Then you will find joy in your relationship to the Lord, ¹  and I will give you great prosperity, ²  and cause crops to grow on the land I gave to your ancestor Jacob.” ³  Know for certain that the Lord has spoken. ⁴ 

I brought you ¹  into a fertile land so you could enjoy ²  its fruits and its rich bounty. But when you entered my land, you defiled it; ³  you made the land I call my own ⁴  loathsome to me.

The Lord, who is the inheritance ¹  of Jacob’s descendants, ²  is not like them. He is the one who created everything. And the people of Israel are those he claims as his own. ³  He is known as the Lord who rules over all.” ⁴ 

The people I call my own attack me like birds of prey or like hyenas. ¹  But other birds of prey are all around them. ²  Let all the nations gather together like wild beasts. Let them come and destroy these people I call my own. ³ 

Before I restore them ¹  I will punish them in full ²  for their sins and the wrongs they have done. For they have polluted my land with the lifeless statues of their disgusting idols. They have filled the land I have claimed as my own ³  with their detestable idols.” ⁴ 

“People of Babylonia, ¹  you plundered my people. ²  That made you happy and glad. You frolic about like calves in a pasture. ³  Your joyous sounds are like the neighs of a stallion. ⁴ 

The Lord, who is the portion of the descendants of Jacob, is not like them. For he is the one who created everything, including the people of Israel whom he claims as his own. ¹  He is known as the Lord who rules over all. ² 

I will lead people, my people Israel, across you; they will possess you and you will become their inheritance. No longer will you bereave them of their children.

The prince will not take away any of the people’s inheritance by oppressively removing them from their property. He will give his sons an inheritance from his own possessions so that my people will not be scattered, each from his own property.’”

You must divide it equally just as I vowed to give it to your forefathers; ¹  this land will be assigned as your inheritance. ² 

Shepherd your people with your shepherd’s rod, ¹  the flock that belongs to you, ²  the one that lives alone in a thicket, in the midst of a pastureland. ³  Allow them to graze in Bashan and Gilead, ⁴  as they did in the old days. ⁵ 

There is no other God like you! ¹  You ²  forgive sin and pardon ³  the rebellion of those who remain among your people. ⁴  You do not remain angry forever, ⁵  but delight in showing loyal love.

Moreover, ¹  you have not brought us into a land that flows with milk and honey, nor given us an inheritance of fields and vineyards. Do you think you can blind ²  these men? We will not come up.”

But the Levites must perform the service ¹  of the tent of meeting, and they must bear their iniquity. ²  It will be a perpetual ordinance throughout your generations that among the Israelites the Levites ³  have no inheritance. ⁴ 

“You are to speak to the Levites, and you must tell them, ‘When you receive from the Israelites the tithe that I have given you from them as your inheritance, then you are to offer up ¹  from it as a raised offering to the Lord a tenth of the tithe.

Those of them who were numbered were 23,000, all males from a month old and upward, for they were not numbered among the Israelites; no inheritance was given to them among the Israelites.

and if his father has no brothers, then you are to give his inheritance to his relative nearest to him from his family, and he will possess it. This will be for the Israelites a legal requirement, ¹  as the Lord commanded Moses.’”

“Give these instructions ¹  to the Israelites, and tell them: ‘When you enter Canaan, the land that has been assigned to you as an inheritance, ²  the land of Canaan with its borders,

The towns you will give must be from the possession of the Israelites. From the larger tribes you must give more; and from the smaller tribes fewer. Each must contribute some of its own towns to the Levites in proportion to the inheritance allocated to each.

But the Lord became angry with me because of you and vowed that I would never cross the Jordan nor enter the good land that he ¹  is about to give you. ²