The Blessings of Obedience

261 “‘You shall make for yourselves no idols, neither shall you raise up an engraved image or a pillar, neither shall you place any figured stone in your land, to bow down to it: for I am Yahweh your God. 2 “‘You shall keep my Sabbaths, and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am Yahweh. 3 “‘If you walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; 4 then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5 Your threshing shall reach to the vintage, and the vintage shall reach to the sowing time; and you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. 6 “‘I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one will make you afraid; and I will remove evil animals out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land. 7 You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. 8 Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand; and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. 9 “‘I will have respect for you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and will establish my covenant with you. 10 You shall eat old store long kept, and you shall move out the old because of the new. 11 I will set my tent among you: and my soul won’t abhor you. 12 I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you will be my people. 13 I am Yahweh your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves; and I have broken the bars of your yoke, and made you go upright.

The Consequences of Disobedience

14 “‘But if you will not listen to me, and will not do all these commandments; 15 and if you shall reject my statutes, and if your soul abhors my ordinances, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant; 16 I also will do this to you: I will appoint terror over you, even consumption and fever, that shall consume the eyes, and make the soul to pine away; and you will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will eat it. 17 I will set my face against you, and you will be struck before your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you; and you will flee when no one pursues you. 18 “‘If you in spite of these things will not listen to me, then I will chastise you seven times more for your sins. 19 I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your sky like iron, and your soil like brass; 20 and your strength will be spent in vain; for your land won’t yield its increase, neither will the trees of the land yield their fruit. 21 “‘If you walk contrary to me, and won’t listen to me, then I will bring seven times more plagues on you according to your sins. 22 I will send the wild animals among you, which will rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number; and your roads will become desolate. 23 “‘If by these things you won’t be reformed to me, but will walk contrary to me; 24 then I will also walk contrary to you; and I will strike you, even I, seven times for your sins. 25 I will bring a sword upon you, that will execute the vengeance of the covenant; and you will be gathered together within your cities: and I will send the pestilence among you; and you will be delivered into the hand of the enemy. 26 When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver your bread again by weight: and you shall eat, and not be satisfied. 27 “‘If you in spite of this won’t listen to me, but walk contrary to me; 28 then I will walk contrary to you in wrath; and I also will chastise you seven times for your sins. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you. 31 I will lay your cities waste, and will bring your sanctuaries to desolation, and I will not take delight in the sweet fragrance of your offerings. 32 I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies that dwell therein will be astonished at it. 33 I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw out the sword after you: and your land will be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. 34 Then the land will enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemies’ land. Even then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. 35 As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, even the rest which it didn’t have in your sabbaths, when you lived on it. 36 “‘As for those of you who are left, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies: and the sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight; and they shall flee, as one flees from the sword; and they will fall when no one pursues. 37 They will stumble over one another, as it were before the sword, when no one pursues: and you will have no power to stand before your enemies. 38 You will perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies will eat you up. 39 Those of you who are left will pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.

40 “‘If they confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, in their trespass which they trespassed against me, and also that, because they walked contrary to me, 41 I also walked contrary to them, and brought them into the land of their enemies: if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled, and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity; 42 then I will remember my covenant with Jacob; and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham; and I will remember the land. 43 The land also will be left by them, and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them: and they will accept the punishment of their iniquity; because, even because they rejected my ordinances, and their soul abhorred my statutes. 44 Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them; for I am Yahweh their God; 45 but I will for their sake remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am Yahweh.’” 46 These are the statutes, ordinances and laws, which Yahweh made between him and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai by Moses.

Laws concerning Dedications

271 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, ‘When a man makes a vow, the persons shall be for Yahweh by your valuation. 3 Your valuation shall be of a male from twenty years old even to sixty years old, even your valuation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary. 4 If it is a female, then your valuation shall be thirty shekels. 5 If the person is from five years old even to twenty years old, then your valuation shall be for a male twenty shekels, and for a female ten shekels. 6 If the person is from a month old even to five years old, then your valuation shall be for a male five shekels of silver, and for a female your valuation shall be three shekels of silver. 7 If the person is from sixty years old and upward; if it is a male, then your valuation shall be fifteen shekels, and for a female ten shekels. 8 But if he is poorer than your valuation, then he shall be set before the priest, and the priest shall value him; according to the ability of him who vowed shall the priest value him. 9 “‘If it is an animal, of which men offer an offering to Yahweh, all that any man gives of such to Yahweh becomes holy. 10 He shall not alter it, nor change it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good: and if he shall at all change animal for animal, then both it and that for which it is changed shall be holy. 11 If it is any unclean animal, of which they do not offer as an offering to Yahweh, then he shall set the animal before the priest; 12 and the priest shall value it, whether it is good or bad. As you the priest values it, so shall it be. 13 But if he will indeed redeem it, then he shall add the fifth part of it to its valuation.

14 “‘When a man dedicates his house to be holy to Yahweh, then the priest shall evaluate it, whether it is good or bad: as the priest shall evaluate it, so shall it stand. 15 If he who dedicates it will redeem his house, then he shall add the fifth part of the money of your valuation to it, and it shall be his. 16 “‘If a man dedicates to Yahweh part of the field of his possession, then your valuation shall be according to the seed for it: the sowing of a homer [1] of barley shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver. 17 If he dedicates his field from the Year of Jubilee, according to your valuation it shall stand. 18 But if he dedicates his field after the Jubilee, then the priest shall reckon to him the money according to the years that remain to the Year of Jubilee; and an abatement shall be made from your valuation. 19 If he who dedicated the field will indeed redeem it, then he shall add the fifth part of the money of your valuation to it, and it shall remain his. 20 If he will not redeem the field, or if he has sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed any more; 21 but the field, when it goes out in the Jubilee, shall be holy to Yahweh, as a field devoted; it shall be owned by the priests. 22 “‘If he dedicates to Yahweh a field which he has bought, which is not of the field of his possession, 23 then the priest shall reckon to him the worth of your valuation up to the Year of Jubilee; and he shall give your valuation on that day, as a holy thing to Yahweh. 24 In the Year of Jubilee the field shall return to him from whom it was bought, even to him to whom the possession of the land belongs. 25 All your valuations shall be according to the shekel of the sanctuary: twenty gerahs to the shekel.

26 “‘Only the firstborn among animals, which is made a firstborn to Yahweh, no man may dedicate it; whether an ox or sheep, it is Yahweh’s. 27 If it is an unclean animal, then he shall buy it back according to your valuation, and shall add to it the fifth part of it: or if it isn’t redeemed, then it shall be sold according to your valuation. 28 “‘Notwithstanding, no devoted thing, that a man shall devote to Yahweh of all that he has, whether of man or animal, or of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy to Yahweh. 29 “‘No one devoted, who shall be devoted from among men, shall be ransomed; he shall surely be put to death. 30 “‘All the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the trees, is Yahweh’s. It is holy to Yahweh. 31 If a man redeems anything of his tithe, he shall add a fifth part to it. 32 All the tithe of the herds or the flocks, whatever passes under the rod, the tenth shall be holy to Yahweh. 33 He shall not search whether it is good or bad, neither shall he change it: and if he changes it at all, then both it and that for which it is changed shall be holy. It shall not be redeemed.’” 34 These are the commandments which Yahweh commanded Moses for the children of Israel on Mount Sinai.