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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Leviticus 26: NABRE
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Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc
Leviticus 26
26
1 I am the Lord your God. You shall not make for yourselves an idol or a graven image. Neither shall you erect a monument, or set up a conspicuous stone in your land, in order that you may adore it. For I am the Lord your God.
2 Observe my Sabbaths, and be fearful toward my Sanctuary. I am the Lord.
3 If you will walk in my precepts, and observe my commandments, and accomplish them, I will give to you rain in its time,
4 and the ground shall bring forth its seedlings, and the trees shall be filled again with fruit.
5 The threshing of the harvest shall last until the vintage, and the vintage shall overtake the sowing. And you shall eat your bread to fullness, and you shall live in your land without fear.
6 I will give peace to your most distant regions. You will sleep, and there will be no one to strike you with terror. I will take away harmful wild beasts, and the sword will not cross your borders.
7 You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall down at the sight of you.
8 Five of yours will pursue a hundred foreigners, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand. Your enemies will fall by the sword in your sight.
9 I will look with favor upon you, and I will cause you to increase; you will be multiplied, and I will confirm my covenant with you.
10 You will eat the oldest of what is old, and, when what is new arrives, you will throw away what is old.
11 I will set my tabernacle in your midst, and my soul will not cast you out.
12 I will walk among you, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people.
13 I am the Lord your God, who led you away from the land of the Egyptians, lest you serve them, and who broke the chains around your necks, so that you would walk upright.
14 But if you will not listen to me, nor accomplish all of my commandments,
15 if you despise my laws, and disdain my judgments, so that you do not accomplish those things which have been established by me, and so that you lead my covenant away into nullification,
16 then I also will do these things to you. I will quickly visit you with destitution, and burning heat, which will waste away your eyes, and consume your lives. In vain will you sow your seed, which will be devoured by your enemies.
17 I will set my face against you, and you will fall down before your enemies, and you will be subjugated to those who hate you. You will flee, though no one pursues.
18 But if you will not be obedient to me in this way, then I will add sevenfold to your chastisement, because of your sins.
19 And I will crush the pride in your hardness, and I will give to you heaven above like iron, and the earth below like brass.
20 Your labor will be consumed to no purpose; the land will not bring forth seedlings, nor will the trees provide their fruit.
21 If you walk as an adversary to me, and if you are not willing to listen to me, I will add sevenfold to your plagues, because of your sins.
22 And I will send upon you the wild beasts of the field, which will consume you and your cattle, and which will reduce everything to paucity, and cause your roadways to become desolate.
23 But if you are not willing to receive discipline in this way, and you still walk as an adversary to me,
24 likewise, I will advance against you as an adversary, and I will strike you seven times, because of your sins.
25 And I will lead over you the sword that shall avenge my covenant. And when you will have fled into the cities, I will send a pestilence into your midst, and you will be delivered into the hands of your enemies.
26 After this, I will have broken the staff of your bread, so that ten women bake bread in one oven, and distribute it by weight. And you shall eat and not be filled.
27 Then, if you will not listen to me through these things, and you still walk against me,
28 then I also will advance against you, with an opposing fury, and I will chastise you with seven plagues, because of your sins:
29 so much so that you will eat the flesh of your sons and your daughters.
30 I will destroy your high places, and I will break apart your false images. You will fall among the ruins of your idols, and my soul will abominate you:
31 so much so that I will reduce your cities to a wilderness, and I will make your Sanctuaries desolate, and I will no longer accept the most sweet odors.
32 And I will utterly ruin your land, and your enemies shall be stupefied at it, when they will have become its inhabitants.
33 Then I will scatter you among the Gentiles, and I will unsheathe the sword after you. And your land will be deserted, and your cities will be demolished.
34 Then the land will be pleased by her Sabbaths, throughout all the days of her solitude. So, while you will be
35 in the land of the enemy, she will worship and rest in the Sabbath of her solitude, because she will not have rested in your Sabbaths, when you lived in her.
36 And whoever of you will remain, I will send terror into their hearts in the regions of their enemies. The sound of a flying leaf will terrify them, and so they will flee, as if from the sword. They will fall, though no one pursues.
37 And they will each fall upon their brothers, as if they were fleeing from wars; no one among you will dare to resist your foes.
38 You will perish among the Gentiles, and the land of the enemy will consume you.
39 But if some few of these still remain, they shall waste away in their iniquities, in the land of their enemies, and they will be afflicted, because of the sins of their fathers and their own sins,
40 until they confess their iniquities, and those of their ancestors, by which they have transgressed against me and walked as adversaries to me.
41 Therefore, I also will walk against them, and I will lead them into a hostile land, until their uncircumcised mind shall be ashamed. Then shall they pray on behalf of their impiety.
42 And I will remember my covenant, which I formed with Jacob, and Isaac, and Abraham. I will also remember the land,
43 which, when she will be left behind by them, shall be pleased by her Sabbaths, enduring solitude because of them. Yet truly, they shall pray for their sins, because they cast aside my judgments, and they despised my laws.
44 And even after so much, when they were in the land of their enemy, I did not cast them off entirely, and I did not so despise them that they would be consumed, nor so that I would nullify my covenant with them. For I am the Lord their God.
45 And I will remember my original covenant, when I led them away from the land of Egypt, in the sight of the Gentiles, so as to be their God. I am the Lord. These are the judgments, and precepts, and laws, which the Lord has granted between himself and the sons of Israel, on mount Sinai, by the hand of Moses.
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