Rewards for Obedience

26 “You shall make for yourselves no idols and erect no graven image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone in your land, to bow down to them; for I am the Lord your God. ² You shall keep my sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.

³ “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, ⁴ then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. ⁵ And your threshing shall last to the time of vintage, and the vintage shall last to the time for sowing; and you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land securely. ⁶ And I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid; and I will remove evil beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land. ⁷ And you shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. ⁸ Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand; and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. ⁹ And I will have regard for you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and will confirm my covenant with you. ¹⁰ And you shall eat old store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new. ¹¹ And I will make my abode among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. ¹² And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people. ¹³ I am the Lord your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves; and I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.

Penalties for Disobedience

¹⁴ “But if you will not hearken to me, and will not do all these commandments, ¹⁵ if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my ordinances, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, ¹⁶ I will do this to you: I will appoint over you sudden terror, consumption and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away. And 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 smitten before your enemies; those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you. ¹⁸ And if in spite of this you will not hearken to me, then I will chastise you again sevenfold for your sins, ¹⁹ and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like brass; ²⁰ and your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.

²¹ “Then if you walk contrary to me, and will not hearken to me, I will bring more plagues upon you, sevenfold as many as your sins. ²² And I will let loose the wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number, so that your ways shall become desolate.

²³ “And if by this discipline you are not turned to me, but walk contrary to me, ²⁴ then I also will walk contrary to you, and I myself will smite you sevenfold for your sins. ²⁵ And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall execute vengeance for the covenant; and if you gather within your cities I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. ²⁶ When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and shall deliver your bread again by weight; and you shall eat, and not be satisfied.

²⁷ “And if in spite of this you will not hearken to me, but walk contrary to me, ²⁸ then I will walk contrary to you in fury, and chastise you myself sevenfold for your sins. ²⁹ You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. ³⁰ And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the dead bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you. ³¹ And I will lay your cities waste, and will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing odors. ³² And I will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be astonished at it. ³³ And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you; and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.

³⁴ “Then the land shall enjoy^[a] its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy^[b] its sabbaths. ³⁵ As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest which it had not in your sabbaths when you dwelt upon it. ³⁶ And as for those of you that are left, 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 when none pursues. ³⁷ They shall stumble over one another, as if to escape a sword, though none pursues; and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies. ³⁸ And you shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. ³⁹ And those of you that are left shall pine away in your enemies’ lands because of their iniquity; and also because of the iniquities of their fathers they shall pine away like them.

⁴⁰ “But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery which they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me, ⁴¹ so that I walked contrary 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 I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. ⁴³ But the land shall be left by them, and enjoy^[c] its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them; and they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they spurned my ordinances, and their soul abhorred my statutes. ⁴⁴ Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them, neither will I 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 for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the Lord.”

⁴⁶ These are the statutes and ordinances and laws which the Lord made between him and the people of Israel on Mount Sinai by Moses.

Votive Offerings

27 The Lord said to Moses, ² “Say to the people of Israel, When a man makes a special vow of persons to the Lord at your valuation, ³ then your valuation of a male from twenty years old up to sixty years old shall be fifty shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary. ⁴ If the person is a female, your valuation shall be thirty shekels. ⁵ If the person is from five years old up to twenty years old, your valuation shall be for a male twenty shekels, and for a female ten shekels. ⁶ If the person is from a month old up to five years old, your valuation shall be for a male five shekels of silver, and for a female your valuation shall be three shekels of silver. ⁷ And if the person is sixty years old and upward, then your valuation for a male shall be fifteen shekels, and for a female ten shekels. ⁸ And if a man is too poor to pay your valuation, then he shall bring the person before the priest, and the priest shall value him; according to the ability of him who vowed the priest shall value him.

⁹ “If it is an animal such as men offer as an offering to the Lord, all of such that any man gives to the Lord is holy. ¹⁰ He shall not substitute anything for it or exchange it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good; and if he makes any exchange of beast for beast, then both it and that for which it is exchanged shall be holy. ¹¹ And if it is an unclean animal such as is not offered as an offering to the Lord, then the man shall bring the animal before the priest, ¹² and the priest shall value it as either good or bad; as you, the priest, value it, so it shall be. ¹³ But if he wishes to redeem it, he shall add a fifth to the valuation.

