"40 If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me; 41 And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity: 42 Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land. 43 The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes. 44 And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD their God. 45 But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the LORD. 46 These are the statutes and judgments and laws, which the LORD made between him and the children of Israel in mount Sinai by the hand of Moses." — Leviticus 26:40-46 KJV.
40. If they shall confess — Confession implies conviction of sin and sincere repentance. David said, “I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” And the iniquity of their fathers — So far as they had endorsed the iniquity of their fathers, by approving and imitating it, they were in a modified sense guilty. Thus must we repent not only of our actual sins but abhor their source, the poison stung into our nature by the transgression of our first parents. By so doing we obtain, through faith in Jesus Christ, not only justification from our personal sins, but the still greater blessing of entire sanctification from that corrupt state of heart which is technically called sin.
41. And that… I have brought — Their captivity should be ascribed not merely to natural causes, after the style of the modern deist, but to the direct interposition of the personal God whose law had been broken. Uncircumcised hearts — Circumcision — “the putting away the filthiness of the flesh” — symbolizes the cleansing of the spiritual being through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. Romans 2:29, note. Till this is accomplished, the people of God are uncircumcised in heart, and are very often in humiliating captivity to the world. For the entire Hebrew nation was in a true and vastly important sense a typical people, whose history is full of spiritual lessons to the Christian Church. Accept of the punishment — Recognise its justice and their own ill desert. The Hebrew verb רָצָה (ratsah) is here used figuratively, and signifies to pay off, as a debt, and not, as Drs. Keil and Murphy render it, to enjoy.
42. Will I remember — Memory cannot be properly predicated of the Omniscient — one with whom there is no succession of thoughts and no past nor future. He will surely bring to pass that which he has promised in the covenant with the patriarchs. Strictly speaking, God’s covenant with Abraham respecting the greatness of his seed was quite unconditional, except circumcision, and it amounts to a promise or an act of mere favour. See Galatians 3:15, 16, where ἐπαγγελίαι, promise, and διαθήκην, covenant, are used as synonymes.
44. Neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly — The purpose of Jehovah embraced the ultimate conversion to the Lord Jesus of that generation of Jews who should be on the earth when the fulness of the Gentiles has been brought to Christ. Towards this end the marvellous continuance of the Jews in their world-wide dispersion manifestly looks. See Luke 21:24; Romans 11:25, 26, notes. After the fulness of the Gentiles has been brought into the kingdom of Christ, so strong will be the faith of the Church that an era of great spiritual illumination will come, in which the seed of Abraham will be as powerfully converted as was Saul of Tarsus.
45. The covenant of their ancestors included certain earthly blessings of a national character, the trusteeship of the oracles of God, the adoption as his first-born, the glory, and the promises. All spiritual blessings in Christ are theirs, also, on condition of accepting him as their Messiah, and special providential care over Israel till that time. This promise is now in process of fulfilment in a most marvellous manner. The Jews have existed as a nation without a country and without a king more than eighteen centuries, resisting absorption into the nations among which they have been scattered, and assimilation to their character and faith.
46. In mount Sinai — The whole Sinaitic peninsula is thus designated. It is not necessary to suppose that the whole of the ceremonial law was delivered on the summit of the mount where the decalogue was received. By the hand of Moses — Says Dr. Green, in his reply to W. Robertson Smith: “The Mosaic origin of the Levitical laws is abundantly declared by the formulas with which they are introduced, and which occur over and over again: The LORD spake unto Moses, or the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron; and the formulas by which they are often followed, for example, Leviticus 7:37, 38; 23:44; 27:34.”
CONCLUDING NOTE.
