Leviticus 26
- "'Do not make idols or set up an image
or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your
land to bow down before it. I am the LORD your God.
- "'Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence
for my sanctuary. I am the LORD.
- "'If you follow my decrees and are careful
to obey my commands,
- I will send you rain in its season, and the
ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit.
- Your threshing will continue until grape
harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat
all the food you want and live in safety in your land.
- "'I will grant peace in the land, and
you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove savage beasts
from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country.
- You will pursue your enemies, and they will
fall by the sword before you.
- Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred
of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before
you.
- "'I will look on you with favor and
make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with
you.
- You will still be eating last year's harvest
when you will have to move it out to make room for the new.
- I will put my dwelling place among you, and
I will not abhor you.
- I will walk among you and be your God, and
you will be my people.
- I am the LORD your God, who brought you out
of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the
bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.
- "'But if you will not listen to me and
carry out all these commands,
- and if you reject my decrees and abhor my
laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant,
- then I will do this to you: I will bring
upon you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your
sight and drain away your life. You will plant seed in vain, because your
enemies will eat it.
- I will set my face against you so that you
will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and
you will flee even when no one is pursuing you.
- "'If after all this you will not listen
to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over.
- I will break down your stubborn pride and
make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze.
- Your strength will be spent in vain, because
your soil will not yield its crops, nor will the trees of the land yield their
fruit.
- "'If you remain hostile toward me and
refuse to listen to me, I will multiply your afflictions seven times over,
as your sins deserve.
- I will send wild animals against you, and
they will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and make you so few
in number that your roads will be deserted.
- "'If in spite of these things you do
not accept my correction but continue to be hostile toward me,
- I myself will be hostile toward you and will
afflict you for your sins seven times over.
- And I will bring the sword upon you to avenge
the breaking of the covenant. When you withdraw into your cities, I will send
a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands.
- When I cut off your supply of bread, ten
women will be able to bake your bread in one oven, and they will dole out
the bread by weight. You will eat, but you will not be satisfied.
- "'If in spite of this you still do not
listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me,
- then in my anger I will be hostile toward
you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over.
- You will eat the flesh of your sons and the
flesh of your daughters.
- I will destroy your high places, cut down
your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your
idols, and I will abhor you.
- I will turn your cities into ruins and lay
waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of
your offerings.
- I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies
who live there will be appalled.
- I will scatter you among the nations and
will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your
cities will lie in ruins.
- Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years
all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies;
then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths.
- All the time that it lies desolate, the land
will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.
- "'As for those of you who are left,
I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the
sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. They will run as though
fleeing from the sword, and they will fall, even though no one is pursuing
them.
- They will stumble over one another as though
fleeing from the sword, even though no one is pursuing them. So you will not
be able to stand before your enemies.
- You will perish among the nations; the land
of your enemies will devour you.
- Those of you who are left will waste away
in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their
fathers' sins they will waste away.
- "'But if they will confess their sins
and the sins of their fathers -- their treachery against me and their hostility
toward me,
- which made me hostile toward them so that
I sent them into the land of their enemies -- then when their uncircumcised
hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin,
- I will remember my covenant with Jacob and
my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the
land.
- For the land will be deserted by them and
will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. They will pay
for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees.
- Yet in spite of this, when they are in the
land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy
them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the LORD their God.
- But for their sake I will remember the covenant
with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations
to be their God. I am the LORD.'"
- These are the decrees, the laws and the regulations
that the LORD established on Mount Sinai between himself and the Israelites
through Moses.
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