Leviticus 26:14 - Meaning and Application

After God set blessing before them, the life and good that would make them a happy people if they obeyed, he now sets curse before them, the death and evil that would make them miserable if they disobeyed. They must not imagine that they are so firmly established that God’s power cannot bring them down, or so favored that his justice will not judge them if they turn from him and rebel. “You only have I known; therefore I will punish you soonest and most severely” (Amos 3:2).

Notice how their sin is described, the sin that would bring all this misery. It is not sins of ignorance or weakness, because God had provided sacrifices for those. It is not sins they repented of and left behind. It is stubborn sin, done on purpose and kept up against warning.

Two things would surely bring ruin on them. First, they would despise God’s commandments (Leviticus 26:14). “If you will not listen to me speaking through the law, or do all these commandments,” that is, if you do not aim to obey them and, when you fail, do not use the appointed remedies, then judgment will follow. Their sin is first described as carelessness, neglect, and leaving duties undone. That is bad enough, but it leads to worse.

Then they are shown as despising God’s statutes, both the duties he commands and the authority behind them. They begin to think little of the law and of the Lawgiver. People move quickly toward ruin when they start to think religion is beneath them. From there, they come to hate his judgments, so that their very souls reject them. Those who begin by despising religion often end by loathing it, and low thoughts of it become hateful thoughts. Those who turn from it will eventually turn against it.

Finally, they break his covenant. Not every broken command is the same as breaking the covenant, or we would all be lost. But when people grow so godless that they despise and hate God’s command, the next step is to deny God and all their relation to him. Those who reject the command will end up rejecting the covenant. It is God’s covenant they break. He made it, but they break it. If a covenant between God and man is kept, God gets all the honor. If it is broken, man carries all the blame, and the breach lies on him.

Second, they would despise God’s discipline. Their disobedience would not have ruined them if they had not stayed stubborn and unrepentant under the ways God used to bring them back. Their contempt for God’s word would not have led to ruin if they had not added contempt for his rod, the discipline that should have led them to repent.

This is described in three ways. “If you will not for all this listen to me” (Leviticus 26:18, 21, 27), that is, if you will not learn obedience from what you suffer, and if you are as deaf to God’s judgments as you have been to the clear teaching of his word and the quiet warnings of your own conscience, then you are truly stubborn. “If you walk contrary to me” (Leviticus 26:21, 23, 27), meaning that you live in opposition to God’s truths, laws, and advice. All sinners do this in some measure, but especially those who refuse correction under judgment. The purpose of discipline is to humble them, soften them, and bring them to repentance. Instead, their hearts harden, they grow more angry against God, and in their trouble they sin even more against him (2 Chronicles 28:22). Some read this as, “If you walk carelessly with me,” as if they do not care what they do or what God does with them, stumbling forward in willful ignorance. “If you will not be reformed by these things,” because God’s purpose in punishing is to correct us by making sin look truly evil and driving us to seek help from him. That is the main purpose. But those who will not be reformed by God’s judgments must expect to be destroyed by them. Those have much to answer for who have long been under God’s correcting hand and still go on stubbornly in sin, sick and hurting and still not changed, beaten down and made poor and still not changed, broken again and again and still not returning to the Lord (Amos 4:6).

The misery is then described under two main headings. First, God himself will be against them, and that is the root of all their misery. “I will set my face against you” (Leviticus 26:17), meaning, “I will oppose you and work to bring you down.” God resists proud sinners and confronts those who challenge his authority. Or “face” may mean anger, so this is, “I will show strong displeasure toward you.” “I will walk contrary to you” (Leviticus 26:24, 28). When God in his providence blocks the plans people thought were safe, crosses their purposes, breaks their schemes, ruins their efforts, and disappoints their hopes, then he is walking contrary to them. There is nothing to gain by fighting the Almighty. He will break either the heart or the neck of those who oppose him, bringing them either to repentance or to ruin. Some read it as, “I will walk carelessly with you,” meaning all covenant love will be forgotten, and they will be left to ordinary providence. Those who cast off God deserve to be cast off by him.

