Discovery BoxLeviticus 26:32-41 
Context26:32 I myself will make the land desolate and your enemies who live in it will be appalled. 26:33 I will scatter you among the nations and unsheathe the sword 1 after you, so your land will become desolate and your cities will become a waste.
26:34 “‘Then the land will make up for 2 its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land will rest and make up its Sabbaths. 26:35 All the days of the desolation it will have the rest it did not have 3 on your Sabbaths when you lived on it.
26:36 “‘As for 4 the ones who remain among you, I will bring despair into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a blowing leaf will pursue them, and they will flee as one who flees the sword and fall down even though there is no pursuer. 26:37 They will stumble over each other as those who flee before a sword, though 5 there is no pursuer, and there will be no one to take a stand 6 for you before your enemies. 26:38 You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will consume you.
26:39 “‘As for the ones who remain among you, they will rot away because of 7 their iniquity in the lands of your enemies, and they will also rot away because of their ancestors’ 8 iniquities which are with them. 26:40 However, when 9 they confess their iniquity and their ancestors’ iniquity which they committed by trespassing against me, 10 by which they also walked 11 in hostility against me 12 26:41 (and I myself will walk in hostility against them and bring them into the land of their enemies), and 13 then their uncircumcised hearts become humbled and they make up for 14 their iniquity,
1 tn Heb “and I will empty sword” (see HALOT 1228 s.v. ריק 3).
2 tn There are two Hebrew roots רָצָה (ratsah), one meaning “to be pleased with; to take pleasure” (HALOT 1280-81 s.v. רצה; cf. “enjoy” in NASB, NIV, NRSV, and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452), and the other meaning “to restore” (HALOT 1281-82 s.v. II רצה; cf. NAB “retrieve” and B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 189).
3 tn Heb “it shall rest which it did not rest.”
4 tn Heb “And.”
5 tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) is used in a concessive sense here.
6 tn The term rendered “to stand up” is a noun, not an infinitive. It occurs only here and appears to designate someone who would take a powerful stand for them against their enemies.
7 tn Heb “in” (so KJV, ASV; also later in this verse).
8 tn Heb “fathers’” (also in the following verse).
9 tn Heb “And.” Many English versions take this to be a conditional clause (“if…”) though there is no conditional particle (see, e.g., NASB, NIV, NRSV; but see the very different rendering in B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 190). The temporal translation offered here (“when”) takes into account the particle אָז (’az, “then”), which occurs twice in v. 41. The obvious contextual contrast between vv. 39 and 40 is expressed by “however” in the translation.
10 tn Heb “in their trespassing which they trespassed in me.” See the note on Lev 5:15, although the term is used in a more technical sense there in relation to the “guilt offering.”
11 tn Heb “and also which they walked.”
12 tn Heb “with me.”
13 tn Heb “or then,” although the LXX has “then” and the Syriac “and then.”
14 tn Heb “and then they make up for.” On the verb “make up for” see the note on v. 34 above.
