Leviticus chapter 26
Blessings for obedience. Punishments for disobedience.
BLESSINGS FOR OBEDIENCE
In the first three verses, we count eight Laws to obey. And in the ten verses that follow, we count 27 blessings. In other words, the blessings far outweigh the requirements.
VERSE 1. “ ‘You shall make for yourselves no idols, and you shall not raise up a carved image or a pillar, and you shall not place any figured stone in your land, to bow down to it; for I am the LORD your God.
make for yourselves no idols. They may not craft a deity.
VERSE 2. “ ‘You shall keep my Sabbaths, and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am the LORD.
VERSE 3. “ ‘If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments, and do them,
and do them. We Christians say salvation is by faith. Yet the Bible calls us to put our faith into action. Otherwise our faith is worthless. Read more »
VERSE 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.
rains in their season. This is to be expected.
But stable weather patterns can be disrupted. A famine will ensue.
VERSE 5. Your threshing shall continue until the vintage, and the vintage shall continue until the sowing time. You shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.
eat your bread to the full. They will not be struck with famine.
dwell in your land safely. This is a great blessing. Even in our day, many people do not dwell in safety.
VERSE 6. “ ‘I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one will make you afraid. I will remove evil animals out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land.
no one will make you afraid. This is a fantastic gift, fulfilling the dreams of a lifetime.
VERSE 7. You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.
VERSE 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.
Five of you shall chase a hundred. They will have great military success.
In our day, many Christians read this promise in a metaphorical way. They pray for great success in ministry.
VERSE 9. “ ‘I will have respect for you, make you fruitful, multiply you, and will establish my covenant with you.
make you fruitful, and multiply you. The LORD God is assuring them that they will have children, and that their numbers will multiply.
In our day, many Christians read this promise in a metaphorical way. They pray for fruitful ministries, ministries that will increase and multiply.
VERSE 10. You shall eat old supplies long kept, and you shall move out the old because of the new.
TNIV translation. You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new.
The LORD God provided more than enough. They experienced an overflow of abundance.
VERSE 11. I will set my tent among you, and my soul won’t abhor you.
VERSE 12. I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you will be my people.
VERSE 13. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. I have broken the bars of your yoke, and made you walk upright.
made you walk upright. This probably refers to living without defeat.
PUNISHMENTS FOR DISOBEDIENCE
In the first two verses, we count six Laws to obey. And in the thirty verses that follow, we count 56 curses.
VERSE 14. “ ‘But if you will not listen to me, and will not do all these commandments,
will not do. We Christians say salvation is by faith. Yet the Bible calls us to put our faith into action. Otherwise our faith is worthless. Read more »
VERSE 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,
you will not do all my commandments. We Christians say salvation is by faith. Yet the Bible calls us to put our faith into action. Otherwise our faith is worthless. Read more »
VERSE 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. You will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will eat it.
I also will do this to you. There are significant consequences for disobeying the Law of the LORD God.
They include terror, diseases, fever, fruitlessness, defeat, subjugation, and fleeing.
In our day, some those things have happened to some people, people who were not rebelling against the LORD God. So why did they happen?
VERSE 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.
VERSE 18. “ ‘If you in spite of these things will not listen to me, then I will chastise you seven times more for your sins.
VERSE 19. I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your sky like iron, and your soil like bronze.
VERSE 20. 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.
VERSE 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.
VERSE 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. Your roads will become desolate.
VERSE 23. “ ‘If by these things you won’t be turned back to me, but will walk contrary to me,
VERSE 24. then I will also walk contrary to you; and I will strike you, even I, seven times for your sins.
VERSE 25. I will bring a sword upon you that will execute the vengeance of the covenant. You will be gathered together within your cities, and I will send the pestilence among you. You will be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
VERSE 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. You shall eat, and not be satisfied.
VERSE 27. “ ‘If you in spite of this won’t listen to me, but walk contrary to me,
VERSE 28. then I will walk contrary to you in wrath. I will also chastise you seven times for your sins.
VERSE 29. You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters.
You will eat the flesh of your sons … daughters. If God’s people break the covenant, they will eventually spiral downward to cannibalism. They will eat their own children. This is an outcome of their own sin. Read more »
VERSE 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.
VERSE 31. I will lay your cities waste, and will bring your sanctuaries to desolation. I will not take delight in the sweet fragrance of your offerings.
VERSE 32. I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it will be astonished at it.
VERSE 33. I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw out the sword after you. Your land will be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.
VERSE 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.
VERSE 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.
VERSE 36. “ ‘As for those of you who are left, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight; and they shall flee, as one flees from the sword. They will fall when no one pursues.
VERSE 37. They will stumble over one another, as it were before the sword, when no one pursues. You will have no power to stand before your enemies.
VERSE 38. You will perish among the nations. The land of your enemies will eat you up.
VERSE 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 they shall pine away with them.
the iniquities of their fathers. They will waste away because of the sins of their fathers.
VERSE 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,
VERSE 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,
VERSE 42. then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham; and I will remember the land.
VERSE 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 they rejected my ordinances, and their soul abhorred my statutes.
VERSE 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 the LORD their God.
VERSE 45. But I will for their sake remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the LORD.’ ”
VERSE 46. These are the statutes, ordinances, and laws, which the LORD made between him and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai by Moses.
LEVITICUS
CHAPTERS: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27
RESOURCES: Summary, Outline, Memorize, The Scapegoat, Female Sacrificial Animals
Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotations on this page are from the World English Bible and the World Messianic Edition. These translations have no copyright restrictions. They are in the Public Domain.