7 Now there gathered together to [Jesus] the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem,

² For they had seen that some of His disciples ate with ^[a]common hands, that is, unwashed [with hands defiled and unhallowed, because they had not given them a ^[b]ceremonial washing]—

³ For the Pharisees and all of the Jews do not eat unless [merely for ceremonial reasons] they wash their hands [diligently ^[c]up to the elbow] with clenched fist, adhering [carefully and faithfully] to the tradition of [practices and customs handed down to them by] their forefathers [to be observed].

⁴ And [when they come] from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they purify themselves; and there are many other traditions [oral, man-made laws handed down to them, which they observe faithfully and diligently, such as], the washing of cups and wooden pitchers and widemouthed jugs and utensils of copper and ^[d]beds—

⁵ And the Pharisees and scribes kept asking [Jesus], Why do Your disciples not order their way of living according to the tradition handed down by the forefathers [to be observed], but eat with hands unwashed and ceremonially not purified?

⁶ But He said to them, Excellently and truly [^[e]so that there will be no room for blame] did Isaiah prophesy of you, the pretenders and hypocrites, as it stands written: These people [constantly] honor Me with their lips, but their hearts hold off and are far distant from Me.

⁷ In vain (fruitlessly and without profit) do they worship Me, ordering and teaching [to be obeyed] as doctrines the commandments and precepts of men.^(A)

⁸ You disregard and give up and ask to depart from you the commandment of God and cling to the tradition of men [keeping it carefully and faithfully].

⁹ And He said to them, You have a fine way of rejecting [thus thwarting and nullifying and doing away with] the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition (your own human regulations)!

¹⁰ For Moses said, Honor (revere with tenderness of feeling and deference) your father and your mother, and, He who curses or reviles or speaks evil of or abuses or treats improperly his father or mother, let him surely die.^(B)

¹¹ But [as for you] you say, A man is exempt if he tells [his] father or [his] mother, What you would otherwise have gained from me [everything I have that would have been of use to you] is Corban, that is, is a gift [already given as an offering to God],

¹² Then you no longer are permitting him to do anything for [his] father or mother [but are letting him off from helping them].

¹³ Thus you are nullifying and making void and of no effect [the authority of] the Word of God through your tradition, which you [in turn] hand on. And many things of this kind you are doing.

¹⁴ And He called the people to [Him] again and said to them, Listen to Me, all of you, and understand [what I say].

¹⁵ There is not [even] one thing outside a man which by going into him can pollute and defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him and make him unhallowed and unclean.

^16 [f]If any man has ears to hear, let him be listening [and let him ^[g]perceive and comprehend by hearing].

¹⁷ And when He had left the crowd and had gone into the house, His disciples began asking Him about the parable.

¹⁸ And He said to them, Then are you also unintelligent and dull and without understanding? Do you not discern and see that whatever goes into a man from the outside cannot make him unhallowed or unclean,

¹⁹ Since it does not reach and enter his heart but [only his] digestive tract, and so passes on [into the place designed to receive waste]? Thus He was making and declaring all foods [ceremonially] clean [that is, ^[h]abolishing the ceremonial distinctions of the Levitical Law].

²⁰ And He said, What comes out of a man is what makes a man unclean and renders [him] unhallowed.

²¹ For from within, [that is] out of the hearts of men, come base and wicked thoughts, sexual immorality, stealing, murder, adultery,

²² Coveting (a greedy desire to have more wealth), dangerous and destructive wickedness, deceit; ^[i]unrestrained (indecent) conduct; an evil eye (envy), slander (evil speaking, malicious misrepresentation, abusiveness), pride (^[j]the sin of an uplifted heart against God and man), foolishness (folly, lack of sense, recklessness, thoughtlessness).

²³ All these evil [purposes and desires] come from within, and they make the man unclean and render him unhallowed.

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26 You shall make for yourselves no idols nor shall you erect a graven image, pillar, or obelisk, nor shall you place any figured stone in your land to which or on which to bow down; 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 keep My commandments and do them,

⁴ I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase and the trees of the field yield their fruit.

⁵ And your threshing [time] shall reach to the vintage and the vintage [time] shall reach to the sowing time, and you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely.

