Leviticus 25:55–27:34

⁵⁵For the Israelites are My slaves. ^zThey are My slaves that I brought out of the land of Egypt; I am Yahweh your God.

Covenant Blessings and Discipline

26“Do not make idols for yourselves, ^aset up a carved image or sacred pillar for yourselves, or place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am Yahweh your God. ²You must keep My Sabbaths and revere My sanctuary; ^bI am Yahweh.

³“If you follow My statutes and faithfully observe My commands, ⁴I will give you rain at the right time, and the land will yield its produce, and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. ⁵Your threshing will continue until grape harvest, and the grape harvest will continue until sowing time; you will have plenty of food to eat and live securely in your land. ^c6I will give peace to the land, and you will lie down with nothing to frighten you. I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword will pass through your land. ^d7You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword. ⁸Five of you will pursue 100, and 100 of you will pursue 10,000; your enemies will fall before you by the sword. ^e

⁹“I will turn to you, make you fruitful and multiply you, and confirm My covenant with you. ¹⁰You will eat the old grain of the previous year and will clear out the old to make room for the new. ¹¹I will place My residence ^famong you, and I will not reject you. ^g12I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people. ^h13I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so that you would no longer be their slaves. I broke the bars of your yoke ⁱand enabled you to live in freedom. ^j

¹⁴“But if you do not obey Me and observe all these commands— ¹⁵if you reject My statutes and despise My ordinances, and do not observe all My commands—and break My covenant, ¹⁶then I will do this to you: I will bring terror ^kon you—wasting disease and fever that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will sow your seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. ¹⁷I will turn ^lagainst you, so that you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even though no one is pursuing you. ^m

¹⁸“But if after these things you will not obey Me, I will proceed to discipline you seven times for your sins. ⁿ¹⁹I will break down your strong pride. I will make your sky like iron and your land like bronze, ²⁰and your strength will be used up for nothing. ^oYour land will not yield its produce, and the trees of the land will not bear their fruit.

²¹“If you act with hostility toward Me and are unwilling to obey Me, I will multiply your plagues seven times for your sins. ^p22I will send wild animals against you that will deprive you of your children, ravage your livestock, and reduce your numbers until your roads are deserted. ^q

²³“If in spite of these things you do not accept My discipline, but act with hostility toward Me, ²⁴then I will act with hostility toward you; I also will strike you seven times for your sins. ²⁵I will bring a sword against you ^rto execute the vengeance of the covenant. Though you withdraw into your cities, I will send a pestilence among you, and you will be delivered into enemy hands. ²⁶When I cut off your supply of bread, 10 women will bake your bread in a single oven and ration out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied. ^s

²⁷“And if in spite of this you do not obey Me but act with hostility toward Me, ²⁸I will act with furious hostility toward you; I will also discipline you seven times for your sins. ²⁹You will eat the flesh of your sons; you will eat the flesh of your daughters. ^t30I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and heap your dead bodies on the lifeless bodies of your idols; ^uI will reject you. ³¹I will reduce your cities to ruins and devastate your sanctuaries. I will not smell the pleasing aroma of your sacrifices. ^v32I also will devastate the land, so that your enemies who come to live there will be appalled by it. ³³But I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw a sword to chase after you. So your land will become desolate, and your cities will become ruins.

³⁴“Then the land will make up for its Sabbath years during the time it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time the land will rest and make up for its Sabbaths. ³⁵As long as it lies desolate, it will have the rest it did not have during your Sabbaths when you lived there.

³⁶“I will put anxiety in the hearts of those of you who survive in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a wind-driven leaf will put them to flight, and they will flee as one flees from a sword, and fall though no one is pursuing them. ³⁷They will stumble over one another as if fleeing from a sword though no one is pursuing them. You will not be able to stand against your enemies. ³⁸You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you. ³⁹Those ^wwho survive in the lands of your enemies will waste away because of their sin; they will also waste away because of their fathers’ sins along with theirs.

