Leviticus 26

1 “‘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.

“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 “‘You shall keep my Sabbaths, and have reverence for 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 statutes and keep my commandments, and do them,

If you follow my rules and keep my regulations,

4 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.

You will chase your enemies, and kill them with the sword.

8 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 kill one hundred, and one hundred of you will kill ten thousand. You will destroy your enemies.

9 “‘I will have respect for you, make you fruitful, multiply you, and 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 old supplies long kept, and you shall move out the old because of the new.

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 tent amongst you, and my soul won’t abhor you.

I will come and live with you—I certainly won't reject you.

12 I will walk amongst you, and will be your God, and you will 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 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.

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 listen to me, and will not do all these commandments,

But if you don't pay attention to me and do what I tell you;

15 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,

if you reject my laws, hate my regulations, and refuse to follow my commandments, and consequently break my agreement,

16 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.

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 will be struck before your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you; and you will flee when no one pursues 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 “‘If you in spite of these things will not listen to me, then 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 I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your sky like iron, and your soil like bronze.

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 strength will be spent in vain; for your land won’t yield its increase, neither will the trees of the land 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 won’t listen to me, then I will bring seven times more plagues on you according to 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 I will send the wild animals amongst you, which will rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number. Your roads will become 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 “‘If by these things you won’t be turned back to me, 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 then I will also walk contrary to you; and I will strike you, even I, seven times for your sins.

then I will take action against you. I will punish you seven times over for your sins.

25 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 amongst you. You will be delivered into the hand of the enemy.

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 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.

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 “‘If you in spite of this won’t listen to me, but walk contrary to me,

However, if in spite of all this you don't obey me, but go on opposing me,

28 then I will walk contrary to you in wrath. I will also chastise you seven times 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 You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters.

You will eat the bodies of your own sons and daughters.

30 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.

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 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.

I will demolish your towns and destroy your pagan sanctuaries, and I will refuse to accept your sacrifices.

32 I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it will be astonished at it.

I will devastate your land myself, so that your enemies who come and live in it will be horrified at what has happened.

33 I will scatter you amongst the nations, and I will draw out the sword after you. Your land will be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.

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 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.

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 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.

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 “‘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.

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 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.

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 will perish amongst the nations. The land of your enemies will eat you up.

You'll die in exile and you'll be buried in a foreign country.

39 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.

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 “‘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,

They need to confess their sins and those of their fathers, acting in such an unfaithful way towards me, opposing me.

41 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,

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 then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham; and I will remember 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 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.

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 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.

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 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.’”

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 statutes, ordinances, and laws, which the LORD made between him and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai by Moses.

These are the rules, regulations, and laws that the Lord set up between himself and the Israelites through Moses on Mount Sinai.