Reward for Obedience
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" 'Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves,
and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it.
I am the LORD your God.
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" 'Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am the LORD.
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" 'If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands,
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I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops
and the trees of the field their fruit.
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Your threshing will continue until grape harvest, and the grape harvest will
continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want
and live in safety in your land.
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" 'I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make
you afraid. I will remove savage beasts from the land,
and the sword will not pass through your country.
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You will pursue your enemies, and they wikk fall by the sword before you.
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Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand,
and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.
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" 'I will look ob you with favor and make you fruitful
and increase your numbers, and I ill keep my covenan with you.
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You will still be eating last year's harvest when you have to move it out
to make the room for the new.
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I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you.
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I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.
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I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would
no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and
enabled you to walk with heads held high.
Punishment for Disobedience
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" 'But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands,
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and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out
all my commands and so violate my covenant,
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then U will do this to you:
I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy
your sight and drain away your life. You will plant seed in vain, because
your enemies will eat it.
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I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies;
those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one
is pursuing you.
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" 'If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins
seven times over.
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I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you
like iron and and the ground beneath you like bronze.
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Your strength will be spent in vain, because your soil wull not yield its crops,
nor wull the trees of the land yield their fruit.
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" 'If you remain hostile toward me and refuse to listen to me,
I will multiply your afflictions seven times over, as your sins deserve.
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I will send wild animals against you, and they will rob you of your children,
destroy your cattle and make you so few in number that your roads will
be deserted.
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" 'If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction
but continue to be hostile toward me,
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I myself will be hostile toward you and
will afflict you for your sins seven times over.
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And I will bring the sword upon you and to avenge the breaking of the covenant.
When you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you,
and you will be given into enemy hands.
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When I cut off your sypply of bread, ten women will be able to bake in one oven,
and they will dole out the bread by weight. You will eat, but you will not be
satisfied.
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" "If in spite of this you still do not listen to me
but continue to be hostile toward me,
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then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I will punish you for
your sins seven times over.
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You will eat the flrsh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.
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I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your
dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you.
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I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries.
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I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled.
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I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you.
Your land will be laid waste, and yiye cities will lie in ruins.
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Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time
that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies;
then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths.
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All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest
it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.
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" 'As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the
lands of their enemies that have the sound of a windblown leaf will put them
to flight. They will run as though fleeing from the swird, and they will fall,
even yhough no one is pursuing them.
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They will stumble over one another as though fleeing from the sword,
even though no one is pursuing them. So you will not be able to stand
before your enemies.
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You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you.
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Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies
because of their sins; also because of their fathers' sins they will waste away.
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" 'But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers -
their treachery against me and their hostility toward me,
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which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of
their enemies - then when their uncircumcised hearts are humble
and they pay for their sin,
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I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac
and my covenant with Abraham, and will remember the land.
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For the land will be deserted by them and will enjoy its sabbaths
while it lies desolate withou them. They will pay for their sins
because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees.
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Yet in spirte of this, when they are in the land of their enemies,
I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely,
breaking my covenant with them. I am the LORD their God.
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But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors
whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God.
I am the LORD.' "
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These are the decrees, the laws and the regulations that the LORD
establilshed on Mount Sinai between himself and the Israelites through Moses.
