Out of Egypt · c. 1445 BC
Chapter 19
Blessings and Warnings
I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you will be my people.
For parents
The Lord warns Israel what will come if they turn away from him: sickness, enemies ruling over them, wild animals that take their children (Leviticus 26:22), the sword and disease, and eating the flesh of their own sons and daughters (26:29). The people are scattered and die in their enemies’ lands. These are told in a few plain words, as the Lord’s warning, without detail. One law says that a person devoted to destruction must be put to death (27:29); it is told as the text says it, without explanation.
On , the was giving the his laws through , and he had more to say to them. “Don’t make for yourselves,” he said. “Don’t put up a carved image or a pillar. Don’t set a stone carved with figures anywhere in your land to bow down to it, because I am the Lord your God. Keep my . Honor my holy place. I am the Lord.
“If you follow my laws and keep my commandments and obey them, I will give you rain at the right time. The land will give its crops, and the trees in the fields will give their fruit. will go on until the grapes are ready to pick, and grape picking will go on until it’s time to sow. You will eat your bread until you are full, and you will live safely in your land.
“I will give peace in the land. When you lie down, no one will make you afraid. I will clear vicious animals out of the land, and no sword will go through your land.
“You will chase your enemies, and they will fall in front of you by the sword. Five of you will chase a hundred. A hundred of you will chase ten thousand. Your enemies will fall in front of you by the sword.
“I will look kindly on you,” the Lord said. “I will give you many children and make you grow in number, and I will make my with you stand firm. You will eat food that has been stored a long time, and you will move the old food out to make room for the new.
“I will set up my tent among you, and I will not turn from you in disgust. I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you will be my people.
“I am the Lord your God. I brought you out of the land of to keep you from being their slaves. I have broken the bars of your and made you walk upright.
“But suppose you won’t listen to me,” the Lord said, “and won’t obey all these commandments. Suppose you reject my laws and hate my rules, so that you don’t obey all my commandments but break my covenant. Then this is what I will do to you. I will send terror on you: a sickness that wastes you away, and a fever that eats away at your eyes and wears your life away. You will sow your seed for nothing, because your enemies will eat it.
“I will set myself against you, and your enemies will defeat you. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one is chasing you.
“If even after these things you won’t listen to me, I will punish you seven times more for your sins. I will break the strength you are proud of. I will make your sky like iron and your ground like bronze. You will wear yourselves out for nothing, because your land won’t give its crops, and the trees of the land won’t give their fruit.
“If you go against me and won’t listen to me,” the Lord said, “I will bring seven times more on you, to match your sins. I will send wild animals among you. They will take your children from you, destroy your livestock, and leave you few in number. Your roads will be empty.
“If these things don’t turn you back to me, and you still go against me, then I will go against you too. I myself will strike you seven times for your sins.
“I will bring a sword on you that will take revenge for the covenant. You will gather inside your cities, and I will send disease among you. You will be handed over to your enemy.
“When I make the bread you live on run short, ten women will bake your bread in one oven, and they will weigh it out when they give it back to you. You will eat, but you won’t be full.
“If even after this you won’t listen to me,” the Lord said, “and you go against me instead, then I will go against you in anger, and I will also punish you seven times for your sins.
“You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your . I will cut down your altars. I will throw your dead bodies onto the bodies of your idols, and I will turn from you in disgust.
“I will wreck your cities and leave your holy places deserted. The sweet smell of your offerings won’t please me. I will ruin the land, and your enemies who live in it will be stunned by it.
“I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw the sword and come after you. Your land will lie empty, and your cities will be ruins.
“Then the land will enjoy its Sabbaths, its years of rest, for as long as it lies empty and you are in your enemies’ land. Then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. As long as it lies empty, it will have rest: the rest it didn’t get on your Sabbaths, while you lived on it.
“As for those of you who are left, in the lands of their enemies I will make them lose heart. The rustle of a leaf in the wind will set them running. They will run as if from a sword, and fall when no one is chasing them. They will trip over one another as if a sword were behind them, when no one is chasing them. You won’t be able to stand up to your enemies.
