Leviticus 26: Blessings and Punishment

God has given them a covenant in Sinai, and He is very concern that they may not be faithful to it. In this chapter He told them the blessings if they obey, or the punishments if they disobey.  

v1-13: Blessings for Obedience

God told them not to make idols, image, or pillar nor a stone carving and bow down to it. They are to keep his Sabbaths and reverence His sanctuary. 

We understand that idols worshipping is obviously wrong. However he also pointed out the importance of keeping the Sabbaths and Reverence to his sanctuary. In Christianity, we do not practice Sabbath, but we have a worship day on Sunday. When we go to His house, we must treat it with respect. When we go to the president house, we don't wear shorts and slippers. Yet, I've seen people wearing that when they visit God's house! Some people skip going to church and watch recorded video instead. Where is our reverence for the house of God? 

Our Sunday is our Sabbath day, and yet, we only spend the morning in church, and do whatever we want after that. We need to spend more time fellowshipping, learning the bible, and serve the Lord. I'm also at fault for this.

The Lord promise them if they follow His commandments, then He will bless them with: 

a) Their land will be productive; they will have good crops, and trees will yield their fruit. The grapes will have great produce throughout the year. They will have surplus of crops that they have to clear out the old grain to make room for the new harvest. (v4-5, 10)

b) They will have more than enough bread and will dwell there securely. There will be peace in the land and no one will make them afraid. Dangerous wild beasts will be removed. (v6)

c) They will have victory in war. They will chase their enemies and they will fall by the sword; Five of them will chase a hundred; and a hundred of you chase ten thousand. (7,8)

d) They will have many children and multiply their people. (v9)

e) God will fulfill His covenant with them, and will dwell with them. He will walk with them and they will be his people. (v11)

The Lord remind them that He is the one who brought them out of Egypt, broke slavery from their neck so that they can walk with their heads held high.

In other words, if they fully obey the Lord, they will bring back Eden into their community, dwelling and walking together with God, who will provide more than what they need. 

v14-39: Punishment for Disobedience

However, if they disobey His commands, and treating his regulation with contempt, then the Lord will punish them. These are some of the curses that will fall on them:

a) Drought, famine and starvation. (v16, 19-20, 26, 29)

b) War in the land, feeling of fear, decimations by wild beasts; defeat before enemies, and exile. (v16-17, 22, 25, 31-33, 36-38)

c) Disease, decimation and death among the people (v16, 22, 25-26, 29-30, 38-39)

d) The Lord turning away from them (v24, 28, 30-31)

There are 5 levels of increase stages of the punishment - 

a) First level - v14:

b) Second level -  v18 ("in spite of this, you still disobey me"). 

c) Third level - v21 ("If even then you remain hostile toward Me"), 

d) Fourth level - v23 ("And if you fail to learn the lesson"), 

e) Fifth level - v27 ("in spite of all this you still refuse to listen").

In the second to the fifth level, God uses the phrase: They will be punish "seven times over for their sins."  This is a saying that the punishment will be complete and nothing will be missed. 

In the fifth level, horrible things will happen to them - "Then you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters" (v29). Moses had already warned them in Deuteronomy 28:53. It states, "You will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege."

In history, this actually comes true. Some of them kill their own child as a sacrifice to idols. But many of them ate their own child during the Babylonian siege on Jerusalem. Lamentations 4:10 says:  "With their own hands compassionate women have cooked their own children, who became their food when my people were destroyed."  

v40-46: God's Mercy

The Lord's punishment is to turn His people away from pride and sin to repentance and obedience, so that He can restore them to Himself and they can enjoy His covenant blessings. That's why the warnings are so severe. Israel was supposed to be an example of the Lord's people so that His name is honored and glorified throughout the nations.  All parents would bring in severe disciplines if the child keep doing things that bring harm to their own lives. 

God knows they are going to fail Him, but He also believe that one day, their stubborn hearts will be humbled. These punishment is restorative, not retributive. (Hebrews 12:5-11)

"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." (v44).

In fact, after the Babylonian exile, the Jews stop worship idols until today. Furthermore, their true humility will come when they see the Lord Jesus coming to save them in future. "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son." Zechariah 12:10

While they were unfaithful, God remains faithful to His covenant as He said in v42 "Then I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land."  Even today, God has given back the land to Israel, after thousand of years in exile by the Romans. The Kingdom of God brought by Jesus is available to the Jews as well. 

Matthew 5:17 says, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them."

Finally, the important thing for God is to maintain a relationship with us. The chapter concluded by saying: "These 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." (v46). 

Only through what Jesus had done, we finally has an everlasting relationship with God. (Galatians 3:8-14). The new covenant blessings are even better than the blessings the Jews have. See Eph 1:3-14 and Heb 8:6.