Old/New Testament
Chapter 26[a]
Rewards of Obedience. 1 “Do not make idols or carved images. Do not set up stone images in your land before which you bow down. I am the Lord, your God. 2 Observe my Sabbaths and stand in awe before my sanctuary. I am the Lord. 3 Follow my statutes and keep my commandments and obey them.[b] 4 Then I will give you rain in its proper season and the yield of the land shall increase and the trees of the field shall bear their fruit. 5 Your threshing shall continue even until your grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall continue until the time for planting. You shall eat your fill of your bread, and dwell securely in your land. 6 I will grant peace in the land. You shall lie down, fearing nothing. I will rid the land of savage beasts, and the sword will not pass through your land. 7 You shall pursue your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. 8 Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you ten thousand, and you shall put them to flight. Your enemies shall fall by the sword before you. 9 I will look with favor upon you, and make you fruitful, and cause you to multiply, and establish my covenant with you. 10 You shall still be eating the old harvest and shall have to clean out the old because of the new. 11 I will establish my tabernacle among you, and my soul will not reject you. 12 [c]I will walk in your midst and I will be your God and you will be my people. 13 I am the Lord, your God, who brought you forth from the land of Egypt so that you would no longer be their slaves. I have broken the bonds of your yoke and brought you out with your heads held high.
14 Consequences of Disobedience.“But if you do not listen to me and do not keep these commandments 15 and if you despise my statutes and hate my ordinances, failing to observe my commandments and breaking my covenant, 16 then I will do this to you: I will visit terror upon you, and consumption and fever that will destroy your eyesight and break your hearts. You shall plant your seeds in vain, and your enemies shall eat it. 17 I will set my face against you so that you are slain by your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee even though no one is pursuing you.
18 “Then, if you still do not obey me, I will punish you seven times as much for your sins. 19 I shall break down your stubborn pride. I shall make your skies like iron and your earth like brass. 20 Your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land will not yield its produce and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.
21 “If you continue to be hostile to me and will not obey me, I will bring plagues upon you, seven times greater than your sins. 22 I will also send wild animals into your midst. They shall carry off your children and cut down your cattle. They shall cause your numbers to decrease and your highways shall become desolate. 23 If you do not accept my correction through these things and you walk in opposition to me, 24 then I will also walk in opposition to you and I will punish you seven times more than your sins. 25 I will bring a sword upon you that will execute vengeance for my covenant. When you are gathered together in your cities, I will send a plague upon you and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. 26 When I have cut off your supply of bread, then ten women shall bake bread in the same oven. They shall deliver your measure of bread. You shall eat it, but not be satisfied.
27 “But if after all of this you still will not obey me but walk in opposition to me, 28 then I will walk in opposition to you in my fury. I will punish you seven times more than your sins. 29 You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places and cut down your idols. I will cast your bodies upon the remains of your idols, and I will loathe you. 31 I will lay your cities waste and bring desolation upon your sanctuaries. I will not delight in your fragrant aromas. 32 I will lay waste the land, and your enemies will dwell there. 33 I will scatter you among the pagans and pull out my sword against you. Your land shall be desolate and your cities shall be laid waste. 34 The land shall be pleased with its Sabbaths while it is desolate and you are dwelling in the land of your enemies. The land shall then rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. 35 It shall rest as long as it lies desolate, because it did not rest during your Sabbaths when you dwelt in it.
36 “As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so timid in the land of their enemies that the sound of a blowing leaf will put them to flight. They shall flee as though fleeing from a sword. They shall fall down when no one is chasing them. 37 They shall fall all over one another as if before a sword, even though no one is chasing them. You shall not have the strength to stand before your enemies. 38 You shall die among the pagans, the land of your enemies will devour you.
39 “Those of you who are left will pine away in their iniquity in the land of their enemies, and also because of the iniquity of their fathers. They shall pine away with them. 40 [d]If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, the trespasses that they committed against me, and that they acted in opposition to me, 41 so that I walked in opposition to them, and brought them into the land of their enemies, if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled and they accept the punishment for their sins, 42 then I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham. These I will remember, and I will remember the land. 43 For the land will have been abandoned by them, and will enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate when they are no longer there. They shall accept the punishment for their iniquity, for they despised my ordinances and their souls loathed my statutes. 44 Yet in spite of all of that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I loathe them, utterly destroying them, and thus breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord, their God. 45 For their sake I will remember the covenant I made with their ancestors whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the pagans so that I might be their God. I am the Lord.”
46 These are the statutes and the ordinances and the laws that the Lord established through Moses between himself and the children of Israel on Mount Sinai.
Redemptive Offerings[e]
Chapter 27
Offerings and Dedications.[f] 1 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the children of Israel saying to them: When a person makes a special vow to dedicate people to the Lord by giving the equivalent sum of money, 3 you shall establish the value of a male from twenty to sixty years old as being fifty shekels of silver, according to the measure of the sanctuary,[g] 4 and if it is a woman, then the value is thirty shekels. 5 If the person is from five years old to twenty years old, then the estimated value of the person is twenty shekels for a male and ten shekels for a female. 6 If the person be from one month old to five years old, then the estimation of the value of a male is five shekels and the estimation of the value of a female is three shekels. 7 If a person is sixty years old or older, the estimation of the value of a male is fifteen shekels and the estimation of the value of a female is ten shekels. 8 But if anyone is too poor to pay the estimated value, then he will present himself before the priest and the priest will make an estimation based on the ability of the person vowing to pay. The priest will establish the value.