⁴⁰“But if they will confess their sin and the sin of their fathers—their unfaithfulness that they practiced against Me, and how they acted with hostility toward Me, ⁴¹and I acted with hostility toward them and brought them into the land of their enemies—and if their uncircumcised hearts will be humbled, ^xand if they will pay the penalty for their sin, 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. ⁴³For the land abandoned by them will make up for its Sabbaths by lying desolate without the people, while they pay the penalty for their sin, because they rejected My ordinances and abhorred My statutes. ⁴⁴Yet in spite of this, while they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject or abhor them so as to destroy them and break My covenant with them, since I am Yahweh their God. ^y45For their sake I will remember the covenant with their fathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God; I am Yahweh.”

⁴⁶These are the statutes, ordinances, and laws the Lord established between Himself and the Israelites through Moses on Mount Sinai.

Funding the Sanctuary

27The Lord spoke to Moses: ²“Speak to the Israelites and tell them: When someone makes a special vow ^zto the Lord that involves the assessment of people, ³if the assessment concerns a male from 20 to 60 years old, your assessment is 50 silver shekels ^ameasured by the standard sanctuary shekel. ^b4If the person is a female, your assessment is 30 shekels. ^c5If the person is from five to 20 years old, your assessment for a male is 20 shekels ^dand for a female 10 shekels. ⁶If the person is from one month to five years old, your assessment for a male is five silver shekels, ^eand for a female your assessment is three shekels of silver. ⁷If the person is 60 years or more, your assessment is 15 shekels for a male and 10 shekels for a female. ⁸But if one is too poor to pay the assessment, he must present the person before the priest and the priest will set a value for him. The priest will set a value for him according to what the one making the vow can afford.

⁹“If the vow involves one of the animals that may be brought as an offering to the Lord, any of these he gives to the Lord will be holy. ¹⁰He may not replace it or make a substitution for it, either good for bad, or bad for good. ^fBut if he does substitute one animal for another, both that animal and its substitute will be holy.

¹¹“If the vow involves any of the unclean animals that may not be brought as an offering to the Lord, the animal must be presented before the priest. ¹²The priest will set its value, whether high or low; the price will be set as the priest makes the assessment for you. ¹³If the one who brought it decides to redeem it, he must add a fifth to the ^gassessed value. ^h

¹⁴“When a man consecrates his house as holy to the Lord, the priest will assess its value, whether high or low. The price will stand just as the priest assesses it. ¹⁵But if the one who consecrated his house redeems it, he must add a fifth to the ⁱassessed value, and it will be his. ^j

¹⁶“If a man consecrates to the Lord any part of a field that he possesses, your assessment of value will be proportional to the seed needed to sow it, at the rate of 50 silver shekels for every five bushels ^kof barley seed. ^l17If he consecrates his field during the Year of Jubilee, ^mthe price will stand according to your assessment. ¹⁸But if he consecrates his field after the Jubilee, the priest will calculate the price for him in proportion to the years left until the next Year of Jubilee, so that your assessment will be reduced. ¹⁹If the one who consecrated the field decides to redeem it, he must add a fifth to the ⁿassessed value, and the field will transfer back to him. ²⁰But if he does not redeem the field or if he has sold it to another man, it is no longer redeemable. ²¹When the field is released in the Jubilee, it will be holy to the Lord like a field permanently set apart; it becomes the priest’s property.

²²“If a person consecrates to the Lord a field he has purchased that is not part of his inherited landholding, ²³then the priest will calculate for him the amount of the ^oassessment up to the Year of Jubilee, and the person will pay the assessed value on that day as a holy offering to the Lord. ²⁴In the Year of Jubilee the field will return to the one he bought it from, ^pthe original owner. ²⁵All your assessed values will be measured by the standard sanctuary shekel, 20 gerahs to the shekel. ^q

²⁶“But no one can consecrate a firstborn of the livestock, whether an animal from the herd or flock, to the Lord, because a firstborn already belongs to the Lord. ^r27If it is one of the unclean livestock, it must be ransomed…