Scriptural Readings for the Fourth of July (Independence Day)

Kohen (Leviticus 25:8-13)

And you will count yourself seven weeks of years, seven years seven times, and these will be for you days of seven weeks of years, forty-nine years. And you will sound aloud the call of the shofar on the seventh month, on the tenth of the month, on the Day of Atonement you will sound aloud the shofar in all your lands. And you will sanctify the year of the fiftieth year, and you will declare liberty in the land to all its inhabitants; a jubilee it will be for you, and each person will return to his inheritance and to his family return. It is a jubilee, the year of the fiftieth year will be for you, you will not plant and you will not reap the growth and you will not harvest the untrimmed. For it is a jubilee, it will be sacred for you, from the field you will eat its fruit. In the year of this jubilee each person will return to his inheritance.

Levi (Leviticus 25:14-19)

And when you sell sales to your fellow, or purchasing from your fellow, one may not wrong another. Just for the number of years since the jubilee you will buy from your fellow, and he will sell you only for the number of years of crops. So that the more years, the more you pay, and so that the fewer years, the less you pay, for a number of crops he is selling you. You will not wrong one another, but be in awe of your God, for I am the CAUSE your God. And you will do My laws and guard My rules and do them, and thus live on the land in safety.

The scroll is rolled.

Maftir (Leviticus 26:42-48)

And I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham I will remember, and I will remember the land. [Quietly] And the land will be lost from them, paying off its Sabbaths by being desolate of them, and they will pay off their iniquity, obviously because they rejected my rules and their souls spurned my laws. [Regular] And also, even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them and I will not spurn them or destroy them or annul My covenant with them, for I the CAUSE am their God. And I will remember for their sake the ancient covenant, that I brought them from the land of Egypt in the eyes of all the nations to be for them God; I am the CAUSE. These are the laws and the rules and the teachings that the CAUSE has given between the Divine and the children of Israel on Mt. Sinai by the hand of Moses.

Haftarah (Isaiah 14:3-27)

And it will be, on the day that the CAUSE grants you rest from your pain and turmoil, and from the hard labor that you labored under, that you will carry up this song to mock the king of Babylon, and say, How has the tyrant ceased, the oppression stopped! The CAUSE broke the staff of the wicked, the rod of overlords. It struck peoples in rage, strikes without cease, treading down nations in anger, pursuit without relent. Now rest and peace is all the earth, breaking out in joyous song! Even the cypresses celebrate against you, the Lebanon cedars, “Now that you have laid down, none will come up to cut us over!” Tartarus below quaked at you, to welcome your entrance, awakening for you the dead-spirits of all the chiefs of earth, raising from their seats all the kings of nations. All speak out and say to you, “So you have been stricken as have we; like us you have become! Brought down to Tartarus is your pride, the noise of your lutes; worms are a bed below you, to cover you maggots!” How have you fallen from the sky, o Venus, Morning Star; brought down to earth, vanquisher of nations! You had thought to yourself, “I will climb to the skies, above the Divine stars I will place my throne, I will sit in the mount of assembly on highest Olympus! I will climb on the back of a cloud, I will be like the Highest! Instead, to Tartarus you were brought down, to the lowest Pit. They see you, they stare, they observe you: “Is this the man who shook the earth, quaked the nations? Who made the world like wilderness, its towns wrecked, its prisoners never let home?” All the kings of all nations were laid in honor in their final home. But you were thrown from your grave, like an unwanted twig; in a dead man’s clothes gashed by the sword, going down to the stones of the Pit like a trampled corpse. You will not be buried alongside them, for your land you destroyed, your people you killed Forever more your evil seed will be unnamed! Put up for his sons a slaughterhouse, for the sin of their father; may they not arise to take the earth! Then the face of the land will be full of towns. And I will rise against them, announces the CAUSE of Multitudes, and will cut down from Babylon remembrance and remnant, kith and kin, announces the CAUSE. And I will make it a possession of the bandicoot-rat, of water-pools; and I will broom it with the broom of destruction, announces the CAUSE of Multitudes.

The CAUSE of Multitudes has vowed this: Thus it will be: If I thought it, thus it is, and if I planned it, thus it comes to pass. To break Assyria in My land, on My mountain to crush him. And his yoke will drop from them, and his burden from their shoulders will drop. That is the plan planned for all the earth, that is the outstretched arm over all the nations. For the CAUSE of Multitudes has planned, who can foil? The Outstretched Arm is God’s, so who can turn it away?