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Rewards for Obedience

¹ You shall make for yourselves no idols and erect no carved images or pillars, and you shall not place figured stones in your land, to worship at them; for I am the Lord your God. ² You shall keep my sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.

³ If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully, ⁴ I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. ⁵ Your threshing shall overtake the vintage, and the vintage shall overtake the sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full, and live securely in your land. ⁶ And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land. ⁷ You shall give chase to your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. ⁸ Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand; your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. ⁹ I will look with favor upon you and make you fruitful and multiply you; and I will maintain my covenant with you. ¹⁰ You shall eat old grain long stored, and you shall have to clear out the old to make way for the new. ¹¹ I will place my dwelling in your midst, and I shall not abhor you. ¹² And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people. ¹³ I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be their slaves no more; I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.

Penalties for Disobedience

¹⁴ But if you will not obey me, and do not observe all these commandments, ¹⁵ if you spurn my statutes, and abhor my ordinances, so that you will not observe all my commandments, and you break my covenant, ¹⁶ I in turn will do this to you: I will bring terror on you; consumption and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away. You shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. ¹⁷ I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down by your enemies; your foes shall rule over you, and you shall flee though no one pursues you. ¹⁸ And if in spite of this you will not obey me, I will continue to punish you sevenfold for your sins. ¹⁹ I will break your proud glory, and I will make your sky like iron and your earth like copper. ²⁰ Your strength shall be spent to no purpose: your land shall not yield its produce, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.

²¹ If you continue hostile to me, and will not obey me, I will continue to plague you sevenfold for your sins. ²² I will let loose wild animals against you, and they shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock; they shall make you few in number, and your roads shall be deserted.

²³ If in spite of these punishments you have not turned back to me, but continue hostile to me, ²⁴ then I too will continue hostile to you: I myself will strike you sevenfold for your sins. ²⁵ I will bring the sword against you, executing vengeance for the covenant; and if you withdraw within your cities, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into enemy hands. ²⁶ When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven, and they shall dole out your bread by weight; and though you eat, you shall not be satisfied.

²⁷ But if, despite this, you disobey me, and continue hostile to me, ²⁸ I will continue hostile to you in fury; I in turn will punish you myself sevenfold for your sins. ²⁹ You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. ³⁰ I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars; I will heap your carcasses on the carcasses of your idols. I will abhor you. ³¹ I will lay your cities waste, will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing odors. ³² I will devastate the land, so that your enemies who come to settle in it shall be appalled at it. ³³ And you I will scatter among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword against you; your land shall be a desolation, and your cities a waste.

³⁴ Then the land shall enjoy^[a] its sabbath years as long as it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land shall rest, and enjoy^[b] its sabbath years. ³⁵ As long as it lies desolate, it shall have the rest it did not have on your sabbaths when you were living on it. ³⁶ And as for those of you who survive, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall though no one pursues. ³⁷ They shall stumble over one another, as if to escape a sword, though no one pursues; and you shall have no power to stand against your enemies. ³⁸ You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall devour you. ³⁹ And those of you who survive shall languish in the land of your enemies because of their iniquities; also they shall languish because of the iniquities of their ancestors.

⁴⁰ But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors, in that they committed treachery against me and, moreover, that they continued hostile to me— ⁴¹ so that I, in turn, continued hostile to them and brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, ⁴² then will I remember my covenant with Jacob; I will remember also my covenant with Isaac and also my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. ⁴³ For the land shall be deserted by them, and enjoy^[c] its sabbath years by lying desolate without them, while they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they dared to spurn my ordinances, and they abhorred my statutes. ⁴⁴ Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them, or abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God; ⁴⁵ but I will remember in their favor the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, to be their God: I am the Lord.

⁴⁶ These are the statutes and ordinances and laws that the Lord established between himself and the people of Israel on Mount Sinai through Moses.