Leviticus 26

⁴Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods. I am the Lord your God.

¹⁵‘Cursed is the man who makes a carved idol or molten image—an abomination to the Lord, the work of the hands of a craftsman—and sets it up in secret.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’

⁵²you must drive out before you all the inhabitants of the land, destroy all their carved images and cast idols, and demolish all their high places.

²⁴You must not bow down to their gods or serve them or follow their practices. Instead, you are to demolish them and smash their sacred stones to pieces.

⁴You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath.

⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

¹⁹Am I suggesting, then, that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything?

²⁰No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be participants with demons.

³⁰You must keep My Sabbaths and have reverence for My sanctuary. I am the Lord.

¹⁹If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best of the land.

¹“Now if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God and are careful to follow all His commandments I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.

²And all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the voice of the Lord your God:

¹³So if you carefully obey the commandments I am giving you today, to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul,

¹⁴then I will provide rain for your land in season, the autumn and spring rains, that you may gather your grain, new wine, and oil.

¹⁸If only you had paid attention to My commandments, your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like waves of the sea.

¹⁹Your descendants would have been as countless as the sand, and your offspring as numerous as its grains; their name would never be cut off or eliminated from My presence.”

¹²So I gave them up to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.

¹³If only My people would listen to Me, if Israel would follow My ways,

¹Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim and said, “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land that I had promised to your fathers, and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you,

²and you are not to make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall tear down their altars.’ Yet you have not obeyed My voice. What is this you have done?

⁶The earth has yielded its harvest; God, our God, blesses us.

¹²“For the seed will be prosperous, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will yield its produce, and the skies will give their dew. To the remnant of this people I will give all these things as an inheritance.

²³Then He will send rain for the seed that you have sown in the ground, and the food that comes from your land will be rich and plentiful. On that day your cattle will graze in open pastures.

¹²The Lord will open the heavens, His abundant storehouse, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations, but borrow from none.

³⁰I will also make the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field plentiful, so that you will no longer bear reproach among the nations on account of famine.

¹⁰He gives rain to the earth and sends water upon the fields.

¹³“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes, the sower of seed. The mountains will drip with sweet wine, with which all the hills will flow.

²⁶You will have plenty to eat, until you are satisfied. You will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you. My people will never again be put to shame.

¹⁹And the Lord answered His people: “Behold, I will send you grain, new wine, and oil, and by them you will be satisfied. I will never again make you a reproach among the nations.

¹⁸You are to keep My statutes and carefully observe My judgments, so that you may dwell securely in the land.

¹⁹Then the land will yield its fruit, so that you can eat your fill and dwell in safety in the land.

¹⁵And I will provide grass in the fields for your livestock, and you will eat and be satisfied.

²⁵I will make with them a covenant of peace and rid the land of wild animals, so that they may dwell securely in the wilderness and sleep in the forest.

²⁶I will make them and the places around My hill a blessing. I will send down showers in season—showers of blessing.

⁹No lion will be there, and no vicious beast will go up on it. Such will not be found there, but the redeemed will walk upon it.

¹³The remnant of Israel will no longer do wrong or speak lies, nor will a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths. But they will feed and lie down, with no one to make them tremble.”

¹⁴He makes peace at your borders; He fills you with the finest wheat.

¹⁰As for you, O Jacob My servant, do not be afraid, declares the Lord, and do not be dismayed, O Israel. For I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their captivity! Jacob will return to quiet and ease, with no one to make him afraid.

¹⁸On that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the creatures that crawl on the ground. And I will abolish bow and sword and battle in the land, and will make them lie down in safety.

¹¹The Lord gives His people strength; the Lord blesses His people with peace.

¹⁰One of you can put a thousand to flight, because the Lord your God fights for you, just as He promised.

⁷The Lord will cause the enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you. They will march out against you in one direction but flee from you in seven.

³⁰How could one man pursue a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the Lord had given them up?

²⁰Now Abishai, the brother of Joab, was chief of the Three, and he wielded his spear against three hundred men, killed them, and won a name along with the Three.

⁹Only do not rebel against the Lord, and do not be afraid of the people of the land, for they will be like bread for us. Their protection has been removed, and the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them!”

