Study Desk

'You shall not make for yourselves idols, nor shall you set up for yourselves a carved image or a memorial stone, nor shall you place a figured stone in your land to bow down to it; for I am the LORD your God.

'Indeed, your threshing season will last for you until grape gathering, and grape gathering will last until sowing time. So you will eat your food to the full and live securely in your land.

I, in turn, will do this to you: I will summon a sudden terror against you, consumption and fever that will make the eyes fail and the soul languish; also, you will sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies will eat it.

'If also after these things you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.

'Your strength will be consumed uselessly, for your land will not yield its produce and the trees of the land will not yield their fruit.

then I in turn will show hostility toward you; and I, even I, will strike you seven times for your sins.

'I will also bring upon you a sword which will execute vengeance for the covenant; and when you gather together into your cities, I will send a plague among you, so that you will be handed over to the enemy.

then I will act with wrathful hostility against you, and I for My part will punish you seven times for your sins.

'I then will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and pile your remains on the remains of your idols, for My soul will loathe you.

'As for those among you who are left, I will also bring despair into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. And the sound of a scattered leaf will chase them, and even when no one is pursuing they will flee as though from the sword, and they will fall.

I also was acting with hostility against them, to bring them into the land of their enemies—or if their uncircumcised heart is humbled so that they then make amends for their wrongdoing,

'For the land will be abandoned by them, and will restore its Sabbaths while it is made desolate without them. They, meanwhile, will be making amends for their wrongdoing, because they rejected My ordinances and their soul loathed My statutes.

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

'But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, so that I might be their God. I am the LORD.'"

'And if the person is from five years even to twenty years old, then your assessment for a male shall be twenty shekels, and for a female, ten shekels.

'But if the person is from a month even up to five years old, then your assessment shall be five shekels of silver for a male, and for a female your assessment shall be three shekels of silver.

'If the person is from sixty years old and upward, if a male, then your assessment shall be fifteen shekels, and for a female, ten shekels.

'He shall not replace it nor exchange it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good; yet if he does exchange animal for animal, then both it and its substitute shall become holy.

'Again, if someone consecrates to the LORD part of the field of his own property, then your assessment shall be proportionate to the seed needed for it: a homer of barley seed at fifty shekels of silver.

'If he consecrates his field after the jubilee, however, then the priest shall calculate the price for him proportionate to the years that are left until the year of jubilee; and it shall be deducted from your assessment.