⁴⁷ “If a foreigner living among you becomes rich, and an Israelite becomes poor and sells himself to the foreigner or to the foreigner’s family, ⁴⁸ he may be redeemed by one of his brothers, ⁴⁹ his uncle, nephew, or anyone else who is a near relative. He may also redeem himself if he can find the money. ⁵⁰ The price of his freedom shall be in proportion to the number of years left before the Year of Jubilee—whatever it would cost to hire a servant for that number of years. ⁵¹ If there are still many years until the Jubilee, he shall pay almost the amount he received when he sold himself; ⁵² if the years have passed and only a few remain until the Jubilee, then he will repay only a small part of the amount he received when he sold himself. ⁵³ If he sells himself to a foreigner, the foreigner must treat him as a hired servant rather than as a slave or as property. ⁵⁴ If he has not been redeemed by the time the Year of Jubilee arrives, then he and his children shall be freed at that time. ⁵⁵ For the people of Israel are my servants; I brought them from the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.

26 “You must have no idols; you must never worship carved images, obelisks, or shaped stones, for I am the Lord your God. ² You must obey my Sabbath laws of rest, and reverence my Tabernacle, for I am the Lord.

³ “If you obey all of my commandments, ^4-5 I will give you regular rains, and the land will yield bumper crops, and the trees will be loaded with fruit long after the normal time!^[a] And grapes will still be ripening when sowing time comes again. You shall eat your fill, and live safely in the land, ⁶ for I will give you peace, and you will go to sleep without fear. I will chase away the dangerous animals. ⁷ You will chase your enemies; they will die beneath your swords. ⁸ Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you, ten thousand! You will defeat all of your enemies. ⁹ I will look after you, and multiply you, and fulfill my covenant with you. ¹⁰ You will have such a surplus of crops that you won’t know what to do with them when the new harvest is ready! ¹¹ And I will live among you and not despise you. ¹² I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people. ¹³ For I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so that you would be slaves no longer; I have broken your chains so that you can walk with dignity.^[b]

¹⁴ “But if you will not listen to me or obey me, ¹⁵ but reject my laws, ¹⁶ this is what I will do to you: I will punish you with sudden terrors and panic, and with tuberculosis and burning fever; your eyes shall be consumed and your life shall ebb away; you will sow your crops in vain, for your enemies will eat them. ¹⁷ I will set my face against you and you will flee before your attackers; those who hate you will rule you; you will even run when no one is chasing you!

¹⁸ “And if you still disobey me, I will punish you seven times more severely for your sins. ¹⁹ I will break your proud power and make your heavens as iron and your earth as bronze. ²⁰ Your strength shall be spent in vain; for your land shall not yield its crops, nor your trees their fruit.

²¹ “And if even then you will not obey me and listen to me, I will send you seven times more plagues because of your sins. ²² I will send wild animals to kill your children and destroy your cattle and reduce your numbers so that your roads will be deserted.

²³ “And if even this will not reform you, but you continue to walk against my wishes, ²⁴ then I will walk against your wishes, and I, even I, will personally smite you seven times for your sin. ²⁵ I will revenge the breaking of my covenant by bringing war against you. You will flee to your cities, and I will send a plague among you there; and you will be conquered by your enemies. ²⁶ I will destroy your food supply so that one oven will be large enough to bake all the bread available for ten entire families; and you will still be hungry after your pittance has been doled out to you.

²⁷ “And if you still won’t listen to me or obey me, ²⁸ then I will let loose my great anger and send you seven times greater punishment for your sins. ²⁹ You shall eat your own sons and daughters, ³⁰ and I will destroy the altars on the hills where you worship your idols, and I will cut down your incense altars, leaving your dead bodies to rot among your idols; and I will abhor you. ³¹ I will make your cities desolate, and destroy your places of worship, and will not respond to your incense offerings. ³² Yes, I will desolate your land; your enemies shall live in it, utterly amazed at what I have done to you.

³³ “I will scatter you out among the nations, destroying you with war as you go. Your land shall be desolate and your cities destroyed. ^34-35 Then at last the land will rest and make up for the many years you refused to let it lie idle; for it will lie desolate all the years that you are captives in enemy lands. Yes, then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths! It will make up for the rest you didn’t give it every seventh year when you lived upon it.

³⁶ “And for those who are left alive, I will cause them to be dragged away to distant lands as prisoners of war and slaves. There they will live in constant fear. The sound of a leaf driven in the wind will send them fleeing as though chased by a man with a sword; they shall fall when no one is pursuing them. ³⁷ Yes, though none pursue they shall stumble over each other in flight, as though fleeing in battle, with no power to stand before their enemies. ³⁸ You shall perish among the nations and be destroyed among your enemies. ³⁹ Those left shall pine away in enemy lands because of their sins, the same sins as those of their fathers.

^40-41 “But at last they shall confess their sins and their fathers’ sins of treachery against me. (Because they were against me, I was against them, and brought them into the land of their enemies.) When at last their evil hearts are humbled and they accept the punishment I send them for their sins, ⁴² then I will remember again my promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will remember the land (and its desolation). ⁴³ For the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as it lies desolate. But then at last they shall accept their punishment for rejecting my laws and for despising my rule. ⁴⁴ But despite all they have done, I will not utterly destroy them and my covenant with them, for I am Jehovah their God. ⁴⁵ For their sakes I will remember my promises to their ancestors to be their God. For I brought their forefathers out of Egypt as all the nations watched in wonder. I am Jehovah.”