¹⁹Gideon and the hundred men with him reached the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, just after the changing of the guard. They blew their horns and broke the jars that were in their hands.

²⁰The three companies blew their horns and shattered their jars. Holding the torches in their left hands and the horns in their right hands, they shouted, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!”

⁶I will make you exceedingly fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will descend from you.

⁷I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

²³You multiplied their descendants like the stars of heaven and brought them to the land You had told their fathers to enter and possess.

³⁸He blesses them, and they multiply greatly; He does not let their herds diminish.

⁶²So I will establish My covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord,

³Incline your ear and come to Me; listen, so that your soul may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant—My loving devotion promised to David.

³May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, so that you may become a company of peoples.

²²While you are sowing in the eighth year, you will be eating from the previous harvest, until the ninth year’s harvest comes in.

¹⁷So he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, since I have nowhere to store my crops?’

²⁹And this will be a sign to you, O Hezekiah: This year you will eat what grows on its own, and in the second year what springs from the same. But in the third year you will sow and reap; you will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

⁸And they are to make a sanctuary for Me, so that I may dwell among them.

³And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God.

¹³For the Lord has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His home:

¹⁴“This is My resting place forever and ever; here I will dwell, for I have desired this home.

⁴⁵Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God.

²²And in Him you too are being built together into a dwelling place for God in His Spirit.

²His tent is in Salem, His dwelling place in Zion.

¹⁶What agreement can exist between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will dwell with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be My people.”

²²“And you will be My people, and I will be your God.”

²³but this is what I commanded them: Obey Me, and I will be your God, and you will be My people. You must walk in all the ways I have commanded you, so that it may go well with you.

⁷I will take you as My own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

²⁷Then you will know that I am present in Israel and that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other. My people will never again be put to shame.

¹⁴For the Lord your God walks throughout your camp to protect you and deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy, lest He see anything unclean among you and turn away from you.

²⁷The trees of the field will give their fruit, and the land will yield its produce; My flock will be secure in their land. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bars of their yoke and delivered them from the hands that enslaved them.

¹⁶Truly, O Lord, I am Your servant; I am Your servant, the son of Your maidservant; You have broken my bonds.

²“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

¹⁹Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

²⁰you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body.

³⁸I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.

²⁰“For long ago you broke your yoke and tore off your chains, saying, ‘I will not serve!’ Indeed, on every high hill and under every green tree you lay down as a prostitute.

¹⁵If, however, you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:

¹⁶You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

¹⁷The Lord has done what He planned; He has accomplished His decree, which He ordained in days of old; He has overthrown you without pity. He has let the enemy gloat over you and exalted the horn of your foes.

¹⁸And if after all this you will not obey Me, I will proceed to punish you sevenfold for your sins.

²⁷But if you do not listen to Me to keep the Sabbath day holy by not carrying a load while entering the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle an unquenchable fire in its gates to consume the citadels of Jerusalem.’”

²If you do not listen, and if you do not take it to heart to honor My name,” says the Lord of Hosts, “I will send a curse among you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already begun to curse them, because you are not taking it to heart.

¹⁸The Lord is righteous, yet I rebelled against His command. Listen, all you people; look upon my suffering. My young men and maidens have gone into captivity.

¹⁶And the Lord said to Moses, “You will soon rest with your fathers, and these people will rise up and prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake Me and break the covenant I have made with them.

¹⁵They rejected His statutes and the covenant He had made with their fathers, as well as the decrees He had given them. They pursued worthless idols and became worthless themselves, going after the surrounding nations that the Lord had commanded them not to imitate.

¹⁰They have returned to the sins of their forefathers who refused to obey My words. They have followed other gods to serve them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken the covenant I made with their fathers.

¹¹But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder; they stopped up their ears from hearing.

¹²They made their hearts like flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord of Hosts had sent by His Spirit through the earlier prophets. Therefore great anger came from the Lord of Hosts.

⁵⁹For this is what the Lord God says: I will deal with you according to your deeds, since you have despised the oath by breaking the covenant.

