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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Leviticus 26:34 - 26:46
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The Effects of these Visitations and the Restoration of the Covenant
v. 34. Then shall the land enjoy her Sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest and enjoy her Sabbaths. It is here implied that Israel, in its revolt against Jehovah and His commandments, would omit the observance of the sabbatical years, and that the land, suffering under the oppression of this greed, would feel the relief brought about by the deportation of the owners.
v. 35. As long as it lieth desolate, it shall rest, because it did not rest in your Sabbaths when ye blood upon it.
v. 36. And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, filling their hearts with a cowardly fear, with the despondency of an unreasonable terror; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth, victims more of their own terror than of any harm done to them by their enemies,
v. 37. And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth; and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
v. 38. And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. Cf Numbers 13-32; Eze_36:13.
v. 39. And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands, So long as they remain in their unrepentant attitude toward God; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them; for if the children follow in the footsteps of their sinful parents, the sins of the latter are visited upon them also. But now the mercy of the Lord comes into the foreground Again.
v. 40. If they shall confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, the guilt which they brought upon themselves by their misdeeds, with their trespass which they trespassed against Me, and that also they have walked contrary unto Me, an open confession being necessary to show the sincerity of their repentance;
v. 41. and that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies, thereby freely acknowledging that they were suffering a well-deserved punishment; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity,
v. 42. then will I remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember, with all the blessings promised therein; and I will remember the land, turn back to it with thoughts of love and kindness.
v. 43. The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her Sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them, being free from the oppression of a population that disregarded the will of the Lord; and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity, bowing their backs to the Lord's chastening rod; because, even because they despised My judgments, and because their soul abhorred My statutes.
v. 44. And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, when it seems that they are absolutely forsaken by God, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them to destroy them utterly, for that had not been the purpose of His punishment in the first place, and to break My covenant with them; for I am the Lord, their God, who always has mercy upon the repentant sinner.
v. 45. 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. I am the Lord. In this way the punishment of the Lord would finally result in blessing the people, in bringing them back to the fellowship of the covenant which He had never repudiated.
v. 46. These are the statutes and judgments and laws which the Lord made between Him and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses. The history of Israel, as foreshadowed in this Chapter, is an example of warning to all men. Unto those that are disobedient to the truth the Lord will render tribulation and anguish, Rom_2:8-9. He will in flaming fire take vengeance on them that know not God, that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, 2Th_1:8-9. But His mercy is always ready to turn to those that come to Him with a sorrowful and repentant heart.