Kant remarks, that all the consequences arising from the transgression or observance of the divine commands are in Mosaisms limited to the present world. From this fact he infers that Judaism contains no religious belief, since we cannot conceive of a religion without faith in a future life. This is but the repetition of an old Mohammedan objection, that the Pentateuch which we now have could not have God for its author because there is not found in it any thing which pertains to eternal realities, as paradise, gehenna, and the last judgment. Hence the suggestion that this chapter was forged by the Jews. Bishop Warburton’s Reply is unsatisfactory. The substance of it is, that a religion which was not founded on the doctrine of immortality and the promise of eternal life must have been supported by the extraordinary providence of God, since, on the low level of Naturalism, civil government could not be supported without a religion teaching a future state of rewards and punishments. De Wette audaciously calls the Mosaic doctrine of retribution “a national delusion,” which rendered Israel vastly unhappy by engendering a gloomy view of life and destroying the fair harmony of man with the world, in which the Greek appears so nobly. J.D. Michaelis makes a fatal concession to the destructive rationalists and deists when he justifies the omission of the doctrine of future rewards and punishments on the ground that the whole Mosaic law was merely a civil institution. A much better reason for the omission of this doctrine in its fully developed form is, the fact that there is a progressive development of religious truth in the Old Testament as in the New. Israel in the wilderness was not ripe for this advanced doctrine. The notion of God’s holiness and justice must first be planted in the mind before faith in immortality could take root for any salutary purpose. Yet we find hints and germs of this doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments scattered through the Pentateuch in the elevated position assigned to MAN, created the last and standing at the head of creation, wearing the image of God, who is a Spirit, and the object of his special care, to whom he reveals himself and styles himself their God; a relationship which is not cancelled by death, and which Christ teaches us involves the immortality of the soul. Matthew 22:31, 32. A hope of immortality, that is full of meaning, involving victory over death, is thus laid in the fellowship of man with God, the everliving. The imperishableness of this fellowship is felt to be sure, because God’s eternity secures the everlasting well-being of his people. “To him who has an eternal value for God an eternal existence is made sure.” — Oehler. The translation of Enoch also clearly involves this doctrine in its germinal form, and the doctrine of temporal retribution is a manifest preparation for it. Yet it must be admitted that there is an entire omission of the eternal consequences of unforgiven sin, which the experience of the gospel ministry shows is a powerful motive to repentance. Yet the dispensation of Mosaism is good, as far as it goes, just as each day’s work in the creation was pronounced good, though all was imperfect till the close of the sixth day. Says Hengstenberg:
“It may be shown how a consideration of the Egyptian superstition, in which a false doctrine of immortality occupies so conspicuous a place, was first of all a motive to leave this field uncultivated, on which the best doctrine was exposed to be grossly misunderstood, and to be satisfied with laying a foundation for the true faith in immortality. It may be shown, that for the present the whole attention of the people was to be directed to temporal retribution, in order that when this had taken root, the faith in future retribution might spontaneously spring up. But the deficiencies of the Pentateuch in reference to the doctrine of immortality are not of a kind to endanger its character as a record of divine revelation.”
The visible and temporal judgments of the Old Testament present impressive historical proof of Jehovah’s moral reign over the nations, which may be the necessary preparation of mankind to appreciate the New Testament revelation of retributions in the unseen and future world. It must be borne in mind that these are not suited to a theocratic government of men in this world. A temporal government must be upheld by temporal sanctions. The theocracy was national and temporal. Moses was well acquainted with the Egyptian doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the future judgment followed by rewards and punishments, yet he did not incorporate them into the law since they belong to the sphere of theology rather than of legislation. It is to be noted that when Mosaism teaches that piety brings happiness and godlessness misery, this does not justify the inference that every misfortune springs from a sin and that every piece of good fortune springs from righteousness. For God sometimes shows patience towards the wicked, and spares them for the sake of the righteous, (Genesis 15:16; 28:26,) while the righteous are proved and purified by affliction, as in the history of Joseph. Earthly benefits of themselves do not make up life. The idea that a godless man possessing abundant external good things is really to be felicitated, cannot be entertained from the moral standpoint of Mosaism. Only the gracious presence of Jehovah can confer happiness. See verse 11, note.
“A morality which rests on the basis of faith in the (national) elective grace and providential faithfulness of the covenant of God, and whose doctrine of good culminates in the prominence assigned to fellowship with God, cannot surely be accused of gross sensuous Eudaemonism — a false charge against the ethics of the Old Testament.” — Oehler
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