Imamat 26:14-16

The Consequences of Disobedience

26:14 “‘If, however, ¹  you do not obey me and keep ²  all these commandments – 26:15 if you reject my statutes and abhor my regulations so that you do not keep ³  all my commandments and you break my covenant – 26:16 I for my part ⁴  will do this to you: I will inflict horror on you, consumption and fever, which diminish eyesight and drain away the vitality of life. ⁵  You will sow your seed in vain because ⁶  your enemies will eat it. ⁷ 

[26:14]  ¹ tn Heb “And if.”

[26:14]  ² tn Heb “and do not do.”

[26:15]  ³ tn Heb “to not do.”

[26:16]  ⁴ tn Or “I also” (see HALOT 76 s.v. אַף 6.b).

[26:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “soul.” These expressions may refer either to the physical effects of consumption and fever as the rendering in the text suggests (e.g., J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452, 454, “diminishing eyesight and loss of appetite”), or perhaps the more psychological effects, “which exhausts the eyes” because of anxious hope “and causes depression” (Heb “causes soul [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh] to pine away”), e.g., B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 185.

[26:16]  ⁶ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have causal force here.

[26:16]  ⁷ tn That is, “your enemies will eat” the produce that grows from the sown seed.