Leviticus 26
COVENANT BLESSINGS AND DISCIPLINE
“Do not make worthless idols for yourselves, set up a carved image or sacred pillar for yourselves, or place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the Lord your God.
2 Keep my Sabbaths and revere my sanctuary; I am the Lord.
3 “If you follow my statutes and faithfully observe my commands, 4 I will give you rain at the right time, and the land will yield its produce, and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. 5 Your threshing will continue until grape harvest, and the grape harvest will continue until sowing time; you will have plenty of food to eat and live securely in your land. 6 I will give peace to the land, and you will lie down with nothing to frighten you. I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword will pass through your land. 7 You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword. 8 Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand; your enemies will fall before you by the sword.
9 “I will turn to you, make you fruitful and multiply you, and confirm my covenant with you. 10 You will eat the old grain of the previous year and will clear out the old to make room for the new. 11 I will place my residence among you, and I will not reject you. 12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. 13 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so that you would no longer be their slaves. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to live in freedom.
14 “But if you do not obey me and observe all these commands — 15 if you reject my statutes and despise my ordinances, and do not observe all my commands — and break my covenant, 16 then I will do this to you: I will bring terror on you — wasting disease and fever that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will sow your seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. 17 I will turn against you, so that you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even though no one is pursuing you.
18 “But if after these things you will not obey me, I will proceed to discipline you seven times for your sins. 19 I will break down your strong pride. I will make your sky like iron and your land like bronze, 20 and your strength will be used up for nothing. Your land will not yield its produce, and the trees of the land will not bear their fruit.
21 “If you act with hostility toward me and are unwilling to obey me, I will multiply your plagues seven times for your sins. 22 I will send wild animals against you that will deprive you of your children, ravage your livestock, and reduce your numbers until your roads are deserted.
23 “If in spite of these things you do not accept my discipline, but act with hostility toward me, 24 then I will act with hostility toward you; I also will strike you seven times for your sins. 25 I will bring a sword against you to execute the vengeance of the covenant. Though you withdraw into your cities, I will send a pestilence among you, and you will be delivered into enemy hands. 26 When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and ration out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.
27 “And if in spite of this you do not obey me but act with hostility toward me, 28 I will act with furious hostility toward you; I will also discipline you seven times for your sins. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons; you will eat the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places, cut down your shrines, and heap your lifeless bodies on the lifeless bodies of your idols; I will reject you. 31 I will reduce your cities to ruins and devastate your sanctuaries. I will not smell the pleasing aroma of your sacrifices. 32 I also will devastate the land, so that your enemies who come to live there will be appalled by it. 33 But I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw a sword to chase after you. So your land will become desolate, and your cities will become ruins.
34 “Then the land will make up for its Sabbath years during the time it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time the land will rest and make up for its Sabbaths. 35 As long as it lies desolate, it will have the rest it did not have during your Sabbaths when you lived there.
36 “I will put anxiety in the hearts of those of you who survive in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a wind-driven leaf will put them to flight, and they will flee as one flees from a sword, and fall though no one is pursuing them. 37 They will stumble over one another as if fleeing from a sword though no one is pursuing them. You will not be able to stand against your enemies. 38 You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you. 39 Those who survive in the lands of your enemies will waste away because of their iniquity; they will also waste away because of their ancestors’ iniquities along with theirs.
40 “But when they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors — their unfaithfulness that they practiced against me, and how they acted with hostility toward me, 41 and I acted with hostility toward them and brought them into the land of their enemies — and when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, 42 then I will remember my covenant with Jacob. I will also remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. 43 For the land abandoned by them will make up for its Sabbaths by lying desolate without the people, while they make amends for their iniquity, because they rejected my ordinances and abhorred my statutes. 44 Yet in spite of this, while they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject or abhor them so as to destroy them and break my covenant with them, since I am the Lord their God. 45 For their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God; I am the Lord.”
46 These are the statutes, ordinances, and laws the Lord established between himself and the Israelites through Moses on Mount Sinai.
Leviticus 27
FUNDING THE SANCTUARY
The Lord spoke to Moses:
2 “Speak to the Israelites and tell them: When someone makes a special vow to the Lord that involves the assessment of people, 3 if the assessment concerns a male from twenty to sixty years old, your assessment is fifty silver shekels measured by the standard sanctuary shekel. 4 If the person is a female, your assessment is thirty shekels. 5 If the person is from five to twenty years old, your assessment for a male is twenty shekels and for a female ten shekels. 6 If the person is from one month to five years old, your assessment for a male is five silver shekels, and for a female your assessment is three shekels of silver. 7 If the person is sixty years or more, your assessment is fifteen shekels for a male and ten shekels for a female. 8 But if one is too poor to pay the assessment, he is to present the person before the priest and the priest will set a value for him. The priest will set a value for him according to what the one making the vow can afford.
