The Lord will bless the Israelites if they listen to Him
1The Lord said to Moses: ‘You may not make idols or images or put sacred_pillars into the ground or bow before statues. You may not pray to them, because I am the Lord your God. 2You must always celebrate my Sabbath days and you must respect my temple. I am the Lord.
3If you live as I tell you to live and you keep on doing what I said in my commandments, 4then I will give you rain at the right time and there will be lots of wheat on your fields and fruit on your trees. 5You will thresh wheat until the time of the grape harvest, and you will harvest the grapes until you have to start sowing wheat and barley. You will have enough food to eat and you will live safely in the land. 6I will give you peace in the land and you will sleep peacefully. I will take away the wild animals from the land and you will not have to go to war. 7You will follow_and_chase your enemies and you will kill them. 8Only 5 of your men will follow_and_chase 100 men of the enemy and 100 of your men will chase away 10 000 men of the enemy. Yes, you will kill all your enemies.
9I will take care of you and I will make you fertile so that you will become a lot of people. I will remember my covenant with you and keep on doing what I have promised you. 10You will eat bread that you make from wheat that you put away a long time before and you will have to take out the old wheat so that you can put in the new wheat. 11I will put my temple among you and I will accept you. 12I will live with you. I will be your God and you will be my people. 13I am the Lord your God. I saved you from the land of Egypt where you were slaves, and I broke the yokes that were on you so that you could walk with your heads held high and be a proud nation again.’
God will punish his people if they do not listen to Him
14‘But if you do not listen to Me and you don't do everything that my commandments say, 15and if you do not respect my laws and you do not want to do what I decide and you break my covenant, 16then I will punish you. You will become afraid, and you will have diseases and fevers that will make you blind and kill you. You will sow wheat and barley, but you will not harvest any food because your enemies will eat it. 17I will become your enemy and your enemies will defeat you and they will rule over you. You will run away and flee, even if there is no one chasing you.
18And then, if you still do not want to listen to Me, I will continue to punish you 7 times more. 19I will take away everything that you have and that you are proud of, and the heaven over you will not give any rain. The sky will be as hard as iron. Nothing will grow on earth, because it will be as hard as brass. 20You will work but you will not get anything. There will be no wheat or barley in the fields or fruit on the trees.
21And if you are still stubborn and you do not want to listen to Me, then I will continue to punish you for your sins. 22I will bring wild animals to come and attack you. They will kill your children and your animals. You will become a small nation, and there will be no people walking on your roads.
23And if you still do not want to listen and you rebel_against Me, 24then I will become your enemy, and I will continue to punish you harshly for your sins. 25I will punish you because you have broken the covenant, and I will bring war_against you. If you run away and flee to the towns, I will bring bad diseases to you and your enemies will defeat you. 26I will take away all your food. There will be so little flour that 10 women will bake bread in one oven. They will weigh the bread and each one will get only a small piece. It will not be enough.
27If you still do not listen to Me and rebel_against Me, 28then I will become an angry enemy. I will continue to punish you for your sins. 29You will have to eat your own children. 30I will destroy your places_of_sacrifice and break down your incense-altars. Then I will throw your dead bodies onto your dead idols. 31Your towns will become heaps of stones and no one will be in your temples. I will not want to see or smell the offerings that you bring to Me. 32I will destroy the land so that your enemies who come to the land will be afraid and shocked. 33I will send you away to go and live in other lands. I will bring people to make war_against you and no one will live in your land. Your towns will be heaps of stones.
34And when there are no more people living in the land and you are in the land of your enemies, then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbath years. 35The land will rest all the time while there are no people living there because the land did not rest in the Sabbath years while you lived there. 36The few people who are still_alive will be afraid in the land of their enemies. They will flee when they hear any noise, even if they hear a leaf falling. They will flee like people who flee from war. They will flee even when there is no one chasing them. 37They will fall over each other like in a war, even when there is no one chasing them. You will not be strong enough to fight against your enemies. 38You will disappear among the nations, and the land of your enemies will eat you and destroy you. 39The few people who will still be alive will die and disappear into the land of their enemies because of their sins. They will also disappear because of the sins of their forefathers.’
God will forgive his people
40‘But if they confess their sins and the sins of their forefathers, if they are sorry because they did not listen to Me and because they have rebelled_against Me, then I will remember the land. 41I became their enemy and I sent them to the land of their enemies, but if they stop living like Gentile people and humble themselves and confess the wrong things that they have done, 42then I will remember the covenant that I made with Jacob, Isaac and Abraham and with the land. 43But the land must first be empty, and there must be no one living there so that it can rest and have its Sabbath years. My people must first be punished for their sins because they showed that they did not respect the things that I said, and they did not want to do what I said.
44But while my people are in the land of their enemies, I will not forget them or leave them alone. I will not cause all of them to die and forget my covenant with them, because I am the Lord their God. 45I will remember that I have made a covenant with them. All the nations saw how I saved my people from the land of Egypt to be their God. I am the Lord.’
46These are the laws that the Lord gave to his people on Mount Sinai when He made the covenant with them and gave these laws to Moses.
