Leviticus26
New Living Translation
1“Do not make idols or set up carved images, or sacred pillars, or sculptured stones in your land so you may worship them. I am the Lord your God.
2You must keep my Sabbath days of rest and show reverence for my sanctuary. I am the Lord.
3“If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands,
4I will send you the seasonal rains. The land will then yield its crops, and the trees of the field will produce their fruit.
5Your threshing season will overlap with the grape harvest, and your grape harvest will overlap with the season of planting grain. You will eat your fill and live securely in your own land.
6“I will give you peace in the land, and you will be able to sleep with no cause for fear. I will rid the land of wild animals and keep your enemies out of your land.
7In fact, you will chase down your enemies and slaughter them with your swords.
8Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand! All your enemies will fall beneath your sword.
9“I will look favorably upon you, making you fertile and multiplying your people. And I will fulfill my covenant with you.
10You will have such a surplus of crops that you will need to clear out the old grain to make room for the new harvest!
11I will live among you, and I will not despise you.
12I will walk among you; I will be your God, and you will be my people.
13I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so you would no longer be their slaves. I broke the yoke of slavery from your neck so you can walk with your heads held high.
14“However, if you do not listen to me or obey all these commands,
15and if you break my covenant by rejecting my decrees, treating my regulations with contempt, and refusing to obey my commands,
16I will punish you. I will bring sudden terrors upon you—wasting diseases and burning fevers that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will plant your crops in vain because your enemies will eat them.
17I will turn against you, and you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will run even when no one is chasing you!
18“And if, in spite of all this, you still disobey me, I will punish you seven times over for your sins.
19I will break your proud spirit by making the skies as unyielding as iron and the earth as hard as bronze.
20All your work will be for nothing, for your land will yield no crops, and your trees will bear no fruit.
21“If even then you remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey me, I will inflict disaster on you seven times over for your sins.
22I will send wild animals that will rob you of your children and destroy your livestock. Your numbers will dwindle, and your roads will be deserted.
23“And if you fail to learn the lesson and continue your hostility toward me,
24then I myself will be hostile toward you. I will personally strike you with calamity seven times over for your sins.
25I will send armies against you to carry out the curse of the covenant you have broken. When you run to your towns for safety, I will send a plague to destroy you there, and you will be handed over to your enemies.
26I will destroy your food supply, so that ten women will need only one oven to bake bread for their families. They will ration your food by weight, and though you have food to eat, you will not be satisfied.
27“If in spite of all this you still refuse to listen and still remain hostile toward me,
28then I will give full vent to my hostility. I myself will punish you seven times over for your sins.
29Then you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters.
30I will destroy your pagan shrines and knock down your places of worship. I will leave your lifeless corpses piled on top of your lifeless idols, and I will despise you.
31I will make your cities desolate and destroy your places of pagan worship. I will take no pleasure in your offerings that should be a pleasing aroma to me.
32Yes, I myself will devastate your land, and your enemies who come to occupy it will be appalled at what they see.
33I will scatter you among the nations and bring out my sword against you. Your land will become desolate, and your cities will lie in ruins.
34Then at last the land will enjoy its neglected Sabbath years as it lies desolate while you are in exile in the land of your enemies. Then the land will finally rest and enjoy the Sabbaths it missed.
35As long as the land lies in ruins, it will enjoy the rest you never allowed it to take every seventh year while you lived in it.
36“And for those of you who survive, I will demoralize you in the land of your enemies. You will live in such fear that the sound of a leaf driven by the wind will send you fleeing. You will run as though fleeing from a sword, and you will fall even when no one pursues you.
37Though no one is chasing you, you will stumble over each other as though fleeing from a sword. You will have no power to stand up against your enemies.
38You will die among the foreign nations and be devoured in the land of your enemies.
39Those of you who survive will waste away in your enemies’ lands because of their sins and the sins of their ancestors.