As they kept on being stubborn, the judgments would grow heavier. If the first clear signs of God’s displeasure did not humble and reform them, then he would punish them seven times more (Leviticus 26:18), and again bring seven times more plagues (Leviticus 26:21), and again punish them seven times (Leviticus 26:24), and then, “I, even I, will punish you seven times for your sins” (Leviticus 26:28). If lighter judgments do not do their work, God will send heavier ones, because when he judges, he will prevail. If true repentance does not stop the case, it will keep moving until execution comes.

Those who are stubborn and hard to change, after they survive one storm, must expect another that is worse. No matter how severely they are punished, while they are still outside hell they must keep saying, “There is worse ahead,” unless they repent. If the founder has melted in vain (Jeremiah 6:29), then the furnace will be heated seven times hotter, as in Daniel 3:19, and then seven times hotter again. Who can live in such burning fire? God does not begin with the harshest judgments, because he is patient and does not delight in the death of sinners. But if they do not repent, he will move on to the harshest judgments, showing that he is righteous and will not be mocked or defied.

Their misery is completed in this warning: “My soul shall abhor you” (Leviticus 26:30).

A person is truly miserable when God hates what he has become, because God’s anger is right and powerful. If anyone turns back, as these people were expected to do, God will take no pleasure in him (Hebrews 10:38), and he will spit them out of his mouth (Revelation 3:16). Scripture speaks of this as something shocking, and yet sadly true: “Has your soul loathed Zion?” (Jeremiah 14:19).

The whole creation would rise against them. All of God’s severe judgments would be sent against them, because he has many arrows in his quiver. The warnings here are very specific because they were really predictions, and the One who knew their coming rebellions knew they would happen. See (Deuteronomy 31:16, Deuteronomy 31:29). This long list of threats shows that evil follows sinners.

Here, the Lord threatens several kinds of temporal judgments, meaning troubles in this life. First are bodily diseases, which would spread widely among them. “I will appoint over you,” like cruel taskmasters, “terror, wasting disease, and fever” (Leviticus 26:16). Some think the word translated “terror” points to a particular disease, perhaps the falling sickness, which is indeed terrifying. All long-lasting sicknesses are included in wasting disease, and all sudden illnesses in fever.

These diseases would waste away the eyes and bring sorrow to the sick and to their families. All diseases are God’s servants. They do what he appoints them to do, and he often uses them as rods to discipline a sinful people. Pestilence is also threatened, and it would come among them when they gathered in their cities for fear of the sword (Leviticus 26:25). The larger the crowd, the greater the destruction. When such sickness reaches soldiers who should be defending a city, it is especially deadly.

Second is famine and a lack of bread, and this would come in several ways. Their enemies would take their food away, as the Midianites did (Judges 6:5, Judges 6:6). Then unseasonable weather, especially no rain, would add to their loss: “I will make your sky like iron” (Leviticus 26:19). No rain would fall, only heat reflecting back down, and the ground would become as hard and dry as bronze. Their work in plowing and sowing would come to nothing (Leviticus 26:20), because the earth’s increase depends more on God’s care than on human farming.

This would be “the breaking of the staff of bread” (Leviticus 26:26), the support life leans on. Perhaps they had leaned more on bread than on God’s blessing. There would be such a shortage of grain that, where one family once filled its own oven with household bread, ten families would now need one oven. That would leave them and their children and servants on short rations, so they would eat and still not be filled. The less they had, the more they would crave. Third, siege would drive them to such despair that they would eat their own sons and daughters (Leviticus 26:29).

Third is war, and their enemies would overpower them. “You will fall before your enemies” (Leviticus 26:17). Their best men would die in battle, and those who hated them would rule over them. That would be just, since they were unwilling for the God who loved them to rule over them (2 Chronicles 12:8). It is a sad thing when enemies become rulers, or when rulers act like enemies and secretly work for a people’s ruin.