⁴⁶ These were the laws, ordinances, and instructions that Jehovah gave to the people of Israel, through Moses, on Mount Sinai.

27 ^1-2 The Lord said to Moses, “Tell the people of Israel that when a person makes a special vow to give himself to the Lord, he shall give these payments instead: ³ A man from the age of twenty to sixty shall pay twenty-five dollars;^{[c] 4} a woman from the age of twenty to sixty shall pay fifteen dollars; ⁵ a boy from five to twenty shall pay ten dollars; a girl, five dollars. ⁶ A boy one month to five years old shall have paid for him two and a half dollars; a girl, one and a half dollars. ⁷ A man over sixty shall pay seven and a half dollars; a woman, five dollars. ⁸ But if the person is too poor to pay this amount, he shall be brought to the priest, and the priest shall talk it over with him, and he shall pay as the priest shall decide.

⁹ “But if it is an animal that is vowed to be given to the Lord as a sacrifice, it must be given. ¹⁰ The vow may not be changed; the donor may neither change his mind about giving it to the Lord, nor substitute good for bad or bad for good; if he does, both the first and the second shall belong to the Lord! ^11-12 But if the animal given to the Lord is not a kind that is permitted as a sacrifice, the owner shall bring it to the priest to value it, and he shall be told how much to pay instead. ¹³ If the animal is a kind that may be offered as a sacrifice,^[d] but the man wants to redeem it, then he shall pay 20 percent more than the value set by the priest.

³² Now they were on the way to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking along ahead; and as the disciples were following they were filled with terror and dread.

Taking them aside, Jesus once more began describing all that was going to happen to him when they arrived at Jerusalem.

³³ “When we get there,” he told them, “I, the Messiah,^[a] will be arrested and taken before the chief priests and the Jewish leaders, who will sentence me to die and hand me over to the Romans to be killed. ³⁴ They will mock me and spit on me and flog me with their whips and kill me; but after three days I will come back to life again.”

³⁵ Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came over and spoke to him in a low voice.^[b] “Master,” they said, “we want you to do us a favor.”

³⁶ “What is it?” he asked.

³⁷ “We want to sit on the thrones next to yours in your Kingdom,” they said, “one at your right and the other at your left!”

³⁸ But Jesus answered, “You don’t know what you are asking! Are you able to drink from the bitter cup of sorrow I must drink from? Or to be baptized with the baptism of suffering I must be baptized with?”

³⁹ “Oh, yes,” they said, “we are!”

And Jesus said, “You shall indeed drink from my cup and be baptized with my baptism, ⁴⁰ but I do not have the right to place you on thrones next to mine. Those appointments have already been made.”

⁴¹ When the other disciples discovered what James and John had asked, they were very indignant. ⁴² So Jesus called them to him and said, “As you know, the kings and great men of the earth lord it over the people; ⁴³ but among you it is different. Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant. ⁴⁴ And whoever wants to be greatest of all must be the slave of all. ⁴⁵ For even I, the Messiah,^[c] am not here to be served, but to help others, and to give my life as a ransom for many.”

⁴⁶ And so they reached Jericho. Later, as they left town, a great crowd was following. Now it happened that a blind beggar named Bartimaeus (the son of Timaeus) was sitting beside the road as Jesus was going by.

⁴⁷ When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus from Nazareth was near, he began to shout out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

⁴⁸ “Shut up!” some of the people yelled at him.

But he only shouted the louder, again and again, “O Son of David, have mercy on me!”

⁴⁹ When Jesus heard him, he stopped there in the road and said, “Tell him to come here.”

So they called the blind man. “You lucky fellow,”^[d] they said, “come on, he’s calling you!” ⁵⁰ Bartimaeus yanked off his old coat and flung it aside, jumped up and came to Jesus.

⁵¹ “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked.

“O Teacher,” the blind man said, “I want to see!”

⁵² And Jesus said to him, “All right, it’s done.^[e] Your faith has healed you.”

And instantly the blind man could see and followed Jesus down the road!

45 My heart is overflowing with a beautiful thought! I will write a lovely poem to the King, for I am as full of words as the speediest writer pouring out his story.

⁸ Your robes are perfumed with myrrh, aloes, and cassia. In your palaces of inlaid ivory, lovely music is being played for your enjoyment. ⁹ Kings’ daughters are among your concubines.^[a] Standing beside you is the queen, wearing jewelry of finest gold from Ophir.

^10-11 “I advise you, O daughter, not to fret about your parents in your homeland far away. Your royal husband delights in your beauty. Reverence him, for he is your lord. ¹² The people of Tyre, the richest people of our day, will shower you with gifts and entreat your favors.”

¹³ The bride,^[b] a princess, waits within her chamber, robed in beautiful clothing woven with gold. ¹⁴ Lovely^[c] she is, led beside her maids of honor to the king! ¹⁵ What a joyful, glad procession as they enter in the palace gates! ¹⁶ “Your sons will some day be kings like their father. They shall sit on thrones around the world!

¹⁷ “I will cause your name to be honored in all generations; the nations of the earth will praise you forever.”

²² The Lord’s blessing is our greatest wealth. All our work adds nothing to it!^[a]