Scripture Daily

Context No. 3991 of 4322 · Leviticus

Context · Reflection

Leviticus 26:27-35: in context

27“‘If you in spite of this won’t listen to me, but walk contrary to me, 28then I will walk contrary to you in wrath. I will also chastise you seven times for your sins. 29You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters. 30I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you. 31I will lay your cities waste, and will bring your sanctuaries to desolation. I will not take delight in the sweet fragrance of your offerings. 32I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it will be astonished at it. 33I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw out the sword after you. Your land will be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. 34Then the land will enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemies’ land. Even then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. 35As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, even the rest which it didn’t have in your Sabbaths when you lived on it.

This is a hard section of the covenant warnings, a sober description of the desolation that would come if Israel persisted in rebellion, ending in exile from the land. We do not dwell on its harrowing images, but one thread within it is worth drawing out.

God says that when the people are carried off and the land lies desolate, then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths, the Sabbath rests that Israel had failed to give it. God had commanded that the land rest every seventh year, and Israel had disobeyed, working it continually; now, in the emptiness of exile, the land would finally receive the rest that had been withheld. There is a striking principle in this. What we withhold from God is not simply lost; in one way or another, God reclaims it. It is a sober reminder that we cannot finally cheat God's purposes by our disobedience; the Sabbaths owed will be paid, one way or another. And beneath even this hard word is God's faithfulness: the exile was not endless, and the land's enforced rest looked toward a restoration to come.

Do I give God what is his due willingly, rather than withholding it, remembering that what we refuse God is not finally lost but reclaimed, and that even his hard dealings look toward restoration?

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