LEVITICUS: Chapter 26

Chapter 26
Summary:	God commands (again) that no one is to make any idols, carved images, or erect statues to worship. He commands that all of his sabbaths are to be observed and followed, and that all of his laws, rules, and commandments are to be followed and obeyed. If the people of Israel can follow these instructions, then God will provide them rain in due season, which will yield an abundance of crops, trees ripe with a surplus of fruit, and grapes growing past their usual harvesting time. The people of Israel will have plenty to eat and will live in safety. God will give peace in the land so that the Israelis can sleep without fear. God will rid the land of "evil" animals, and will protect the land from the sword of the enemy. God says that the people of Israel shall chase their enemies and that they shall fall before them by the sword. Five Israeli soldiers will be able to drive off one hundred enemies, and a hundred Israeli soldiers will be able to drive off ten thousand enemies, who will all die by the sword of Israel. God will respect the people of Israel and cause them to grow and multiply while establishing a covenant with them. The people will eat from the abundance of food, and have to get rid of some of the old food to make room for the surplus of new food that has harvested. God even says that he'll be able to live amongst the people of Israel in his tabernacle, and not have to hate them all(!) He says that he'll be able to walk amongst them, and will be their god and that the Israelis will be his people. He tells the people (yet again) that he is the one that got the people of Israel out of their slavery in Egypt, breaking the bonds of their slavery and made them dignified again. But... If the people of Israel do not follow and obey all of God's laws and commandments, thereby breaking God's covenant with them, God will fill the people of Israel with terror, consumption, disease that will burn and consume your eyes, cause sorrow to your heart, and farmers will sow their crops in vain, while their enemies will eat whatever manages to grow*. God will set his face against the people of Israel, and they shall be slain before their enemies. The enemies of Israel will reign over them, and the people of Israel will be so filled with terror that they will panic and flee even when they're not in danger. If the people of Israel still won't comply with God's demands then God will punish them seven times more for their "sins". God will break the people of Israel's pride with burden, making the skies feel as "heavy as iron" and the "earth as brass". Farmers will toil in vain as their land will not yield their crops, nor will the trees yield their fruit. If the people still won't obey God's rules and laws, and won't listen to him, then God will bring seven* times more plagues upon the people according to their "sins". God will send wild animals among the people of Israel to kill their children, destroy their cattle, and dwindle the population. The city roads will become desolate. If the people of Israel still will not reform their ways and still walk contrary to God, then God will walk contrary to them and punish them another seven* times for their "sins". God will "bring a sword upon" (wage war upon) the people, that will avenge the argument over God's covenant. God will send pestilence among the people of Israel and will deliver the people to the hands of their enemies. God will destroy their food supply so that as it will take "ten women" to bake enough bread in "one oven", that even once eaten will never be enough to satisfy one's hunger. And if after all this, the people of Israel will still not listen, God will walk contrary to them in fury and will chastise the people seven* times for their sins. The people of Israel will be forced to resort to cannibalism to survive. God will tear down any temples, altars, or idols they have created for other gods, and cast the corpses of the people of Israel onto the corpses of their gods, and God will abhor the people of Israel. God will waste their cities, and bring their temples into desolation, while refusing to acknowledge any "animal sacrifices" people might make to God - God will refuse to "smell the savor" of their "sweet odor". God will turn the land into a wasteland and the enemies of the Israelis that will inhabit the land will be astonished at what has been done to the land. God will scatter the people of Israel among the "heathen" nations and wage war against the people as they flee. God says that the land laying desolate will finally get to enjoy it's sabbaths, while the people of Israel have fled to the lands of their enemies. God adds that the land lying desolate will finally have its rest, as it (apparently) didn't rest when the people of Israel denied the land its sabbaths. Anyone that has survived God's wrath God will curse with fear as they live amongst their enemies. The sound of a shaken leaf will cause them to run as if they were fleeing from a sword, and that they shall fall when no one is pursuing them. They will stumble upon each other as they flee and will have no courage to stand up to their enemies. The surviving people of Israel will perish among their "heathen" enemies, and those that manage to survive will pine away in their "sins" and the "sins" of their fathers. If at last the survivors might confess their "sin", and the "sins" of their fathers, and that they have trespassed and walked contrary to God; if then their "uncircumcised hearts" are truly humble and accept the punishment for their "sins", then God will remember his covenant with Jacob*, Isaac, and Abraham, and the "promised land". God says that the land will still be left to them, because even though these surviving descendants of Israel have "despised" God's judgments and laws, and were driven into the lands of their enemies due to their "sins", God will not cast them away. No will God abhor them, or destroy them completely, as this would break his covenant with them. God will remember his covenant with their ancestors, whom once again God "reminds" that he was the one who brought them out of the land of Egypt - in sight of the "heathens" - so that he could rule over the people as their god. These are the laws (and threats) which God made between himself and the people of Israel that were given to Moses.
Notes:	1.) The exact line as written in the King James version is "and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it." This could possibly be alluding to cannibalism if we compare the usage and phrasing of "your seed" to other verses, such as Leviticus 20:2 - "...that giveth any of his seed unto Molech..." In this verse "his seed" is referring to an infantile offspring. 2.) Yet more repetition of the significance of the mystical number seven. 3.) Again, although renamed by God himself, God refers to Israel as "Jacob", yet he refers to Abram by the name Abraham which was also a given name by God.
