Buy why should they experience the bitterness and degradation of exile? Why pine away in the land of their enemies? Jehovah was their God. Exile could never result from His inability to shield them from the invader, but it might from His unwillingness to do it. Under what circumstances that might be the case, the lawgiver next proceeds to declare, describing the different steps in God's dealings in chastisements with the people, which would culminate in captivity, from which they could only hope to return after real confession of their sins.
Brought out of Egypt by the exercise of divine power, brought into the land, too, in fulfillment of Jehovah's promise, their entrance into Canaan, and their possession of it, did not depend on their obedience; though for their continuance therein, the keeping of the covenant was an absolute necessity. Placed before God on the ground of law, obedience was requisite, if the land was to support them, or to continue to be cultivated by those to whom Jehovah had given it. So from verses 1-13 we have enumerated the blessings which, on condition of their continued obedience, they would enjoy; and from verses 14-45, the different dealings with them in judgment, if disobedient, till exile should be their portion.
Let us read in the words of Jehovah the various blessings that He promised them. " Ye shall make you no idols, nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it, for I am the Lord your God. Ye shall keep my Sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord." Idolatry avoided, the Sabbath, the sign between Jehovah and Israel duly remembered, and His sanctuary reverenced, the people would have kept themselves apart from other nations, and would have maintained the testimony to the one true God. Then if walking in His statutes, and keeping His commandments, God would abundantly bless them. " I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time, and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land. And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you. And ye shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of the new. And I will set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people. I am the Lord your God which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright " (verses 4-13).
What a beautiful picture of a people enjoying the blessing of Jehovah, and of His delight in them is here presented to us. What they were especially charged to do we have seen in verses 1-2. Then, if they would walk in God's statutes, and would keep His commandments, and do them, all these blessings would be theirs. Unsolicited by Israel God here offers to bless them, and that according to the desire of His heart. We learn, therefore, what He could do, and would do, if they should prove obedient. For an earthly people's happiness, ere the kingdom was to be set up in power, nothing seems lacking. The fertility of the ground they could count on, and that which man cannot control-rain, God promised should not be withheld in its season. Of peace and plenty and security He assured them. No evil beast should remain in the land, nor should the sword pass through it. Power in victory should be theirs, and they should multiply in their inheritance. Further, God's dwelling place should be among them. He would walk among them, and be their God, and they should be His people. As of old in the garden God had delight in men, so would He take delight in His redeemed people. And as then, nothing that the creature needed for his happiness was withheld, so would it be with the Israelites, though dwelling on an earth where sin is, and with nations around them not exempted from any of the bitter consequences of the fall.
But all this was conditional. Did they ever enjoy it? Did they ever experience the fullness of it, the barns so filled with the new harvest that they brought forth the old store, and eat it; the crops so heavy that their threshing reached unto the vintage, and the vintage to the sowing time? Were they ever tree from idolatry when in their land as a whole people?
Alas, No. They had false gods in the days of Joshua (24:23). They forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashteroth in the days of the Judges (Jud. 2:13); and the ten tribes were in a state of apostasy in the days of Ahab. The Lord foresaw it all, and warned them of that which He must do in righteousness, if they would not by their obedience allow Him to bless them in grace, and according to the desire of His heart. This is next set before them, and the lawgiver details the steps in governmental dealing that must be taken to endeavor to bring them to repentance, when they had failed, that they should not be driven out of their inheritance.
These steps, as here detailed, are five in number. How they tell of the yearnings of Jehovah's heart over His rebellious people, chastising them only so much as should be needed to lead them to repentance. (1) Sickness is threatened with slaughter by their enemies, and the produce of the soil, the fruit of their labors to be at the mercy of the invader (verses 16-17). This kind of dealing we read of in the days of the Judges, when different nations invaded Canaan. And, in the days of Gideon they had to hide the fruits of their harvest, if they could, from the watchful eye of their enemy (Judg. 6). If that had succeeded in bringing them to repentance, God's dealing in government would have stopped. But that failing, drought, and consequent famine, would be sent (18-20). In the days of Ahab Israel experienced this to the full, and proved too Jehovah's willingness to relax His hand in punishment, when they confessed that He was God (1 Kings 18).