9 “If the vow involves one of the animals that may be brought as an offering to the Lord, any of these he gives to the Lord will be holy. 10 He may not replace it or make a substitution for it, either good for bad, or bad for good. But if he does substitute one animal for another, both that animal and its substitute will be holy.
11 “If the vow involves any of the unclean animals that may not be brought as an offering to the Lord, the animal must be presented before the priest. 12 The priest will set its value, whether high or low; the price will be set as the priest makes the assessment for you. 13 If the one who brought it decides to redeem it, he must add a fifth to the assessed value.
14 “When a man consecrates his house as holy to the Lord, the priest will assess its value, whether high or low. The price will stand just as the priest assesses it. 15 But if the one who consecrated his house redeems it, he must add a fifth to the assessed value, and it will be his.
16 “If a man consecrates to the Lord any part of a field that he possesses, your assessment of value will be proportional to the seed needed to sow it, at the rate of fifty silver shekels for every six bushels of barley seed. 17 If he consecrates his field during the Year of Jubilee, the price will stand according to your assessment. 18 But if he consecrates his field after the Jubilee, the priest will calculate the price for him in proportion to the years left until the next Year of Jubilee, so that your assessment will be reduced. 19 If the one who consecrated the field decides to redeem it, he must add a fifth to the assessed value, and the field will transfer back to him. 20 But if he does not redeem the field or if he has sold it to another man, it is no longer redeemable. 21 When the field is released in the Jubilee, it will be holy to the Lord like a field permanently set apart; it becomes the priest’s property.
22 “If a person consecrates to the Lord a field he has purchased that is not part of his inherited landholding, 23 then the priest will calculate for him the amount of the assessment up to the Year of Jubilee, and the person will pay the assessed value on that day as a holy offering to the Lord. 24 In the Year of Jubilee the field will return to the one he bought it from, the original owner. 25 All your assessed values will be measured by the standard sanctuary shekel, twenty gerahs to the shekel.
26 “But no one can consecrate a firstborn of the livestock, whether an animal from the herd or flock, to the Lord, because a firstborn already belongs to the Lord. 27 If it is one of the unclean livestock, it can be ransomed according to your assessment by adding a fifth of its value to it. If it is not redeemed, it can be sold according to your assessment.
28 “Nothing that a man permanently sets apart to the Lord from all he owns, whether a person, an animal, or his inherited landholding, can be sold or redeemed; everything set apart is especially holy to the Lord. 29 No person who has been set apart for destruction is to be ransomed; he must be put to death.
30 “Every tenth of the land’s produce, grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord. 31 If a man decides to redeem any part of this tenth, he must add a fifth to its value. 32 Every tenth animal from the herd or flock, which passes under the shepherd’s rod, will be holy to the Lord. 33 He is not to inspect whether it is good or bad, and he is not to make a substitution for it. But if he does make a substitution, both the animal and its substitute will be holy; they cannot be redeemed.”
34 These are the commands the Lord gave Moses for the Israelites on Mount Sinai.
Numbers 1
THE CENSUS OF ISRAEL
The Lord spoke to Moses in the tent of meeting in the Wilderness of Sinai, on the first day of the second month of the second year after Israel’s departure from the land of Egypt:
2 “Take a census of the entire Israelite community by their clans and their ancestral families, counting the names of every male one by one. 3 You and Aaron are to register those who are twenty years old or more by their military divisions — everyone who can serve in Israel’s army. 4 A man from each tribe is to be with you, each one the head of his ancestral family. 5 These are the names of the men who are to assist you:
Elizur son of Shedeur from Reuben;
6 Shelumiel son of Zurishaddai from Simeon;
7 Nahshon son of Amminadab from Judah;
8 Nethanel son of Zuar from Issachar;
9 Eliab son of Helon from Zebulun;
10 from the sons of Joseph:
Elishama son of Ammihud from Ephraim,
Gamaliel son of Pedahzur from Manasseh;
11 Abidan son of Gideoni from Benjamin;
12 Ahiezer son of Ammishaddai from Dan;
13 Pagiel son of Ochran from Asher;
14 Eliasaph son of Deuel from Gad;
15 Ahira son of Enan from Naphtali.
16 These are the men called from the community; they are leaders of their ancestral tribes, the heads of Israel’s clans.”
17 So Moses and Aaron took these men who had been designated by name, 18 and they assembled the whole community on the first day of the second month. They recorded their ancestry by their clans and their ancestral families, counting one by one the names of those twenty years old or more, 19 just as the Lord commanded Moses. He registered them in the Wilderness of Sinai:
20 The descendants of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel: according to their family records by their clans and their ancestral families, counting one by one the names of every male twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in the army, 21 those registered for the tribe of Reuben numbered 46,500.
