Leviticus 26 draws out in a solemn manner, not in the form of type now, but of direct statement, the prophetic history of the people, and warns of the direct effect of their being tried on the ground of their own responsibility, which is the principle of law. What a contrast, except in the close, with the jubilee! I shall not of course enter on its details.
Suffice it to say that God does not close this searching word of His without the remembrance of His covenant, as it is said, with Jacob, and His covenant with Isaac, and His covenant with Abraham. He speaks here in this unusually emphatic way of His covenant with every one of them; so that even from His mouth, against whom they had so long and deeply sinned, there should be a threefold witness for His mercy in that day. “And I will,” says He, “remember the land.” Thus we see the connection with the chapter before, and how perfectly therefore a divine order is kept up even where our dullness hinders us often from perceiving it. “The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her Sabbaths” – another link of the connection with what went before – “while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised My judgments, and because their souls abhorred my statutes. And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break My covenant with them: for I am Jehovah their God. But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am Jehovah.” Thus God falls back on what He is Himself after He has fully detailed the sorrows that fell on the people because of what they were.
But whatever may be the necessary changes in the government of God because of a people changing – alas! merely from one form of evil and opinion to another, God, the immutable eternal God, who has given this special name to them – God in His own unchangeableness – will show them mercy when He comes whose right it is to reign.