kill] your sons and daughters and eat their flesh.
You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters.
30 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.
I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you.
31 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].
I will lay your cities waste, and will bring your sanctuaries to desolation. I will not take delight in the sweet fragrance of your offerings.
32 I will completely ruin your country, with the result that even your enemies who capture it will be shocked/appalled [when they see it].
I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it will be astonished at it.
33 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.
I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw out the sword after you. Your land will be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.
34 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.
Then the land will enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemies’ land. Even then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths.
35 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.
As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, even the rest which it didn’t have in your Sabbaths when you lived on it.
36 “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.
“‘As for those of you who are left, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight; and they shall flee, as one flees from the sword. They will fall when no one pursues.
37 You will stumble over each other. So you will not be able to stand and fight your enemies.
They will stumble over one another, as it were before the sword, when no one pursues. You will have no power to stand before your enemies.
38 Many of you will die in the countries that belong to your enemies [DOU].
You will perish among the nations. The land of your enemies will eat you up.
39 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.
Those of you who are left will pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers they shall pine away with them.
40 “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,
“‘If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, in their trespass which they trespassed against me; and also that because they walked contrary to me,
I also walked contrary to them, and brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled, and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity,
42 I will remember the agreement that I made with [your ancestors] Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and [what I promised them about] this land.
then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham; and I will remember the land.
43 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].
The land also will be left by them, and will enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them; and they will accept the punishment of their iniquity because they rejected my ordinances, and their soul abhorred my statutes.
44 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.
Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly and to break my covenant with them; for I am the LORD their God.
45 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.”
But I will for their sake remember the covenant of their ancestors, 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.’”
46 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].
These are the statutes, ordinances, and laws, which the LORD made between him and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai by Moses.