⁵The earth is defiled by its people; they have transgressed the laws; they have overstepped the decrees and broken the everlasting covenant.

⁸then may another eat what I have sown, and may my crops be uprooted.

¹⁵You will sow but not reap; you will press olives but not anoint yourselves with oil; you will tread grapes but not drink the wine.

¹⁷They will devour your harvest and food; they will consume your sons and daughters; they will eat up your flocks and herds; they will feed on your vines and fig trees. With the sword they will destroy the fortified cities in which you trust.”

³³And every one of you that I do not cut off from My altar, I will cause your eyes to fail and your heart to grieve. All your descendants will die by the sword of men.

³²Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, while your eyes grow weary looking for them day after day, with no power in your hand.

³³A people you do not know will eat the produce of your land and of all your toil. All your days you will be oppressed and crushed.

²¹The Lord will make the plague cling to you until He has exterminated you from the land that you are entering to possess.

²²The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew; these will pursue you until you perish.

¹⁰If anyone from the house of Israel or a foreigner living among them eats any blood, I will set My face against that person and cut him off from among his people.

²⁵The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will march out against them in one direction but flee from them in seven. You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

³⁶As for those of you who survive, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, so that even the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. And they will flee as one flees the sword, and fall when no one pursues them.

³⁷They will stumble over one another as before the sword, though no one is behind them. So you will not be able to stand against your enemies.

¹The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.

⁵There they are, overwhelmed with dread, where there was nothing to fear. For God has scattered the bones of those who besieged you. You put them to shame, for God has despised them.

¹⁴Then the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands of those who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist.

²¹If you walk in hostility toward Me and refuse to obey Me, I will multiply your plagues seven times, according to your sins.

⁵The well-fed hire themselves out for food, but the starving hunger no more. The barren woman gives birth to seven, but she who has many sons pines away.

²⁸then I will walk in fury against you, and I, even I, will punish you sevenfold for your sins.

²⁴then I will act with hostility toward you, and I will strike you sevenfold for your sins.

¹⁹At this, Nebuchadnezzar was filled with rage, and the expression on his face changed toward Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He gave orders to heat the furnace seven times hotter than usual,

¹⁶⁴Seven times a day I praise You for Your righteous judgments.

²³The sky over your head will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron.

¹Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was among the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there will be neither dew nor rain in these years except at my word!”

¹¹He will spread out his hands within it, as a swimmer spreads his arms to swim. His pride will be brought low, despite the skill of his hands.

²⁵But I tell you truthfully that there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and great famine swept over all the land.

¹¹On that day you will not be put to shame for any of the deeds by which you have transgressed against Me. For then I will remove from among you those who rejoice in their pride, and you will never again be haughty on My holy mountain.

¹¹The ark of God was captured, and Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died.

¹⁷or the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you. He will shut the heavens so that there will be no rain, nor will the land yield its produce, and you will soon perish from the good land that the Lord is giving you.

¹A song of ascents. Of Solomon. Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain; unless the Lord protects the city, its watchmen stand guard in vain.

⁴But I said, “I have labored in vain, I have spent My strength in futility and vanity; yet My vindication is with the Lord, and My reward is with My God.”

⁴I will give you rains in their season, and the land will yield its produce, and the trees of the field will bear their fruit.

¹³Is it not indeed from the Lord of Hosts that the labor of the people only feeds the fire, and the nations weary themselves in vain?

⁹You expected much, but behold, it amounted to little. And what you brought home, I blew away. Why? declares the Lord of Hosts. Because My house still lies in ruins, while each of you is busy with his own house.

¹⁰Therefore, on account of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth has withheld its crops.

¹⁸And if after all this you will not obey Me, I will proceed to punish you sevenfold for your sins.

²⁷But if in spite of all this you do not obey Me, but continue to walk in hostility toward Me,

¹⁵Or if I send wild beasts through the land to leave it childless and desolate, with no man passing through it for fear of the beasts,

²⁴They will be wasted from hunger and ravaged by pestilence and bitter plague; I will send the fangs of wild beasts against them, with the venom of vipers that slither in the dust.

⁶In the days of Shamgar son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were deserted and the travelers took the byways.

