Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament · Leviticus Capítulo 26

Moreover the Lord would bestow His covenant blessing upon them without intermission. אל פּנה signifies a sympathizing and gracious regard (Psalms 25:16; Psalms 69:17). The multiplication and fruitfulness of the nation were a constant fulfilment of the covenant promise (Genesis 17:4-6) and an establishment of the covenant (Genesis 17:7); not merely the preservation of it, but the continual realization of the covenant grace, by which the covenant itself was carried on further and further towards its completion. This was the real purpose of the blessing, to which all earthly good, as the pledge of the constant abode of God in the midst of His people, simply served as the foundation.

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Notwithstanding their numerous increase, they would suffer no want of food. “Ye shall eat that which has become old, and bring out old for new.” Multiplicabo vos et multiplicabo simul annonam vestram, adeo ut illam prae multitudine et copia absumere non possitis, sed illam diutissime servare adeoque abjicere cogamini, novarum frugum suavitate et copia superveniente ( C. a Lap.). הוציא vetustum triticum ex horreo et vinum ex cella promere ( Calvin).

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“I will make My dwelling among you, and My soul will not despise you.” משׁכּן , applied to the dwelling of God among His people in the sanctuary, involves the idea of satisfied repose.

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God's walking in the midst of Israel does not refer to His accompanying and leading the people on their journeyings, but denotes the walking of God in the midst of His people in Canaan itself, whereby He would continually manifest Himself to the nation as its God and make them a people of possession, bringing them into closer and closer fellowship with Himself, and giving them all the saving blessings of His covenant of grace.

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For He was their God, who had brought them out of the land of the Egyptians, that they might no longer be servants to them, and had broken the bands of their yokes and made them go upright. על מטת , lit., the poles of the yoke (cf. Ezekiel 34:27), i.e., the poles which are laid upon the necks of beasts of burden (Jeremiah 27:2) as a yoke, to bend their necks and harness them for work. It was with the burden of such a yoke that Egypt had pressed down the Israelites, so that they could no longer walk upright, till God by breaking the yoke helped them to walk upright again. As the yoke is a figurative description of severe oppression, so going upright is a figurative description of emancipation from bondage. קוממיּוּת , lit., a substantive, an upright position; here it is an adverb (cf. Ges. §100, 2).

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Yea, the Lord would turn His face against them, so that they would be beaten by their enemies, and be so thoroughly humbled in consequence, that they would flee when no man pursued (cf. Leviticus 26:36).

But if these punishments did not answer their purpose, and bring Israel back to fidelity to its God, the Lord would punish the disobedient nation still more severely, and chasten the rebellious for their sin, not simply only, but sevenfold. This He would do, so long as Israel persevered in obstinate resistance, and to this end He would multiply His judgments by degrees. This graduated advance of the judgments of God is so depicted in the following passage, that four times in succession new and multiplied punishments are announced: (1) utter barrenness in their land, - that is to say, one heavier punishment (Leviticus 26:18-20); (2) the extermination of their cattle by beasts of prey, and childlessness, - two punishments (Leviticus 26:21, Leviticus 26:22); (3) war, plague, and famine, - three punishments (Leviticus 26:23-26); (4) the destruction of all idolatrous abominations, the overthrow of their towns and holy places, the devastation of the land, and the dispersion of the people among the heathen-four punishments which would bring the Israelites to the verge of destruction (Leviticus 26:27-33). In this way would the Lord punish the stiffneckedness of His people. - These divine threats embrace the whole of Israel's future. But the series of judgments mentioned is not to be understood historically, as a prediction of the temporal succession of the different punishments, but as an ideal account of the judgments of God, unfolding themselves with inward necessity in a manner answering to the progressive development of the sin. As the nation would not resist the Lord continually, but times of disobedience and apostasy would alternate with times of obedience and faithfulness, so the judgments of God would alternate with His blessings; and as the opposition would not increase in uniform progress, sometimes becoming weaker and then at other times gaining greater force again, so the punishments would not multiply continuously, but correspond in every case to the amount of the sin, and only burst in upon the incorrigible race in all the intensity foretold, when ungodliness gained the upper hand.

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Their towns and their sanctuaries He would destroy, because He took no pleasure in their sacrificial worship. מקדּשׁים are the holy things of the worship of Jehovah, the tabernacle and temple, with their altars and the rest of their holy furniture, as in Ps. 68:36; Psalms 74:7. ניחח ריח (Leviticus 1:9) is the odour of the sacrifice; and ריח , to smell, an anthropomorphic designation of divine satisfaction (cf. Amos 5:21; Isaiah 11:3).

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But those who still remained under this oppression would pine away in their iniquities ( ימּקּוּ , lit., to rot, moulder away), and “also in the iniquities of their fathers with them.” אתּם refers to עונות , “which are with them,” which they carry with them and must atone for (see at Exodus 20:5),

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“And yet, even with regard to this, when they shall be in the land of their enemies, have I not despised them.” That is to say, if it shall have come even so far as that they are in the land of their enemies (the words גּם־זאת stand first in an absolute sense, and are strengthened or intensified by ואף and more fully explained by בּהיותם וגו ), I have not rejected them, to destroy them and break My covenant with them. For I am Jehovah their God, who, as the absolutely existing and unchangeably faithful One, keeps His promises and does not repent of His calling (Romans 11:29).

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He would therefore remember the covenant with the forefathers, whom He had brought out of Egypt before the eyes of the nations, to be a God to them; and He would renew the covenant with the fathers to them (the descendants), to gather them again out of the heathen, and adopt them again as His nation (cf. Deuteronomy 30:3-5). In this way the judgment would eventually turn to a blessing, if they would bend in true repentance under the mighty hand of their God.

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