LeviticusChapter 26

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¹"Do not make idols for yourselves. Do not set up a carved statue or a sacred stone pillar. Do not put a carved stone in your land to bow down to it. For I am the LORD your God. ²Keep my Sabbaths and show respect for my holy place. I am the LORD. ³If you follow my laws and are careful to keep my commands, ⁴I will send you rain at the right time. The land will grow its crops. The trees in the fields will give their fruit. ⁵Your grain harvest will last until it is time to pick grapes. Your grape harvest will last until it is time to plant. You will have all the food you want. You will live safely in your land. ⁶I will give peace to the land. You will lie down and have nothing to fear. I will remove dangerous animals from the land. No sword will pass through your land. ⁷You will chase your enemies. They will fall by the sword in front of you. ⁸Five of you will chase a hundred. A hundred of you will chase ten thousand. Your enemies will fall by the sword in front of you. ⁹I will turn toward you. I will make you have many children and grow in number. And I will make my covenant stand with you. ¹⁰You will still be eating last year's grain when you have to clear it out. You will need room for the new grain. ¹¹I will make my home among you. I will not turn away from you in disgust. ¹²I will walk among you and be your God. And you will be my people. ¹³I am the LORD your God. I brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of the yoke on your necks. I let you walk with your heads held high. ¹⁴But suppose you do not obey me. Suppose you do not carry out all these commands. ¹⁵Suppose you reject my laws and hate my rules. You fail to carry out all my commands, and so you break my covenant. ¹⁶Then this is what I will do to you. I will bring sudden terror on you. I will send a disease that wastes you away. I will send a fever that ruins your eyes and drains your life. You will plant your seed for nothing, because your enemies will eat the crops. ¹⁷I will turn against you, and your enemies will defeat you. Those who hate you will rule over you. You will run away even when no one is chasing you. ¹⁸If you still will not obey me after all this, I will punish you seven times more for your sins. ¹⁹I will break your stubborn pride. I will make the sky above you hard like iron. I will make the ground below you hard like bronze. ²⁰Your strength will be used up for nothing. For your land will not grow its crops, and the trees of the land will not give their fruit. ²¹If you keep walking against me and refuse to obey me, I will add to your plagues seven times more. It will be what your sins deserve. ²²I will send wild animals against you. They will take away your children and destroy your livestock. They will make your numbers few. Your roads will be empty. ²³Suppose that even after these things you do not accept my correction. Suppose you keep walking against me. ²⁴Then I will walk against you too. I will strike you seven times more for your sins. ²⁵I will bring a sword against you to punish you for breaking the covenant. You will hide inside your cities. But I will send a plague among you. And you will be handed over to your enemy. ²⁶I will cut off your supply of bread. Then ten women will bake your bread in just one oven. They will hand out your bread by weight. You will eat, but you will not be full. ²⁷Suppose that even after all this you do not obey me. Suppose you keep walking against me. ²⁸Then I will walk against you in great anger. I myself will punish you seven times more for your sins. ²⁹You will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters. ³⁰I will destroy your high places. I will cut down your incense altars. I will pile your dead bodies on the lifeless remains of your idols. And I will turn away from you in disgust. ³¹I will turn your cities into piles of broken stone. I will ruin your holy places. I will refuse to enjoy the pleasing smell of your sacrifices. ³²I will ruin the land. Your enemies who come to live there will be shocked. ³³I will scatter you among the nations. I will pull out a sword and chase after you. Your land will be empty, and your cities will be in ruins. ³⁴Then the land will enjoy its Sabbaths. It will rest all the days it lies empty while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. ³⁵As long as it lies empty, the land will have rest. It will get the rest it did not get during the Sabbaths when you lived there. ³⁶As for those of you who are left alive, I will make their hearts weak with fear in the lands of their enemies. Even the sound of a leaf blowing in the wind will make them run. They will run as if running from a sword. They will fall down even when no one is chasing them. ³⁷They will trip over each other as if running from a sword, even though no one is behind them. So you will not be able to stand up against your enemies. ³⁸You will perish among the nations. The land of your enemies will swallow you up. ³⁹Those of you who are left in the lands of your enemies will waste away because of their sin. They will rot away because of the sins of their fathers too. ⁴⁰But suppose they confess their sin and the sin of their fathers. Suppose they confess how unfaithful they were to me and how they walked against me. ⁴¹They confess that I walked against them and brought them into the land of their enemies. If their stubborn hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin,a ⁴²then I will remember my covenant with Jacob. I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham. And I will remember the land. ⁴³For they will leave the land empty. It will enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies empty without them. And they will pay the price for their sin. That is because they rejected my rules and hated my laws. ⁴⁴Yet even so, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them. I will not hate them so much that I destroy them all. I will not break my covenant with them. For I am the LORD their God. ⁴⁵For their sake I will remember the covenant with their fathers. I brought them out of the land of Egypt while the nations watched. I did it so that I could be their God. I am the LORD." ⁴⁶These are the laws, rules, and teachings the LORD made between himself and the Israelites. He gave them through Moses on Mount Sinai.