¹⁴But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not known, and the land was left desolate behind them so that no one could come or go. Thus they turned the pleasant land into a desolation.”

¹⁷I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring a sword against you. I, the Lord, have spoken.”

⁴The roads to Zion mourn, because no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gates are deserted; her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she herself is bitter with anguish.

³O Lord, do not Your eyes look for truth? You struck them, but they felt no pain. You finished them off, but they refused to accept discipline. They have made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent.

³⁰“I have struck your sons in vain; they accepted no discipline. Your own sword has devoured your prophets like a voracious lion.”

⁶“I afflicted all your cities with cleanness of teeth and all your towns with lack of bread, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the Lord.

⁷“I also withheld the rain from you when the harvest was three months away. I sent rain on one city but withheld it from another. One field received rain; another without rain withered.

¹³Because of the indecency of your uncleanness I tried to cleanse you, but you would not be purified from your filthiness. You will not be pure again until My wrath against you has subsided.

¹⁴I, the Lord, have spoken; the time is coming, and I will act. I will not refrain or show pity, nor will I relent. I will judge you according to your ways and deeds,’ declares the Lord God.”

²¹If you walk in hostility toward Me and refuse to obey Me, I will multiply your plagues seven times, according to your sins.

¹⁶Wash and cleanse yourselves. Remove your evil deeds from My sight. Stop doing evil!

¹⁷Learn to do right; seek justice and correct the oppressor. Defend the fatherless and plead the case of the widow.”

²⁶to the pure You show Yourself pure, but to the crooked You show Yourself shrewd.

²⁷to the pure You show Yourself pure, but to the crooked You show Yourself shrewd.

⁴God is wise in heart and mighty in strength. Who has resisted Him and prospered?

¹⁰But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit. So He turned and became their enemy, and He Himself fought against them.

¹²I will strike them with a plague and destroy them—and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they are.”

¹⁷I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring a sword against you. I, the Lord, have spoken.”

²¹The Lord will make the plague cling to you until He has exterminated you from the land that you are entering to possess.

⁸Therefore this is what the Lord God says: I will bring a sword against you and cut off from you man and beast.

²“Son of man, speak to your people and tell them: ‘Suppose I bring the sword against a land, and the people of that land choose a man from among them, appointing him as their watchman,

¹⁷Or if I bring a sword against that land and say, ‘Let a sword pass through it,’ so that I cut off from it both man and beast,

¹⁴You will eat but not be satisfied, and your hunger will remain with you. What you acquire, you will not preserve; and what you save, I will give to the sword.

¹⁶He called down famine on the land and cut off all their supplies of food.

¹For behold, the Lord God of Hosts is about to remove from Jerusalem and Judah both supply and support: the whole supply of food and water,

¹⁶When I shower you with the deadly arrows of famine and destruction that I will send to destroy you, I will intensify the famine against you and cut off your supply of food.

⁶You have planted much but harvested little. You eat but never have enough. You drink but never have your fill. You put on clothes but never get warm. You earn wages to put into a bag pierced through.”

¹³“Son of man, if a land sins against Me by acting unfaithfully, and I stretch out My hand against it to cut off its supply of food, to send famine upon it, and to cut off from it both man and beast,

²¹If you walk in hostility toward Me and refuse to obey Me, I will multiply your plagues seven times, according to your sins.

²⁴then I will act with hostility toward you, and I will strike you sevenfold for your sins.

⁵And I Myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm, with anger, fury, and great wrath.

¹⁸So He will repay according to their deeds: fury to His enemies, retribution to His foes, and recompense to the islands.

¹⁵So you will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and a horror to the nations around you, when I execute judgments against you in anger, wrath, and raging fury. I, the Lord, have spoken.

¹³And when My anger is spent and I have vented My wrath against them, I will be appeased. And when I have spent My wrath on them, they will know that I, the Lord, in My zeal have spoken.

¹⁸Therefore I will respond with wrath. I will not look on them with pity, nor will I spare them. Although they shout loudly in My ears, I will not listen to them.”

³“I have trodden the winepress alone, and no one from the nations was with Me. I trampled them in My anger and trod them down in My fury; their blood spattered My garments, and all My clothes were stained.