⁶ I will give peace in the land; you shall lie down and none shall fill you with dread or make you afraid; and I will clear ferocious (wild) beasts out of the land, and no sword shall 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 put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.

⁹ For I will be leaning toward you with favor and regard for you, rendering you fruitful, multiplying you, and establishing and ratifying My covenant with you.^(A)

¹⁰ And you shall eat the [abundant] old store of produce long kept, and clear out the old [to make room] for the new.

¹¹ I will set My dwelling in and among you, and My soul shall not despise or reject or separate itself from you.

¹² And I will walk in and with and 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 no more be slaves; and I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect [as free men].

¹⁴ But if you will not hearken to Me and will not do all these commandments,

¹⁵ And if you spurn and despise My statutes, and if your soul despises and rejects My ordinances, so that you will not do all My commandments, but break My covenant,

¹⁶ I will do this: I will appoint over you [sudden] terror (trembling, trouble), even consumption and fever that consume and waste the eyes and make the [physical] life pine away. You shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.

¹⁷ I [the Lord] will set My face against you and ^[a]you shall be defeated and slain before your enemies; they who hate you shall rule over you; you shall flee when no one pursues you.^(B)

¹⁸ And if in spite of all this you still will not listen and be obedient to Me, then I will chastise and discipline you seven times more for your sins.

¹⁹ And I will break and humble your pride in your power, and I will make your heavens as iron [yielding no answer, no blessing, no rain] and your earth [as sterile] as brass.^(C)

²⁰ And your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruit.

²¹ If you walk contrary to Me and will not heed Me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you, according to your sins.

²² I will loose the wild beasts of the field among you, which shall rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few so that your roads shall be deserted and desolate.^(D)

²³ If by these means you are not turned to Me but determine to walk contrary to Me,

²⁴ I also will walk contrary to you, and I will smite you seven times for your sins.

²⁵ And I will bring a sword upon you that shall execute the vengeance [for the breaking] of My covenant; and you shall be gathered together within your cities, and I will send the pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hands of the enemy.^(E)

²⁶ When I break your staff of bread and cut off your supply of food, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall ration your bread and deliver it again by weight; and you shall eat, and not be satisfied.^(F)

²⁷ And if in spite of all this you will not listen and give heed to Me but walk contrary to Me,

²⁸ Then I will walk contrary to you in wrath, and I also will chastise you seven times for your sins.

²⁹ You shall eat the flesh of your sons and of your daughters.^(G)

³⁰ And I will destroy your high places [devoted to idolatrous worship], and cut down your sun-images, and throw your dead bodies upon the [wrecked] bodies of your idols, and My soul shall abhor you [with deep and unutterable loathing].^(H)

³¹ I will lay your cities waste, bring your sanctuaries to desolation, and I will not smell the fragrance of your sweet and soothing odors [of offerings made by fire].^(I)

³² And I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it.

³³ I will scatter you among the nations and draw out [your enemies’] sword after you; and your land shall be desolate and your cities a waste.^(J)

³⁴ Then shall the land [of Israel have the opportunity to] enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemies’ land; then shall the land rest, to enjoy and receive payments for its sabbaths [divinely ordained for it].

³⁵ As long as it lies desolate and waste, it shall have rest, the rest it did not have in your sabbaths when you dwelt upon it.^(K)

³⁶ As for those who are left of you, I will send dejection (lack of courage, a faintness) into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a driven leaf shall put them to hasty and tumultuous flight, and they shall flee as if from the sword, and fall when no one pursues them.

³⁷ They shall stumble over one another as if to escape a sword when no one pursues them; and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies.

³⁸ You shall perish among the nations; the land of your enemies shall eat you up.

³⁹ And those of you who are left shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away like them.

⁴⁰ But if they confess their own and their fathers’ iniquity in their treachery which they committed against Me—and also that because they walked contrary to Me

⁴¹ I also walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if then their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they then accept the punishment for their iniquity,^(L)

⁴² Then will I [earnestly] remember My covenant with Jacob, My covenant with Isaac, and My covenant with Abraham, and [earnestly] remember the land.^(M)

⁴³ But the land shall be left behind them and shall enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them; and they shall accept the punishment for their sins and make amends because they despised and rejected My ordinances and their soul scorned and rejected My statutes.