But further, if such dealings should fail of effecting real repentance, then (3) wild beasts would multiply, which would bereave them of their children, destroy their cattle, thin the population, and make desolate the highways. To this infliction Ezekiel (14:15) refers. If still they would not be reformed by the Lord's dealings with them, but would walk contrary unto Him, then He would walk contrary unto them, and would punish them seven times for their sins, bringing (4) a sword to avenge the quarrel of the covenant (v. 23-26), with its too frequent accompaniments, want and pestilence. Should that too fail, the Lord would walk contrary to them in fury, and (5) the people reduced to the last extremity should eat their own offspring, and the idols, demonstrated to be idols, Jehovah would destroy. The people formerly regarded by Him as the apple of His eye He would abhor, and their cities should be laid waste, and their sanctuaries should be brought unto desolation, the savor of their sweet odors God would not accept, but would bring their land into desolation, and would scatter them among the nations, terminating His dealings with them to induce repentance with exile from the land of their possession (29-33). That took place finally in the days of Zedekiah. The miseries predicted were realized during the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, as Lam. 121They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me: all mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it: thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me. (Lamentations 1:21), U. describe; and after the capture of the city the land rested, enjoying its Sabbaths, because it did not rest in the Sabbatical years when they dwelt upon it. To this passage in Leviticus (26:35) the chronicler (2 Chron. 36:2121To fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years. (2 Chronicles 36:21)) evidently refers.
How ready was the Lord to bless His people! How full was the blessing He could give them, delighting as He would have done to have walked among them. But they would not. Judicial dealing, therefore, had to take place. Yet how slow to anger! He would only deal blow after blow when each preceding one had failed to bring them to repentance. At last exile had to be their lot. Then exiles and captives, Jehovah's face, once turned towards them, would be turned from them, the sound even of a shaken leaf should chase them, they should flee as fleeing from a sword, and should fall when none pursued them, and perish among the heathen, and the land of their enemies should eat them up (36-39).
Yet the whole nation was not to perish. God would not cast them away, nor would He abhor them to destroy them utterly, and to break His covenant with them. For He was Jehovah their God. So, for their sakes, He will yet remember His covenant with their ancestors, whom He brought forth out of the land of Egypt, in the sight of the heathen, that He might be their God (44, 45). But that can only be when they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with the trespass that they have trespassed against Him. If, then, their uncircumcised hearts shall be humbled, and they shall accept the punishment of their iniquity, then will He remember His covenant with Jacob, and also His covenant with Isaac, and also His covenant with Abraham, and He will remember the land (40-42). The value of a covenant made with those who have died here comes out. The iniquity of the people in subsequent generations cannot set aside a covenant made with with those who have passed away, and which was not annulled before their death.
Throughout this chapter the reader may remark that God's dealings with Israel in their land, and His dealings with the land because of their sins, are the prominent features. In harmony with that, He here says that He will remember the land; but the return of the people, though hinted at, and that not obscurely, is not directly stated. That is set forth in Deut. 28-30, which predict the fortunes of the people, whilst this chapter of Leviticus describes more particularly that of the land, and so comes, as we have seen, in close connection with the ordinance regarding the Sabbatical year, and the regulations about the Jubilee.
The Lord will remember the land. Of this Ezekiel treats. The desolation of the land he predicted in chapter vi. of his book, its returning fertility, preparatory to the nation's restoration, he announces in chapter 36:1-15. In the days of Joshua God brought them into the land with everything in readiness for their immediate occupation. So will it be in the future. " O, mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to my people of Israel, for they are at hand to come" (Ezek. 36:88But ye, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to my people of Israel; for they are at hand to come. (Ezekiel 36:8)). This has always been God's way. He planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed (Gen. 2:88And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. (Genesis 2:8)). The One who did this has gone to prepare a place for. His own in His Father's house. The place, the land, is prepared beforehand, and then God brings His people into it. That being His manner of acting, and the prophetic word declaring it, we can understand the language and importance of Psa. 67:66Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us. (Psalm 67:6), " The earth has yielded" (not " Then shall the earth yield") her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us." The returning fertility of the land is the harbinger of full national blessing. Jehovah, they will then own, has remembered the land.
For Israel, of course, this chapter of Leviticus has special interest. For us in the present day it is not without interest, since we learn from the answer of Huldah, the prophetess to Josiah the King (2 Kings 22:16,1716Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of the book which the king of Judah hath read: 17Because they have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands; therefore my wrath shall be kindled against this place, and shall not be quenched. (2 Kings 22:16‑17)), that this portion of God's word was part of the book, which Shaphan, the scribe, read in the ears of the King. The destruction of Jerusalem especially because of idolatry, was predicted, we are told, in the book that was read before the King, and that would certainly be carried out. Now Deut. 2814And thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them. (Deuteronomy 28:14) predicted the sorrows of the people, consequent on their sins; but Leviticus (xxvi. 31, 32) plainly foretells what Deuteronomy (28:52) only hints at-the destruction of their cities and of their sanctuaries, and that especially because of their practices of idolatry. The answer of Huldah makes it plain that the book found was not only that of Deuteronomy, a work which we are asked by some to believe was about that time composed, but it contained more than we have in the last book of the Pentateuch. It really was what it was called, " The book of the law of the Lord by the hand of Moses" (2 Chron. 34:1414And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found a book of the law of the Lord given by Moses. (2 Chronicles 34:14)).