In this way God would break the pride of their power (Leviticus 26:19). He had given them power over the nations, but when they grew proud of it and used it for themselves instead of for God’s kingdom, it was right for him to break it. God would also bring a sword on them to avenge the breaking of his covenant (Leviticus 26:25). He has a just case against those who break covenant with him, because he will not be fooled by false-hearted people. In one way or another, he will take up this cause against those who deal with him in half-truths and treachery.

Fourth are wild animals, lions, bears, and wolves, which would multiply and tear apart all who came near (Leviticus 26:22). We read of two bears who killed forty-two children at once (2 Kings 2:24). This is one of the four severe judgments threatened in (Ezekiel 14:21), which clearly refers back to this chapter. Human beings were made to rule over the creatures, and though many animals are stronger than we are, none would have harmed us if we had not first cast off God’s rule and lost our own. Now the creatures rebel against the one who rebels against his Maker, and when the Lord chooses, they become tools of his wrath and servants of his justice.

Fifth is captivity, or being scattered: “I will scatter you among the nations” (Leviticus 26:33), “in your enemies’ land” (Leviticus 26:34). No people were ever so united among themselves as Israel was. Yet for their sin God would scatter them, so they would be lost among the nations, from whom he had once set them apart, but with whom they had wickedly mixed themselves. Even then, justice would not stop there. A sword would follow them, finding them wherever they went. God’s judgments cannot be avoided or outrun.

Sixth is the complete ruin and emptiness of their land, so striking that even their enemies, who helped bring it on, would be amazed when they looked back on it (Leviticus 26:32). First, their cities would be laid waste, abandoned, and uninhabited, with all buildings destroyed. Those who survived the war would still see everything decay. Second, their sanctuaries would become ruins, meaning both their synagogues, where they met each Sabbath for worship, and their tabernacle, where they met three times a year. Third, the land itself would become empty, with no one tilling or caring for it (Leviticus 26:34, Leviticus 26:35). Then the land would enjoy its sabbaths, because they had not kept the sabbatical years God had commanded.

They had worked the ground when God wanted it to rest, so they were justly driven out of it. The wording suggests that the land itself was relieved when it was freed from such sinners, under whose burden it had groaned (Romans 8:20). The Babylonian captivity lasted seventy years, and during that time the land enjoyed its sabbaths, as is said in (2 Chronicles 36:21), in connection with this warning.

The destruction of their idols is also mentioned, though this was more a mercy than a judgment. Still, it was a necessary part of justice, and it shows the sin that would bring all these troubles on them: “I will destroy your high places” (Leviticus 26:30). Those who will not give up their sins when God commands them will be separated from them by his judgments. Since they would not destroy their high places, God would do it.

To shame them for the foolish love they had shown their idols, God says their dead bodies would lie next to the dead bodies of their idols. Those who cling to their sinful desires will sooner or later have enough of them. Their idols could not save either themselves or the people who worshiped them. The people who made them were like them, and both would perish together, like the blind falling into a pit.

Spiritual judgments are also threatened here. These judgments reach the mind, because the One who made the mind can, when he chooses, strike it. God says they would find no acceptance with him: “I will not smell the sweet aroma of your offerings” (Leviticus 26:31). Even though God’s judgments did not make them stop sinning, they still brought incense and offerings, but it was useless, since even their incense became offensive to him (Isaiah 1:13).

They would also lose courage in war and become completely broken in spirit. They would not only fear and run away (Leviticus 26:17), but they would fear and fall even when no one chased them (Leviticus 26:36). A guilty conscience would keep them in constant terror, so that not only the sound of a trumpet, but even the rustle of a leaf, would make them flee. Those who cast off fear of God place themselves under fear of everything else (Proverbs 28:1).

Their very fears would drive them against one another (Leviticus 26:37, 38). Those who had helped increase one another’s guilt would now help increase one another’s terror. They would also have no hope of forgiveness for their sins (Leviticus 26:39). “They shall waste away in their guilt, and how can they live?” (Ezekiel 33:10). It is just for God to leave in despair those who have chosen to sin boldly, and we owe it only to free grace if we are not left to waste away in the sin we were born in and have lived in.