"14 But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments; 15 And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments, but that ye break my covenant: 16 I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. 17 And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you. 18 And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. 19 And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass: 20 And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits. 21 And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins. 22 I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate. 23 And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me; 24 Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins. 25 And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. 26 And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied. 27 And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me; 28 Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. 29 And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat. 30 And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. 31 And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours. 32 And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. 33 And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. 34 Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies’ land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. 35 As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it. 36 And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth. 37 And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies. 38 And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. 39 And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them." — Leviticus 26:14-39 KJV.
Law is necessary to government. But we can no more have law without penalty than we can have a coin without a reverse side. Accountability implies free agents, with intelligence sufficient to apprehend the consequences of actions in the form of rewards and punishments distinctly announced beforehand. The seasonableness and the clearness of this announcement enhance the guiltiness of transgression and intensify the punishment. This graphic portrayal of the issues of disobedience leaves rebellious Israel without excuse.
“This graduated advance of the judgments of God is so depicted in the following passage that four times in succession new and multiplied punishments are announced: 1) Utter barrenness in their land, that is to say, one heavier punishment, verses 18-20; 2) the extermination of their cattle by beasts of prey, and childlessness — two punishments, verses 21-22; 3) war, plague, and famine — three punishments, verses 23-26; 4) the destruction of all idolatrous abominations, the overthrow of their towns and holy places, the devastation of the land, and the dispersion of the people among the heathen — four punishments — which would bring the Israelites to the verge of destruction, verses 27-33. These divine threats embrace the whole of Israel’s future.” — Keil and Delitzsch.
14. Not hearken… not do — A refusal to give undivided attention and earnest heed to the law of God by the proper use of our perceptive and reflective powers is as culpable as wilful disobedience, inasmuch as it implies a disregard of the divine authority. The most solemn and frequent injunction of Christ was this, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” It is worthy of remark that the process of apostasy begins with sins of omission, and in the next verse ends with sins of commission.
15. Despise my statutes — In all deliberate rejection of God’s law, there is the offensive element of pride lifting itself above the divine wisdom and majesty. All wilful sin contemns Jehovah. Herein is the very essence of its turpitude. The following judgments are not for single transgressions, but for an inward contempt of all the divine commandments, breaking out in presumptuous and incorrigible rebellion against Jehovah, who had openly set his name in Israel. Break my covenant — The successive clauses of this verse are in the form of a climax, rising step by step till the culminating sin is reached — a violation of that solemn compact whose seal was upon the person of every male, and which was pregnant with blessings, to the seed of Abraham. This would be national suicide. “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”
16. Appoint over you — This is the very verb used to indicate that Potiphar made Joseph overseer in his house. Genesis 39:5. They who throw off allegiance to Jehovah will fall under the dominion of the ministers of his vengeance who, as the satraps of the rejected king, shall rule these rebels with the utmost rigour till they sue for pardon and peace. Terror — Appalling fear, ever present by day and by night — a state of the utmost insecurity and alarm, of which the subjects of a stable and strong government in time of peace have no conception. Consumption — Emaciation naturally results from terror. Many a culprit, carrying a guilty secret in his bosom, has been wasted to a skeleton. The burning ague — Rather, the burning of fever. See R.V. When a tide of fire courses through the veins, the helpless victim realizes that he is under the rod of Omnipotence. Consume the eyes — The eye is the organ of grief. When sunken, it indicates extreme and long-continued suffering. Sorrow of heart — Causing the soul to grieve. The entire being, soul and body, shall be the vehicle of anguish. Ye shall sow… in vain — The insecurity of the people in some portions of the Holy Land, especially east of the Jordan, even now destroys the motive to activity in agriculture and turns the fertile plains into a desert.
17. I will set my face — By direct interposition, in addition to those ministers of his wrath, will Jehovah vindicate his broken covenant and punish his refractory people. Ye shall flee — So great is the contrast in war between those obedient to God and the disobedient, that instead of one chasing a thousand, a thousand godless Hebrews shall flee when not even one enemy pursues.
