Leviticus - The Old Testament

¹ ' "You will not make idols for yourselves; you will not erect statues or cultic stones, or erect carved stones in your country, for you to worship: for I, Yahweh, am your God.

² You will keep my Sabbaths and revere my sanctuary. I am Yahweh.

³ "If you live according to my laws, if you keep my commandments and put them into practice,

⁴ I shall give you the rain you need at the right time; the soil will yield its produce and the trees of the countryside their fruit;

⁵ you will thresh until vintage time and gather grapes until sowing time. You will eat your fill of bread and live secure in your land.

⁶ "I shall give peace in the land, and you will go to sleep with no one to frighten you. I shall rid the land of beasts of prey. The sword will not pass through your land.

⁷ You will pursue your enemies and they will fall before your sword;

⁸ five of you pursuing a hundred of them, one hundred pursuing ten thousand; and your enemies will fall before your sword.

⁹ "I shall turn towards you, I shall make you fertile and make your numbers grow, and I shall uphold my covenant with you.

¹⁰ "Having eaten all you need of last year's harvest, you will throw out the old to make room for the new.

¹¹ "I shall fix my home among you and never reject you.

¹² I shall live among you; I shall be your God and you will be my people,

¹³ I, Yahweh your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you should be their slaves no longer, and who broke the bonds of your yoke and made you walk with head held high.

¹⁴ "But if you will not listen to me and do not put all these commandments into practice,

¹⁵ if you reject my laws and detest my customs, and you break my covenant by not putting all my commandments into practice,

¹⁶ this is how I shall treat you: "I shall subject you to terror, consumption and fever, making you dim of sight and short of breath. You will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will eat it.

¹⁷ I shall turn against you and you will be defeated by your enemies. Your foes will have the mastery over you, and you will flee when no one is pursuing you.

¹⁸ "And if, in spite of this, you will not listen to me, I shall punish you seven times over for your sins.

¹⁹ I shall break your proud strength. I shall make the sky like iron for you, and your soil like bronze.

²⁰ You will wear out your strength in vain, your land will not yield its produce, nor the trees of the country their fruit.

²¹ "And if you go against me and will not listen to me, I shall heap seven times more plagues on you for your sins.

²² I shall send wild animals to attack you and rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and reduce your numbers until your roads are deserted.

²³ "And if that does not reform you, and you still go against me,

²⁴ then I shall go against you and punish you another seven times over for your sins.

²⁵ I shall bring the sword on you, which will avenge the covenant, and when you huddle inside your towns, I shall send pestilence among you, and you will fall into the enemy's clutches.

²⁶ When I take away the bread which supports you, ten women will be able to bake your bread in one oven and will then dole your bread out by weight; you will eat but not be satisfied.

²⁷ "And if, in spite of this, you will not listen to me but go against me,

²⁸ I shall go against you in fury and punish you seven times over for your sins.

²⁹ You will eat the flesh of your own sons, you will eat the flesh of your own daughters.

³⁰ I shall destroy your high places and smash your incense-altars; I shall pile your corpses on the corpses of your foul idols and shall reject you.

³¹ I shall reduce your cities to ruins; I shall lay waste your sanctuary and refuse to inhale from you smells intended to please.

³² I shall make such a desolation of the country that your enemies who come to live there will be appalled by it.

³³ And I shall scatter you among the nations. I shall unsheathe the sword against you, reducing your country to desert and your towns to ruins.

³⁴ Then the country will indeed observe its Sabbaths, all the while it lies deserted, while you are in the country of your enemies. Then indeed the country will rest and observe its Sabbaths.

³⁵ And as it lies deserted it will rest, as it never did on your Sabbaths when you were living there.

³⁶ I shall strike such fear into the hearts of those of you who survive in the countries of their enemies that the sound of a falling leaf will set them fleeing; they will flee as though fleeing from the sword, and fall when no one is pursuing.

³⁷ They will stumble over one another as though fleeing before the sword, when no one is pursuing. You will be powerless to stand up to your enemies;

³⁸ you will perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies will swallow you up.

³⁹ Those of you who survive will pine away in their guilt in the countries of their enemies and, bearing the guilt of their ancestors too, will pine away like them.

⁴⁰ "Then they shall admit their guilt and that of their ancestors and their infidelities against me, and further, their setting themselves against me.

⁴¹ "I in my turn will go against them and bring them into the land of their enemies. Then their uncircumcised hearts will grow humble and then they will accept the punishment for their guilt.

⁴² I shall remember my covenant with Jacob, I shall remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham; and I shall remember the country too.

⁴³ "Abandoned, the country will keep its Sabbaths, as it lies deserted in their absence, and they will have to accept the punishment for their guilt, since they detested my customs and rejected my laws.

⁴⁴ "Yet, in spite of all this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I shall not so utterly reject or detest them as to destroy them completely and break my covenant with them; for I am Yahweh their God.

⁴⁵ For their sake I shall remember the covenant I made with those first generations that I brought out of Egypt while other nations watched, so that I should be their God, I, Yahweh." '

⁴⁶ Such were the decrees, customs and laws which Yahweh established between himself and the Israelites on Mount Sinai through Moses.