Lê-vi Ký 26

No idols

¹Do not make worthless idols for yourselves, and do not set up a carved image or a sacred pillar. Do not place a stone carved with images anywhere in your land in order to bow down before it, for I am the LORD your God. ²You are to keep my Sabbaths and stand in awe of my sanctuary. I am the LORD.

Blessings for obedience

³If you live by my statutes and faithfully keep my commandments, ⁴then I will send you rain at the right season; the land will yield its crops, and the trees of the field their fruit. ⁵Threshing will keep you busy until the grape harvest, and the grape harvest until it is time to sow. You will have bread enough to be satisfied, and you will live in your land secure. ⁶I will give peace in the land, and you will lie down to sleep with no one to frighten you. I will rid the land of harmful beasts, and no sword will cross your land. ⁷You will chase your enemies, and they will fall by the sword in front of you. ⁸Five of you will put 100 to flight, and 100 of you will rout 10,000. Your enemies will fall before you by the sword. ⁹I will turn toward you with favor, make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will uphold my covenant with you. ¹⁰You will still be eating from last year’s harvest, long stored, when you have to clear it out to make room for the new. ¹¹I will set my dwelling place in your midst, and I will not turn from you in loathing.^{a 12}I will go about among you. I will be God to you, and you will be my people. ¹³I am the LORD your God. I brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you were their slaves. I snapped the crossbars of the yoke on your neck and made you walk upright.

Punishment for disobedience

¹⁴But if you will not listen to me and do not carry out all these commandments, ¹⁵if you reject my statutes and loathe my rulings, so that you fail to keep all my commandments and so break my covenant, ¹⁶then I too will do this to you: I will send panic upon you, with wasting disease and burning fever that wear out the eyes and wear down the spirit. You will sow your seed and gain nothing from it, for your enemies will eat the harvest. ¹⁷I will turn my face against you, and you will go down in defeat before your enemies. Your foes will rule you, and you will run when there is no one chasing you.

Seven times more for your sins

¹⁸If even after these things you do not listen to me, I will go on to discipline you seven times more for your sins. ¹⁹I will break the strength you are proud of. I will make your sky hard as iron and your soil hard as bronze. ²⁰You will wear yourselves out for nothing. Your land will not give its crops, and the trees in the land will not give their fruit. ²¹If you keep walking in opposition to me and refuse to listen to me, I will strike you with blows seven times more, as your sins deserve.^{b 22}I will send the wild animals among you. They will take your children from you, wipe out your herds, and leave you so few that no one travels your roads. ²³If you will not accept my discipline even through these things, and you keep walking in opposition to me, ²⁴then I too will walk in opposition to you, and it is I who will strike you seven times over for your sins. ²⁵I will bring a sword against you that will carry out the vengeance of the covenant. When you crowd into your cities for safety, I will send deadly disease among you, and you will be handed over to your enemy. ²⁶When I break the staff that is your bread, there will be so little that ten women can bake it all in a single oven. They will hand it back to you weighed out, and you will eat and still be hungry.

Exile, and the covenant remembered

²⁷If in spite of this you still will not listen to me, but keep walking in opposition to me, ²⁸then I will walk in furious opposition to you, and I too will discipline you seven times over for your sins. ²⁹You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters. ³⁰I will destroy your hilltop shrines and cut down your incense altars. I will throw your dead bodies on the carcasses of your idols, and I will loathe you. ³¹I will turn your cities into ruins and make your sanctuaries desolate. I will not smell the soothing aroma you offer. ³²It is I who will lay the land waste, so that your enemies who settle in it will be appalled. ³³As for you, I will scatter you among the nations and draw a sword to chase after you. Your land will be left desolate and your cities in ruins. ³⁴So the land will at last enjoy its Sabbaths through all the time it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land. Then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths.^{c 35}Through all its days of desolation it will rest, as it never rested in your Sabbaths while you were living there. ³⁶On those of you who survive I will bring despair of heart in the lands of their enemies. The rustle of a leaf in the wind will chase them, and they will run as people run from a sword, and fall with no one behind them. ³⁷They will tumble over one another as though a sword were behind them, when there is no pursuer at all. You will have no strength to make a stand against your enemies. ³⁸Among the nations you will perish; your enemies’ land will eat you up. ³⁹And the survivors among you will waste away under their guilt in your enemies’ lands; under their fathers’ guilt as well, which is with them, they will waste away. ⁴⁰But if they confess their guilt and the guilt of their fathers, the unfaithfulness they committed against me, and confess too that they walked in opposition to me,^{d 41}so that I too walked in opposition to them and brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they accept the punishment for their guilt,^{e 42}then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and my covenant with Isaac, and my covenant with Abraham I will remember as well; and I will remember the land. ⁴³For the land will be left behind by them and will enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them, and they will accept the punishment for their guilt, for the very reason that they rejected my rulings and loathed my statutes. ⁴⁴But even then, while they are in their enemies’ land, I will not cast them off, nor will I loathe them so much that I make an end of them and break my covenant with them. For I am the LORD their God. ⁴⁵I will remember, for their good, the covenant I made with the generation before them, whom I led out of the land of Egypt while the nations looked on, to be their God. I am the LORD.’” ⁴⁶These are the statutes, the rulings and the instructions that the LORD set between himself and the Israelites on Mount Sinai through Moses.