¹⁹How miserable those days will be for pregnant and nursing mothers!

¹⁰As a result, fathers among you will eat their sons, and sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments against you and scatter all your remnant to every wind.’

⁵³Then you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you.

⁵⁴The most gentle and refined man among you will begrudge his brother, the wife he embraces, and the rest of his children who have survived,

¹⁰The hands of compassionate women have cooked their own children, who became their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

²⁰Look, O Lord, and consider: Whom have You ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the infants they have nurtured? Should priests and prophets be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

²⁸Then the king asked her, “What is the matter?” And she answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son, that we may eat him, and tomorrow we will eat my son.’

²⁹So we boiled my son and ate him, and the next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son, that we may eat him.’ But she had hidden her son.”

²⁰On the altars he slaughtered all the priests of the high places, and he burned human bones on them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.

⁹Therefore Jacob’s guilt will be atoned for, and the full fruit of the removal of his sin will be this: When he makes all the altar stones like crushed bits of chalk, no Asherah poles or incense altars will remain standing.

³You are to say: ‘O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God! This is what the Lord God says to the mountains and hills, to the ravines and valleys: I am about to bring a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places.

⁴Your altars will be demolished and your incense altars will be smashed; and I will cast down your slain before your idols.

¹³Then you will know that I am the Lord, when their slain lie among their idols around their altars, on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, and under every green tree and leafy oak—the places where they offered fragrant incense to all their idols.

³In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, Josiah began to seek the God of his father David, and in the twelfth year he began to cleanse Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherah poles, the carved idols, and the cast images.

⁴Then in his presence the altars of the Baals were torn down, and he cut to pieces the incense altars that were above them. He shattered the Asherah poles, the carved idols, and the cast images, crushed them to dust, and scattered them over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.

³⁸Now, however, You have spurned and rejected him; You are enraged by Your anointed one.

³and replied to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should I not be sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”

³Turn Your steps to the everlasting ruins, to everything in the sanctuary the enemy has destroyed.

⁴Your foes have roared within Your meeting place; they have unfurled their banners as signs,

²⁶If we deliberately go on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice for sins remains,

²¹When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.

⁷The Lord has rejected His altar; He has abandoned His sanctuary; He has delivered the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They have raised a shout in the house of the Lord as on the day of an appointed feast.

⁴Then the city was breached; and though the Chaldeans had surrounded the city, all the men of war fled by night by way of the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden. They headed toward the Arabah,

⁵but the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho, and his whole army deserted him.

¹¹“And I will make Jerusalem a heap of rubble, a haunt for jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.”

¹⁶They have made their land a desolation, a perpetual object of scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and shake their heads.

⁸I will make this city a desolation and an object of scorn. All who pass by will be appalled and will scoff at all her wounds.

¹¹And this whole land will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.

¹⁵So you will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and a horror to the nations around you, when I execute judgments against you in anger, wrath, and raging fury. I, the Lord, have spoken.

³⁷You will become an object of horror, scorn, and ridicule among all the nations to which the Lord will drive you.

²⁷Then the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will drive you.

¹⁴But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not known, and the land was left desolate behind them so that no one could come or go. Thus they turned the pleasant land into a desolation.”

²³However, with an uplifted hand I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them throughout the lands.

¹⁵I will disperse you among the nations and scatter you throughout the lands; I will purge your uncleanness.

⁶⁴Then the Lord will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.

⁶⁵Among those nations you will find no repose, not even a resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a despairing soul.

¹¹You have given us up as sheep to be devoured; You have scattered us among the nations.

²¹So the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation, until seventy years were completed, in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah.

²“Speak to the Israelites and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land itself must observe a Sabbath to the Lord.

³For six years you may sow your field and prune your vineyard and gather its crops.

⁴³For the land will be abandoned by them, and it will enjoy its Sabbaths by lying desolate without them. And they will pay the penalty for their iniquity, because they rejected My ordinances and abhorred My statutes.

¹⁰So you are to consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be your Jubilee, when each of you is to return to his property and to his clan.

