(from One New Man Bible translated by William Morford)
B’hukotai
God’s Favor
26:3. “If you will walkin My statutes and keep My commandments and do them, 4. then I shall give you rain in due season and the land will yield its increase and the trees of the field will yield their fruit. 5. And your threshing will reach to the vintage and the vintage will reach to the sowing time, and you will eat your bread to the full and live safely in your land. 6. And I shall give peace in the land, and you will lie down, and no one will make you afraid, and I shall get rid of terrible beasts from the land, neither will the sword go through your land. 7. And you will chase your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword. 8. And five of you will chase a hundred and a hundred of you will put ten thousand to flight and your enemies will fall before you by the sword. 9. For I will have respect for you and make you fruitful and multiply you and I will establish My covenant with you. 10. And you will eat old store and bring out the old because of the new. 11. And I will set My Tabernacle among you, and My very being will not abhor you. 12. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you will be My people. (2 Cor. 5:16, Rev. 21:3) 13. I AM the LORD* your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so you would not be their bond men, and I have broken the bands of your yoke and made you go upright.”
God’s Anger
26:14. “But if you will not hearken to Me and will not do all these commandments, 15. and if you despise My statutes, or if your very being abhors My judgments, so you will not do all My commandments, but you break My covenant, 16. then I shall do this to you; I shall even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning fever that will consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart, and you will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will eat it. 17. And I shall set My face against you and you will be slain before your enemies. Those who hate you will reign over you and you will flee when no one pursues you.
26:18. “And if you will not yet hearken to Me for all this, then I shall punish you seven times more for your sins. 19. And I shall break your powerful pride and I shall make your heaven as iron and your earth as bronze, 20. and your strength will be spent in vain, for your land will not yield her increase, neither will the trees of the land yield their fruits.
26:21. “And if you walk contrary to Me and will not hearken to Me I shall bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins. (Rev. 15:1) 22. I shall also send wild beasts among you, which will rob you of your children and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number, and your highways will be desolate. 23. If you will not be redeemed by Me by these things, but will walk contrary to Me, 24. then I shall also walk contrary to you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins. 25. And I shall bring a sword upon you that will avenge the quarrel of My covenant, and when you are gathered together within your cities, I shall send the pestilence among you, and you will be delivered into the hand of the enemy. 26. And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women will bake your bread in one oven and they will deliver you your bread again by weight, and you will eat and not be satisfied.
26:27. “And if you will not hearken to Me for all this, but walk contrary to Me, 28. then I shall walk contrary to you also in fury and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins, 29. and you will eat the flesh of your sons and you will eat the flesh of your daughters. 30. And I shall destroy your high places and cut down your images and cast your carcasses upon the carcases of your idols, and My Very Being will abhor you, 31. and I shall make your cities waste and bring your Sanctuaries to desolation, and I shall not smell the savor of your sweet odors. 32. And I shall bring the land into desolation and your enemies who live there will be astonished at it.
33. And I shall scatter you among the nations, and will draw out a sword after you, and your land will be desolate and your cities waste. 34. Then the land will enjoy her Sabbaths, as long as it lies desolate and you arein your enemies’ land, even then the land will rest and enjoy her Sabbaths. 35. As long as it lies desolate it will rest because it did not rest in your Sabbaths when you lived in it. 36. And upon those of you who are left I shall send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, and the sound of a shaken leaf will chase them and they will flee, as fleeing from a sword, and they will fall when no one pursues. 37. And they will fall one upon another, as it were before a sword when no one pursues, and you will have no power to stand before your enemies. 38. And you will perish among the nations and the land of your enemies will eat you up. 39. And those of you that are left will pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands, and also in the iniquities of their fathers will they pine away with them. 40. If they will confess their iniquity and the iniquities of their fathers, with their treachery which they acted treacherously against Me, and that also 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 I shall remember My covenant with Jacob and also My covenant with Isaac and I shall also remember My covenant with Abraham, and I shall remember the land.43. The land also will be left of them and will enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them, and they will accept of the punishment of their iniquities because, even because they despised My judgments, and because their soul abhorred My statutes. 44. And yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I shall not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly and to break My covenant with them for I AMthe LORD* their God. 45. But I shall for their sake remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought out from the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, so I would be their God. I AM the LORD*!”
