Beginning

Good Comes to Those Who Obey

26 ‘Do not make gods for yourselves. Do not set up for yourselves something to look like a god or a holy object. Do not set up something cut from stone in your land to bow down to. For I am the Lord your God. ² Keep My Days of Rest and honor My holy place. I am the Lord. ³ If you live by My Laws and do what I say, ⁴ I will give you rain at the right time. So the land will give its food and the trees will give their fruit. ⁵ The crushing of your grain will last until the grapes are gathered. The grape gathering will last until the seeds are planted. You will eat your food until you are full, and be safe living in your land. ⁶ I will give peace in the land. You will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will make the land free from the danger of wild animals. And no sword will move through your land. ⁷ You will go after those who hate you, and they will fall in front of you by the sword. ⁸ Five of you will go after a hundred. A hundred of you will go after ten thousand. And those who hate you will fall in front of you by the sword. ⁹ I will care for you and give you many children. I will keep My agreement with you. ¹⁰ You will eat last year’s food, and use it all because you will have new. ¹¹ I will make My home among you. My soul will not turn away from you. ¹² I will walk among you and be your God. And you will be My people. ¹³ I am the Lord your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt so you would not be their servants. I have broken loose the heavy load from your back and made you walk straight.

Punishment to Those Who Do Not Obey

¹⁴ ‘But if you do not obey Me and do not do all I say, ¹⁵ if you turn away from My Laws and do not want to do what I tell you to do, and do not do it, and so break My agreement, ¹⁶ I will do this to you: I will bring upon you much fear, disease that destroys, and sickness that will waste away the eyes and make the body weak. You will plant your seeds for nothing, for those who hate you will eat it. ¹⁷ I will turn against you so you will fall in front of those who fight you. Those who hate you will rule over you. You will run away when no one is coming after you. ¹⁸ If after all of these things you still do not obey Me, I will punish you seven times more for your sins. ¹⁹ I will break the pride you have of your power. I will make your sky like iron and your earth like brass. ²⁰ You will use your strength for nothing. For your land will not give food, and the trees of the land will not give fruit.

²¹ ‘If you act against Me and will not obey Me, I will bring you seven times more trouble than your sins. ²² I will let the wild animals loose among you. They will rob you of your children and destroy your cattle. They will make you few in number, so that your roads will be empty.

²³ ‘If after these things you do not turn to Me, but still go against Me, ²⁴ then I will go against you. I Myself will punish you seven times for your sins. ²⁵ I will bring a sword upon you that will punish you for breaking the agreement. I will send disease among you when you gather together in your cities. So you will be given into the hands of those who hate you. ²⁶ When I take away your bread of life, ten women will make your bread in one stove. They will give out your bread by weight. And you will eat it and not be filled.

²⁷ ‘If you still do not obey Me after all this, but go against Me, ²⁸ then I will go against you with anger. I Myself will punish you seven times for your sins. ²⁹ You will eat the flesh of your sons and daughters. ³⁰ I will destroy your high places and cut down your altars of special perfume. I will throw your dead bodies on what is left of your gods. My soul will hate you. ³¹ I will destroy your cities also, and your holy places. I will not smell your pleasing smells. ³² I will destroy the land, so those living in it who hate you will be filled with fear because of it. ³³ I will divide you among the nations and send the sword after you. Your land will be destroyed and your cities a waste.

³⁴ ‘Then the land will be like new because of its Days of Rest while it lies waste and you are in the land of those who hate you. Then the land will rest and have new life because of the Days of Rest. ³⁵ As long as it lies waste it will have the rest it did not have on your Days of Rest, while you were living in it. ³⁶ Of those of you who are left in the lands of those who hate you, I will make their hearts weak. The sound of a leaf blown by the wind will make them run away even when no one is going after them. They will run away as if it were a sword, and they will fall. ³⁷ They will fall over each other as if running from the sword, when no one is going after them. You will have no strength to stand up in front of those who hate you. ³⁸ You will die among the nations. The land of those who hate you will eat you up. ³⁹ So those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of those who hate you, because of their sins. Also because of the sins of their fathers, they will waste away with them.