Thoughts:	This chapter can basically be summed up as such: do exactly as God commands and your cities and people will prosper with enormous wealth, but break any of God's laws and he'll kill you all - but if any of you happen to survive and say your sorry (and really mean it) then God will forgive you. God starts out restating his first commandment - that no one is to make any idols, carved images, or statues to worship - and reminds everyone to observe his sabbaths as well as to obey all of his laws and commandments. If the people can follow these rules to the letter, then God will "bless" them with lots of rain, which in turn will "bless" them with an abundance of crops. In addition, the people of Israel will protect them from "evil" animals and enemy armies. The first issue I take here is that animals do not follow any sense of "good" or "evil" - even animals that are dangerous to humans are not "evil" in any sense of the word. Animals attack usually only when either themselves, their young, or their territory is threatened. They don't hunt or prey upon humans by entering their habitats with the intention of killing people. When they do enter a human's territory it is generally in a quest to find food or nesting materials, and not simply to attack from a sense of "evil" intent. Anyways, God claims that the soldier amongst the people of Israel will be able to repel enemy army in rather ridiculous ratios - that five soldiers will be able to repel an army of one hundred, and that 100 soldiers will be able to repel 10,000 enemies. Apparently, in a battle against 100 soldiers you'll need to match five percent of their army, but going against an army of 10,000, you'll only need to match one percent of the enemy army(!) It's not made clear here if Aaron's "Rod of God" will be necessary to win these battles. God continues on saying that he'll "bless" the people of Israel by allowing them to multiply and grow in population and that everyone will have plenty to eat. He even goes on to say that he'll actually feel comfortable living amongst the people in the tabernacle and won't hate the people(!) God will be happy to walk amongst the people (providing they do everything he tells them to do) and to rule over them as their god. He remind them (yet again) that he was the guy who got them out of their slavery in Egypt and made them dignified again. However, now God changes gears and spends the rest of the chapter threatening the people with what he will do if the people don't follow his laws and commandments. The first thing God has planned for disobedience is to instill terror and disease among the people - a disease that will "burn and consume" their eyes, and cause sorrow in their hearts. He'll also make it so that farmers will be sowing their crops in vain, while allowing enemy civilizations to come in and eat whatever they do manage to grow. God will set his face against the people and this will see them slaughtered by the hands of their enemies. The people of Israel will be so consumed by terror that they'll become paranoid and flee even when they're not in danger. If the people of Israel don't get the message the first time, then God will punish them seven times more for their "sinning". (Every time God ups the ante in this chapter it will be by seven times.) Next up, God will break the people's pride with heavy burden and curse the farmers even more while their crops and fruit trees fail to provide food. This doesn't exactly "seven times worse" but God still has more in store. If the people of Israel still don't mend their ways, then God will bring them seven times more plagues for their "sinning". (Making this fourteen times the punishment?) He'll send wild (evil?) animals amongst the people to kill their children, cattle, and to dwindle their population. Their city roads will become desolate due to the population loss. If the people of Israel still don't mend their ways, then God will punish them seven more times for their "sinning". (Making this twenty one times the punishment?) God will wage war against the people of Israel and send pestilence throughout the land, and will deliver the people into the hands of their enemies. God will also destroy all of their food supply and makes a strange, silly, and slightly chauvinistic analogy about "ten women" baking bread "in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied." If after all this the people still don't respond to God's punishments, then God will "walk contrary to them in fury" and will chastise the people seven more times. (Making this twenty eight times the punishment?) This time the people will be so undernourished and starved that God says they'll resort to cannibalism - and will eat their sons and daughters. God somehow is confident that the people will be "sinning" by putting up altars and erecting statues to other gods, and says that he will tear them down and let the people of Israel's corpses rot amongst the ruins. If the people try to give God any animal sacrifices, he's not even going to acknowledge them despite their "sweet odor". The "promised land" will be so devastated and desolate that the "heathens" will be astonished at the condition of the land when they inhabit it. God will scatter the people of Israel among the "heathen" nations that surround them, and wage war against them as they flee. With the land laying desolate, God says that it will finally get its rest and "sabbaths" as apparently God has already assumed that the people weren't observing this law either. God will continue to curse any survivors amongst the people of Israel with fear, stating that the sound of a shaking leaf will cause them to flee in paranoia as if they were being chased by a sword wielding enemy. The people will apparently be so paranoid as to trip over each other as they flee and they will have lost all their courage to even stand up to their enemies at all. They will perish at the hands of their enemies and those that survive will pine away in their "sins", as well as the "sins" of their fathers. The problem with God's threats is that he assumes that if the people are breaking his laws that they're breaking all of his laws, and he also makes the assumption that all of the people are guilty, much like we saw with his judgment upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. With God, everything is in terms of absolutes, all or nothing, and this is not an example of being "just". However, the world is never comprised of absolutes, and thereby we must judge things on specific terms - not by lumping people together. Just because a majority of people might be guilty of breaking a law - such as "speeding" in our modern world - does not make the whole of the people criminals. You couldn't punish the entire state of Vermont with life in prison if 98% of the population had traffic tickets on their licenses, just because a few of those people had felony offenses. The "speeders" shouldn't be lumped in with the handful of criminals with felony records simply because on paper all of them broke the law in some respect. Treating people with broad strokes like this is not "justice" at all. Quite clearly the first dozen or so verses are a form of "bribery" in rewarding the people for following God's laws, while the next two dozen or so verses are a form of "extortion" - to strike fear into the people to obey, or else. If anything this chapter shares a lot in common with criminal racketeering, that provide "protection" to their rackets for "paying up", and resorting to violence and property damage when their rackets don't "pay up". I just cannot see any other way to view these passages as anything but forms of practicing bribery and extortion in order to get submission and compliance. However, even after all these nasty things God says he will do to the people of Israel, he wraps things up by saying that if there's anybody left that survived all of his famines, diseases, wild animal attacks, and invading armies, and if they're really sorry and sincere about it, they can accept God's punishment and he'll let them have the "promised land" again - because after all, he did promise this land to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and a promise is a promise - as long as it's on God's terms. Before closing out the chapter God once again states that it was him that brought the people of Israel out of Egypt.