Leviticus 26–27

1 You shall not make for yourselves idols; neither set up a carved image nor a standing stone, nor shall you set up any sculpted stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the Lord your God.

2 You shall keep My Sabbaths and reverence My sanctuary: I am the Lord.

3 If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments and do them, 4 then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5 Your threshing shall last till the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last till the time for sowing, and you shall eat your bread till you are full and dwell in your land safely.

6 I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down for sleep, and none shall make you afraid; I will remove harmful beasts from the land, and the sword shall not 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 put ten thousand to flight, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.

9 I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will confirm My covenant with you. 10 You shall eat the old harvest long stored, and clear out the old to make way for the new. 11 I will set My tabernacle among you, and I shall not abhor you. 12 I will walk among you, and I 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, that you should not be their slaves, and I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk upright.

14 But if you will not listen to Me, and will not do all these commandments, 15 if you despise My statutes, or if you abhor My judgments, so that you will not do all My commandments, but you break My covenant, 16 then I will do this to you: I will visit you with terror, with wasting disease, and with a fever that shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart, and 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 slain before your enemies. They that hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you.

18 If you will not yet listen to Me after all this, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. 19 I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heaven as iron and your land as bronze. 20 Your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield her increase, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.

21 If you continue to walk contrary to Me and will not listen to Me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins. 22 I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number. And your roads shall be desolate.

23 And if by these things you are not turned to Me, but walk contrary to Me, 24 then I will also walk contrary to you and will punish you yet seven times for your sins. 25 I will bring a sword upon you that shall extract vengeance for My covenant. And when you are gathered together within your cities, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. 26 When I have broken the supply of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall ration your bread again by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied.

27 If you will not listen to Me for all this, but walk contrary to Me, 28 then I will walk contrary to you also in fury, and I Myself will chastise you seven times for your sins. 29 You shall eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your funeral offerings on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I shall abhor you. 31 I will make your cities a waste and bring your sanctuaries to desolation, and I will not smell the savor of your fragrant offerings. 32 I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies that dwell there shall be astonished at it. 33 I will scatter you among the nations and I will draw out a sword after you. And your land shall be desolate and your cities a waste. 34 Then the land shall enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest and enjoy its sabbaths. 35 As long as it lies desolate it shall rest because it did not rest during your sabbaths when you lived upon it.

36 And on those who are left alive of you I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall make them flee, and they shall flee as from a sword, and they shall fall when no one pursues. 37 They shall fall one upon one another, as to escape before the sword, though no one pursues, and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies. 38 You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall consume you. 39 And those who are left of you shall rot away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands, and also because of the iniquities of their fathers, they shall rot away with them.

40 But if they confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their treachery that they committed against Me, and also that they have walked contrary to Me, 41 and that I also have walked contrary to them and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity, 42 then will I remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. 43 But the land shall be abandoned by them, and enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. They shall make amends for their iniquity, because they despised My judgments and because they abhorred My statutes. 44 Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, nor will I abhor them to destroy them utterly and to break My covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. 45 But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their fathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the Lord.

46 These are the statutes and judgments and laws that the Lord made between Himself and the children of Israel on Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses.

Chapter 27

1 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 2 Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: When a man makes a special vow to the Lord based on the equivalent value of persons, 3 then the equivalent value of a male from twenty to sixty years old shall be fifty shekels of silver, according to the sanctuary shekel. 4 If the person is a female, then the equivalent value shall be thirty shekels. 5 If the person is five to twenty years old, then the equivalent value shall be twenty shekels for a male and ten shekels for a female. 6 If the person is one month to five years old, then the equivalent value shall be five shekels for a male and three shekels of silver for a female. 7 If the person is sixty years old or older, then the equivalent value shall be fifteen shekels for a male and ten shekels for a female. 8 But if he is too poor to afford the equivalent value, then he shall present himself before the priest and the priest shall set his value. According to what the person making the vow can afford, so the priest shall set his value.

9 And if it be an animal, of which men bring an offering to the Lord, all that any man gives of such to the Lord shall be holy. 10 He shall not exchange it nor substitute it, good for bad or bad for good. If he in fact substitutes an animal for another, then both it and its substitute shall be holy. 11 If it is any sort of unclean animal that is not permitted as an offering to the Lord, then he shall present the animal before the priest. 12 And the priest shall set its value, whether good or bad; according to the equivalent value set by the priest, so shall it be. 13 But if he plans on redeeming it, then he shall add one-fifth to the equivalent value.

