Malcom: Welcome to Immerse: the Daily Bible reading Experience.
Day 100 and 31
if one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and cannot support
himself, support him as you would a foreigner or a temporary resident
and allow him to live with you.
Do not charge interest or make a profit at his expense.
Instead, show your fear of God by letting him live with you as your relative.
Remember, do not charge interest on money.
You lend him or make a profit on food, you sell him.
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you
the land of Canaan and to be your God.
If one of your fellow is Israelites falls into poverty and is forced to sell himself
to you, do not treat him as a slave.
Treat him instead as a hired worker or as a temporary resident who lives with you.
And he will serve you only until the year of Jubilee.
At that time, he and his children will no longer be obligated to you,
and they will return to their clans and go back to the land originally
allotted to their ancestors.
The people of Israel are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt,
so they must never be sold as slaves.
Show your fear of God by not treating them harshly.
However, you may purchase male and female slaves from among the nations around you.
You may also purchase the children of temporary residents who live
among you, including those who have been born in your land.
You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children
as a permanent inheritance.
You may treat them as slaves, but you must never treat your
fellow Israelites this way.
Suppose a foreigner or a temporary resident becomes
rich while living among you.
If any of your fellow Israelites fall into poverty and are forced to sell
themselves to such a foreigner or to a member of his family, they still
retain the right to be bought back even after they have been purchased.
They may be bought back by a brother, an uncle, or a cousin.
In fact, anyone from the extended family may buy them back.
They may also redeem themselves if they have prospered.
They will negotiate the price of their freedom with the person who bought them.
The price will be based on the number of years from the time they were
sold until the next year of Jubilee.
Whatever it would cost to hire a worker for that period of time, if many years
still remain until the Jubilee, they will repay the proper portion of what
they received when they sold themselves.
If only a few years remain until the year of Jubilee, they will repay a
small amount for their redemption.
The foreigner must treat them as workers hired on a yearly basis.
You must not allow a foreigner to treat any of your fellow Israelites harshly.
If any Israelites have not been bought back by the time the year
of Jubilee arrives, they and their children must be set free at that time.
For the people of Israel belong to me.
They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt.
I am the Lord your God.
Do not make idols or set up carved images or sacred pillars or sculptured stones
in your land so you may worship them.
I am the Lord your God.
You must keep my Sabbath days of rest and show reverence for my sanctuary.
I am the Lord.
If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I
will send you the seasonal rains.
The land will then yield its crops and the trees of the
field will produce their fruit.
Your threshing season will overlap with the grape harvest and your grape
harvest will overlap With the season of planting grain, you will eat your fill
and live securely in your own land.
I will give you peace in the land.
And you will be able to sleep with no cause For fear, I will rid
the land of wild animals and keep your enemies out of your land.
In fact, you will chase down your enemies and slaughter them with your swords.
Five of you will chase a hundred and a hundred of you will chase 10,000.
All your enemies will fall beneath your sword.
I will look favorably upon you, making you fertile and multiplying your people.
And I will fulfill my covenant with you.
You will have such a surplus of crops that you will need to clear out the old
grain to make room for the new harvest.
I will live among you and I will not despise you.
I will walk among you.
I will be your God and you will be my people.
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so you
would no longer be their slaves.
I broke the yoke of slavery from your neck so you can walk with your heads held high.
However, if you do not listen to me or obey all these commands, and if
you break my covenant by rejecting my decrees, treating my regulations
with contempt, and refusing to obey my commands, I will punish you.
I will bring sudden terrors upon you.
Wasting diseases and burning fevers that will cause your eyes
to fail and your life to eeb away.
You will plant your crops in vain because your enemies will eat them.
I will turn against you and you will be defeated by your enemies.
Those who hate you will rule over you and you will run even
when no one is chasing you.
And if in spite of all this, you still disobey me.
I will punish you seven times over for your sins.
I will break your proud spirit by making the skies as unyielding, as
iron and the earth as hard as bronze.
All your work will be for nothing, for your land will yield no crops,
and your trees will bear no fruit.
If even then, you remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey me.
I will inflict disaster on you seven times over for your sins.
I will send wild animals that will rob you of your children
and destroy your livestock.
Your numbers will dwindle and your roads will be deserted.
And if you fail to learn the lesson and continue your hostility toward me, then
I myself will be hostile toward you.
I will personally strike you with calamity seven times over for your sins.
I will send armies against you to carry out the curse of
the covenant you have broken.
When you run to your towns for safety, I will send a plague to
destroy you there and you will be handed over to your enemies.
I will destroy your food supply so that 10 women will need only one oven
to bake bread for their families.
They will ration your food by weight.
And though you have food to eat, you will not be satisfied.
If in spite of all this you still refuse to listen and still remain
hostile toward me, then I will give full vent to my hostility.
I myself will punish you seven times over for your sins.
Then you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters.
I will destroy your pagan shrines and knock down your places of worship.
I will leave your lifeless corpses piled on top of your lifeless
idols, and I will despise you.
I will make your city's desolate and destroy your places of pagan worship.
I will take no pleasure in your offerings.
That should be a pleasing aroma to me.
Yes.
I myself will devastate your land and your enemies who come to occupy.
It will be appalled at what they see.
I will scatter you among the nations and bring out my sword against you.
Your land will become desolate and your cities will lie in ruins.
Then at last, the land will enjoy its neglected Sabbath
years as it lies desolate.
