Sinai & The Law

then I too will go against you; and I, yes I, will strike you seven times over for your sins.

I will bring a sword against you which will execute the vengeance of the covenant. You will be huddled inside your cities, I will send sickness among you, and you will be handed over to the power of the enemy.

I will cut off your supply of bread, so that ten women will bake your bread in one oven and dole out your bread by weight, and you will eat but not be satisfied.

"'And if, for all this, you still will not listen to me, but go against me;

then I will go against you furiously, and I also will chastise you yet seven times more for your sins.

You will eat the flesh of your own sons, you will eat the flesh of your own daughters.

I will destroy your high places, cut down your pillars for sun-worship, and throw your carcasses on the carcasses of your idols; and I will detest you.

I will lay waste to your cities and make your sanctuaries desolate, so as not to smell your fragrant aromas.

I will desolate the land, so that your enemies living in it will be astounded by it.

You I will disperse among the nations, and I will draw out the sword in pursuit after you; your land will be a desolation and your cities a wasteland.

Then, at last, the land will be paid its Shabbats. As long as it lies desolate and you are in the lands of your enemies, the land will rest and be repaid its Shabbats.

Yes, as long as it lies desolate it will have rest, the rest it did not have during your Shabbats, when you lived there.

As for those of you who are left, I will fill their hearts with anxiety in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf will frighten them, so that they will flee as one flees from the sword and fall when no one is pursuing.

Yes, with no one pursuing they will stumble over each other as if fleeing the sword - you will have no power to stand before your enemies.

And among the nations you will perish; the land of your enemies will devour you.

Those of you who remain will pine away in the lands of your enemies from guilt over your misdeeds and those of your ancestors.

Then they will confess their misdeeds and those of their ancestors which they committed against me in their rebellion; they will admit that they went against me.

At that time I will be going against them, bringing them into the lands of their enemies. But if their uncircumcised hearts will grow humble, and they are paid the punishment for their misdeeds;

then I will remember my covenant with Ya'akov, also my covenant with Yitz'chak and my covenant with Avraham; and I will remember the land.

For the land will lie abandoned without them, and it will be paid its Shabbats while it lies desolate without them; and they will be paid the punishment for their misdeeds, because they rejected my rulings and loathed my regulations.

Yet, in spite of all that, I will not reject them when they are in the lands of their enemies, nor will I loathe them to the point of utterly destroying them and thus break my covenant with them, because I am ADONAI their God.

Rather, for their sakes, I will remember the covenant of their ancestors whom I brought out of the land of Egypt -with the nations watching -so that I might be their God; I am ADONAI.'"

These are the laws, rulings and teachings that ADONAI himself gave to the people of Isra'el on Mount Sinai through Moshe.

ADONAI said to Moshe,

"Tell the people of Isra'el, 'If someone makes a clearly defined vow to ADONAI to give him an amount equal to the value of a human being,