1 But if in spite of all this you do not obey Me, but continue to walk in hostility toward Me, 28 then I will walk in fury against you, and I, even I, will punish you sevenfold for your sins. 29 You will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and heap your lifeless bodies on the lifeless remains of your idols; and My soul will despise you.

31 I will reduce your cities to rubble and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will refuse to smell the pleasing aroma of your sacrifices. 32 And I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who dwell in it will be appalled. 33 But I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes desolate and your cities are laid waste.

34 Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. 35 As long as it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not receive during the Sabbaths when you lived in it.

36 As for those of you who survive, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, so that even the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. And they will flee as one flees the sword, and fall when no one pursues them. 37 They will stumble over one another as before the sword, though no one is behind them. So you will not be able to stand against your enemies.

38 You will perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies will consume you. 39 Those of you who survive in the lands of your enemies will waste away in their iniquity and will decay in the sins of their fathers.

40 But if they will confess their iniquity and that of their fathers in the unfaithfulness that they practiced against Me, by which they have also walked in hostility toward Me— 41 and I acted with hostility toward them and brought them into the land of their enemies—and if their uncircumcised hearts will be humbled and they will make amends for their iniquity, 42 then I will remember My covenant with Jacob and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.

43 For the land will be abandoned by them, and it will enjoy its Sabbaths by lying desolate without them. And they will pay the penalty for their iniquity, because they rejected My ordinances and abhorred My statutes.

44 Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject or despise them so as to destroy them and break My covenant with them; for I am the LORD their God. 45 But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their fathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the LORD.”

46 These are the statutes, ordinances, and laws that the LORD established between Himself and the Israelites through Moses on Mount Sinai.

REFLECTIONS

This chapter of Leviticus started off sounding like a hypothetical scenario – “If you obey, things will go well, but if you disobey, I will judge you.” But as the “disobedience” half goes on, it gets more and more specific. Because this wasn’t just a hypothetical possibility. God knew that his people would abandon the covenant and all these things would happen, because their hearts were still “uncircumcised” (v 41).

But the thing I love most about the passage is that God’s judgment is not the end of this awful story, because God had committed himself from the very beginning to bring renewal and blessing – not just to Israel, but to the whole world. God would be faithful to his covenant with Abraham (v 42) – and God has been faithful! He brought Israel back from exile, and then sent Jesus to open to the way to salvation and blessing for all people.

I need to ask myself: Is my heart humble before the Lord and his claim on my life (v 41)? But in the end, my assurance doesn’t rest on my own ability to obey. I rest on the fact that God always remembers and is faithful to his promises in Jesus.