⁵The earth is defiled by its people; they have transgressed the laws; they have overstepped the decrees and broken the everlasting covenant.

⁶Therefore a curse has consumed the earth, and its inhabitants must bear the guilt; the earth’s dwellers have been burned, and only a few survive.

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until the present time.

⁷And when they ask, ‘Why are you groaning?’ you are to say, ‘Because of the news that is coming. Every heart will melt, and every hand will go limp. Every spirit will faint, and every knee will turn to water.’ Yes, it is coming and it will surely happen, declares the Lord God.”

¹⁷A thousand will flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you will all flee, until you are left alone like a pole on a mountaintop, like a banner on a hill.

¹⁷And I will set My face against you, so that you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one pursues you.

¹⁵So that their hearts may melt and many may stumble, I have appointed at all their gates a sword for slaughter. Yes, it is ready to flash like lightning; it is drawn for slaughter.

⁹and said to them, “I know that the Lord has given you this land and that the fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who dwell in the land are melting in fear of you.

¹⁰For we have heard how the Lord dried up the waters of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites across the Jordan, whom you devoted to destruction.

¹The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.

¹⁴Then the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands of those who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist.

¹²This is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies. They will turn their backs and run from their enemies, because they themselves have been set apart for destruction. I will no longer be with you unless you remove from among you whatever is devoted to destruction.

¹³Get up and consecrate the people, saying, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, for this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Among you, O Israel, there are things devoted to destruction. You cannot stand against your enemies until you remove them.

¹⁵Then panic struck the Philistines in the camp, in the field, and among all the people. Even those in the outposts and raiding parties trembled. Indeed, the earth quaked, and panic spread from God.

¹⁶Now when Saul’s watchmen at Gibeah in Benjamin looked and saw the troops melting away and scattering in every direction,

⁴Nothing will remain but to crouch among the captives or fall among the slain. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised.

²²And when the three hundred rams’ horns sounded, the Lord set all the men in the camp against one another with their swords. The army fled to Beth-shittah toward Zererah as far as the border of Abel-meholah near Tabbath.

⁴²Do not go up, lest you be struck down by your enemies, because the Lord is not among you.

¹⁷So all who resolve to go to Egypt to reside there will die by sword and famine and plague. Not one of them will survive or escape the disaster I will bring upon them.’

¹⁸For this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: ‘Just as My anger and wrath were poured out on the residents of Jerusalem, so will My wrath be poured out on you if you go to Egypt. You will become an object of cursing and horror, of vilification and disgrace, and you will never see this place again.’

¹³And in that day a great ram’s horn will sound, and those who were perishing in Assyria will come forth with those who were exiles in Egypt. And they will worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.

⁶⁸The Lord will return you to Egypt in ships by a route that I said you should never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”

⁴⁸you will serve your enemies the Lord will send against you in famine, thirst, nakedness, and destitution. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.

²⁶I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live long upon it, but will be utterly destroyed.

²⁷Then the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will drive you.

¹²And I will take away the remnant of Judah who have resolved to go to the land of Egypt to reside there; they will meet their end. They will all fall by the sword or be consumed by famine. From the least to the greatest, they will die by sword or famine; and they will become an object of cursing and horror, of vilification and reproach.

¹³I will punish those who live in the land of Egypt, just as I punished Jerusalem, by sword and famine and plague,

¹⁷So they will lack food and water; they will be appalled at the sight of one another wasting away in their iniquity.

²³Your turbans will remain on your heads and your sandals on your feet. You will not mourn or weep, but you will waste away because of your sins, and you will groan among yourselves.

¹⁰Now as for you, son of man, tell the house of Israel that this is what they have said: ‘Our transgressions and our sins are heavy upon us, and we are wasting away because of them! How can we live?’

⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

⁶⁵Among those nations you will find no repose, not even a resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a despairing soul.

³⁵And so upon you will come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

³⁶Truly I tell you, all these things will come upon this generation.

¹³He who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.

²Those of Israelite descent separated themselves from all the foreigners, and they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers.

³While they stood in their places, they read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day, and they spent another quarter of the day in confession and worship of the Lord their God.