⁴⁰ ‘If they tell their sins and the sins of their fathers which they did when they were not faithful to Me and were against Me with anger, ⁴¹ (I also was angry with them and brought them into the land of those who hate them) if their sinful heart loses its pride and they are willing to turn away from their sin, ⁴² I will remember My agreement with Jacob, My agreement with Isaac, and My agreement with Abraham. And I will remember the land. ⁴³ But the land will be left behind them and become better with its Days of Rest while it lies empty without them. During this time they will turn away from their sin because they had not done what I told them to do and their soul hated My Laws. ⁴⁴ Yet even when they are in the land of those who hate them, I will not turn away from them. I will not hate them enough to destroy them and break My agreement with them. For I am the Lord their God. ⁴⁵ But because of them I will remember the agreement with their fathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the eyes of the nations, to be their God. I am the Lord.’”

⁴⁶ These are the Laws which the Lord made between Himself and the people of Israel through Moses at Mount Sinai.

Laws about Gifts to the Lord

27 Then the Lord said to Moses, ² “Say to the sons of Israel, ‘When a man makes a special promise, you will decide upon the worth of this person for the Lord. ³ The price you put on a man from twenty to sixty years old will be fifty pieces of silver, by the weight of the holy place. ⁴ For a woman it will be thirty pieces of silver. ⁵ For a male from five to twenty years old it will be twenty pieces of silver. For a woman it will be ten pieces of silver. ⁶ Your price for a child from one month to five years old will be five pieces of silver for the boy, and three pieces of silver for the girl. ⁷ Your price for a person sixty years old and older will be fifteen pieces of silver for the man, and ten pieces of silver for the woman. ⁸ But if the person is too poor to pay your price, he will be brought to the religious leader. The religious leader will decide the worth of the person by how much he who made the promise is able to pay.

⁹ ‘If it is a kind of animal which men give as a gift to the Lord, any such animal that is given to the Lord will be holy. ¹⁰ He must not have another animal take its place, good for bad or bad for good. If he does trade one animal for another, then both animals will become holy. ¹¹ But if the animal is unclean and not the kind which men give to the Lord, then he will bring the animal to the religious leader. ¹² The religious leader will decide if it is good or bad. Whatever price the religious leader puts on it, so it will be. ¹³ If the man wants to buy it again, he will add a fifth to your price.

¹⁴ ‘When a man sets apart his house as holy to the Lord, the religious leader will decide if it is good or bad. Whatever price the religious leader puts on it, so it will be. ¹⁵ If the man who sets it apart wants to buy his house again, he will add one-fifth part to your price. Then it will be his.

¹⁶ ‘If a man sets apart to the Lord part of a field he owns, you will decide upon its price by the seed needed for it. Ten baskets of barley seed will be worth fifty pieces of silver. ¹⁷ If he sets apart his field during the Year of Jubilee, it will be worth your full price. ¹⁸ But if he sets apart his field after the Year of Jubilee, the religious leader will decide upon its worth by the years left until the next Year of Jubilee. It will be taken off your price. ¹⁹ If the man who sets it apart wants to buy his field again, he will add one-fifth part to your price. Then it will be his. ²⁰ But if he does not want to buy the field again, or has sold the field to another man, it cannot be bought again. ²¹ And when the field becomes free in the Jubilee, it will be holy to the Lord, like a field set apart. It will belong to the religious leader. ²² If a man sets apart to the Lord a field he has bought, which is not a part of the land he was given by his father, ²³ the religious leader will decide its worth until the Year of Jubilee. The man will pay that amount on that day as holy to the Lord. ²⁴ In the Year of Jubilee the field will return from him who bought it to the one who owned it first. ²⁵ The price of silver used in the holy place will decide its worth. One piece of silver will be worth twenty small pieces of money.

²⁶ ‘But no man may set apart a first-born of the animals. A first-born of the cattle or the flock belongs to the Lord. ²⁷ If it is an animal that is unclean, he will buy it again by paying your price and one-fifth part added to it. If it is not bought again, then it will be sold for your price.

²⁸ ‘But nothing that a man sets apart to the Lord of all he has, of man or animal or his own land, will be sold or bought. Everything that has been set apart is most holy to the Lord. ²⁹ No person who has been set apart to be destroyed from among men can be paid for. He must be put to death.

³⁰ ‘The tenth part of all the land, of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord’s. It is holy to the Lord. ³¹ If a man wants to buy any of the tenth part that belongs to the Lord, he will add one-fifth part to its price. ³² And every tenth animal of the cattle or flock, whatever passes under the shepherd’s stick, the tenth one will be holy to the Lord. ³³ The man will not ask if it is good or bad, or trade it for something else. If he does trade it for something else, then both will become holy. He cannot buy them again.’”

³⁴ These are the Laws the Lord gave Moses on Mount Sinai for the sons of Israel.