⁴⁴ And ^[b]yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn and cast them away, neither will I despise and abhor them to destroy them utterly and to break My covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God.^(N)

⁴⁵ But I will for their sake [earnestly] 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, ordinances, and laws which the Lord made between Him and the Israelites on Mount Sinai through Moses.

27 And the Lord said to Moses,

² Say to the Israelites, When a man shall make a special vow of persons to the Lord at your valuation,

³ Then your valuation of a male from twenty years old to sixty years old shall be fifty shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary.

⁴ And if the person is a female, your valuation shall be thirty shekels.

⁵ And if the person is from five years old up to twenty years old, then your valuation shall be for the male twenty shekels and for the female ten shekels.

⁶ And if a child is from a month up to five years old, then your valuation shall be for the male five shekels of silver and for the female three shekels.

⁷ And if the person is from sixty years old and above, if it be a male, then your valuation shall be fifteen shekels and for the female ten shekels.

⁸ But if the man is too poor to pay your valuation, then he shall be set before the priest, and the priest shall value him; according to the ability of him who vowed shall the priest value him.

⁹ If it is a beast of which men offer an offering to the Lord, all that any man gives of such to the Lord shall be holy.

¹⁰ He shall not replace it or exchange it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good; and if he makes any exchange of a beast for a beast, then both the original offering and that exchanged for it shall be holy.

¹¹ If it is an unclean animal, such as is not offered as an offering to the Lord, he shall bring the animal before the priest,

¹² And the priest shall value it, whether it be good or bad; as you, the priest, value it, so shall it be.

¹³ But if he wishes to redeem it, he shall add a fifth to your valuation.

¹⁴ If a man dedicates his house to be sacred to the Lord, the priest shall appraise it, whether it be good or bad; as the priest appraises it, so shall it stand.

¹⁵ If he who dedicates his house wants to redeem it, he shall add a fifth of your valuation to it, and it shall be his.

¹⁶ And if a man shall dedicate to the Lord some part of a field of his possession, then your valuation shall be according to the seed [required] for it; [a sowing of] a homer of barley shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver.

¹⁷ If he dedicates his field during the Year of Jubilee, it shall stand according to your full valuation.

¹⁸ But if he dedicates his field after the Jubilee, then the priest shall count the money value in proportion to the years that remain until the Year of Jubilee, and it shall be deducted from your valuation.

¹⁹ If he who dedicates the field wishes to redeem it, then he shall add a fifth of the money of your appraisal to it, and it shall remain his.

²⁰ But if he does not want to redeem the field, or if he has sold it 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 devoted [to God or destruction]; the priest shall have possession of it.

²² And if a man dedicates to the Lord a field he has bought, which is not of the fields of his [ancestral] possession,

²³ The priest shall compute the amount of your valuation for it up to the Year of Jubilee; the man shall give that amount on that day as a holy thing to the Lord.

²⁴ In the Year of Jubilee the field shall return to him of whom it was bought, to him to whom the land belonged [as his ancestral inheritance].

²⁵ And all your valuations shall be according to the sanctuary shekel; twenty gerahs shall make a shekel.

²⁶ But the firstling of the animals, since a firstling belongs to the Lord, no man may dedicate, whether it be ox or sheep. It is the Lord’s [already].

²⁷ If it be of an unclean animal, the owner may redeem it according to your valuation, and shall add a fifth to it; or if it is not redeemed, then it shall be sold according to your valuation.

²⁸ But nothing that a man shall devote to the Lord of all that he has, whether of man or beast or of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy to the Lord.

²⁹ No one doomed to death [under the claim of divine justice], who is to be completely destroyed from among men, shall be ransomed [from suffering the death penalty]; he shall surely be put to death.

³⁰ And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord’s; it is holy to the Lord.^(O)

³¹ And if a man wants to redeem any of his tithe, he shall add a fifth to it.

³² And all the tithe of the herd or of the flock, whatever passes under the herdsman’s staff [by means of which each tenth animal as it passes through a small door is selected and marked], the tenth shall be holy to the Lord.^(P)

³³ The man shall not examine whether the animal is good or bad nor shall he exchange it. If he does exchange it, then both it and the animal substituted for it shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed.

³⁴ These are the commandments which the Lord commanded Moses on Mount Sinai for the Israelites.^(Q)