Leviticus 26
Key Scriptures
26: 2-12 “I am the Lord your God. If you obediently follow my laws and commands, I will bring the seasonal rains you need and give you bountiful crops and fruit-filled orchards. …You will have an abundance of food and the peace and security to enjoy it. The whole country will dwell in peace and there will be nothing and no one to fear; you will have no concerns to keep you up at night. …I’ll see to it that wars cease…so you can prosper and grow your families. … I will, in fact, come to live among you and be ever so attentive to you, strolling caringly in your midst. I will be a doting Father to you my beloved children.”
26:14-19 “But if you spurn my laws and commandments, despising my decrees and making a mockery of my covenant, I will let loose all sorts of trials and tribulations among you. You will experience terrifying, debilitating illness and infections that rob you of your eyesight and leave you weak and miserable. When you plant seeds, only your enemies will enjoy the harvest. I will personally oppose you, allowing your oppressors to overpower and have their way with you. You will become so traumatized that you will imagine pursuers even when none are there. …I will use trouble and hardship to put an end to your stubbornness and pride.”
26:21-25 “If you still continue in your obstinate ways and refuse to listen to my voice, I will increase your troubles sevenfold as befits the flagrant nature of your sins. …And if that doesn’t work and you continue to defy me and obstinately refuse to accept my correction, then will I turn in defiance upon you. …War will break out, driving you into seclusion in your fortified towns where starvation and disease will set in, leaving you at the mercy of your vicious attackers.”
26:27-39 “And if despite all this you still insist on defying me, I will defy you and severely punish you for all your sins...and I will come to despise you. …Your towns will become uninhabitable, your sanctuaries empty. …Your land will become so bleak and barren that those I bring in to occupy it will be in utter shock at the sight. And you will be scattered like dust to the four corners of the earth. …Then, with you exiled to distant lands, your own land of Canaan will finally get the Sabbath rest it deserves—the Sabbath rest you denied it in your lawless disobedience. …In foreign lands you will wither away and perish, victims of your captors’ aggression and disregard. Your sins, compounding those of your fathers before you, will carry you away to destruction.”
26:40-44 “However, if my people will but confess their sins along with the sins of their fathers—the treachery and defiance that led to their exile—then when their pride is broken and their punishment complete I will recall the covenant I made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will call to mind the covenant and the land I promised to them and their descendants. …And turning my head from the contemptuous behavior of my people, I will have compassion on them in the lands of their exile and there I will preserve them lest they are wiped from the face of the earth forever. In the end, I will see to it that my covenant is not broken, for I am the Lord.”
Basic Message
God told the Israelites that after reaching Canaan they would receive numerous blessings and benefits, but only if they obeyed the commandments and decrees they had been given. Obedience would mean that the People of Israel would enjoy peace, safety, and prosperity, as well as the knowledge that God was present among them in a personal way.
They were then told that disobedience would result in serious punishment by God. Illness, worry, crop failure, enemy invasion and subjugation could be expected. If the people did not respond favorably to these punishments, God would see to it that things got even worse. Epidemics, famine, and terror would be used to discipline the Israelites for their sins and break their willful defiance. And if even that did not cause a turnaround, God would cause complete destruction of their land and communities and send the people away to exile among their enemies, where most would perish in heartbreak and pain.
But even as exiles in foreign lands, God promised that if the people confessed their sins and turned from their defiant ways, he would respond and spare a remnant to honor his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God promised to remain faithful to the covenant he made with Israel and not abandon his chosen people, despite their faithlessness.
Comments
* God lays out a simple formula: obedience equals blessing, disobedience equals punishment. The choice is up to the Israelites. He will remain faithful to the covenant he made with them; therefore, their entire fate rests in their own hands. We know from Biblical history the unfortunate choices they made. But it is interesting that the utterly dire consequences that they knew accompanied those choices were not enough to dissuade them from making them. Apparently human nature is such that the mere threat of future punishment is not sufficient to steer the heart away from making bad choices in the present. Most parents have experienced the same scenario with their children. Some level of present pain or discomfort seems the only tools to make them (and all of us) really listen. Otherwise, we have selective haring and only tend to listen to what we want to hear. In any case, the Israelites knew full well what to expect from their moral choices; perhaps they just couldn’t believe that a loving God would carry out the stipulated punishments.
* The obedience God was demanding of the Israelites boiled down to honoring a personal commitment to and relationship with him. Obedience for obedience sake was of no interest to God. He was/is not a technocrat. He wanted a heartfelt, personal relationship with the people of Israel, as he does with each of us today. Israelite devotion to God through obedience to his commands would be its own evidence of a heart commitment. As Jesus later put it, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Love makes obedience easy. In fact, it makes obedience a delight. But without love for God as one’s central motivation, law-abiding becomes a chore and a failure waiting to happen. That is why those who possess no love for God tend to mock even the notion of obedience to an ancient code of moral laws. “Who,” they cry, “has the right to tell me how to live my life?” Godless morality boils down to this simple maxim “If it feels right, it is right.” Interestingly enough, that orientation is based on self-serving emotions that no one in their right mind would want everyone else around them to live by.
* God’s passionate involvement with the Israelites meant he would react “emotionally,” speaking anthropomorphically, to their defiance of him. For most of us inculcated with Greek philosophical notions of a distant and detached deity, the idea of God expressing passionate emotions based on human behavior might seem silly. But, again, as any parent who loves a child knows, deep emotional responses are an inevitable part of any wholesome parent-child relationship. When those emotions are lacking, one can only suspect pathology. Platonic love is a myth. Abraham Joshua Heschel described the God of the Bible as “The most moved Mover” (to place him in diametrical opposition to the Aristotilian notion that God was the “Unmoved Mover”). Our culture has adopted the mistaken view that logic should have preeminence over emotions (a male thing). But logic without emotion can be a tyrant. Both are needed to help form a healthy, wholesome personality.
* Despite the pathos that would move God to punish Israel’s willful defiance of him, he would not break his side of the covenant. God’s person is love and integrity incarnate. He remains faithful to himself, and to his Word, no matter what; so he would never give up completely on Israel (or us), regardless the level of rebellion and disobedience they (we) exhibited. God ultimately would depend upon himself to pull his people Israel out of the mire they created for themselves. He would do whatever it took to reverse their treachery and betrayal and give them opportunity to renew their covenant relationship with him. His promise was to be faithful, and his character meant he would always be just that. Over time, God would again and again have to express his unwavering faithfulness in the face of repeated Israelite rejection until, in the person of Jesus, he determined to express it in a way that had permanent ramifications.
Biblical Themes
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 13, 15