¹⁴ “When a man dedicates his house to be holy to the Lord, the priest shall value it as either good or bad; as the priest values it, so it shall stand. ¹⁵ And if he who dedicates it wishes to redeem his house, he shall add a fifth of the valuation in money to it, and it shall be his.

¹⁶ “If a man dedicates to the Lord part of the land which is his by inheritance, then your valuation shall be according to the seed for it; a sowing of a homer of barley shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver. ¹⁷ If he dedicates his field from the year of jubilee, it shall stand at your full valuation; ¹⁸ but if he dedicates his field after the jubilee, then the priest shall compute the money-value for it according to the years that remain until the year of jubilee, and a deduction shall be made from your valuation. ¹⁹ And if he who dedicates the field wishes to redeem it, then he shall add a fifth of the valuation in money to it, and it shall remain his. ²⁰ But if he does not wish to redeem the field, or if he has sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed any more; ²¹ but the field, when it is released in the jubilee, shall be holy to the Lord, as a field that has been devoted; the priest shall be in possesion of it. ²² If he dedicates to the Lord a field which he has bought, which is not a part of his possession by inheritance, ²³ then the priest shall compute the valuation for it up to the year of jubilee, and the man shall give the amount of the valuation on that day as a holy thing to the Lord. ²⁴ In the year of jubilee the field shall return to him from whom it was bought, to whom the land belongs as a possession by inheritance. ²⁵ Every valuation shall be according to the shekel of the sanctuary: twenty gerahs shall make a shekel.

²⁶ “But a firstling of animals, which as a firstling belongs to the Lord, no man may dedicate; whether ox or sheep, it is the Lord’s. ²⁷ And if it is an unclean animal, then he shall buy it back at your valuation, and add a fifth to it; or, if it is not redeemed, it shall be sold at your valuation.

²⁸ “But no devoted thing that a man devotes to the Lord, of anything that he has, whether of a man or beast, or of his inherited field, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy to the Lord. ²⁹ No one devoted, who is to be utterly destroyed from among men, shall be ransomed; he shall be put to death.

³⁰ “All the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the trees, is the Lord’s; it is holy to the Lord. ³¹ If a man wishes to redeem any of his tithe, he shall add a fifth to it. ³² And all the tithe of herds and flocks, every tenth animal of all that pass under the herdsman’s staff, shall be holy to the Lord. ³³ A man shall not inquire whether it is good or bad, neither shall he exchange it; and if he exchanges it, then both it and that for which it is exchanged shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed.”

³⁴ These are the commandments which the Lord commanded Moses for the people of Israel on Mount Sinai.

Prayer for Deliverance from Persecution

To the choirmaster: according to Lilies. A Psalm of David.

8 ¹ And Saul was consenting to his death.

Saul Persecutes the Church

And on that day a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samar′ia, except the apostles. ² Devout men buried Stephen, and made great lamentation over him. ³ But Saul laid waste the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.

Philip Preaches in Samaria

⁴ Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. ⁵ Philip went down to a city of Samar′ia, and proclaimed to them the Christ. ⁶ And the multitudes with one accord gave heed to what was said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs which he did. ⁷ For unclean spirits came out of many who were possessed, crying with a loud voice; and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. ⁸ So there was much joy in that city.

⁹ But there was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the nation of Samar′ia, saying that he himself was somebody great. ¹⁰ They all gave heed to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is that power of God which is called Great.” ¹¹ And they gave heed to him, because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic. ¹² But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. ¹³ Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip. And seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed.

¹⁴ Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samar′ia had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, ¹⁵ who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit; ¹⁶ for it had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. ¹⁷ Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. ¹⁸ Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, ¹⁹ saying, “Give me also this power, that any one on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” ²⁰ But Peter said to him, “Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!^{[a] 21} You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. ²² Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. ²³ For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.” ²⁴ And Simon answered, “Pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.”