Leviticus 26:14-39 - Theatenings Against Disobedience

"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.

THREATENINGS AGAINST DISOBEDIENCE, 14-39.

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.

The Temporal and Spiritual Benefits of the Levitical Sacrifices

We propound a question of more than ordinary interest when we inquire into the precise benefit which accrued to the devout Hebrew from his faithful observance of the law of offerings. The answer to this inquiry will elucidate the important question of the nature and extent of the blessing promised to the believer in Jesus Christ, who presents him to the Father as his great sin offering. The moral delinquencies of man are of two kinds — offenses against society, which are called crimes, and are punishable with temporal penalties, and offenses purely spiritual, or sins, which await the fires of the judgment day. The Levitical law added, also, ceremonial offenses or impurities. Under the theocracy this distinction is in a measure lost, the different kinds of offenses being blended together and treated as sins. The first benefit to the sincere offerer was exemption from the temporal punishment of death. Yet all crimes could not be so expiated as to escape judicial death. Offenses which disorganize and destroy society — murder, adultery, and cursing of parents, and sins especially offensive to God, as profanation of his holy day and blasphemy of his holy name were beyond the efficacy of the sacrifices as to their power to screen the guilty from physical death. But minor offenses — usually punished by the civil magistrate — if freely confessed with all possible restitution, together with ceremonial impurities, found an exemption from death in the blood sprinkled on the altar. But what did those blood sprinklings and those blazing altars do for guilty souls? Did they relieve the burdened conscience, effecting exactly such a change as penitent believers in Christ now experience in the pardon of their sins and the witness of the Spirit of adoption? There are several answers. First, that there was to the sincere Hebrew the same subjective phenomena as now attend justification by faith; the same conscious relief; and the same joy in the assurance of reconciliation: not flowing from the blood of the victim, but from the blood of its great Antitype appropriated by an anticipatory faith. But the insuperable objection to this is, that there is not in the Pentateuch the first hint of the Lamb of God, the reality of which the victim bleeding on the Hebrew altar is but the shadow. Hence there is no ground laid for faith to build upon in any objective revelation of the Sacrifice to be offered on Calvary. The second view seems to be endorsed by Origen, Theodoret, Erasmus, and Luther, in their explanation of the term ἱλαστήριον in Romans 3:25. It is, that there was in the blood of animals slain in sacrifice by Divine appointment an inherent efficacy to take away the sins of the devout offerer, without any apprehension by faith of the Heaven-appointed Victim yet to pour out his blood. "As the lid of the ark of the covenant, when sprinkled with blood, imparted to the Israelite a firm confidence of the forgiveness of his sins, in like manner the Saviour, and especially his death, is the security for our redemption to which we may believingly look." To the same conclusion Bonar comes. "The sin passes away; it is an instantaneous, complete, perpetual pardon."

THE PRETERMISSION OF SINS.

The third view is based on the explicit statements of Divine inspiration. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews reiterates, in various phrases, the declaration that the blood of bulls and of goats cannot take away sins. Hebrews 10:4. Between this assertion and the assurance given by Jehovah that "the priest shall make atonement for him, and it shall be forgiven him," (Leviticus 6:7,) we have a seeming contradiction, of which the best explanation is afforded by St. Paul, who, in explaining the ἱλαστήριον, is very careful to say that "Christ Jesus is set forth to be 'the propitiation,' 'the mercy seat,' through faith in his blood, to declare his (God's) righteousness for the passing over (πάρεσις, the pretermission) of sins that are past (in ages gone) through the forbearance of God." The doctrine of St. Paul is, that the atoning death of Jesus justifies God, by removing his seeming low estimate of sin, or indifference towards it, in passing over and forbearing to punish the sins of penitent, blood-offering Hebrews in past ages. See on Romans 3:25, also Alford and Bengel. The latter says, that "pretermission, (forgiveness,) in the Old Testament, had respect to transgressions until (ἀπολύτρωσιν) redemption of them was accomplished in the death of Christ. Hebrews 9:15. The objects of pretermission are sins; the object of forbearance are sinners." Says Alford, "Where sins are continually called to mind, there, clearly, the conscience is not clear from them. Very similar is the assertion of Ebrard, when speaking of the blood of bulls as incapable of taking away sins: 'It was shed, not as the instrument of complete vicarious propitiation, but as an exhibition of the postulate [assumed need] of vicarious propitiation.'" How far this pretermission of sins applies to pious pagans is a question beyond the range of our present inquiry. See on Acts 17:30. Respecting the emotional experience attending sacrificial forgiveness as thus explained, we have no explicit statements in the Scriptures. But from such expressions as the testimony that his ways "pleased God," given to Enoch, (Hebrews 11:5;) "blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven," (Psalm 32:1); "the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him," (Psalm 25:14); and from the joy that rings out its hallelujahs through the Psalms, we infer that the Holy Spirit, though not yet doing his official work as the Paraclete, the Spirit of adoption, was by his essential presence assuring obedient Israelites of the gracious forbearance of Jehovah towards them in passing over their sins. This implies that the sacrifices were not offered as a dead opus operatum, or mechanical and soulless performance, but with that devout and penitent state of heart which alone can appropriate spiritual good. When this was absent the "vain oblations" of apostate Israel became "an abomination" (Isaiah 1:11-15) to Jehovah, and he proclaims to the sinning nation, "I desired mercy (philanthropy and justice) and not (mere) sacrifice." Hosea 6:6.