Leviticus 26
1 [Yahweh also said this to Moses/me on Sinai Mountain]: “Do not make idols or set up statues of false gods or sacred stones [to worship other gods]. And do not put on your property a stone that has been shaped [to resemble a false god] and bow down to [worship] it. [You must worship only] me, Yahweh, 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 “Honor the Sabbath days and revere my Sacred Tent, because I, Yahweh, [live there].
Keep my Sabbaths and show respect for my sanctuary. I am the Lord.
3 “If you carefully obey all my commands [DOU],
If you follow my rules and keep my regulations,
4 I will send rain for you at the proper/right times, in order that crops will grow on your land and there will be plenty of fruit on your trees.
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 You will continue [harvesting and] threshing [grain] until it is time to harvest grapes, and you will continue to harvest grapes until it is time to start planting [things in the following year]. And you will have all the food that you want to eat, and you will live safely in your land.
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 “[If you obey all my laws], there will be peace in your country, and when you lie down [to sleep], nothing will cause you to be afraid. I will get rid of the dangerous animals in your country, and there will no wars [MTY] in your country.
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 will pursue your enemies and kill them with your swords:
You will chase your enemies, and kill them with the sword.
8 Five of you will pursue 100 of them, and 100 of you will pursue 1,000 of them and kill them with your swords.
Five of you will kill one hundred, and one hundred of you will kill ten thousand. You will destroy your enemies.
9 “[If you obey all my laws], I will bless you and cause you to have many children [DOU]. And I will do what I said that I would do in the agreement that I made 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 When you are still eating food from the harvest from the previous year, it will be necessary for you to throw away some of it to make space for the new harvest.
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 live among you in my Sacred Tent, and I will never reject you.
I will come and live with you—I certainly won't reject you.
12 I will walk among you and continue to be your God, and you will continue to 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 Yahweh your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt in order that you would no longer be slaves of the people of Egypt. [When you were there, you were treated as though you were animals that worked for the people of Egypt, but] [MET] I broke the bars of the (yokes/frames that were put around your necks) and enabled you to walk with your heads up.”
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 heed me and obey all these commands,
But if you don't pay attention to me and do what I tell you;
15 and if you reject [DOU] my decrees and laws, and do not do [DOU] what I commanded you to do in the agreement that I made with you,
if you reject my laws, hate my regulations, and refuse to follow my commandments, and consequently break my agreement,
16 these are the things that I will do to you: I will suddenly cause there to be disasters that will ruin you. You will have diseases that cannot be cured, and fevers that will cause you to become blind and will slowly kill you. It will be useless for you to plant seeds, because your enemies will eat the crops that grow.
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 reject/abandon you [IDM], with the result that you will be defeated by your enemies. Then those who hate you will rule you, and [you will be so terrified that] you will run away even when no one is pursuing 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 still will not heed me after all those things happen to you, I will continue to punish you again and again for the sins that you have committed.
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 cause you to no longer be stubborn and proud; I will cause [no rain to fall; it will be as though] [MET] the sky is made of iron; and the ground will be [as hard as] brass [MET].
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 You will uselessly work very hard [to plant seeds], because crops will not grow in the hard soil in your fields, and fruit will not grow on your trees.
Your strength will be completely wasted because your land won't produce crops, and your trees won't produce fruit.
21 “If you continue to oppose me and refuse to heed me, I will cause you to experience disasters again and again, like you deserve to experience because of 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 wild animals to attack you, and they will kill your little children and destroy your cattle. There will be very few of you who will remain alive, with the result that there will be very few [HYP] people walking on the roads in your country.
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 “When you experience those things that I do to punish you, if you still do not pay attention to me, and if you continue to oppose me,
However, if in spite of all this correction you still don't change but go on opposing me,
24 I myself will oppose you, and I will punish you for your sins again and again.
then I will take action against you. I will punish you seven times over for your sins.
25 I will send [foreign] [MTY] to punish you for not doing the things that I commanded you to do in the agreement that I made with you. If you [try to escape from your enemies by] shutting yourselves in your cities [that have walls around them], I will cause you to experience plagues, and I will allow your enemies to capture [IDM] you.
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 cut off your food supply, there will be very little flour with which to make bread. As a result, ten women will be able to bake all their bread in [only] one oven. [When the bread is baked], each woman will divide it [among the members of her family, but there will be very little for each one], and when they have eaten all of it, they will still be hungry.
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 “After all those things happen, if you still do not heed me, if you still oppose me,
However, if in spite of all this you don't obey me, but go on opposing me,
28 I will be very angry with you, and I will oppose you, and I myself will punish you for your sins again and again.
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 be extremely hungry, with the result that] you will [kill] your sons and daughters and eat their flesh.
You will eat the bodies of your own sons and daughters.
30 I will cause the shrines [where you worship idols] on hilltops to be destroyed. I will smash the altars where you burn incense [to worship your gods], and I will cause your corpses to be piled on the lifeless statues of your gods. And I will detest 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 cause your cities to become heaps of ruins, and I will cause the buildings that are dedicated to the worship of your gods to be smashed. And I will not be pleased at all with the aroma of your offerings [that are burned on the altar].
I will demolish your towns and destroy your pagan sanctuaries, and I will refuse to accept your sacrifices.
32 I will completely ruin your country, with the result that even your enemies who capture it will be shocked/appalled [when they see 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 enable [your enemies to kill you with] their swords, and I will cause the rest of you to be scattered among other nations. Your country will be ruined and your cities will become ruins.
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 After that happens, as long as you are living in your enemies’ countries, your land will be allowed to rest, like you should have allowed it to rest every seven years.
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 All the time that your land is desolate, it will be able to rest, like you did not enable it to rest during all the years that you lived there.
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 you people who will remain alive in the countries to which your enemies [will have taken you], I will cause you to become so afraid that when you hear the sound of leaves being blown by the wind, you will run away. You will run like [SIM] you are running from [a man carrying] a sword, and you will fall down, even though no one is pursuing you.
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 You will stumble over each other. So you will not be able to stand and fight 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 Many of you will die in the countries that belong to your enemies [DOU].
You'll die in exile and you'll be buried in a foreign country.
39 And those of you who remain alive will slowly die and rot in the countries of your enemies because of your sins and because of the sins of your ancestors.
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 “But your descendants must confess their sins and the sins that their ancestors committed. Their ancestors acted unfaithfully toward me and were hostile to me, with the result that I forced them to go to the countries that belonged to their enemies. But when your descendants humble themselves [SYN] and stop being very stubborn [IDM] and accept being punished for their sins,
They need to confess their sins and those of their fathers, acting in such an unfaithful way towards me, opposing me.
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 I will remember the agreement that I made with [your ancestors] Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and [what I promised them about] this 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 But [before that happens], you will be forced to leave your land, with the result that the land will be able to rest while it is desolate and while the people are being punished for rejecting my laws and hating my decrees [DOU].
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 But when that happens, I will still not reject them or hate them and destroy them completely. I will not cancel the agreement that I made with them; for I am still Yahweh 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 I will (remember/never forget) the agreement that I made with your ancestors when I brought them out of Egypt, in order that the people of all nations will know that I, Yahweh, [will continue to] be your God.”
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 Those are the decrees, the laws, and the regulations [DOU] that Yahweh established on Sinai Mountain between himself and the Israeli people by [giving them to] Moses/me [to tell to them].
These are the rules, regulations, and laws that the Lord set up between himself and the Israelites through Moses on Mount Sinai.
