To Obey

Blessings of Obedience
1‘You shall not make for yourselves idols, nor shall you set up for yourselves an image or a sacred pillar, nor shall you place a figured stone in your land to bow down to it; for I am the LORD your God.2‘You shall keep My sabbaths and reverence My sanctuary; I am the LORD.3‘If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out,4then I shall give you rains in their season, so that the land will yield its produce and the trees of the field will bear their fruit.5‘Indeed, your threshing will last for you until grape gathering, and grape gathering will last until sowing time. You will thus eat your food to the full and live securely in your land.6‘I shall also grant peace in the land, so that you may lie down with no one making you tremble. I shall also eliminate harmful beasts from the land, and no sword will pass through your land.7‘But you will chase your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword;8five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword.9‘So I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will confirm My covenant with you.10‘You will eat the old supply and clear out the old because of the new.11‘Moreover, I will make My dwelling among you, and My soul will not reject you.12‘I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people.13‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would not be their slaves, and I broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.


Penalties of Disobedience
14‘But if you do not obey Me and do not carry out all these commandments,15if, instead, you reject My statutes, and if your soul abhors My ordinances so as not to carry out all My commandments, and so break My covenant,16I, in turn, will do this to you: I will appoint over you a sudden terror, consumption and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away; also, you will sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies will eat it up.17‘I will set My face against you so that you will be struck down before your enemies; and those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one is pursuing you.18‘If also after these things you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.19‘I will also break down your pride of power; I will also make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze.20‘Your strength will be spent uselessly, for your land will not yield its produce and the trees of the land will not yield their fruit.


Leviticus 26:1-20






Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

I also will do this unto you,.... Henceforward follow threatenings of dreadful evils to the transgressors and despisers of the commandments of God, which thus begin:

I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart; some, as Aben Ezra observes, take these to design what may affect the seed sown and the increase of it, such as blasting and mildew, because it follows: "ye shall sow in vain"; but no doubt diseases of the body are intended; for what we translate "terror" does not signify terror of mind, but some sudden, hasty, terrible distemper; perhaps the pestilence, as the Targum of Jonathan; some have thought of the falling sickness, as Bishop Patrick, because the word has the signification of haste and precipitance; and the second is a disease well known among us, and so called from its wasting and consuming nature; Jarchi interprets it of a disease which swells the flesh, either fills it with tumours and pustules, the Septuagint calls it the itch; or with wind or water, which has led some to think of the dropsy; and the last of them seems to be rightly rendered a burning ague or fever, though the Septuagint takes it for the jaundice, but that seems not to be so threatening, terrible, and dangerous, as what may be here supposed: now these diseases and all others are by the appointment of God, they come and go by his order, and while they continue have the power over persons, nor can they rid themselves of them at pleasure; and these have such an effect on persons seized by them, as to cause dimness of sight, a hollowness of their eyes, which sink into the head, as well as fill the heart with grief and sorrow; either through present pains and agonies, or in a view of future judgment and wrath to come:

and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it; either eat it up for forage before it is ripe, or, if ripe and gathered in the barn, should come and besiege their cities and plunder their granaries.