"Leviticus 26: God Walks Contrary in Verses 24, 28 and 41"

Leviticus 26 is usually taught as blessings in verses 3 through 13 and curses in 14 through 39, with a way back in 40 through 45. What caught me this time was one verb that goes through all three and changes hands partway.

The verb is "walk." It comes first in verse 3, the condition for the blessings: "If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them." The people walk, and the statutes are the road. Then the reward in verse 12 uses the same verb with a different subject.

And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people.
— Leviticus 26:12

After the rain and the harvest and the safety, what the chapter finally promises is company on the road. Verse 11 has him setting his tabernacle among them, and verse 12 puts him on foot beside them. Paul picks the promise up in 2 Corinthians 6:16 with "I will dwell in them, and walk in them."

Walking contrary

The curses open with "But if ye will not hearken unto me" in verse 14, and the phrase that matters arrives in verse 21: "And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me." The people are the ones walking, and they've turned around on the road. Verse 24 is the reply.

Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.
— Leviticus 26:24

It's the same verb with a new subject, and verse 28 repeats it with "in fury" added. The chapter spent its blessing on God walking among them, and the curse is that picture run backward, with the same company facing the other direction.

Verse 41 is the one I'd have missed. It sits inside the way back, in the sentence describing what the people will confess.

If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me;
And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity:
— Leviticus 26:40-41

The confession has two parts. They say they walked contrary, and they say he walked contrary back. They are asked to describe the whole sequence, including their own start of it, and not only the damage. Exile in this chapter has a cause, and the confession is where that gets said aloud. A people who can say both clauses are no longer only on the receiving end of it, which may be why the sentence goes straight on to humbled hearts.

The land and its sabbaths

Verses 34 and 35 are easy to pass over between the sword and the scattering, and I think they carry more of the curses than the famine does.

As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it.
— Leviticus 26:35

The land enjoys "her sabbaths" while the people are in their enemies' country, and verse 43 says so a second time. The sabbath year goes back to Leviticus 25:4, "in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land," which I wrote about last Thursday, mostly on the verses where the law asks its own question about food. Chapter 26 reads to me like the bill for chapter 25. The text doesn't draw that line itself, though the vocabulary is close enough that I'd be surprised if the two chapters were meant to be read apart.

Second Chronicles 36:21 reads the exile through this passage. It says the land was desolate "until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years." The chronicler gives a number, seventy, which is a kind of precision Leviticus 26 never offers for itself. Nowhere in the chapter does it say how many sabbaths the land was owed, and the Chronicles verse is the nearest anyone gets to an answer. That is a later writer's reading of the earlier passage, and a reasonable one.

Seven times

Readers want a unit for "seven times," whether years or rounds or a sevenfold weight, and the chapter doesn't supply one. Verses 18 and 21 say "seven times more," which suggests something piled on top of what came before, and that is about all the text allows. I've heard good people settle on seven years, and others on seven times the damage, and neither can point to a verse.

Verse 29 is the hardest line in the chapter: "ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat." It belongs to a siege, and Deuteronomy 28 has a parallel, so go there for the fuller picture. I'm leaving it alone here.

Remembering runs back to Abraham

Verse 42 is where the chapter turns.

Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.
— Leviticus 26:42

Jacob comes first and Abraham last, so the remembering goes backward through the generations, starting with the one nearest to them. The land is in the same sentence, and it is remembered along with the patriarchs after the long stretch of verses that left it desolate.

The "Then" opening verse 42 answers the "if" of verses 40 and 41, so confession and humbling come first. Verse 44 has no "if" in it.

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 the Lord their God.
— Leviticus 26:44

In verse 15 the people were the ones who would "break my covenant." In verse 44 the Lord says he will not. Verse 45 adds that he will remember "for their sakes" the covenant of their ancestors, the one tied to bringing them out of Egypt. I take verses 40 through 42 to be about how the people come back and verses 44 and 45 to be about why anyone is still there to come back, which is my guess at how the two pieces fit. The second doesn't wait on the first being done perfectly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Leviticus 26 promise that obedience brings rain and a good harvest?

It promises them to a nation, since the "ye" in these verses is the whole people about to live in a land, and the rain, the bread and the safety are national goods. I wouldn't read it as a promise about one man's income or one family's health. People who do usually end up somewhere harder than the text puts them, because the same chapter then has to account for every farmer who kept the sabbath and lost a crop.

What does the chapter say about the Sabbath?

Verse 2 says "Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary." For Latter-day Saints the Lord's day is described in D&C 59:9-10, which tells us to go to the house of prayer on his holy day and offer our sacraments. The Bible Dictionary says the change from the last day of the week to the first "is not so important as is the concept and principle of the Sabbath." Leviticus 26 cares about the principle, and it makes the land's sabbaths the measure of what the people missed.

Who is the chapter talking to, one person or the whole group?

The whole group, and verses 40 through 45 speak of "they" in exile and of their fathers, so it's a people with a history behind it. I wouldn't match any single curse in 14 through 39 to one bad year in one life. The text never does.

Where should I read the parallel?

Deuteronomy 28 has the same order, blessings first and then a much longer list of curses, and verse 15 opens with an "if thou wilt not hearken" like the one that opens Leviticus 26:14. It's longer and harsher, and I'd read Leviticus 26 before it.

Read verses 40 through 45 right after verse 39, in the same sitting. Don't put the chapter down where the curses stop.

— D.