Leviticus 26
26
Blessings for Obedience
(Deut 7.12–24; 28.1–14)
1 #
Ex 20.4; Lev 19.4; Deut 5.8; 16.21–22; 27.1 The LORD said, “Do not make idols or set up statues, stone pillars, or carved stones to worship. I am the LORD your God. 2Keep the religious festivals and honour the place where I am worshipped. I am the LORD.
3 #
Deut 11.13–15; 28.1–14 “If you live according to my laws and obey my commands, 4I will send you rain at the right time, so that the land will produce crops and the trees will bear fruit. 5Your crops will be so plentiful that you will still be harvesting corn when it is time to pick grapes, and you will still be picking grapes when it is time to sow corn. You will have all that you want to eat, and you will live in safety in your land.
6“I will give you peace in your land, and you will sleep without being afraid of anyone. I will get rid of the dangerous animals in the land, and there will be no more war there. 7You will be victorious over your enemies; 8five of you will be able to defeat a hundred, and a hundred will be able to defeat 10,000. 9I will bless you and give you many children; I will keep my part of the covenant that I made with you. 10Your harvests will be so plentiful that they will last for a year, and even then you will have to throw away what is left of the old harvest to make room for the new. 11I will live among you in my sacred tent, and I will never turn away from you. 12#2 Cor 6.16I will be with you; I will be your God, and you will be my people. 13I, the LORD your God, brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves. I broke the power that held you down and I let you walk with your head held high.”
Punishment for Disobedience
(Deut 28.15–68)
14The LORD said, “If you will not obey my commands, you will be punished. 15If you refuse to obey my laws and commands and break the covenant I have made with you, 16I will punish you. I will bring disaster on you — incurable diseases and fevers that will make you blind and cause your life to waste away. You will sow your seed, but it will do you no good, because your enemies will conquer you and eat what you have grown. 17I will turn against you, so that you will be defeated, and those who hate you will rule over you; you will be so terrified that you will run when no one is chasing you.
18“If even after all this you still do not obey me, I will increase your punishment seven times. 19I will break your stubborn pride; there will be no rain, and your land will be dry and as hard as iron. 20All your hard work will do you no good, because your land will not produce crops and the trees will not bear fruit.
21“If you still continue to resist me and refuse to obey me, I will again increase your punishment seven times. 22I will send dangerous animals among you, and they will kill your children, destroy your livestock, and leave so few of you that your roads will be deserted.
23“If after all this punishment you still do not listen to me, but continue to defy me, 24then I will turn on you and punish you seven times harder than before. 25I will bring war on you to punish you for breaking our covenant, and if you gather in your cities for safety, I will send incurable diseases among you, and you will be forced to surrender to your enemies. 26I will cut off your food supply, so that ten women will need only one oven to bake all the bread they have. They will ration it out, and when you have eaten it all, you will still be hungry.
27“If after all this you still continue to defy me and refuse to obey me, 28then in my anger I will turn on you and again make your punishment seven times worse than before. 29Your hunger will be so great that you will eat your own children. 30I will destroy your places of worship on the hills, tear down your incense altars, and throw your dead bodies on your fallen idols. In utter disgust 31I will turn your cities into ruins, destroy your places of worship, and refuse to accept your sacrifices. 32I will destroy your land so completely that the enemies who occupy it will be shocked at the destruction. 33I will bring war on you and scatter you in foreign lands. Your land will be deserted, and your cities left in ruins. 34-35Then the land will enjoy the years of complete rest that you would not give it; it will lie abandoned and get its rest while you are in exile in the land of your enemies.
36“I will make those of you who are in exile so terrified that the sound of a leaf blowing in the wind will make you run. You will run as if you were being pursued in battle, and you will fall when there is no enemy near you. 37You will stumble over one another when no one is chasing you, and you will be unable to fight against any enemy. 38You will die in exile, swallowed up by the land of your enemies. 39The few of you who survive in the land of your enemies will waste away because of your own sin and the sin of your ancestors.
40“But your descendants will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors, who resisted me and rebelled against me, 41and made me turn against them and send them into exile in the land of their enemies. At last, when your descendants are humbled and they have paid the penalty for their sin and rebellion, 42#Gen 17.7–8; 26.3–4; 28.13–14I will remember my covenant with Jacob and with Isaac and with Abraham, and I will renew my promise to give my people the land. 43First, however, the land must be rid of its people, so that it can enjoy its complete rest, and they must pay the full penalty for having rejected my laws and my commands. 44But even then, when they are still in the land of their enemies, I will not completely abandon or destroy them. That would put an end to my covenant with them, and I am the LORD their God. 45I will renew the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I showed all the nations my power by bringing my people out of Egypt, in order that I, the LORD, might be their God.”
46All these are the laws and commands that the LORD gave to Moses on Mount Sinai for the people of Israel.