⁸If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

⁹If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

⁷and must confess the sin he has committed. He must make full restitution, add a fifth to its value, and give all this to the one he has wronged.

¹⁵Then I will return to My place until they admit their guilt and seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.”

³³When Your people Israel are defeated before an enemy because they have sinned against You, and they return to You and confess Your name, praying and pleading with You in this temple,

³⁴then may You hear from heaven and forgive the sin of Your people Israel. May You restore them to the land You gave to their fathers.

⁷In addition to all your other abominations, you brought in foreigners uncircumcised in both heart and flesh to occupy My sanctuary; you defiled My temple when you offered My food—the fat and the blood; you broke My covenant.

⁵¹You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit, just as your fathers did.

⁶So the leaders of Israel and the king humbled themselves and said, “The Lord is righteous.”

⁷When the Lord saw that they had humbled themselves, the word of the Lord came to Shemaiah, saying, “They have humbled themselves; I will not destroy them, but will soon grant them deliverance. My wrath will not be poured out on Jerusalem through Shishak.

⁴Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and remove the foreskins of your hearts, O men of Judah and people of Jerusalem. Otherwise, My wrath will break out like fire and burn with no one to extinguish it, because of your evil deeds.”

²⁵“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh—

²⁶Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and all the inhabitants of the desert who clip the hair of their temples. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.”

²⁹“Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before Me? Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring the calamity during his days, but I will bring it upon his house in the days of his son.”

²⁴So God heard their groaning, and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

⁵Furthermore, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered My covenant.

⁶⁰But I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you.

⁴⁵And He remembered His covenant with them, and relented by the abundance of His loving devotion.

²³He remembered us in our low estate His loving devotion endures forever.

¹⁵Look, I am with you, and I will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

¹⁵and if you reject My statutes, despise My ordinances, and neglect to carry out all My commandments, and so break My covenant,

⁷because the mind of the flesh is hostile to God: It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.

³⁴Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths.

³⁵As long as it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not receive during the Sabbaths when you lived in it.

¹⁷For you hate My instruction and cast My words behind you.

¹²And in his distress, Manasseh sought the favor of the Lord his God and earnestly humbled himself before the God of his fathers.

³⁰I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and heap your lifeless bodies on the lifeless remains of your idols; and My soul will despise you.

²God did not reject His people, whom He foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says about Elijah, how he appealed to God against Israel:

³¹But in Your great compassion, You did not put an end to them; nor did You forsake them, for You are a gracious and compassionate God.

²³But the Lord was gracious to Israel and had compassion on them, and He turned toward them because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And to this day, the Lord has been unwilling to destroy them or cast them from His presence.

²⁹But if from there you will seek the Lord your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

³⁰When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and listen to His voice.

¹⁴For the Lord will not forsake His people; He will never abandon His heritage.

²⁰“This is what the Lord says: If you can break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night, so that day and night cease to occupy their appointed time,

²¹then My covenant may also be broken with David My servant and with My ministers the Levites who are priests, so that David will not have a son to reign on his throne.

³⁸I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.

²²But I withheld My hand and acted for the sake of My name, so that it would not be profaned in the eyes of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out.

⁹But I acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the eyes of the nations among whom they were living, in whose sight I had revealed Myself to Israel by bringing them out of the land of Egypt.

²The Lord has proclaimed His salvation and revealed His righteousness to the nations.

³He has remembered His love and faithfulness to the house of Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

³³who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord.”

¹⁴But I acted for the sake of My name, so that it would not be profaned in the eyes of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out.

³⁴These are the commandments that the Lord gave to Moses for the Israelites on Mount Sinai.

¹These are the statutes and ordinances you must be careful to follow all the days you live in the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess.

¹These are the commandments and statutes and ordinances that the Lord your God has instructed me to teach you to follow in the land that you are about to enter and possess,

⁴You are to follow the Lord your God and fear Him. Keep His commandments and listen to His voice; serve Him and hold fast to Him.

¹Then the Lord said to Moses on Mount Sinai,

³⁷These were counted from the Kohathite clans, everyone who could serve at the Tent of Meeting. Moses and Aaron numbered them according to the command of the Lord through Moses.