1 You shall not make for your- selves idols or set up an image or pillar or carved stone in your land to bow before it for I am Yahweh, your God.
2 You shall keep my sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am Yahweh.
Promises of God
3 If you walk according to my precepts and obey my commandments, if you carry them out,
4 I will give you rain in its season and the land will yield its produce, the trees in the field their fruit;
5 the threshing time will last to vintage time and the vintage till sowing time. You will have food in abundance and you will live securely in your land.
6 I will give you peace in your country and you will sleep without anyone disturbing you. I will banish the wild beast and keep the sword of war from passing through the land.
7 You will rout your enemies and they will fall before your sword;
8 five of you will pursue a hun dred of them and a hundred of you ten thousand of them, and they will fall be fore you by the sword.
9 I will turn towards you to make your families fruitful and your people numerous, and I will confirm my covenant with you.
10 When you are still eating from the old harvest you will have to discard what is stored to make place for the new.
11 I will make my Dwelling among you and I will not reject you.
12 I will walk among you; I will be your God and you will be my people.
13 I am Yah weh your God, who brought you out of Egypt to be their slaves no longer. I have broken the bars of your yoke let ting you walk erect.
Curses
14 But if you do not heed me and keep my commandments,
15 if you reject my precepts and ignore my decrees, refusing to obey all my commandments and so break my covenant,
16 I, in turn, will do this: I will bring upon you a terror, a tuberculosis and fever, weakening your eyes and draining your life. In vain will you sow, for your enemies will eat it.
17 I will turn away from you until you are beaten by your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you and you shall flee when no one pursues you.
18 If after all this you do not obey me, I will continue to punish you sevenfold for your sins.
19 I will break the pride of your power; I will make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze.
20 Your strength shall be spent in vain; your land will give no produce and the trees no fruit.
21 If you defy me and are unwilling to obey me, I will bring seven times as many plagues on you for your sins.
22 I will let loose the wild animals and they will rob you of your children and destroy your cattle and make you so few that your roads will be deserted.
23 If, with all this, you do not repent but remain hostile towards me,
24 then I will be hostile towards you and strike you seven times for your sins.
25 The sword I will bring against you, and with the sword I will avenge my covenant with you; and when you gather together in your cities I will send pestilence on you and you shall be delivered into enemy hands.
26 When I cut off your supply of bread and ten women bake bread in one oven and bring back rationed bread, you will eat and not be satisfied.
27 But if with all that you do not obey me and remain defiant towards me,
28 I will go against you in fury and punish you sevenfold for your sins.
29 You shall eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.
30 I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars; I will cast your corpses on those of your idols and I shall hate you.
31 I will lay waste your cities and make desolate your sanctuaries and no longer shall I relish your sweet-smelling offer ings.
32 I will make the land desolate so that your enemies who settle in it will be as tonished.
33 I will scatter you among the nations and unsheathe the sword behind you, as your land becomes desolate and your cities lie in ruins.
34 Then the land shall enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies waste while you are in the land of your enemies;
35 then the land will rest and observe its sabbaths. As long as the land lies desolate it shall have the sabbath rest that it did not have when you inhabited it.
36 As for those of you who are left, I will make them faint-hearted in the land of their enemies. The sound of a wind-blown leaf will chase them and even when no one pursues them,
37 they will flee as from the sword and will fall. They will stumble against each other as if running from the sword even when they are not pursued, and you will be unable to stand up before your enemies.
38 You shall perish among the nations and die in the land of your enemies.
39 Those among you who remain will rot away because of their wickedness in the land of your enemies and because of the wickedness of their fathers they will rot away with them.
40 Then they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers. They will admit that their treacheries and their hostility towards me made me hostile towards them
41 and caused me to bring them to the land of their enemies, and then their uncircumcised hearts may become humble and they will accept the punishment for their sin.
42 Then I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham as well, and I will re member the land.
43 For the land will be abandoned by them and it shall observe its sabbath; it will be desolate without them, while they pay for their sin because they spurned my ordinances and ignored my statutes.
44 Yet even so, when they are in the land of their enemies I will not reject them or ignore them to the point of destroying them and breaking my covenant with them, for I am Yahweh, their God.
45 For their sake I will remember my covenant with their forefathers whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am Yahweh.”
46 These are the statutes, the ordinances and the teachings of the covenant Yahweh made with the Israelites, through Moses, on Mount Sinai.
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Comments Leviticus, Chapter 26
• 26.3 The law of God is a law of life. When peo ple do not follow it, they destroy themselves. Here God requires of his people justice, kindness and respect for life. He can exact it for facts will justify his words: he promises infallibly benefits or disasters.
The end of this chapter, written during the exile, describes the decadence of the Jewish people just before their exile. This destruction was, in some sense, “God’s punishment”: but it was also the consequence of their faults, be cause any society which disregards the foundations of moral life is digging its own grave.
This chapter presents as opposite poles: peace and fruitfulness on the one hand, and on the other, the insecurity, waste and division among people who do not listen to God:
– injustice breeds violence;
– sexual license weakens the sense of sacrifice;
– national resources are wasted on luxury and on repressive forces;
Such people come to the point of eating the flesh of their own children.