26:46. These are the statutes and judgments and teachings, which the LORD* made between Himself and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses.
Vows
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 singular vow, the persons will be for the LORD* by your estimation. 3. And if your estimation is of the male from twenty years old even to sixty years old then your estimation will be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the Sanctuary. 4. And if it isa female, then your estimation will be thirty shekels. 5. And if it is from five years old even to twenty years old, then your estimation will be of the male twenty shekels, and for the female ten shekels. 6. And if it is from a month old even to five years old, then your estimation will be for the male five shekels of silver and for the female your estimation will be three shekels of silver. 7. And if it isfrom sixty years old and above, if it is male then your estimation will be fifteen shekels, and for the female ten shekels. 8. But if he is poorer than your estimation, then he will present himself before the priest, and the priest will value him according to the ability of the one who vowed will the priest value him.
27:9. “And if it is an animal, of which men bring an offering to the LORD*, all that anyonegives of such to the LORD* will be holy. 10. He will not alter it, or change it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good: and if he will at all change animal for animal, then it and the exchange for it will be holy. 11. And if it isany unclean animal, of which they do not offer an offering to the LORD*, then he will present the beast before the priest 12. and the priest will estimate it, whether it is good or bad: according to the estimation of the priest, so will it be. 13. But if he will at all redeem it, then he will add a fifth of it to your estimation.
27:14. “And when a man sanctifies his house to be holy to the LORD*, then the priest will estimate it, whether it is good or bad: as the priest will estimate it, so will it stand. 15. And if he who sanctified it will redeem his house, then he will add the fifth ofthe money of your estimation to it, and it will be his.
27:16. “And if a man sanctifies to the LORD* part of a field of his possession, then your estimation will be according to its seed, a homer of barley seed will be valued at fifty shekels of silver. 17. If he sanctifies his field from the year of jubilee, it will stand according to your estimation. 18. But if he sanctifies his field after the jubilee, then the priest will reckon to him the money according to the years that remain, even to the year of the jubilee, and it will be deducted from your estimation. 19. And if he who sanctified the field will in any way redeem it, then he will add the fifth of the money of your estimation to it, and it will be assured to him. 20. And if he will not redeem the field, or if he has sold the field to another man, it will not be redeemed any more. 21. But the field, when it goes out in the jubilee, will be holy to the LORD*, as a field devoted; the possession of it will be the priest’s.
27:22. “And if hesanctifies to the LORD* a field which he has bought, which is not of the fields of his possession, 23. then the priest will reckon to him the value of your estimation to the year of the jubilee, and he will give your estimation in that day, a holy thing to the LORD*. 24. In the year of the jubilee the field will return to him from whom it was bought, to him to whom the possession of the land did belong. 25. And all your estimations will be according to the shekel of the Sanctuary: twenty gerahs will be the shekel.
27:26. “Only the firstling of the animals, which should be the LORD’s* firstling, no man will sanctify it, whether it is an ox, or sheep: it is the LORD’s*. 27. And if it is of an unclean beast, then he will redeem it according to your estimation and will add a fifth of it to it, or, if it is not redeemed, then it will be sold according to your estimation.
27:28. “But no devoted thing that a man will devote to the LORD* of all that he has, of man and animal and of the field of his possession, will be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy to the LORD*. 29. Nothing devoted, which will be devoted of men, will be redeemed, itwill surely be put to death.
27:30. “And all the tithe of the land, of the seed of the land, of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD’s*: it isholy to the LORD*. 31. And if a man will at all redeem anythingof his tithes, he will add to it the fifth of it. 32. And concerning the tithe of the herd or of the flock, of whatever passes under the rod, the tenth will be holy to the LORD*. 33. He will not seek whether it is good or bad, neither will he change it: and if he changes it at all, then both it and the change of it will be holy, it will not be redeemed.”
27:34. These are the commandments, which the LORD* commanded Moses for the children of Israel in Mount Sinai.
Next week’s Torah readings: B’midbar