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Leviticus 26

1“You must not make idols for yourselves. You must not set up a carved image or a sacred pillar for yourselves, or place a figured stone in your land to bow down upon it, because I am Yahweh your God. 2You must keep my Sabbaths and revere my sanctuary. I am Yahweh.

3“If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and do them, 4I will give you your rains in their season. The land will give its yield, and the trees of the field will give their fruit. 5Your threshing will last until the grape harvest, and the grape harvest will last until sowing. You will eat your bread to the full and live securely in your land. 6I will give peace in the land. You will lie down, and no one will make you afraid. I will rid the land of harmful wild animals, and no sword will pass through your land. 7You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword. 8Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand. Your enemies will fall before you by the sword. 9I will turn toward you, make you fruitful, multiply you, and uphold my covenant with you. 10You will eat old produce long stored and clear out the old to make room for the new. 11I will place my dwelling among you, and I will not loathe you. 12I will walk among you. I will be your God, and you will be my people. 13I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would no longer be their slaves. I broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk upright.

14“But if you do not listen to me and do not carry out all these commandments, 15if you reject my statutes and loathe my judgments, so that you do not carry out all my commandments and break my covenant, 16I in turn will do this to you: I will bring terror upon you, wasting disease and fever that make the eyes fail and life waste away. You will sow your seed in vain; your enemies will eat it. 17I will set my face against you, and you will be defeated before your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one is pursuing you.

18“If even after these things you do not listen to me, I will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. 19I will break the pride of your strength. I will make your sky like iron and your land like bronze. 20Your strength will be spent in vain. Your land will not give its yield, and the trees of the land will not give their fruit.

21“If you walk with hostility toward me and refuse to listen to me, I will add plagues upon you sevenfold, according to your sins. 22I will send the wild animals among you. They will bereave you of children, destroy your livestock, and make you few, so that your roads become deserted.

23“If through these things you are not corrected by me, and you walk with hostility toward me, 24I myself will also walk with hostility toward you. I myself will strike you sevenfold for your sins. 25I will bring a sword upon you to exact vengeance for the covenant. When you gather into your towns, I will send pestilence among you, and you will be handed over to the enemy. 26When I break your staff of bread, ten women will bake your bread in one oven and give back your bread by weight. You will eat and not be satisfied.

27“If even with this you do not listen to me, but walk with hostility toward me, 28I will walk with furious hostility toward you. I myself will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. 29You will eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters you will eat. 30I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and lay your corpses on the corpses of your idols. I will loathe you. 31I will make your towns a ruin and lay waste your sanctuaries. I will not smell your pleasing aromas. 32I myself will lay waste the land, and your enemies who settle in it will be appalled at it. 33I will scatter you among the nations and draw out a sword after you. Your land will become a desolation, and your towns will become a ruin.

34“Then the land will enjoy its Sabbaths throughout the time it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies' land. Then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. 35Throughout the time it lies desolate it will rest, the rest it did not have on your Sabbaths when you lived on it. 36As for those of you who remain, I will put faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a windblown leaf will pursue them. They will flee as from a sword and fall when no one is pursuing. 37They will stumble over one another as if fleeing a sword, though no one is pursuing. You will have no power to stand before your enemies. 38You will perish among the nations, and your enemies' land will devour you. 39Those of you who remain will waste away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands. They will also waste away in the iniquities of their fathers, along with them.

40“They will confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, their unfaithfulness in which they acted unfaithfully against me, and also that they walked with hostility toward me. 41I in turn will walk with hostility toward them and bring them into their enemies' land. If then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, 42I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac. My covenant with Abraham I will remember, and I will remember the land. 43The land will be abandoned by them and enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. They will make amends for their iniquity, because they rejected my judgments and loathed my statutes. 44Yet even when they are in their enemies' land, I will not reject them or loathe them so as to destroy them completely and break my covenant with them, because I am Yahweh their God. 45For their sake I will remember the covenant with the former generations, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am Yahweh.”

46These are the statutes, judgments, and instructions that Yahweh established between himself and the sons of Israel on Mount Sinai through Moses.

Translation notes 10

26:1–2 — Images; sanctuary. The prohibitions name several kinds of cult objects. The “figured stone” may be a carved or decorated stone used in worship; its precise form is uncertain. Reverence for Yahweh's sanctuary accompanies keeping his Sabbaths.

26:3–13 — Abundance; dwelling. The harvests overlap in a picture of abundance. The numbers in verse 8 deliberately magnify victory rather than follow a constant mathematical ratio. Yahweh places his dwelling among the people and walks among them. “Walk upright” preserves the bodily image of release from a yoke.

26:11, 15, 30, 43 — Loathe. Hebrew uses “my being” or “your being,” often translated “soul,” with these expressions of abhorrence. English renders the whole expression as the subject's own loathing, without turning it into a statement about a disembodied soul.

26:16–20 — Disease; face; metals. The disease terms describe wasting and fever without establishing exact modern diagnoses. The eyes and life failing may include physical and emotional distress. “Set my face against you” preserves the image of determined opposition. Iron skies and bronze land depict the withholding of rain and fruitfulness.

26:18–28 — Sevenfold; hostility. The repeated sevens intensify the discipline. The uncommon word rendered “hostility” can also be understood in terms of contrary, careless, or indifferent conduct. The draft keeps one expression through the reciprocal warnings rather than silently changing its meaning when Yahweh becomes the subject.

26:22–26 — Bereavement; staff of bread. The wild animals bereave the people, with loss of children understood in the verb. “Staff of bread” is an image of bread as the support of life. Ten women share one oven and return measured bread, describing severe scarcity. The draft preserves both the image and the specified numbers.

26:29–33 — Flesh; corpses; aromas. The repeated eating of sons' and daughters' flesh remains explicit. The text calls the destroyed idols “corpses” as it does the people. “Incense altars” is provisional; the precise cult installations are disputed. Yahweh's refusal to smell the pleasing aromas reverses the offering language used earlier in the book.

26:34–43 — The land's Sabbaths; amends. The verb can express enjoying or making up for what is due. The draft has the land “enjoy” its withheld Sabbaths and the people “make amends for” their iniquity. “Pay the penalty for” is another rendering in the human clauses. The land's rest and the people's liability are kept together without treating their senses as identical.

26:40–42 — Confession; uncircumcised heart. The syntax linking confession, humility, and remembrance is difficult. Verse 40 has no explicit “if”; verse 41 contains wording literally like “or then.” The draft construes the latter as a condition leading into remembrance. The bodily image “uncircumcised heart” describes resistance; it is retained without replacing it with an abstract judgment.

26:42–45 — Remembering the covenant. Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham appear in that order, and “I will remember” is repeated. Remembering announces attention and action, not prior divine forgetfulness. The closing commitment stands alongside the severe sanctions; neither is removed to make the passage easier.