18. Seven times more — Seven typifies perfection. The chastisement will be complete. The resources of Jehovah are infinite, and he has the cycles of eternity for their development. For your sins — National sins are punished in this world, because nations do not exist after death. Individual sinners are reserved unto the day of judgment to be punished.
19, 20. Pride of… power — The conceit of national puissance, which is so unlike the spirit of dependence and humility, must be eradicated by painful methods. Heaven as iron — The rain promised to the obedient shall be withheld from the disobedient. See verse 4, note. Earth as brass — Through lack of water the fields will be as void of herbage as if metallic. They shall yield no increase under the divine curse, in amazing contrast to the plethoric garners promised in verses 4 and 5. In respect to spiritual good, the same contrast exists now between those who distrust and those who fully believe the promise of the Father respecting the gift of the Holy Ghost.
21. Walk contrary unto me — Literally, go into encounter with me. Sin against the divine law is collision with the divine Person. Hence pantheism, in teaching the impersonality of God, destroys the sense of the guilt of sin. Plagues — Smitings. Not merely natural consequences of disobedience, but positive inflictions. The more aggravated the sin, the more severe the chastisement, though even then not equal to the demerit of their transgression. According to your sins — All this is spoken of temporal inflictions, else the nation had perished. See Psalm 130:3.
22. Wild beasts — As the promise includes the extinction of destructive beasts out of the land, so the threatening includes their multiplication and their importation from surrounding countries, as the following words imply. I will send — Before the invention of fire arms wild beasts frequently became a great scourge by their enormous increase. Rob you of your children — So frequently are children destroyed by wild beasts in India that the English government in their mortality reports in the census tables have a column for the enumeration of the “wolf-eaten” children. A disturbance of “the balance of the power,” by a diminution of men and an increase of wolves, would become a calamity of gigantic dimensions. Your highways shall be desolate — There can be no more impressive description of national decay than the disuse and desolation of the thoroughfares through which commerce and social intercourse have ceased to move their busy feet, by reason of the decrease of population, the decline of business, the perils of travel, (see Judges 5:6, note,) and the absence of worshippers going up to the place of worship. Lamentations 1:4.
23. If ye will not be reformed — The natural evil, or suffering, entailed in this world by moral evil, or sin, is corrective and not strictly penal. In this life it is of the nature of a purgative in its design; in the life to come it is a punishment, not for the amendment of the convict but for the conservation of the moral order of the universe, and hence a blessing when thus broadly viewed.
25. Avenge the quarrel of my covenant — Literally, avenging the covenant of vengeance. The R.V., “Execute the vengeance of the covenant.” This was a punishment inflicted for breaking the covenant, and it was graduated, in severity, to the richness of covenant blessings forfeited by apostasy. “It may be reverently said that God does not deal carelessly with his own covenants. He does not throw them away, and take no further heed of their operation. In the sense of looking after his word and observing its issues he may be described in Old Testament language as a ‘jealous God.’” — Joseph Parker. The Abrahamic covenant is here personified as a friend of God claiming vindication against the neglect and abuse of godless men. Sin changes the covenant of grace into the covenant of vengeance, and the love of the Saviour into “the wrath of the Lamb.” Revelation 6:16.
26. The staff of bread — Bread is called “the staff of life,” because it is man’s chief sustenance. By famine this staff is broken. Ten women… one oven — The oven which commonly was sufficient for the use of one woman will hold the diminutive loaves of ten. By weight — So severe shall be the famine that wretchedly small rations shall be weighed out by the ounce. Hunger shall be aggravated and shall not be satisfied. In the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans many of the rich sold all they had for one measure of wheat, and the poor gave all their possessions for a measure of barley. Then shutting themselves up in the inmost rooms of their house they ate it, some without grinding, others made bread, and snatched it out of the fire half-baked, in their haste to banish the gnawings of hunger. Children pulled the morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very mouths, and so did the mothers to their infants.