22 The descendants of Simeon: according to their family records by their clans and their ancestral families, those registered counting one by one the names of every male twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in the army, 23 those registered for the tribe of Simeon numbered 59,300.
24 The descendants of Gad: according to their family records by their clans and their ancestral families, counting the names of those twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in the army, 25 those registered for the tribe of Gad numbered 45,650.
26 The descendants of Judah: according to their family records by their clans and their ancestral families, counting the names of those twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in the army, 27 those registered for the tribe of Judah numbered 74,600.
28 The descendants of Issachar: according to their family records by their clans and their ancestral families, counting the names of those twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in the army, 29 those registered for the tribe of Issachar numbered 54,400.
30 The descendants of Zebulun: according to their family records by their clans and their ancestral families, counting the names of those twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in the army, 31 those registered for the tribe of Zebulun numbered 57,400.
32 The descendants of Joseph:
The descendants of Ephraim: according to their family records by their clans and their ancestral families, counting the names of those twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in the army, 33 those registered for the tribe of Ephraim numbered 40,500.
34 The descendants of Manasseh: according to their family records by their clans and their ancestral families, counting the names of those twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in the army, 35 those registered for the tribe of Manasseh numbered 32,200.
36 The descendants of Benjamin: according to their family records by their clans and their ancestral families, counting the names of those twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in the army, 37 those registered for the tribe of Benjamin numbered 35,400.
38 The descendants of Dan: according to their family records by their clans and their ancestral families, counting the names of those twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in the army, 39 those registered for the tribe of Dan numbered 62,700.
40 The descendants of Asher: according to their family records by their clans and their ancestral families, counting the names of those twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in the army, 41 those registered for the tribe of Asher numbered 41,500.
42 The descendants of Naphtali: according to their family records by their clans and their ancestral families, counting the names of those twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in the army, 43 those registered for the tribe of Naphtali numbered 53,400.
44 These are the men Moses and Aaron registered, with the assistance of the twelve leaders of Israel; each represented his ancestral family. 45 So all the Israelites twenty years old or more, everyone who could serve in Israel’s army, were registered by their ancestral families. 46 All those registered numbered 603,550.
DUTIES OF THE LEVITES
47 But the Levites were not registered with them by their ancestral tribe. 48 For the Lord had told Moses, 49 “Do not register or take a census of the tribe of Levi with the other Israelites. 50 Appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of the testimony, all its furnishings, and everything in it. They are to transport the tabernacle and all its articles, take care of it, and camp around it. 51 Whenever the tabernacle is to move, the Levites are to take it down, and whenever it is to stop at a campsite, the Levites are to set it up. Any unauthorized person who comes near it is to be put to death.
52 “The Israelites are to camp by their military divisions, each man with his encampment and under his banner. 53 The Levites are to camp around the tabernacle of the testimony and watch over it, so that no wrath will fall on the Israelite community.” 54 The Israelites did everything just as the Lord had commanded Moses.
Mark 2
THE SON OF MAN FORGIVES AND HEALS
When he entered Capernaum again after some days, it was reported that he was at home.
2 So many people gathered together that there was no more room, not even in the doorway, and he was speaking the word to them. 3 They came to him bringing a paralytic, carried by four of them. 4 Since they were not able to bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and after digging through it, they lowered the mat on which the paralytic was lying. 5 Seeing their faith, Jesus told the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
6 But some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts: 7 “Why does he speak like this? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone? ”
8 Right away Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were thinking like this within themselves and said to them,“Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? 9 Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat, and walk’? 10 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” — he told the paralytic — 11 “I tell you: get up, take your mat, and go home.”
12 Immediately he got up, took the mat, and went out in front of everyone. As a result, they were all astounded and gave glory to God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this! ”
THE CALL OF LEVI
13 Jesus went out again beside the sea. The whole crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. 14 Then, passing by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office, and he said to him,“Follow me,” and he got up and followed him.
15 While he was reclining at the table in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who were following him. 16 When the scribes who were Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? ”
17 When Jesus heard this, he told them,“It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
A QUESTION ABOUT FASTING
18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. People came and asked him, “Why do John’s disciples and the Pharisees’ disciples fast, but your disciples do not fast? ”
19 Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the groom is with them, can they? As long as they have the groom with them, they cannot fast. 20 But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. 21 No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new patch pulls away from the old cloth, and a worse tear is made. 22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the skins. No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins.”
LORD OF THE SABBATH
23 On the Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to make their way, picking some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? ”
25 He said to them, “Have you never read what David and those who were with him did when he was in need and hungry — 26 how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest and ate the bread of the Presence — which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests — and also gave some to his companions? ” 27 Then he told them, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. 28 So then, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
— Leviticus 26–27, Numbers 1, Mark 2 (CSB)