Leviticus 26
26
The Reward of Obedience. 1#This chapter concludes the revelation of laws at Mount Sinai (cf. v. 46). Blessings and curses are also found at the end of Deuteronomy’s law collection (Dt 28). Similar lists of blessings and curses appear in the conclusions of ancient Near Eastern treaties. Do not make idols for yourselves. You shall not erect a carved image or a sacred stone for yourselves, nor shall you set up a carved stone for worship in your land;#Lv 19:4; Nm 33:52. for I, the Lord, am your God. 2Keep my sabbaths,#Lv 23:3. and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord.
3#The blessings are concerned with the well-being of the nation and its land and involve agricultural bounty, national security, military success and population growth. #Dt 28:1–69. If you live in accordance with my statutes and are careful to observe my commandments, 4I will give you your rains in due season, so that the land will yield its crops, and the trees their fruit;#Dt 11:14; Ps 85:13; Ez 34:26–27. 5your threshing will last till vintage time, and your vintage till the time for sowing, and you will eat your fill of food, and live securely in your land.#Lv 25:18–19; Dt 12:10. 6I will establish peace in the land, and you will lie down to rest with no one to cause you anxiety. I will rid the country of ravenous beasts, and no sword shall sweep across your land. 7You will rout your enemies, and they shall fall before your sword. 8Five of you will put a hundred of your foes to flight, and a hundred of you will put to flight ten thousand, till your enemies fall before your sword.#Dt 32:30; Jos 23:10. 9I will look with favor upon you, and make you fruitful and numerous,#Gn 1:28; Ex 1:7. as I carry out my covenant with you. 10You shall eat the oldest stored harvest, and have to discard it to make room for the new.#Lv 25:22. 11#Ex 29:45; Ez 37:26–28; 2 Cor 6:16. I will set my tabernacle in your midst, and will not loathe you. 12Ever present in your midst, I will be your God, and you will be my people; 13I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be their slaves no more, breaking the bars of your yoke and making you walk erect.#Ez 34:27; Na 1:13.
The Punishment of Disobedience.#To encourage obedience, the list of punishments is longer than the blessings (cf. a similar proportion in Dt 28). The punishments are presented in waves (vv. 14–17, 18–20, 21–22, 23–26, 27–39), one group following another if the people do not return to obedience. Punishments involve sickness, pestilence, agricultural failure and famine, attack of wild animals, death of the people’s children, destruction of illicit and even licit cults, military defeat, panic, and exile. 14#Dt 28:15–69. But if you do not heed me and do not keep all these commandments, 15if you reject my statutes and loathe my decrees, refusing to obey all my commandments and breaking my covenant, 16then I, in turn, will do this to you: I will bring terror upon you—with consumption and fever to dim the eyes and sap the life. You will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will consume the crop. 17I will turn against you, and you will be beaten down before your enemies#1 Kgs 8:33–34. and your foes will lord it over you. You will flee though no one pursues you.
18If even after this you do not obey me, I will increase the chastisement for your sins sevenfold,#Ps 79:12; Prv 6:31. 19to break your proud strength. I will make the sky above you as hard as iron, and your soil as hard as bronze, 20so that your strength will be spent in vain; your land will bear no crops, and its trees no fruit.
21If then you continue hostile, unwilling to obey me, I will multiply my blows sevenfold, as your sins deserve. 22I will unleash wild beasts against you, to rob you of your children and wipe out your livestock, till your population dwindles away and your roads become deserted.
23If, with all this, you still do not accept my discipline and continue hostile to me, 24#Jer 2:30; Ez 5:17; 14:17. I, too, will continue to be hostile to you and I, for my part, will smite you for your sins sevenfold. 25I will bring against you the sword, the avenger of my covenant. Though you then huddle together in your cities, I will send pestilence among you, till you are delivered to the enemy. 26When I break your staff of bread, ten women will need but one oven for baking your bread, and they shall dole it out to you by weight;#Is 9:19; Ez 4:16; 5:16; 14:13; Mi 6:14. and though you eat, you shall not be satisfied.
27If, despite all this, you disobey and continue hostile to me, 28I will continue in my hostile rage toward you, and I myself will discipline you for your sins sevenfold, 29till you begin to eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters.#Lam 2:20. 30I will demolish your high places, overthrow your incense stands, and cast your corpses upon the corpses of your idols.#2 Chr 14:5; 34:3–4, 7; Ez 6:3–6. In my loathing of you, 31I will lay waste your cities and desolate your sanctuaries, refusing your sweet-smelling offerings. 32So devastated will I leave the land that your enemies who come to live there will stand aghast at the sight of it.#1 Kgs 9:8; Jer 9:11; 18:16; 19:8; 25:18. 33And you I will scatter among the nations#Ps 44:12; Jer 15:7; Ez 6:8. at the point of my drawn sword, leaving your countryside desolate and your cities deserted. 34Then shall the land, during the time it lies waste, make up its lost sabbaths, while you are in the land of your enemies; then shall the land have rest and make up for its sabbaths#Lv 25:2; 2 Chr 36:21. 35during all the time that it lies desolate, enjoying the rest that you would not let it have on your sabbaths when you lived there.
