Imamat 26:3-13

The Benefits of Obedience

26:3 “‘If you walk in my statutes and are sure to obey my commandments, ¹  26:4 I will give you your rains in their time so that ²  the land will give its yield and the trees of the field will produce their fruit. ³  26:5 Threshing season will extend for you until the season for harvesting grapes, ⁴  and the season for harvesting grapes will extend until sowing season, so ⁵  you will eat your bread until you are satisfied, ⁶  and you will live securely in your land. 26:6 I will grant peace in the land so that ⁷  you will lie down to sleep without anyone terrifying you. ⁸  I will remove harmful animals ⁹  from the land, and no sword of war ¹⁰  will pass through your land. 26:7 You will pursue your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword. ¹¹  26:8 Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword. 26:9 I will turn to you, make you fruitful, multiply you, and maintain ¹²  my covenant with you. 26:10 You will still be eating stored produce from the previous year ¹³  and will have to clean out what is stored from the previous year to make room for new. ¹⁴ 

26:11 “‘I will put my tabernacle ¹⁵  in your midst and I will not abhor you. ¹⁶  26:12 I will walk among you, and I will be your God and you will be my people. 26:13 I am the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from being their slaves, ¹⁷  and I broke the bars of your yoke and caused you to walk upright. ¹⁸ 

Ulangan 7:12-15

Promises of Good for Covenant Obedience

7:12 If you obey these ordinances and are careful to do them, the Lord your God will faithfully keep covenant with you ¹⁹  as he promised ²⁰  your ancestors. 7:13 He will love and bless you, and make you numerous. He will bless you with many children, ²¹  with the produce of your soil, your grain, your new wine, your oil, the offspring of your oxen, and the young of your flocks in the land which he promised your ancestors to give you. 7:14 You will be blessed beyond all peoples; there will be no barrenness ²²  among you or your livestock. 7:15 The Lord will protect you from all sickness, and you will not experience any of the terrible diseases that you knew in Egypt; instead he will inflict them on all those who hate you.

[26:3]  ¹ tn Heb “and my commandments you shall keep and do them.” This appears to be a kind of verbal hendiadys, where the first verb is a modifier of the action of the second verb (see GKC 386 §120.d, although שָׁמַר [shamar, “to keep”] is not cited there; cf. Lev 20:8; 25:18, etc.).

[26:4]  ² tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have resultative force here.

[26:4]  ³ tn Heb “the tree of the field will give its fruit.” As a collective singular this has been translated as plural.

[26:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “will reach for you the vintage season.”

[26:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have resultative force here.

[26:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “to satisfaction”; KJV, ASV, NASB “to the full.”

[26:6]  ⁷ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have resultative force here.

[26:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “and there will be no one who terrifies.” The words “to sleep” have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[26:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “harmful animal,” singular, but taken here as a collective plural (so almost all English versions).

[26:6]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “no sword”; the words “of war” are supplied in the translation to indicate what the metaphor of the sword represents.

[26:7]  ¹¹ tn Heb “to the sword.”

[26:9]  ¹² tn Heb “cause to arise,” but probably used here for the Lord’s intention of confirming or maintaining the covenant commitment made at Sinai. Cf. KJV “establish”; NASB “will confirm”; NAB “carry out”; NIV “will keep.”

[26:10]  ¹³ tn Heb “old [produce] growing old.”

[26:10]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and old from the presence of new you will bring out.”

[26:11]  ¹⁵ tn LXX codexes Vaticanus and Alexandrinus have “my covenant” rather than “my tabernacle.” Cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV “my dwelling.”

[26:11]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and my soul [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh] will not abhor you.”

[26:13]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “from being to them slaves.”

[26:13]  ¹⁸ tn In other words, to walk as free people and not as slaves. Cf. NIV “with (+ your CEV, NLT) heads held high”; NCV “proudly.”

[7:12]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “will keep with you the covenant and loyalty.” On the construction used here, see v. 9.

[7:12]  ²⁰ tn Heb “which he swore on oath.” The relative pronoun modifies “covenant,” so one could translate “will keep faithfully the covenant (or promise) he made on oath to your ancestors.”

[7:13]  ²¹ tn Heb “will bless the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[7:14]  ²² sn One of the ironies about the promises to the patriarchs concerning offspring was the characteristic barrenness of the wives of the men to whom these pledges were made (cf. Gen 11:30; 25:21; 29:31). Their affliction is in each case described by the very Hebrew word used here (עֲקָרָה, ’aqarah), an affliction that will no longer prevail in Canaan.