“You will die among the nations, and the land of your enemies will eat you up. In your enemies’ lands, those of you who are left will waste away because of their wrongdoing, and because of their ancestors’ wrongdoing too.
“Suppose they confess their wrongdoing and their ancestors’ wrongdoing,” the Lord said. “Suppose they confess how they were unfaithful to me and went against me, so that I went against them and brought them into their enemies’ land. If their closed hearts are humbled then, and they accept the punishment for their wrongdoing, I will remember my covenant with , my covenant with , and my covenant with too, and I will remember the land.
“The land will be left empty of them, and it will enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies empty without them. They will accept the punishment for their wrongdoing, because they rejected my rules and hated my laws.
“But even so, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, and I will not turn from them in disgust so much that I destroy them completely and break my covenant with them, because I am the Lord their God. I will remember, for their sake, the covenant I made with their ancestors, the people I brought out of the land of Egypt while the nations watched, so that I could be their God. I am the Lord.”
These are the laws, the rules and the instructions that the Lord made between himself and the Israelites. He gave them through Moses on Mount Sinai.
Then the Lord told Moses what to say to the Israelites about . When someone made a vow to give a person to the Lord, the person was to be valued in silver.
A man from twenty to sixty years old was to be valued at fifty of silver, a little over a pound, and a woman at thirty shekels. From five to twenty years old, a male was to be valued at twenty shekels and a female at ten. From a month to five years old, a boy was to be valued at five shekels of silver and a girl at three. From sixty years old and up, a man was to be valued at fifteen shekels and a woman at ten.
But if he was too poor to pay that value, he was to be brought to the , and the priest would set a value for him, by what he could afford.
If someone gave the Lord an animal of the kind people offer to him, whatever he gave became . He was not to change it or swap it, trading a good animal for a bad one or a bad animal for a good one. If he did swap one animal for another, both of them became holy.
If it was an animal, the kind not offered to the Lord, he was to bring it to the priest, who would set its value, whether it was good or bad. It was worth what the priest said. If the one who gave it wanted to buy it back, he had to add a fifth to the price.
When someone gave his house to the Lord to be holy, the priest would set its value, whether it was good or bad, and that value would stand. If the one who gave it wanted to buy his house back, he had to add a fifth to the price, and it would be his again.
When someone gave the Lord part of a field from his own land, its value was set by how much seed it took to sow it. If it took a of seed, about six bushels, to sow the land, it was worth fifty shekels of silver.
If he gave his field starting from the , its value stood as it was set. If he gave it after the Jubilee, the priest would work out the price from the years left until the Year of Jubilee, and the value would be made lower.
If the man who gave the field wanted to buy it back, he had to add a fifth to the price, and it would stay his. But if he didn’t buy it back, or if he had sold the field to someone else, it could not be bought back any more. When the field went free in the Jubilee, it would be holy to the Lord, as a field, and it would belong to the priests.
If someone gave the Lord a field he had bought, not his own land, the priest would work out what it was worth up to the Year of Jubilee, and the man would pay that amount the same day, as something holy to the Lord. When the Year of Jubilee came, the field would go back to the one it was bought from, the one who owned the land.
All these values were to be weighed by the shekel of the holy place. That shekel was twenty , and a gerah was about half a gram.
No one could give the Lord a firstborn animal, whether an ox or a sheep. As a firstborn, it was already the Lord’s. If it was an unclean animal, the owner was to buy it back at its value and add a fifth to the price. If it wasn’t bought back, it was to be sold at its value.
But when a man devoted something he had to the Lord, whether it was a person, an animal or a field of his own land, it could not be sold or bought back. Everything permanently devoted was most holy to the Lord.
“No person who is devoted to destruction may be ,” the Lord said. “He must be put to death.”
The of the land belonged to the Lord: a tenth of everything it grew, whether grain grown from seed or fruit off the trees. It was holy to the Lord. If anyone wanted to buy back any of his tithe, he had to add a fifth to it.
A tenth of the herds and flocks was holy to the Lord too: every tenth animal that passed under the staff as they were counted. The owner was not to look them over to see whether they were good or bad, or swap one for another. If he did swap one, both animals became holy and could not be bought back.
These are the commandments the Lord commanded Moses for the Israelites on Mount Sinai.