40“But at last my people will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors for betraying me and being hostile toward me.
41When I have turned their hostility back on them and brought them to the land of their enemies, then at last their stubborn hearts will be humbled, and they will pay for their sins.
42Then I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.
43For the land must be abandoned to enjoy its years of Sabbath rest as it lies deserted. At last the people will pay for their sins, for they have continually rejected my regulations and despised my decrees.
44“But despite all this, I will not utterly reject or despise them while they are in exile in the land of their enemies. I will not cancel my covenant with them by wiping them out, for I am the Lord their God.
45For their sakes I will remember my ancient covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of all the nations, that I might be their God. I am the Lord.”
46These are the decrees, regulations, and instructions that the Lord gave through Moses on Mount Sinai as evidence of the relationship between himself and the Israelites.
Study Guide
Public-domain commentary and original-language notes for Leviticus 26.
Chapter Summary
In this chapter: Promises upon keeping the precepts. (1–13). Threatenings against disobedience. (14–39). God promises to remember those that repent. (40–46).
vv1-13
This chapter contains a general enforcement of all the laws given by Moses; by promises of reward in case of obedience, on the one hand; and threatenings of punishment for disobedience, on the other. While Israel maintained a national regard to God's worship, sabbaths, and sanctuary, and did not turn aside to idolatry, the Lord engaged to continue to them temporal mercies and religious advantages. These great and precious promises, though they relate chiefly to the life which now is, were typical of the spiritual blessings made sure by the covenant of grace to all believers, through Christ. 1. Plenty and abundance of the fruits of the earth. Every good and perfect gift must be expected from above, from the Father of lights. 2. Peace under the Divine protection. Those dwell in safety, that dwell in God. 3. Victory and success in their wars. It is all one with the Lord to save by many or by few. 4. The increase of their people. The gospel church shall be fruitful. 5. The favour of God, which is the fountain of all Good. 6. Tokens of his presence in and by his ordinances. The way to have God's ordinances fixed among us, is to cleave closely to them. 7. The grace of the covenant. All covenant blessings are summed up in the covenant relation, I will be your God, and ye shall be my people; and they are all grounded upon their redemption. Having purchased them, God would own them, and never cast them off till they cast him off. (Le 26:14-39)
vv14-39
After God has set the blessing before them which would make them a happy people if they would be obedient, he here sets the curse before them, the evils which would make them miserable, if they were disobedient. Two things would bring ruin. 1. A contempt of God's commandments. They that reject the precept, will come at last to renounce the covenant. 2. A contempt of his corrections. If they will not learn obedience by the things they suffer, God himself would be against them; and this is the root and cause of all their misery. And also, The whole creation would be at war with them. All God's sore judgments would be sent against them. The threatenings here are very particular, they were prophecies, and He that foresaw all their rebellions, knew they would prove so. TEMPORAL judgments are threatened. Those who will not be parted from their sins by the commands of God, shall be parted from them by judgments. Those wedded to their lusts, will have enough of them. SPIRITUAL judgments are threatened, which should seize the mind. They should find no acceptance with God. A guilty conscience would be their continual terror. It is righteous with God to leave those to despair of pardon, who presume to sin; and it is owing to free grace, if we are not left to pine away in the iniquity we were born in, and have lived in.
vv40-46
Among the Israelites, persons were not always prosperous or afflicted according to their obedience or disobedience. But national prosperity was the effect of national obedience, and national judgments were brought on by national wickedness. Israel was under a peculiar covenant. National wickedness will end in the ruin of any people, especially where the word of God and the light of the gospel are enjoyed. Sooner or later, sin will be the ruin, as well as the reproach, of every people. Oh that, being humbled for our sins, we might avert the rising storm before it bursts upon us! God grant that we may, in this our day, consider the things which belong to our eternal peace.
