Leviticus 26

God blesses the people who obey him

1 The Lord said to Moses, ‘You must not make idols for yourselves. Do not use wood or stone to make images or statues of false gods. Do not worship any stone shape that you have put on your land. I am the Lord your God.

2 You must obey my rules about Sabbath days. You must respect my holy tabernacle. I am the Lord.

3 You must carefully obey my laws and my commands. 4 If you do, I will send rain at the proper time each year. The land will provide you with food. Plenty of fruit will grow on your trees. 5 You will continue to bring in grain from your fields until it is time to pick your grapes. And you will continue to pick your grapes until it is time to plant seeds for the next year. You will have all the food to eat that you need. You will live safely in your land.

6 I will cause there to be peace in your land. You will not be afraid of trouble when you lie down to sleep. I will remove dangerous animals from your land. No enemies will come to attack you. 7 You will be able to chase after your enemies and kill them. 8 Five of your men will chase away 100 of your enemies. 100 of your men will chase away 10,000 enemies. You will attack them and kill them.

9 I will help you. I will cause you to have many children so that the number of your people grows. I will do what I have promised to do in my covenant with you. 10 When harvest time comes each year, you will still be eating food that you have stored. You will need to throw food out of your store rooms to make space for the new crops. 11 I will have my home among you. I will never turn against you. 12 I will walk among you. I will be your God and you will be my people. 13 I am the Lord your God. I brought you out from Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves of the Egyptians. I destroyed the power that caused you to suffer. Then you could live as free people.

God punishes the people who do not obey him

14 But it will be different if you do not respect me and obey my commands. 15 I will punish you if you do not accept my laws and you turn against my rules. I will punish you if you do not obey all my commands and you spoil the covenant that I made with you. 16 This is how I will punish you: I will cause terrible things to happen to you. You will have diseases that make you weak and diseases that make your bodies very hot. You will have diseases that spoil your eyes and diseases that take away your strength. You will plant seeds in your fields but your enemies will eat the crops. 17 I will turn against you. Your enemies will attack you and they will win against you. People who hate you will rule over you. You will run away to escape even if nobody is chasing you!

18 Even after I have punished you like that, you might still choose not to obey me. If so, I will continue to punish you seven times more for your sins. 19 I will stop you being proud of your strength. I will not send any rain from the sky. Your land will become hard and dry. 20 You will use all your strength to work very hard, but it will be useless. Your land will not provide any food for you. No fruit will grow on your trees.

21 If you continue to turn against me, I will cause you to suffer even more. If you refuse to obey me, I will punish you seven times more again for your sins. 22 I will send wild animals to attack you. They will kill your children and your animals. Very few of your people will remain and nobody will travel on your roads.

23 After all that punishment, you may still not turn back to me. If you continue to turn against me, 24 I myself will turn against you. I will punish you another seven times more strongly for your sins. 25 I will send armies to attack you. They will punish you because you have not obeyed my covenant with you. If you escape into your cities, I will send bad diseases among you. Then your enemies will have power over you. 26 I will stop you getting any food. Ten women will bake all the bread for their families in only one oven. They will weigh the bread for each person but nobody will have enough to eat.

27 After this, you may still not obey me. If you continue to turn against me, 28 I will be angry and I will turn against you. I myself will punish you seven times more strongly because of your sins. 29 Then you will be so hungry that you will eat your own children. 30 I will destroy your altars for sacrifices to false gods and your altars for incense. I will put your dead bodies in a heap on top of your dead idols. I will hate you. 31 I will destroy your cities and the places where you worship. The sweet smell of your offerings will not give me pleasure. 32 I myself will destroy the land where you live. Your enemies who come to live there will be very upset when they see it. 33 I will chase you out to go and live among other nations. I will cause enemies to attack you. I will destroy your land. Your cities will become heaps of stones.

34 While you are living in the countries of your enemies, your own land will have a rest. It will have the Sabbath rest that it should have had every seven years. 35 When you lived on the land, you did not allow it to have its Sabbath rest. Now it will have complete rest while it is an empty place.

36 Some of you will remain alive in the countries of your enemies. But you will live in great fear. The sound of a leaf that moves in the wind will cause you to run away. You will think that someone is chasing you to kill you. Nobody is chasing you, but you will still fall down as you try to escape. 37 You will fall over each other, like people who are running away from their enemies. Nobody is chasing you, but you are still afraid. None of you will be strong enough to fight against your enemies. 38 You will die among the nations where you are living. That is where you will come to an end. 39 Those of you who still remain will slowly die in the countries of your enemies. You will become weak and you will die because of your sins and because of the sins of your ancestors.

40 But one day, your descendants may realize that they and their ancestors have been wrong. They may clearly agree that they have turned against me. They may agree that they have not been faithful to me. 41 That was why I myself turned against them and I took them to the countries of their enemies. When they know that, they will no longer be proud. They will accept the punishment that they deserve for their sins. 42 When that happens, I will do what I have promised to do. I made those promises in my covenant with your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I will remember to bless the land that I gave to them.

43 It was necessary for my people to go away from the land for a time. The land needed to be empty so that it could have the Sabbath rest that it should have had. My people refused to obey my rules. They hated my laws. So they needed to receive the punishment that they deserved for their sins. 44 But I am the Lord their God. So I will not forget them while they are living in the countries of their enemies. I will not turn away from them. I will not destroy them completely. I will not forget the covenant that I made with them. 45 Yes, I will help them because of the covenant that I made with their ancestors. While other nations watched, I brought my people out of Egypt to be their God. I am the Lord.’

46 These are the laws, rules and commands that the Lord told Moses on Mount Sinai. They are his covenant with Israel's people.