9 “If he brings an animal as an offering to the Lord, then everything that he has given to the Lord will be holy. 10 He should not exchange it, a good one for a bad one or a bad one for a good one. If he should substitute one animal for another, then both the original and the substitution become holy. 11 If it is an unclean animal, one that a person cannot offer to the Lord, then he will bring the animal before the priest 12 and the priest will determine whether it is good or bad and the priest will give an estimation of its value. This is how it will be established. 13 If the owner wishes to redeem it, he shall add a fifth to your estimation of its value.
14 “If a man sets apart his house as something holy to the Lord, the priest shall make an estimation of it, whether it is good or bad, and the priest shall establish its value. This is how it shall be established. 15 If he desires to redeem the house that he has set apart, he shall add a fifth to its estimated value, and then it shall be his. 16 If a man sets apart a piece of his property to the Lord, then your estimation of its value shall be based on the seed that it takes to sow it, a homer[h] of barley being valued at fifty shekels of silver. 17 If he sets the field apart at the beginning of the Jubilee Year, this shall be your evaluation. 18 But if he sets apart the field after the Jubilee Year, the priest shall determine the value according to the number of years remaining until the Jubilee Year, and thus the evaluation shall be adjusted. 19 If he wishes to redeem the field that he had set apart, then he shall add a fifth to your evaluation and it shall be his. 20 But if he does not redeem the field, or if he sold the field to another person, then it is not to be redeemed anymore, 21 but when the field is released in the Jubilee Year, it shall be holy to the Lord. It will be treated like a priest’s field, and it shall be their property.
22 “If a man sets apart a field that he bought, a field that is not his family’s inheritance, dedicating it[i] to the Lord, 23 then the priest shall make an estimation of its value from then until the Jubilee Year, and the man shall pay the estimation that day as something holy to the Lord. 24 In the Jubilee Year the field shall be returned to the one from whom it was bought, the one whose land it was.
25 “Every estimation is determined according to the shekel of the sanctuary, twenty gerahs[j] to the shekel.
26 Offerings Not Redeemable.[k]“No one shall dedicate the firstborn of an animal, for the firstborn already belongs to the Lord, whether it be an ox or a sheep, it belongs to the Lord. 27 If it is an unclean animal, then he shall redeem it based on its evaluation and add a fifth to its value. If it is not redeemed, then it should be sold for its established value.
28 “But nothing that a person owns and is put under the ban for the Lord, be it man or animal or ancestral property, can be sold or redeemed. Everything set aside is most holy to the Lord. 29 No person under the ban can be redeemed. He must be put to death.
30 “Everything that belongs to the tithe of the land, be it the seed of the land or the fruit of the tree, belongs to the Lord. It is holy to the Lord. 31 If someone wants to redeem his tithes, he shall add one-fifth to its value. 32 As to the tithes of the herd or the flock, of everything passing under the herdsman’s staff, the tenth to pass shall be holy to the Lord. 33 He shall not investigate to see if it is good or bad, nor shall he exchange it for another. If he exchanges it, then the first animal and its substitute shall both be holy and are not to be redeemed.” 34 These are the commandments that the Lord gave to Moses for the children of Israel on Mount Sinai.
First Oppositions[a]
Chapter 2
Jesus Heals a Paralyzed Man. 1 When Jesus returned some days later to Capernaum, the word quickly spread that he was at home. 2 Such large multitudes gathered there that no longer was any space available, even in front of the door, and he was preaching the word to them.
3 Some people arrived, bringing to him a man who was paralyzed, carried by four men. 4 Since they were unable to bring him near Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above him and then lowered the bed on which the paralyzed man was lying.
5 On perceiving their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” 6 Now some scribes[b] were sitting there, thinking to themselves: 7 “How can this man say such things? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
8 Jesus was able immediately to discern in his spirit what they were thinking, and he asked, “Why do you entertain such thoughts in your hearts? 9 Which is easier: to say to the paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say: ‘Stand up, take your mat, and walk’? 10 But that you may come to realize that the Son of Man[c] has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralyzed man— 11 “I say to you, stand up, take your bed, and go to your home.” 12 The man stood up, immediately picked up his bed, and went off in full view of all of them. The onlookers were all astonished and they glorified God, saying, “We have never before witnessed anything like this.”
13 Jesus Calls Levi (Matthew). Once again Jesus went out to the shore of the lake,[d] and as a large crowd came to him, he taught them. 14 As he was walking along, he saw Levi[e] the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. Jesus said to him, “Follow me,” and he got up and followed him.
15 Jesus Eats with Sinners. When he was sitting at dinner in his[f] house, many tax collectors and sinners were seated with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed Jesus. 16 Some scribes who were Pharisees noticed that Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors, and they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 When Jesus overheard this remark, he said, “It is not the healthy who need a physician, but rather those who are sick. I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
18 A Time of Joy and Grace.[g] John’s disciples and the Pharisees were observing a fast. Some people came to Jesus and asked, “Why do John’s disciples and those of the Pharisees fast but your disciples do not do so?” 19 Jesus answered, “How can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is still with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. 20 But the time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then on that day they will fast.[h]
21 “No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear results. 22 Nor does anyone pour new wine[i] into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and then the wine and the skins are both lost. Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.”
23 Picking Grain on the Sabbath.[j] One day, as Jesus was passing through a field of grain on the Sabbath, his disciples began to pick some heads of grain as they walked along. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Behold, why are your disciples doing what is forbidden on the Sabbath?”
25 He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? 26 He entered the house of God when Abiathar[k] was high priest and ate the sacred bread that only the priests were permitted to eat, and he shared it with his companions.” 27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.[l] 28 That is why the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Copyright © 2019 by Catholic Book Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.