28. In fury — Hebrew, in the heat of encountering. Fury, as implying a perturbed and excited malevolence, is not predicable of Jehovah. Yet as a species of anthropomorphism, to convey in a vivid manner the intense activity of the divine justice against impenitent and defiant Israel, it is admissible. Even I — This seems to imply the direct interposition of the divine hand without the employment of secondary causes. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
29. Ye shall eat the flesh of your sons — This awful prediction was literally fulfilled in the siege of Jerusalem by Titus and the Roman army. Mary of Perea, a woman of high birth and great wealth, was so maddened by hunger that she killed, roasted, and ate one half of her sucking child. See Josephus, book vi, chap. 3:4.
30. I will destroy your high places — These were probably artificial eminences on which idol worshippers set up the statues of their gods. Images — These were sun-pillars or sun-statues, standing on the altars of Baal. Your carcasses shall be denied decent sepulture, and shall share the shame of your dethroned idols.
31. I will make your cities waste — Palestine is filled with ruined cities. Says Porter, in his Giant Cities of Bashan:
“Every opening to the right and left revealed ruins; now a tomb in a quiet nook; now a temple in a lonely forest glade; now a shapeless and nameless heap of stones and fallen columns; and now, through a long green vista, the shattered walls and towers of an ancient city. The country is filled with ruins. In every direction to which the eye turns, in every spot on which it rests, ruins are visible — so truly, so wonderfully, have the prophecies been fulfilled. Every view we got in Bashan was an ocular demonstration of the literal fulfilment of the curse pronounced on the land by Moses more than three thousand years ago. One day I climbed a peak which commands the sea of Galilee and the Jordan valley up to the waters of Merom. I was able to distinguish, by the aid of a glass, in a region thirty miles long by ten wide, every spot celebrated in sacred history. My eye swept the sea from north to south, from east to west; not a single sail, not a solitary boat, was there. My eye swept the great Jordan valley, the little plains, the glens, the mountain sides from base to summit — not a city, not a village, not a house, not a sign of settled habitation was there, except a few huts at Magdala and the shattered houses of Tiberias. Desolation keeps unbroken sabbath in Galilee now. Nature has lavished on the country some of her choicest gifts — a rich soil, a genial climate — but the curse of Heaven has come upon it because of the sin of man.”
Keith, after enumerating a large number of celebrated cities in the Holy Land lying in utter desolation, exclaims:
“How marvellously are the predictions of their desolation verified, when, in general, nothing but ruined ruins form the most distinguished remnants of the cities of Israel; and when the multitude of its towns are almost all left, with many a vestige to testify of their number, but without a mark to tell their name.”
Your sanctuaries — By the use of the plural number there may be an implied reference to idolatrous temples, but it is more probable that the future sanctuary cities, Bethel, Shiloh, and Jerusalem, are proleptically referred to, including the numerous synagogues scattered over the land. I will not smell the savour — In other words, “I will not smell with pleasure, 1 will not enjoy, the savour of your sweet odours.” Only the penitent, obedient, and devout heart can please God or appropriate spiritual good. The mere mechanical performance of sacrifice and burning of incense, dissevered from the appropriate state of the moral and religious sensibilities, is a solemn mockery and abomination. See The Temporal and Spiritual Benefits of the Levitical Sacrifices. Isaiah 1:11-15.