Currently Selected:
Leviticus 26: GNBDK
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
Good News Bible with Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha. Scripture taken from the Good News Bible (r) (Today's English Version Second Edition, UK/British Edition). Copyright © 1992 British & Foreign Bible Society. Used by permission.
Leviticus 26
26
Covenant blessings
1You must not make any idols, and do not set up any divine image or sacred pillar. You must not place any carved#26.1 Heb uncertain stone in your land, bowing down to it, because I am the LORD your God. 2You must keep my sabbaths and respect my sanctuary; I am the LORD.
3If you live according to my rules, keep my commands, and do them, 4I will give you rain at the proper time, the land will produce its yield, and the trees of the field will produce their fruit. 5Your threshing season will last until the grape harvest, and the grape harvest will last until planting time. You will eat your fill of food and live securely in your land. 6I will grant peace in the land so that you can lie down without anyone frightening you. I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword will pass through it. 7You will chase your enemies, and they will fall before you in battle. 8Five of you will chase away a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase away ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you in battle. 9I will turn my face to you, will make you fruitful and numerous, and will keep my covenant with you. 10You will still be eating the previous year’s harvest when the time will come to clear it out to make room for the new! 11I will place my dwelling#26.11 Or tabernacle among you, and I will not despise you. 12I will walk around among you; I will be your God, and you will be my people. 13I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt’s land—who brought you out from being Egypt’s slaves. I broke your bonds and made you stand up straight.
Covenant curses
14But if you do not obey me and do not carry out all these commands— 15if you reject my rules and despise my regulations, not doing all my commands and breaking my covenant— 16then I will do the following to you:
I will bring horrific things:#26.16 Precise nature of the diseases uncertain wasting diseases and fevers that make the eyes fail and drain life away.
You will plant seed for no reason because your enemies will eat the food.
17I will turn my face against you: you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you; and you will run away even when no one is chasing you.
18If, despite all that, you still do not obey me, I will punish you for your sins seven more times: 19I will destroy your prideful power. I will turn your sky to iron and your land to bronze 20so that your strength will be spent for no reason: your land will not produce its yield, and the trees of the land won’t produce their fruit.
21If you continue to oppose me and are unwilling to obey me, I will strike you for your sins seven more times: 22I will send wild animals against you, and they will kill your children and destroy your livestock. They will make you so few in number that your roads will seem deserted.
23If, despite these things, you still do not accept my discipline and continue to oppose me, 24then I will continue to oppose you. I will strike you for your sins seven more times: 25I will bring the sword against you, avenging the breaking of the covenant.#26.25 Or executing covenant vengeance If you retreat into your cities, I will send a plague on you, and you will be handed over to the enemy. 26When I destroy your food supply, ten women will bake bread in a single oven, and they will ration out bread by weight. You will eat but will never get full.
27If, despite all this, you still do not obey me and continue to oppose me, 28then I will continue to oppose you—with anger! I will punish you for your sins seven more times: 29You will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters. 30I will eliminate your shrines, chop down your incense altars, and pile your dead bodies on the dead bodies of your idols. I will despise you. 31I will turn your cities into ruins, I will devastate your sanctuaries, and I will not smell the soothing smells of your offerings. 32I will personally devastate the land so much that your enemies who resettle it will be astonished by it. 33I will scatter you among the nations. I will unsheathe my sword against you. Your land will be devastated and your cities will be ruins.
34At that time, while it is devastated and you are in enemy territory, the land will enjoy its sabbaths. At that time, the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. 35During the whole time it is devastated, it will have the rest it didn’t have during the sabbaths you lived in it.
36I will bring despair into the hearts of those of you who survive in enemy territory. Just the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to running, and they will run scared as if running from a sword! They will fall even when no one is chasing them! 37They will stumble over each other as they would before a sword, even though no one is chasing them! You will have no power to stand before your enemies. 38You will disappear among the nations—the land of your enemies will devour you. 39Any of you who do survive will rot in enemy territory on account of their guilty deeds. And they will rot too on account of their ancestors’ guilty deeds.
Covenant and restoration
40But if they confess their and their ancestors’ guilt for the wrongdoing they did to me, and for their continued opposition to me— 41which made me oppose them, so I took them into enemy territory—or if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they make up for their guilt, 42then I will remember my covenant with Jacob. I will also remember my covenant with Isaac. And my covenant with Abraham. And I will remember the land. 43The land will be absent of them and will be enjoying its sabbaths while it lies devastated, free of them. They will be making up for their guilty deeds for no other reason than the fact that they rejected my regulations and despised my rules. 44But despite all that, when they are in enemy territory, I will not reject them or despise them to the point of totally destroying them, breaking my covenant with them by doing so, because I am the LORD their God. 45But for their sake I will remember the covenant with the first generation, the ones I brought out of Egypt’s land in the sight of all the nations, in order to be their God; I am the LORD.
46These are the rules, regulations, and instructions between the LORD and the Israelites that he gave through Moses on Mount Sinai.
Currently Selected:
:
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
2011 Common English Bible. All rights reserved.