“If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands,
Parallel translations
- WEB “‘If you walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them;
- KJV If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them;
- BSB If you follow My statutes and carefully keep My commandments,
- NKJV ‘If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them,
- NASB If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out,
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God promises blessing if Israel walks in His statutes and obeys His commandments. Covenant faithfulness opens the way to His favor.
Overview
This begins the section of covenant blessings, conditioned on obedience. To 'walk in' God's statutes means a whole life ordered by His commands, not mere outward compliance. While the Mosaic covenant tied blessing to obedience, the gospel reveals that such obedience flows from grace, and Christ fulfills the law's righteous demands for His people.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Isa 1:19If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;
- Deut 11:13–15It shall happen, if you shall listen diligently to my commandments which I command you today, to love Yahweh your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,
- Deut 28:1–14It shall happen, if you shall listen diligently to Yahweh your God’s voice, to observe to do all his commandments which I command you today, that Yahweh your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.
- Isa 48:18–19Oh that you had listened to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.
- Ps 81:12–16So I let them go after the stubbornness of their hearts, that they might walk in their own counsels.
- Matt 7:24–25“Everyone therefore who hears these words of mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man, who built his house on a rock.
- Judg 2:1–2Yahweh’s angel came up from Gilgal to Bochim. He said, “I brought you out of Egypt, and have brought you to the land which I swore to give your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you.
- Rom 2:7–10to those who by perseverance in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and incorruptibility, eternal life;
- Deut 7:12It shall happen, because you listen to these ordinances, and keep and do them, that Yahweh your God will keep with you the covenant and the loving kindness which he swore to your fathers.
- Lev 18:4–5You shall do my ordinances, and you shall keep my statutes, and walk in them: I am Yahweh your God.
- Josh 23:14–15“Behold, today I am going the way of all the earth. You know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one thing has failed of all the good things which Yahweh your God spoke concerning you. All have happened to you. Not one thing has failed of it.
- Rev 22:14Blessed are those who do his commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
Sermons and teaching on this passage from across YouTube.
Clear, readable, conservative exposition — the best free place to start on any passage.
Matthew Henry, Barnes, Gill, the Pulpit Commentary, Ellicott, Cambridge, and more — stacked on one page for this exact verse.
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Every sacrifice, every priest, and every day of atonement points beyond itself to the one perfect offering and the great High Priest who, by his own blood, makes the unclean holy once for all.
How Leviticus 26:3 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.