Knox Bible

1

I am the Lord your God; and if I, the Lord, am your God, you must not make yourselves idols or carved figures, or set up monuments or engraved stones in any part of your country, so as to pay them worship.

2

It is for you to observe my sabbaths, to reverence my sanctuary; the Lord’s sanctuary.

3

If you live by my law, if you remember my commands and obey them, rain shall fall on you when fall it should;

4

the land will yield its increase, and the trees will be bowed with fruit,

5

threshing not done with by vintage time, or vintage by seed-time; you shall have food to your hearts’ content. Securely you shall hold your lands;

6

sleep safe in your beds, with peace on all your frontiers. I will rid you, too, of ravenous beasts, and never the sword shall lay your country waste.

7

You shall rout your enemies, and beat them down before you;

8

five of you putting a hundred aliens to flight, and a hundred of you ten thousand; so shall your enemies bite the dust at your approach.

9

Under the eye of my favour you shall increase and multiply, all my promises to you I will make good;

10

ever the old harvest shall suffice, till you rid yourselves of it to make room for the new.

11

I will make my dwelling among you, and never shall my love cast you off,

12

still coming and going in the midst of you, I your God, and you my people.

13

Was it not I, the Lord your God, that rescued you from your masters in Egypt, struck the chains from your necks, and gave you the upright carriage of free men?

14

Will you refuse me a hearing? Will you leave all my commands unfulfilled?

15

Will you defy my laws, let my decrees go for nothing, neglect my bidding, annul my covenant with you?

16

If so, this shall be my answer to you. I will be quick to punish you with dearth, and send fever to dim your eyes and waste your lives away; your crops shall be sown in vain, for the enemy to consume them.

17

You shall feel my displeasure, when you are beaten down before your enemies, when you submit to tyrants who hate you, when you take flight before ever your foes attack.

18

And if you still refuse obedience, I will exact sevenfold punishment for your sins,

19

till I have tamed this stubborn pride of yours. The skies shall be iron above you, and the earth bronze;

20

all your labour will be spent in vain, earth will yield you no harvest, and the trees no fruit.

21

Cross me, refuse me a hearing, and I will add fresh plagues, in sevenfold punishment of your sins.

22

I will send wild beasts to prey upon you and your cattle, till you are a few in number, and your roads lie deserted.

23

And if you refuse to be chastened, and cross me still,

24

I will cross you in my turn, punishing your sins sevenfold.

25

I will let war loose upon you in return for breaking your covenant with me; and when you take refuge in the cities, I will send pestilence among you. And soon you will be fain to surrender to your enemies,

26

when I have cut off your supply of bread, so that ten women can bake in one oven, and dole out the bread by weight to men that eat and are still hungry.

27

Will you refuse me a hearing, will you cross me, even then?

28

If so, I will cross you in my turn, hot with anger, plaguing you sevenfold for your sins,

29

till you must needs eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters.

30

I will destroy your hill-shrines, break your idols, and where your idols have fallen, you too will fall. Such will be my loathing for you

31

that I will turn your cities into a wilderness, and your holy places into a desert; the fragrance of your sacrifices will be acceptable to me no more.

32

I will make a havoc of your land, so that your very enemies, as they come to dwell there, will stand aghast.

33

For yourselves, I will scatter you wide among the nations, and my sword shall be at work on what you have left behind you, turning your land into a desert, your cities into ruins.

34

Then, in those days of desolation, your land will enjoy a sabbath indeed; while you are far away,

35

exiled among your enemies, it will be at rest, it will repose in a sabbath of utter loneliness, that land which was never given rest by any sabbath of yours, while you dwelt there.

36

Those of you who are left will be faint-hearted in the lands of your enemies, ready to take flight at the fall of a leaf, as if it were a sword threatening them, prostrate before ever their foes attack,

37

stumbling over one another as if routed in battle, so little heart will be left among you to withstand your enemies.

38

You will be lost among the Gentiles, swallowed up by a hostile country.

39

Those few who live on will live on to pine away, still unpardoned, exiles in a land that hates them, punishment for their sins, punishment for the sins of their fathers.

40

So it must be, until they confess their sins and the sins of those fathers of theirs who rebelled against me and crossed me.

41

I must cross them still, condemning them to exile in a land that hates them, until those defiled hearts learn to be ashamed.✻

Then they will make atonement for their sins,

42

and I will remember my covenant with Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham, remember the land

43

which they have left, sunk now in the enjoyment of its long repose, uninhabited because of their sins. They will make atonement at last for their sin in rejecting my decrees, forgetting my law.

44

And it will prove that all the while, even when they were exiled among their enemies, they were not rejected, they were not forgotten altogether; I would not let them perish, would not annul my covenant with them. No, I am the Lord their God,

45

and I will bethink me of the covenant I made long ago, when I rescued them from Egypt under the eyes of the Gentiles, and proclaimed myself the God who protects them, I, the Lord.

Such were the decrees and the laws by which the Lord bound the sons of Israel to himself on mount Sinai, with Moses for his spokesman.