Leviticus 26:1-45
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Summary
- What the people can expect: 1) if they obey God, 2) if they disobey God, and 3) if they return to God after disobedience.
Details and/or Comments
- This is spoken to a people who belonged to God – an opportunity the rest of the world did not have. With this great opportunity comes great responsibility.
- Regretfully, history demonstrates that they chose the judgments (curses), instead of the blessings.
Scripture
Leviticus 26:1-45 – Blessings and judgment.
| Scripture Passage | Comments and Links |
| Lev 26:1 " 'You shall make for yourselves no idols, neither shall you raise up an engraved image or a pillar, neither shall you place any figured stone in your land, to bow down to it: for I am Yahweh your God.
Lev 26:2 " 'You shall keep my Sabbaths, and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am Yahweh. |
Connection between idolatry and NOT observing the Sabbaths. This includes the Sabbaths for the LAND (v. 34-35).
God must be worshiped the true way (which God defines), not by imitating the ways of the surrounding wicked nations.
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| Lev 26:3 " 'If you walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; | BENEFITS OF OBEDIENCE: |
| Lev 26:4 then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
Lev 26:5 Your threshing shall reach to the vintage, and the vintage shall reach to the sowing time; and you shall eat your bread to the full, ... |
1) Ecological benefits – rain, harvest, abundance |
| … and dwell in your land safely.
Lev 26:6 " 'I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one will make you afraid; and I will remove evil animals out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land.
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2) Safety – protection from wild animals; peace |
| Lev 26:7 You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.
Lev 26:8 Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand; and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. |
3) Victory over enemies |
| Lev 26:9 " 'I will have respect for you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and will establish my covenant with you. | 4) Offspring
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| Lev 26:10 You shall eat old store long kept, and you shall move out the old because of the new. | 5) Plenty of food |
| Lev 26:11 I will set my tent among you: and my soul won't abhor you.
Lev 26:12 I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you will be my people. Lev 26:13 I am Yahweh your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves; and I have broken the bars of your yoke, and made you go upright. |
6) God dwelling among you |
| Lev 26:14 " 'But if you will not listen to me, and will not do all these commandments;
Lev 26:15 and if you shall reject my statutes, and if your soul abhors my ordinances, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant; |
CURSES OF DISOBEDIENCE |
| Lev 26:16 I also will do this to you: I will appoint terror over you, even consumption and fever, that shall consume the eyes, and make the soul to pine away; and you will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will eat it.
Lev 26:17 I will set my face against you, and you will be struck before your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you; and you will flee when no one pursues you. |
1) Terror, disease, famine, war, defeat
A reversal of the above; all to be intensified if they don't repent (see below). |
| Lev 26:18 " 'If you in spite of these things will not listen to me, then I will chastise you seven times more for your sins. | FOR CONTINUED REBELLION |
| Lev 26:19 I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your sky like iron, and your soil like brass;
Lev 26:20 and your strength will be spent in vain; for your land won't yield its increase, neither will the trees of the land yield their fruit. |
1) Hunger
(not yet full-scale famine) |
| Lev 26:21 " 'If you walk contrary to me, and won't listen to me, then I will bring seven times more plagues on you according to your sins. | 2) Disease/plague |
| Lev 26:22 I will send the wild animals among you, which will rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number; and your roads will become desolate. | 3) Wild animals |
| Lev 26:23 " 'If by these things you won't be reformed to me, but will walk contrary to me;
Lev 26:24 then I will also walk contrary to you; and I will strike you, even I, seven times for your sins. Lev 26:25 I will bring a sword upon you, that will execute the vengeance of the covenant; and you will be gathered together within your cities: and I will send the pestilence among you; and you will be delivered into the hand of the enemy. |
4) War & disease |
| Lev 26:26 When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver your bread again by weight: and you shall eat, and not be satisfied. | 5) Famine |
| Lev 26:27 " 'If you in spite of this won't listen to me, but walk contrary to me;
Lev 26:28 then I will walk contrary to you in wrath; and I also will chastise you seven times for your sins. Lev 26:29 You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters. |
6) Starvation
The result of ongoing famine. |
| Lev 26:30 I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you.
Lev 26:31 I will lay your cities waste, and will bring your sanctuaries to desolation, and I will not take delight in the sweet fragrance of your offerings. Lev 26:32 I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies that dwell therein will be astonished at it. Lev 26:33 I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw out the sword after you: and your land will be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. |
7) Death
9) Exile |
| Lev 26:34 Then the land will enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemies' land. Even then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths.
Lev 26:35 As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, even the rest which it didn't have in your sabbaths, when you lived on it. |
THEN THE LAND WILL GET ITS SABBATH RESTS! |
| Lev 26:36 " 'As for those of you who are left, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies: and the sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight; and they shall flee, as one flees from the sword; and they will fall when no one pursues.
Lev 26:37 They will stumble over one another, as it were before the sword, when no one pursues: and you will have no power to stand before your enemies. Lev 26:38 You will perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies will eat you up. Lev 26:39 Those of you who are left will pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them. |
10) Terror
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| Lev 26:40 " 'If they confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, in their trespass which they trespassed against me, and also that, because they walked contrary to me,
Lev 26:41 I also walked contrary to them, and brought them into the land of their enemies: if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled, and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity; |
IF THEY REPENT AND ACCEPT THEIR PUNISHMENT |
| Lev 26:42 then I will remember my covenant with Jacob; and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham; ... | 1) Promises to the patriarchs will be remembered. |
| ... and I will remember the land.
Lev 26:43 The land also will be left by them, and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them: and they will accept the punishment of their iniquity; because, even because they rejected my ordinances, and their soul abhorred my statutes. |
2) The land will get its sabbath rest, while they are absent from the land. |
| Lev 26:44 Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them; for I am Yahweh their God;
Lev 26:45 but I will for their sake remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am Yahweh.' " |
3) They will not be totally rejected by God, even while they are in the land of their exile.
Yahweh is still their God. The context is one of the people's repentance. The covenant is based on promises made to their ancestors. |
9:7, 24; 10:1-7 • 11:1-47 • Ch.13-14 • 18:1-30 • 19 (selected verses) • 25:1-55 • 26:1-45 |
Scripture Passages
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—— To avoid any copyright issues, all Scripture is either from a public domain translation (such as the World English Bible), my own translation, or a combination of these. ——
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The name "Yahweh," when present in an Old Testament passage, represents the Hebrew name for the God of the Bible.
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Unless otherwise noted, all notes and comments are © by Dennis Hinks.
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