HelpFinder Bible - Flipbook - Page 487
L EVITICUS 26
page 117
and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand!
All your enemies will fall beneath your sword.
9 “I will look favorably upon you, making you
fertile and multiplying your people. And I will
fulfill my covenant with you. 10 You will have
such a surplus of crops that you will need to
clear out the old grain to make room for the new
harvest! 11 I will live among you, and I will not
despise 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, who brought you out of the land
of Egypt so you would no longer be their slaves.
I broke the yoke of slavery from your neck so
you can walk with your heads held high.
Punishments for Disobedience
14 “However, if you do not listen to me or obey
all these commands, 15 and if you break my covenant by rejecting my decrees, treating my regulations with contempt, and refusing to obey my
commands, 16 I will punish you. I will bring sudden terrors upon you—wasting diseases and
burning fevers that will cause your eyes to fail
and your life to ebb away. You will plant your
crops in vain because your enemies will eat
them. 17 I will turn against you, and you will be
defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you
will rule over you, and you will run even when
no one is chasing you!
18 “And if, in spite of all this, you still disobey
me, I will punish you seven times over for your
sins. 19 I will break your proud spirit by making
the skies as unyielding as iron and the earth as
hard as bronze. 20 All your work will be for nothing, for your land will yield no crops, and your
trees will bear no fruit.
21 “If even then you remain hostile toward me
and refuse to obey me, I will inflict disaster on
you seven times over for your sins. 22 I will send
wild animals that will rob you of your children
and destroy your livestock. Your numbers will
dwindle, and your roads will be deserted.
23 “And if you fail to learn the lesson and continue your hostility toward me, 24 then I myself
will be hostile toward you. I will personally
strike you with calamity seven times over for
your sins. 25 I will send armies against you to
carry out the curse of the covenant you have
broken. When you run to your towns for safety,
I will send a plague to destroy you there, and
you will be handed over to your enemies. 26 I will
destroy your food supply, so that ten women
will need only one oven to bake bread for their
families. They will ration your food by weight,
and though you have food to eat, you will not
be satisfied.
27 “If in spite of all this you still refuse to listen
and still remain hostile toward me, 28 then I will
give full vent to my hostility. I myself will punish
26:30 The Hebrew term (literally round things) probably
alludes to dung.
you seven times over for your sins. 29 Then you
will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters. 30 I will destroy your pagan shrines and
knock down your places of worship. I will leave
your lifeless corpses piled on top of your lifeless idols,* and I will despise you. 31 I will make
your cities desolate and destroy your places of
pagan worship. I will take no pleasure in your
offerings that should be a pleasing aroma to
me. 32 Yes, I myself will devastate your land,
and your enemies who come to occupy it will
be appalled at what they see. 33 I will scatter
you among the nations and bring out my sword
against you. Your land will become desolate,
and your cities will lie in ruins. 34 Then at last
the land will enjoy its neglected Sabbath years
as it lies desolate while you are in exile in the
land of your enemies. Then the land will finally
rest and enjoy the Sabbaths it missed. 35 As long
as the land lies in ruins, it will enjoy the rest you
never allowed it to take every seventh year while
you lived in it.
36 “And for those of you who survive, I will
demoralize you in the land of your enemies.
• Poverty
LE V I TI C U S 25:39
Am I my brother’s keeper? According to
the Scriptures, I am. Can we stand idly by
while another person is in serious need?
If we neglect the physical and emotional
needs of others, we are neglecting the
Lord himself (Matthew 25:31-46). The
value God places on even the most poor
and downtrodden is made clear by his
commands to the Hebrews to take care
of one another. This verse acknowledges
that sometimes people fall onto hard
times and cannot help themselves; this is
when we are required to give them aid.
• Obedience
LE V I TI C U S 26:14-21
A primary motive for listening to
God and obeying him is our own
protection. God’s voice can warn us
when we are about to do something
unwise or to commit a sin. God’s
view is comprehensive, while ours is
quite limited. This is why we rely on
his guiding voice. When we refuse
to listen to God, we make ourselves
vulnerable to the many destructive
forces in our world.