Key Words
עָשָׂה: to do or make, in the broadest sense and widest application
אֱלִיל: good for nothing, by anal. vain or vanity; specifically an idol
קוּם: to rise (in various applications, literal, figurative, intensive and causative)
פֶּסֶל: an idol
מַצֵּבָה: something stationed, i.e. a column or (memorial stone); by analogy, an idol
נָתַן: to give, used with greatest latitude of application (put, make, etc.)
מַשְׂכִּית: a figure (carved on stone, the wall, or any object); figuratively, imagination
אֶבֶן: a stone
אֶרֶץ: the earth (at large, or partitively a land)
שָׁחָה: to depress, i.e. prostrate (especially reflexive, in homage to royalty or God)
Cross References
Leviticus 26The parallel primary legal discourse outlining Israel's covenant curses for national disobedience.
Supported by Matthew Henry, JFB
Parallels the terrifying warning of eating the flesh of sons and daughters during severe siege.
Supported by JFB
Explicit fulfillment of the land resting to enjoy its sabbaths during the seventy-year exile.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Explicit historical fulfillment of the land resting to enjoy its sabbaths during the Babylonian exile.
Supported by Matthew Henry, JFB
The matching covenant blessings discourse detailing prosperity for keeping God's commandments.
Supported by Matthew Henry, JFB
The covenant of peace where God rids the land of evil beasts.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Corresponds directly to the judgment of heaven as brass and earth as iron.
Supported by JFB
Lists wild beasts, sword, famine, and pestilence as God's four sore judgments.
Supported by JFB
Directly echoes breaking the staff of bread and delivering bread by weight.
Supported by JFB
Records the tragic historical fulfillment of mothers eating their own children during the siege.
Supported by JFB
Promises the spiritual circumcision of the heart to cure Israel's stubborn, uncircumcised heart.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Calvin highlights this as the direct prohibition of making molten gods of silver or gold.
Supported by John Calvin
The prophetic fulfillment where the plowman overtakes the reaper and treading grapes reaches sowing.
Supported by JFB
Reflects the mathematical impossibility of five chasing an hundred except by God's judgment.
Supported by Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole
Grounds the covenant obligations in the historic redemption from Egyptian bondage.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Expanded details on the sorrow of heart, terror, and failing eyes threatened here.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Fulfillment of being slain before enemies and fleeing when none pursueth.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Describes the highways lying waste and travelers ceasing, fulfilling the predicted desolation.
Supported by JFB
Fulfills the promise to destroy high places, make cities waste, and lay idols desolate.
Supported by JFB
Expands on the threat of being scattered among all people and finding no ease.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Establishes the Sabbatical year law that Israel violated, leading to the forced land rest.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Illustrates the wicked fleeing when no one pursues, matching the shaken leaf terror.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Explicitly describes house of Israel as being physically circumcised but having 'uncircumcised hearts'.
Supported by Matthew Henry
New Testament definition of true circumcision as that of the heart and spirit, not letter.
Supported by Matthew Henry
God hears Israel's groaning and remembers His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Supported by Matthew Poole
Exilic confession that God in His great mercy did not utterly consume or forsake them.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Relates to eating the old store of harvest until the ninth year's increase.
Supported by JFB
The promise of God's sanctuary and tabernacle being set in their midst forever.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Prophetic fulfillment of sowing much but bringing in little as a covenant curse.
Supported by Matthew Henry
The curse of sowing but not reaping, treading olives but not anointing.
Supported by Matthew Henry
The wicked flee when no man pursueth, matching verse 17's internal terror.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Parallels the threat of sending the teeth of wild beasts against disobedient Israel.
Supported by JFB
Prophesies God taking away from Jerusalem the whole stay and staff of bread.
Supported by JFB
Repeats the curse of eating but not being satisfied due to lack of bread.
Supported by JFB
Josiah literalized this by burning human bones on pagan altars, defiling their idols.
Supported by JFB
Solomon's prayer models confession after being smitten before enemies for sinning.
Supported by Matthew Henry