I will break your pride in your power, and I will make your sky like iron [giving no rain and blocking all prayers] and your ground like bronze [hard to plow and yielding no produce].

‘If then, you act with hostility toward Me and are unwilling to obey Me, I will increase the plague on you seven times in accordance with your sins.

I will let loose the [wild] animals of the field among you, which will bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock and make you so few in number that your roads will lie deserted and desolate.

‘And if by these things you are not turned to Me, but act with hostility against Me,

then I also will act with hostility against you, and I will strike you seven times for your sins.

I will bring a sword on you that will execute vengeance for [breaking] the covenant; and when you gather together in your cities, I will send pestilence (virulent disease) among you, and you shall be handed over to the enemy.

When I break your staff of bread [that is, cut off your supply of food], ten women will bake your bread in one oven, and they will ration your bread; and you will eat and not be satisfied.

‘Yet if in spite of this you will not [attentively] listen to Me but act with hostility against me,

then I will act with hostility against you in wrath, and I also will punish you seven times for your sins.

You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.

I will destroy your high places [devoted to idolatrous worship], and cut down your incense altars, and heap your dead bodies upon the [crushed] bodies of your idols, and My soul will detest you [with deep and unutterable loathing].

I will lay waste your cities as well and will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your sweet and soothing aromas [of offerings by fire].

I will make the land desolate, and your enemies who settle in it will be appalled at it.

I will scatter you among the nations and draw out the sword [of your enemies] after you; your land will become desolate and your cities will become ruins.

‘Then the land [of Israel] will enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths.

As long as it lies desolate, it will have rest, the rest it did not have on your Sabbaths, while you were living on it.

As for those who are left of you, I will bring despair (lack of courage, weakness) into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a scattered leaf will put them to flight, and they will flee as if [running] from the sword, and will fall even when no one is chasing them.

They shall stumble over one another as if to escape from a sword when no one is chasing them; and you will have no power to stand before your enemies.

You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will consume you.

Those of you who are left will rot away because of their wickedness in the lands of your enemies; also because of the wickedness of their forefathers they will rot away like them.

I also was acting with hostility toward them and brought them into the land of their enemies—then if their uncircumcised (sin-filled) hearts are humbled and they accept the punishment for their wickedness,

then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham, and remember the land.

Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so despise them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God.

But I will, for their sake, [earnestly] remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I have brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the Lord.’”

“Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘When a man makes a special vow [consecrating himself or a member of his family], he shall be valued according to your [established system of] valuation of people belonging to the Lord [that is, the priest accepts from the man making the vow a specified amount of money for the temple treasury in place of the actual person].

If your valuation is of a male between twenty and sixty years of age, then your valuation shall be fifty shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary.

Or if the person is a female, then your valuation shall be thirty shekels.

But if the child is between one month and five years of age, then your valuation shall be five shekels of silver for the male and three shekels for the female.

If the person is sixty years old and above, your valuation shall be fifteen shekels for the male, and ten shekels for the female.

But if the person is too poor to pay your valuation, then he shall be placed before the priest, and the priest shall value him; according to the ability of the one who vowed, the priest shall value him.

‘Now if it is an animal of the kind which men can present as an offering to the Lord, any such that one gives to the Lord shall be holy.

He shall not replace it or exchange it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good; but if he does exchange an animal for an animal, then both the original offering and its substitute shall be holy.

and the priest shall value it as either good or bad; it shall be as you, the priest, value it.

But if he ever wishes to redeem it, then he shall add one-fifth of it to your valuation.

‘If a man consecrates his house as sacred to the Lord, the priest shall appraise it as either good or bad; as the priest appraises it, so shall it stand.

If the one who consecrates his house should wish to redeem it, then he shall add one-fifth of your valuation price to it, so that it may be his.

‘And if a man consecrates to the Lord part of a field of his own property, then your valuation shall be proportionate to the seed needed for it; a homer of barley seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver.

If the one who consecrates the field should ever wish to redeem it, then he shall add one-fifth of the appraisal price to it, so that it may return to him.

When the field reverts in the Jubilee, the field shall be holy to the Lord, like a field set apart (devoted); the priest shall possess it as his property.

Or if a man consecrates to the Lord a field which he has bought, which is not part of the field of his [ancestral] property,

then the priest shall calculate for him the amount of your valuation up to the Year of Jubilee; and the man shall give that [amount] on that day as a holy thing to the Lord.

Every valuation of yours shall be in accordance with the sanctuary shekel; twenty gerahs shall make a shekel.

‘However, the firstborn among animals, which as a firstborn belongs to the Lord, no man may consecrate, whether an ox or a sheep. It is [already] the Lord’s.

If it is among the unclean animals, the owner may redeem it in accordance with your valuation, and add one-fifth to it; or if it is not redeemed, then it shall be sold in accordance with your valuation.

‘But nothing that a man sets apart [that is, devotes as an offering] to the Lord out of all that he has, of man or of animal or of the fields of his own property, shall be sold or redeemed. Anything devoted to destruction (banned, cursed) is most holy to the Lord.

No one who may have been set apart among men shall be ransomed [from death], he shall most certainly be put to death.

If a man wishes to redeem any part of his tithe, he shall add one-fifth to it.

For every tithe of the herd or flock, whatever passes under the [shepherd’s] staff, the tenth one shall be holy to the Lord.