Passage: Leviticus 26, 27 (RSV)


Leviticus 26


1"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.
2You 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,
4then 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.
5And 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.
6And 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.
7And you shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.
8Five 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.
9And I will have regard for you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and will confirm my covenant with you.
10And you shall eat old store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new.
11And I will make my abode among you, and my soul shall not abhor you.
12And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people.
13I 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.
14"But if you will not hearken to me, and will not do all these commandments,
15if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my ordinances, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant,
16I 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;
17I 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.
18And if in spite of this you will not hearken to me, then I will chastise you again sevenfold for your sins,
19and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like brass;
20and 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.
22And 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,
24then I also will walk contrary to you, and I myself will smite you sevenfold for your sins.
25And 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.
26When 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,
28then I will walk contrary to you in fury, and chastise you myself sevenfold for your sins.
29You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.
30And 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.
31And I will lay your cities waste, and will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing odors.
32And I will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be astonished at it.
33And 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 its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies' land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its sabbaths.
35As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest which it had not in your sabbaths when you dwelt upon it.
36And 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.
37They 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.
38And you shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
39And 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,
41so 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;
42then 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.
43But the land shall be left by them, and enjoy 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.
44Yet 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;
45but 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."
46These are the statutes and ordinances and laws which the LORD made between him and the people of Israel on Mount Sinai by Moses.

Leviticus 27


1The 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,
3then 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.
4If the person is a female, your valuation shall be thirty shekels.
5If 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.
6If 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.
7And 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.
8And 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.
10He 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.
11And 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,
12and the priest shall value it as either good or bad; as you, the priest, value it, so it shall be.
13But 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.
15And 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.
17If he dedicates his field from the year of jubilee, it shall stand at your full valuation;
18but 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.
19And 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.
20But 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;
21but 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 possession of it.
22If he dedicates to the LORD a field which he has bought, which is not a part of his possession by inheritance,
23then 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.
24In 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.
25Every 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.
27And 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 man or beast, or of his inherited field, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy to the LORD.
29No 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.
31If a man wishes to redeem any of his tithe, he shall add a fifth to it.
32And 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.
33A 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."
34These are the commandments which the LORD commanded Moses for the people of Israel on Mount Sinai.



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