32. Desolation — “When Elisha came up the defile from Jericho to Bethel, forests clothed the surrounding heights, (2 Kings 2:24;) now there is not a tree. Vineyards then covered the terraced sides of glen and hill, from base to summit. They have all disappeared. Cities and fortresses, in the days of Israel’s power, crowned every peak and studded every ridge; shapeless mounds now mark their desolated sites.” — Porter. A fact still more remarkable is, the discovery of cities in Bashan with houses as perfect as if finished only yesterday, and yet without an inhabitant. Porter, from the battlements of the castle of Scalah, “counted thirty towns and villages, many of them almost as perfect as when they were built, and yet for more than five centuries there has not been a single inhabitant in one of them.” Your enemies… shall be astonished — Not only are the Bedouins, who occasionally encamp in these cities of eastern Palestine, astonished at their utter solitude, but “the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall (do) say when they see the plagues of that land… even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath. the Lord done thus unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger?” Deuteronomy 29:22-24.
33. I will scatter you — This admonitory prophecy looks beyond the captivity of Israel in Babylon, its first fulfilment, to that world-wide dispersion which began at the destruction of Jerusalem and continues to this day, a miracle of national life perpetuated in spite of all opposing forces and destructive agencies, a people “scattered and peeled,” dwelling in every nation, yet resisting absorption and assimilation. “THE DISPERSION” was the general title applied to those Jews who remained in foreign countries after the return from Babylon, during the period of the second temple. Most of them were in bondage, and shut out from the full privileges of the chosen race. John 7:35; James 1:1, notes. There are legends pointing to settlements of Jews in Arabia, Ethiopia and Abyssinia. At the beginning of the Christian era the “dispersion” was divided into three great sections — the Babylonian, the Syrian, and the Egyptian. For the breadth of the dispersion, see Acts 2:9-11, note. Its influence on the rapid promulgation of Christianity can scarcely be overrated. The course of apostolic preaching follows, in a regular progress, the line of Jewish settlements. Thus the wickedness of Israel was overruled for the furtherance of the Gospel.
34. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths — The sabbatical years are here referred to. Probably from the death of Joshua to the time of the Babylonish captivity, seventy of the years of rest had been neglected. During the seventy years in Babylon the land of Canaan had a period of rest equivalent to the number of which it had been defrauded by the disobedience of the Hebrews.
35. Because it did not rest — The divine government has its compensations. What it does not receive as a willing offering it extorts in the form of penalty. The riches gained by unlawfully tilling the soil during these sabbatic years were wasted in the captivity, and the despised law received its due in one payment.
36. The sound of a shaken leaf — The Hebrew is more poetical, the voice of a driven leaf.
“So wrong doing is never blessed. Even when men appear to succeed and to save themselves alive, their success is partial, and may only create an opportunity for further divine judgment. Do not suppose that men are successful simply because they are living. A man may have escaped the sea only to die a more terrible death on land. Marvellous are the judicial resources of God. We have an indication here of a law to whose subtle force many men can testify. Fear takes away all power, and turns the most dauntless soldier into a coward.” — Joseph Parker.
No expression could more vividly portray the perpetual terror, the distressing alarm, of the poor captives. In the lands of their enemies — In the Orient, outside of the Hebrew theocracy, slaves had no civil rights. Even under Roman law the master with impunity could chop up his slaves into mince meat for his fish ponds if he should choose. After the return from Babylon four different dynasties obtained the supremacy of the land of Canaan. The dominion of Persia was from 536 to 333 B.C.; of Greece, from 333 to 167 B.C.; of the Asmoneans, from 167 to 63 B.C.; of the Herods under Rome, from 40 B.C., to 70 A.D.
38. Ye shall perish among the heathen — Says Josephus, in Wars of the Jews:
“The number of those that were carried captive during this whole war was ninety-seven thousand, and the number that perished during the whole siege one million one hundred thousand, the greater part of whom were, indeed, of the same nation with the citizens of Jerusalem, but not belonging to the city itself; for they were come up from all the country to the feast of unleavened bread and were on a sudden shut up by an army.”
So many were led away into captivity that the slave markets of the world were glutted, and, in exact accordance with prophecy, there was no man to buy them. Deuteronomy 28:68.
39. In the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine — For ten points of difference between the natural consequences of the parents’ sins and their punishment, see Exodus 20:5, note.
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