36Those of you who survive in the lands of their enemies, I will make so fainthearted that the sound of a driven leaf will pursue them, and they shall run as if from the sword, and fall though no one pursues them; 37stumbling over one another as if to escape a sword, while no one is after them—so helpless will you be to take a stand against your foes! 38You shall perish among the nations, swallowed up in your enemies’ country. 39Those of you who survive will waste away in the lands of their enemies, for their own and their ancestors’ guilt.#Ez 4:17; 24:23; 33:10.
40#Even though the people may be severely punished, God will remember the covenant when the people repent. They will confess#Lv 16:21; Nm 5:7; Neh 1:6. their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors in their treachery against me and in their continued hostility toward me, 41so that I, too, had to be hostile to them and bring them into their enemies’ land. Then, when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, 42I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac; and also my covenant with Abraham I will remember.#Ex 6:5; 2 Kgs 13:23; Ps 106:45; Ez 16:60. The land, too, I will remember. 43The land will be forsaken by them, that in its desolation without them, it may make up its sabbaths, and that they, too, may make good the debt of their guilt for having spurned my decrees and loathed my statutes. 44Yet even so, even while they are in their enemies’ land, I will not reject or loathe them to the point of wiping them out, thus making void my covenant with them; for I, the Lord, am their God. 45I will remember for them the covenant I made with their forebears, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations,#Ex 12:51. that I might be their God. I am the Lord.
46These are the statutes, decrees and laws which the Lord established between himself and the Israelites through Moses on Mount Sinai.#Lv 7:38; Nm 36:13.
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Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc
Leviticus 26
26
Leviticus 26
1¶ Ye shall make no idols for yourselves nor graven image, neither shall you raise up a title, neither shall ye place any painted stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I AM your God.
2Keep my sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.
3If ye walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and do them,
4then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
5And your threshing shall last unto the vintage, and the vintage shall last unto the sowing time; and ye shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land safely.
6For I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land.
7And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.
8And five of you shall chase one hundred, and one hundred of you shall put ten thousands to flight; and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.
9For I will return unto you and make you fruitful and multiply you and establish my covenant with you.
10And ye shall eat old store and bring forth the old because of the new.
11And I will set my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you.
12And I will walk among you and will be your God, and ye shall be my people.
13I AM your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their slaves; and I have broken the bands of your yoke and made you walk with your faces uplifted.
14¶ But if ye will not hearken unto me and will not do all these my commandments;
15and if ye shall despise my statutes or if your soul should abhor my rights so that ye will not do all my commandments but that ye break my covenant,
16I also will do this unto you: I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague that shall consume the eyes and torment the soul, and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
17And I will place my wrath upon you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies; those that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when no one pursues you.
18And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
19And I will break the pride of your stronghold, and I will make your heaven as iron and your earth as bronze.
20And your strength shall be spent in vain; for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.
21And if ye walk contrary unto me and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.
22I will also send wild beasts among you which shall rapture your children and destroy your animals and make you few in number, and your ways shall be desolate.
23And if ye will not be corrected by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me,
24then will I also walk contrary unto you and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.
25And I will bring an avenging sword upon you, in vindication of the covenant; and ye shall gather together within your cities; but I will send pestilence among you, and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
26When I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight, and ye shall eat and not be satisfied.
27And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me but walk contrary unto me,
28then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury, and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.
29And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.
30And I will destroy your high places and cut down your images and cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you.
31And I will make your cities waste and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the aroma of your suave incense.
32And I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies who dwell therein shall be astonished at it.
33And I will scatter you among the Gentiles and will draw out a sword after you, and your land shall be desolate and your cities waste.
34Then shall the land rest for her sabbaths all the days that it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; even then shall the land rest and enjoy her sabbaths.
35All the time that it shall be desolate, it shall rest that which it did not rest in your sabbaths when ye dwelt upon it.
36And upon those that are left alive of you I will send such cowardice into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, that the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursue.
37And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursue; and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
38And ye shall perish among the Gentiles, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
39And those that are left of you shall pine away for their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and for the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.
40¶ And they shall confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers for their trespass which they trespassed against me and that also they have walked contrary unto me,
41and that I also have walked contrary unto them and have brought them into the land of their enemies; and then their uncircumcised hearts shall be humbled, and they shall plead because of their iniquity;
42and I will remember my covenant with Jacob and likewise my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember, and I will remember the land.
43That the land shall be without them and shall rest her sabbaths, being desolate because of them; and they shall plead because of their iniquity because they despised my rights and their soul abhorred my statutes.
44And yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them to destroy them utterly and to break my covenant with them; for I AM their God.
45But I will remember them because of the old covenant, when I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the Gentiles, that I might be their God: I am the Lord.
46These are the statutes and rights and laws, which the Lord established between him and the sons of Israel in Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses.
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The Jubilee Bible 2000 (JUB) by Ransom Press International