14 When a man consecrates his house as holy to the Lord, then the priest shall set its value, whether good or bad, according to the equivalent value set by the priest, so shall it be established. 15 If he who consecrates the house should redeem it, then he shall add one-fifth to its equivalent value, and it shall be his.

16 If a man shall consecrate to the Lord some of his land, then the equivalent value shall be according to the seed needed to sow it: fifty shekels of silver per homer of barley seed. 17 If he consecrates his field from the Year of Jubilee, the equivalent value shall stay fixed, 18 but if he consecrates his field after the Jubilee, then the priest shall calculate for him the price according to the years that remain until the next Year of Jubilee, and the equivalent value shall be reduced. 19 And if he who consecrated the field plans on redeeming it, then he shall add one-fifth to the equivalent value, and it will be established as his. 20 If he does not redeem the field, but rather sells the field to another man, it may not be redeemed again. 21 But when the field is released in the Jubilee, it shall be holy to the Lord as a devoted field; it shall become the possession of the priest.

22 If a man consecrates to the Lord a field that he purchased, which is not part of his land property, 23 then the priest shall calculate for him the amount of the valuation, up to the Year of Jubilee, and he shall give your valuation on that day as a holy thing to the Lord. 24 In the Year of Jubilee the field shall return to the one from whom it was bought, to him to whom the property of land belongs. 25 All your estimations shall be according to the shekel of the sanctuary: Twenty gerahs shall be one shekel.

26 A firstborn of animals, which as firstborn belongs to the Lord, no man may consecrate; whether ox or sheep, it is the Lord’s. 27 If it is among the unclean animals, then he shall ransom it at the equivalent value and shall add one-fifth to it, but if it is not redeemed, then it shall be sold at the equivalent value.

28 Anything that a man shall devote to the Lord from all that he has, whether human, animal, or land, shall not be sold or redeemed. Every devoted thing is most holy to the Lord.

29 No one devoted of men, who shall be doomed to death, shall be redeemed; he shall surely be put to death.

30 Any tithe of the land, whether seed of the land or fruit of the trees, belongs to the Lord. It is holy to the Lord. 31 If a man plans on redeeming some of his tithe, he shall add one-fifth to it. 32 Any tithe of herd or flock, all that passes under the counting staff, the tenth one shall be holy to the Lord. 33 A person shall not differentiate between good or bad, nor shall he make a substitute for it, but if he does, then both it and its substitute shall be holy. It shall not be redeemed.

34 These are the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses for the children of Israel on Mount Sinai.

Mark 2

1 Again, He entered Capernaum after some days. And it was reported that He was in the house. 2 Immediately many were gathered together, so that there was no room to receive them, not even at the door. And He preached the word to them. 3 They came to Him bringing one sick with paralysis, who was carried by four men. 4 When they could not come near Him due to the crowding, they uncovered the roof where He was. When they had broken it open, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.”

6 But some of the scribes were sitting there, reasoning in their hearts, 7 “Why does this Man speak such blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

8 Immediately, when Jesus perceived in His spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, He said to them, “Why do you contemplate these things in your hearts? 9 Which is easier to say to the paralytic: ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? 10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,” He said to the paralytic, 11 “I say to you, rise, and take up your bed, and go your way to your house.” 12 Immediately he rose, picked up the bed, and went out in front of them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

13 He went out again by the seaside, and the whole crowd came to Him, and He taught them. 14 As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s station, and He said to him, “Follow Me.” And he rose and followed Him.

15 As Jesus was at supper in his house, many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples. For there were many, and they followed Him. 16 When the scribes and Pharisees saw Him eating with tax collectors and sinners, they said to His disciples, “How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?”

17 When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

18 Now the disciples of John and of the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to Him, “Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?”

19 Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. 20 But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.

21 “No one sews a piece of new cloth on an old garment, or else the new piece that covered it tears away from the old, and the tear is made worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, and the wine is spilled, and the wineskins will be marred. But new wine must be poured into new wineskins.”

23 He went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. As they went, His disciples began to pluck the heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to Him, “Look, why are they doing on the Sabbath what is not lawful?”

25 He said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he and those who were with him were in need and hungry: 26 how he went into the house of God, in the days Abiathar was the high priest, and ate the ritual bread, which is lawful only for the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?”

27 Then He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”