Leviticus 26–27

Rewards for Obedience

²⁶“You shall make for yourselves no idols and erect no carved images or pillars, and you shall not place figured stones in your land, to worship at them, for I am the Lord your God.^{* 2}You shall keep my Sabbaths and revere my sanctuary: I am the Lord.^*

³“If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully,^{* 4}I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. ⁵Your threshing shall overlap the vintage, and the vintage shall overlap the sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full and live securely in your land.^{* 6}And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land.^{* 7}You shall give chase to your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. ⁸Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand; your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.^{* 9}I will look with favor upon you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will maintain my covenant with you.^{* 10}You shall eat old grain long stored, and you shall have to clear out the old to make way for the new.^{* 11}I will place my dwelling in your midst, and I shall not abhor you.^{* 12}I^l will be your God, and you shall be my people.^{* 13}I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be their slaves no more; I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.

Penalties for Disobedience

¹⁴“But if you will not obey me and do not observe all these commandments,^{* 15}if you spurn my statutes and abhor my ordinances, so that you will not observe all my commandments and you break my covenant, ¹⁶I in turn will do this to you: I will bring terror on you, consumption and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away. You shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.^{* 17}I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down by your enemies; your foes shall rule over you, and you shall flee though no one pursues you.^{* 18}And if in spite of this you will not obey me, I will continue to punish you sevenfold for your sins. ¹⁹I will break your proud glory, and I will make your sky like iron and your earth like copper.^{* 20}Your strength shall be spent to no purpose: your land shall not yield its produce, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.^*

²¹“If you continue hostile to me and will not obey me, I will continue to plague you sevenfold for your sins. ²²I will let loose wild animals against you, and they shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock; they shall make you few in number, and your roads shall be deserted.^*

²³“If in spite of these punishments you have not turned back to me but continue hostile to me,^{* 24}then I, too, will continue hostile to you: I myself will strike you sevenfold for your sins.^{* 25}I will bring the sword against you, executing vengeance for the covenant, and if you withdraw into your cities, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into enemy hands.^{* 26}When I cut off your supply of bread,^m ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven, and they shall dole out your bread by weight, and though you eat, you shall not be satisfied.^*

²⁷“But if, despite this, you disobey me and continue hostile to me, ²⁸I will continue hostile to you in fury; I in turn will punish you myself sevenfold for your sins. ²⁹You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.^{* 30}I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars; I will heap your carcasses on the carcasses of your idols. I will abhor you.^{* 31}I will lay your cities waste, will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing odors.^{* 32}I will devastate the land, so that your enemies who come to settle in it shall be appalled at it.^{* 33}And you I will scatter among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword against you; your land shall be a desolation and your cities a waste.^*

³⁴“Then the land shall enjoyⁿ its Sabbath years as long as it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land shall rest and enjoy^o its Sabbath years.^{* 35}As long as it lies desolate, it shall have the rest it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were living on it. ³⁶And as for those of you who survive, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall though no one pursues.^{* 37}They shall stumble over one another, as if to escape a sword, though no one pursues, and you shall have no power to stand against your enemies.^{* 38}You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall devour you.^{* 39}And those of you who survive shall languish in the land of your enemies because of their iniquities; they shall also languish because of the iniquities of their ancestors.^*

⁴⁰“But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors—their treachery against me and also their continued hostility to me,^{* 41}so that I in turn was hostile to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if, then, their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity,^{* 42}then will I remember my covenant with Jacob; I will remember also my covenant with Isaac and also my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.^{* 43}For the land shall be deserted by them and enjoy^p its Sabbath years by lying desolate without them, while they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they dared to spurn my ordinances, and they abhorred my statutes.^{* 44}Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them or abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God,^{* 45}but I will remember in their favor the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, to be their God: I am the Lord.”^*

⁴⁶These are the statutes and ordinances and laws that the Lord established between himself and the Israelites on Mount Sinai through Moses.^*

Votive Offerings

²⁷The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ²“Speak to the Israelites and say to them: When a person makes an explicit vow to the Lord concerning the equivalent for a human being, ³the equivalent for a male shall be: from twenty to sixty years of age the equivalent shall be fifty shekels of silver by the sanctuary shekel.^{* 4}If the person is a female, the equivalent is thirty shekels. ⁵If the age is from five to twenty years of age, the equivalent is twenty shekels for a male and ten shekels for a female. ⁶If the age is from one month to five years, the equivalent for a male is five shekels of silver, and for a female the equivalent is three shekels of silver.^{* 7}And if the person is sixty years old or over, then the equivalent for a male is fifteen shekels and for a female ten shekels. ⁸If any cannot afford the equivalent, they shall be brought before the priest and the priest shall assess them; the priest shall assess them according to what each one making a vow can afford.^*

⁹“If the vow concerns an animal that may be brought as an offering to the Lord, any such animal that may be given to the Lord shall be holy. ¹⁰Another shall not be exchanged or substituted for it, either good for bad or bad for good, and if one animal is substituted for another, both that one and its substitute shall be holy. ¹¹If the vow concerns any unclean animal that may not be brought as an offering to the Lord, the animal shall be presented before the priest. ¹²The priest shall assess it: whether good or bad, according to the assessment of the priest, so it shall be.^{* 13}But if it is to be redeemed, one-fifth must be added to the assessment.^*

¹⁴“If a person consecrates a house to the Lord, the priest shall assess it: whether good or bad, as the priest assesses it, so it shall stand. ¹⁵And if the one who consecrates the house wishes to redeem it, one-fifth shall be added to its assessed value, and it shall revert to the original owner.^*

¹⁶“If a person consecrates to the Lord any inherited landholding, its assessment shall be in accordance with its seed requirements: fifty shekels of silver to a homer of barley seed. ¹⁷If the person consecrates the field as of the year of Jubilee, that assessment shall stand, ¹⁸but if the field is consecrated after the Jubilee, the priest shall compute the price for it according to the years that remain until the year of Jubilee, and the assessment shall be reduced.^{* 19}And if the one who consecrates the field wishes to redeem it, then one-fifth shall be added to its assessed value, and it shall revert to the original owner, ²⁰but if the field is not redeemed or if it has been sold to someone else, it shall no longer be redeemable. ²¹But when the field is released in the Jubilee, it shall be holy to the Lord as a devoted field; it becomes the priest’s holding.^{* 22}If someone consecrates to the Lord a field that has been purchased that is not a part of the inherited landholding, ²³the priest shall compute for it the proportionate assessment up to the year of Jubilee, and the assessment shall be paid as of that day, a sacred donation to the Lord.^{* 24}In the year of Jubilee the field shall return to the one from whom it was bought, whose holding the land is.^{* 25}All assessments shall be by the sanctuary shekel: twenty gerahs shall make a shekel.^*

²⁶“A firstling of animals, however, which as a firstling belongs to the Lord, cannot be consecrated by anyone; whether ox or sheep, it is the Lord’s.^{* 27}If it is an unclean animal, it shall be ransomed at its assessment, with one-fifth added; if it is not redeemed, it shall be sold at its assessment.^*

²⁸“Nothing that a person…