While you are in exile in the land of your enemies, then the land will finally
rest and enjoy the sabbaths it missed.
As long as the land lies in ruins, it will enjoy the rest.
You never allowed it to take every seventh year while you lived in it.
And for those of you who survive, I will demoralize you
in the land of your enemies.
You will live in such fear that the sound of a leaf driven by
the wind will send you fleeing.
You will run as though fleeing from a sword and you will fall
even when no one pursues you.
Though no one is chasing you, you will stumble over each other
as though fleeing from a sword.
You will have no power to stand up against your enemies.
You will die among the foreign nations and be devoured in the land of your enemies.
Those of you who survive will waste away in your enemy's lands because of their
sins and the sins of their ancestors.
But at last, my people will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors for
betraying me and being hostile toward me.
When I have turned their hostility back on them and brought them to the
land of their enemies, then at last, their stubborn hearts will be humbled
and they will pay for their sins.
Then I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my Covenant with
Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.
For the land must be abandoned to enjoy its years of Sabbath
rest as it lies deserted.
At last, the people will pay for their sins for they have continually rejected
my regulations and despised my decrees.
But de, despite all this, I will not utterly reject or despise them while they
are in exile in the land of their enemies.
I will not cancel my covenant with them by wiping them out for I am
the Lord their God for their sakes.
I will remember my ancient covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of
the land of Egypt in the sight of all the nations that I might be their God.
I am the Lord.
These are the decrees, regulations and instructions that the Lord
gave through Moses on Mount Sinai as evidence of the relationship
between himself and the Israelites.
The Lord said to Moses, give the following instructions to the people
of Israel, if anyone makes a special vow to dedicate someone to the Lord
by paying the value of that person.
Here is the scale of values to be used.
A man between the ages of 20 and 60 is valued at 50 shekels of silver
as measured by the sanctuary shekel.
A woman of that age is valued at 30 shekels of silver.
A boy between the ages of five and 20 is valued at 20 shekels of silver.
A girl of that age is valued at 10.
Shekels of silver.
A boy between the ages of one month and five years is valued
at five shekels of silver.
A girl of that age is valued at three shekels of silver.
A man older than 60 is valued at 15 shekels of silver.
A woman of that age is valued at 10 shekels of silver.
If you desire to make such a vow but cannot afford to pay the required
amount, take the person to the priest.
He will determine the amount for you to pay based on what you can afford.
If your vow involves giving an animal that is acceptable as an
offering to the Lord, any gift to the Lord will be considered holy.
You may not exchange or substitute it for another animal, neither
a good animal for a bad one, nor a bad animal for a good one.
But if you do exchange one animal for another, then both the original animal and
its substitute will be considered holy.
If your vow involves an unclean animal, One that is not acceptable
as an offering to the Lord, then you must bring the animal to the priest.
He will assess its value and his assessment will be
final, whether high or low.
If you want to buy back the animal, you must pay the value
set by the priest plus 20%.
If someone dedicates a house to the Lord, the priest will come to assess its value.
The priest's assessment will be final, whether high or low.
If the person who dedicated the house wants to buy it back, he must pay
the value set by the priest plus 20%.
Then the house will again be his.
If someone dedicates to the Lord a piece of his family property, its
value will be assessed according to the amount of seed required to plant it.
50.
She shekels of silver for a field planted with five bushels of barley seed.
If the field is dedicated to the Lord in the year of Jubilee, then
the entire assessment will apply.
But if the field is dedicated after the year of Jubilee, the priest
will assess the land's value in proportion to the number of years
left until the next year of Jubilee.
It's assessed value is reduced each year.
If the person who dedicated the field wants to buy it back, he must pay
the value set by the priest plus 20%.
Then the field will again be legally his, but if he does not want to buy it
back and it is sold to someone else, the field can no longer be bought back.
When the field is released in the year of Jubilee, it will be holy.
A field specially set apart for the Lord.
It will become the property of the priests.
If someone dedicates to the Lord a field he has purchased, but which
is not part of his family property.
The priest will assess its value based on the number of years left
until the next year of Jubilee.
On that day, he must give the assessed value of the land as
a sacred donation to the Lord.
In the year of Jubilee, the field must be returned to the person from
whom he purchased it, the one who inherited it as family property.
All the payments must be measured by the weight of the sanctuary
shekel, which equals 20.
Gus.
You may not dedicate a firstborn animal to the Lord for the firstborn of your cattle,
sheep, and goats already belong to him.
However, you may buy back the firstborn of a ceremonially unclean
animal by paying the priest's assessment of its worth plus 20%.
If you do not buy it back, the priest will sell it at its assessed value.
However, anything specially set apart for the Lord.
Whether a person, an animal, or family property must
never be sold or bought back.
Anything devoted in this way has been set apart as holy and it belongs to the Lord.
No person specially set apart for destruction may be bought back.
Such a person must be put to death one 10th of the produce of the land,
whether grain from the fields or fruit from the trees belongs to the Lord.
And must be set apart to him as holy.
If you want to buy back the Lord's 10th of the grain or fruit, you
must pay its value plus 20%.
Count off every 10th animal from your herds and flocks and set
them apart for the Lord as holy.
You may not pick and choose between good and bad animals, and you may
not substitute one for another.
But if you do exchange one animal for another, then both the original animal
and its substitute will be considered holy and cannot be bought back.
These are the commands that the Lord gave through Moses on
Mount Sinai for the Israelites.
This concludes today's Immer reading experience.
Thank you for joining us.