Imamat 26:28-39

26:28 I will walk in hostile rage against you ¹  and I myself will also discipline you seven times on account of your sins. 26:29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. ²  26:30 I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars, ³  and I will stack your dead bodies on top of the lifeless bodies of your idols. ⁴  I will abhor you. ⁵  26:31 I will lay your cities waste ⁶  and make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will refuse to smell your soothing aromas. 26:32 I myself will make the land desolate and your enemies who live in it will be appalled. 26:33 I will scatter you among the nations and unsheathe the sword ⁷  after you, so your land will become desolate and your cities will become a waste.

26:34 “‘Then the land will make up for ⁸  its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land will rest and make up its Sabbaths. 26:35 All the days of the desolation it will have the rest it did not have ⁹  on your Sabbaths when you lived on it.

26:36 “‘As for ¹⁰  the ones who remain among you, I will bring despair into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a blowing leaf will pursue them, and they will flee as one who flees the sword and fall down even though there is no pursuer. 26:37 They will stumble over each other as those who flee before a sword, though ¹¹  there is no pursuer, and there will be no one to take a stand ¹²  for you before your enemies. 26:38 You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will consume you.

Restoration through Confession and Repentance

26:39 “‘As for the ones who remain among you, they will rot away because of ¹³  their iniquity in the lands of your enemies, and they will also rot away because of their ancestors’ ¹⁴  iniquities which are with them.

¹ tn Heb “in rage of hostility with you”; NASB “with wrathful hostility”; NRSV “I will continue hostile to you in fury”; CEV “I’ll get really furious.”

² tn Heb “and the flesh of your daughters you will eat.” The phrase “you will eat” has not been repeated in the translation for stylistic reasons.

³ sn Regarding these cultic installations, see the remarks in B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 188, and R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 2:903. The term rendered “incense altars” might better be rendered “sanctuaries [of foreign deities]” or “stelae.”

⁴ tn The translation reflects the Hebrew wordplay “your corpses…the corpses of your idols.” Since idols, being lifeless, do not really have “corpses,” the translation uses “dead bodies” for people and “lifeless bodies” for the idols.

⁵ tn Heb “and my soul will abhor you.”

⁶ tn Heb “And I will give your cities a waste”; NLT “make your cities desolate.”

⁷ tn Heb “and I will empty sword” (see HALOT 1228 s.v. ריק 3).

⁸ tn There are two Hebrew roots רָצָה (ratsah), one meaning “to be pleased with; to take pleasure” (HALOT 1280-81 s.v. רצה; cf. “enjoy” in NASB, NIV, NRSV, and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452), and the other meaning “to restore” (HALOT 1281-82 s.v. II רצה; cf. NAB “retrieve” and B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 189).

⁹ tn Heb “it shall rest which it did not rest.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “And.”

¹¹ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) is used in a concessive sense here.

¹² tn The term rendered “to stand up” is a noun, not an infinitive. It occurs only here and appears to designate someone who would take a powerful stand for them against their enemies.

¹³ tn Heb “in” (so KJV, ASV; also later in this verse).

¹⁴ tn Heb “fathers’” (also in the following verse).