Adore and Tremble: An Overview of God’s Judgment on Israel (Leviticus 26:14-22)
“Almighty vengeance, how it burns! How bright his fury glows!” – Isaac Watts 😖
Dear reckless rebel,
You’re aware it’s wrong, but you do it anyway. You’re warned
the punishment’s strong, but you still disobey.
This happens to both
believers and nonbelievers. The difference is believers strive hard not to sin
while nonbelievers easily give in to fleshly desires within. It’s not that we,
the faithful, worship God and the faithless don’t worship any god; it’s that non-Christians
live for another idol other than the true God.
If you’re not a
Christian, you might think what I believe in is all about following rules,
especially now that I’m tackling the Books of the Law. Yes, I live by God’s
commands, but my obedience doesn’t admit me to heaven. We can only get there
through faith in Jesus Christ. Obeying Him is the fruit of having Him as our
Lord.
But what was it like before Christ came here when what the
people only had was the law? If you’ve been following along this blog, I hope
you have the idea that all that the Israelites have gone through and all that
they practice point to Jesus.
In Exodus, we see that
God showed the Egyptians that He truly is God through the plagues. (If you want
to read the entry on it, click this link.) Then when He delivered the
Israelites from Egypt, He gave them the law. (The entry’s here.) This law is the revelation of God’s
character: His principle is love.
Loving makes us a
blessing to people as we treat them as our brothers and sisters. It’s a blessing to us as well because we see God using us
to bring Him to others. The thing about love is that it comes back to us; we
get loved back, and that’s one great bonus. In Old Testament times, there were
specific blessings for the Israelites when they observed the commandments. But
what if they don’t follow? In many instances, they actually didn’t, but we’re only in the part of
the Bible when God was still giving the law.
Our text is God’s
first three stages of punishments when they disobey. Yes, “when.” This warning
is literally a prophecy.
Leviticus 26:14-22 (NKJV)
14 ‘But if
you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments,
15 and if
you despise My statutes, or if your soul abhors My judgments, so that you do
not perform all My commandments, but break My covenant,
16 I also
will do this to you:
I will even appoint
terror over you, wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and
cause sorrow of heart.
And you shall sow
your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
17 I will
set My face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies.
Those who hate you
shall reign over you, and you shall flee when no one pursues you.
18 ‘And
after all this, if you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more
for your sins.
19 I will
break the pride of your power;
I will make your
heavens like iron and your earth like bronze.
20 And
your strength shall be spent in vain;
for your land shall
not yield its produce, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruit.
21 ‘Then,
if you walk contrary to Me, and are not willing to obey Me, I will bring on you
seven times more plagues, according to your sins.
22 I will
also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, destroy
your livestock, and make you few in number;
and your highways
shall be desolate.
Before this were the blessings, but I want us to face the
fact that we humans are rebellious in nature. I’ve covered that in the
beginning of this letter. I want us to see that God does what He says. He says
that if the Israelites disobey His commandments, he will “also” or “in turn (NASB)”
do the following to them. This shows that disobeying is really doing something
bad to God because what will also
happen to them is bad. Yes, this is God’s vengeance. I looked this word up
because “revenge” or “payback” is my concept of it. Vengeance is having “punishment
inflicted or retribution exacted for an injury or wrong”
I chose to feature the hymn “Adore and Tremble” because it
calls for us to see the intensity of God’s wrath, and that is what I want to
emphasize as I discuss the punishment that are told in our passage. God’s wrath,
judgment, and vengeance are realities we must not take lightly. The fulfillment
of the curses we’ll be analyzing are based on the Scripture references Bible.org
has provided
Let’s look at the first stage. God said in verse 16 that diseases
shall consume their eyes and cause sorrow of heart, and the seed they sow shall
be eaten by their enemies. The next verse says their haters shall reign over them.
This happened in Judges 6. When the Israelites did evil, God handed them over
to Midian for 7 years. The Midianites destroyed all of Israel’s crops with the help
of the Amalekites and the people of the East. We see the oppression, but
there’s no mention of diseases, so I researched on what wasting disease is and
what the fever described here is.
According to Wikipedia (edited 2021), “In medicine, wasting,
also known as wasting syndrome, refers to the process by which a debilitating
disease causes muscle and fat tissue to "waste" away.” The site says
conditions associated with this include tuberculosis, which was termed as
“consumption” in other Bible versions (e.g. KJV, NASB) of verse 16, chronic
diarrhea, AIDS, and superior mesenteric artery syndrome. Now for what KJV calls
“the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart” or
what the Septuagint points as the jaundice, I see this as just the fever we
know today, but it caused much negativity and sorrow because they didn’t have
medicine before. Imagine that. Jaundice, on the other hand, is a condition when
“the skin, whites of the eyes and mucous membranes turn yellow” and fever is
one of its symptoms
The second stage is “seven times more” as it says in verse 18. God said He’ll make their heavens like iron and their earth like bronze. Gill’s Exposition explains this as having drought and unfruitful land (Gill, 1763). In 1 Kings 16, Ahab became king over Israel, and he did evil—the things he did were specified there—so we see in 1 Kings 17:6 that there was no rain and in 1 Kings 18:2 that there was a severe famine.
The third stage is again times seven, and it’s the attack of
the wild animals. In 2 Kings 17, Hoshea became king and also did evil. It says
in verse 25 that the people didn’t fear God, so He sent lions, which killed
some of them.
The fourth stage is the ravages of war. Throughout the Old
Testament there are many battles, but one big war I see is the internal
division of Israel. “A half-century of warfare followed the split into two
kingdoms along the traditional Saulide-Davidic borders. The century after that
was punctuated by fractious interactions, culminating in war between the north
and south late in Israel’s history
The last stage is desolation and exile. In 2 Kings 25, the
king of Babylon burned Jerusalem and had the people carried away as captives.
We got a glimpse of what’s ahead in the Old Testament. Doesn’t
this make you fear God all the more? By fear, I mean revere, but talks of
beasts and war are full of gore. There’s this trembling as we now adore. However,
we’re free from the ultimate curse, which is eternal death in hell, because of Christ’s
death and resurrection. When God said the Israelites would be
punished, they actually went through it, and so when God says He gives us everlasting
life, He really means it. That life starts once you accept Jesus as your Lord
and Savior. He’ll renew you with a life full of His grace.
Everything is in the Lord’s hands. Yield to Him and follow
His commands. Love sums them up. Love fills our cup. This fallen world may look
like it’s living a curse, but Jesus assures His beloved that heaven is more
than a bottomless purse.
With love,
Celina <3
References
21. A Welcome Warning (Leviticus 26). (n.d.). Retrieved from Bible.org:
https://bible.org/seriespage/21-welcome-warning-leviticus-26
Cleveland Clinic. (2018, July 23). Adult Jaundice:
Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis, Treatment & Prevention. Retrieved
from ClevelandClinic.org:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15367-adult-jaundice
Gill, J. (1763). Leviticus 26 Gill's Exposition.
Retrieved from Bible Hub:
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/gill/leviticus/26.htm
Nakhai, B. A. (n.d.). The Divided Monarchy.
Retrieved from Bible Odyssey:
https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/places/related-articles/divided-monarchy
Oxford University Press. (n.d.). VENGEANCE English
Definition and Meaning. Retrieved from Lexico.com:
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/vengeance
Wikipedia. (2021, November 1). Wasting.
Retrieved from Wikipedia.org: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasting
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