And as to those that remain of you -- I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, that the sound of a driven leaf shall chase them, and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth;
Leviticus 26 has climbed through warning after warning, and this verse shows the end of the road: survivors abroad, running from a blowing leaf. It raises two questions: who sent that fear, and whether this is the end of their story.
The verse belongs to the darker half of a chapter built on a single contrast.
Leviticus 26, which we have now reached, has a very solemn character. Verses 1-13 give a glowing picture of the earthly blessing and prosperity that would follow their obedience. Verses 14-39 give a terrible forecast of the evils that would follow, if disobedience marked them... But it was all strictly conditional. It runs, "If you walk … then I will give." Everything depended on their obedience, and that "If" proved fatal.
What makes this picture unusual is that nothing is chasing them. The panic is real; the pursuer is not.
Fear of their enemies would be so great that the sound of a shaken leaf would make them run. They would expect injury or death when no one was pursuing them (v. 36). They would be no help to one another in their selfish anxiety to deliver themselves alone. In the lands in which they had sought shelter they would in effect be "eaten up" (v. 38).
The faintness God sends replaces something they once had.
Instead of the courage He once gave them against all odds, they would fall into abject terror... Those left of them in their enemies' lands would pine away in their own iniquities, and in the iniquities of their fathers with them (38, 39).
So what had Israel's protection ever rested on?
The presence of God should always have been their shield and defence. No weapon formed against them could prosper. But only an obedient people could enjoy that presence. Jehovah could not sanction disobedience or wickedness by His presence. The uncircumcised nations around them might depend on their skill and their military resources. Israel had only the arm of Jehovah to depend on. He would never stretch out that arm to shield unholiness or disobedience. Their strength was to walk with God in a spirit of dependence and obedience. As long as they walked that way, a wall of fire surrounded them, protecting them from every enemy and every evil.
Scripture elsewhere states the principle behind a fear that runs from nothing.
To fear an enemy much mightier than yourself is not blameworthy. But to fear without cause — when you are unbeatable — is cowardice indeed, and Scripture marks such a spirit as shameful. It is solemn to learn that Scripture places the "cowardly" with the "unbelieving" among those condemned to the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8). An evil conscience makes a coward. "The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion" (Proverbs 28:1).
The threat did not stay a threat.
But Israel failed altogether. Despite the solemn and appalling picture set before their eyes in verses 14-33 of this chapter, they forsook the Lord and served other gods. So they brought on themselves the severe judgments threatened in this section... Scattered and stripped, wasted and outcast, they are the monuments of Jehovah's unbending truth and justice. They read aloud, to all the nations of the earth, a most impressive lesson about the moral government of God. These nations would gain much by studying that lesson closely. And it would be healthy for our own hearts to ponder it too.
The chapter that threatens dispersion does not stop there.
A promise follows this threat: "But if they confess their iniquity… then I will remember my covenant with Jacob," and so on (vv. 40-42). That is, God would bring them back.
- Shield — Israel's safety was God's presence, not their own strength. That presence stayed with an obedient people, and it would not cover disobedience.
- Withdrawal — The courage was God's gift, not Israel's own. When He took it back, abject terror filled its place.
- Terror — The judgment is inward. No enemy pursues, yet a rustling leaf drives them, and they are no help to one another.
- Witness — Scattered and wasted, the nation became a public lesson to every people about the moral government of God.
- Door — The chapter's last word is not terror but confession, and a covenant God remembers.
and they shall stumble one over another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth; and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
Leviticus 26 sets two futures before Israel. Obedience brings God's presence and protection. Disobedience brings blow after blow of discipline. Verse 37 sits near the bottom of that second road. A nation that once could not be beaten now trips over its own people, and nobody is chasing them. Where had their strength gone?
Courage had been God's gift to this people. Take it away and only terror is left:
Instead of the courage He once gave them against all odds, they would fall into abject terror.
Their defence was never skill or weapons. It was God Himself, and He would not back disobedience:
The presence of God should always have been their shield and protection. No weapon formed against them could prosper. But only an obedient people could enjoy that presence. The Lord could not use His presence to approve disobedience or wickedness. The uncircumcised nations around them might depend on their own skill and weapons. Israel had only the arm of the Lord to depend on. That arm could never be stretched out to shield unholiness or disobedience. Their strength was to walk with God in a spirit of dependence and obedience.
The sword in this verse is imaginary. The fear is real, and it has a source:
To fear an enemy much stronger than yourself is not blameworthy. But to fear when there is no reason to — when you cannot be beaten — is cowardice indeed, and scripture brands such a spirit. It is solemn to learn that scripture lists the "fearful" (cowardly) with the "unbelieving" among those condemned to the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8). An evil conscience makes a coward. "The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion" (Proverbs 28:1).
One writer reads a later defeat the same way. The wrongdoer was one man; the weakness was the whole nation's:
It is not the wrongdoer alone, but Israel. The greater God's blessing to His people, the greater their responsibility. God's grace is rich: it deals with all our evil and puts it away. Yet whatever dishonours Him, after He has blessed us like this, makes us nothing before the enemy. The worst evil disappears before the power of redemption. But take an evil a man would count very small. If he holds on to it or overlooks it, it later becomes a source of weakness beyond measure in the presence of Satan. Is this a reason for distrust? Not in the least. It is the greatest possible reason for watchfulness and care.
The verse pictures men tripping over their own countrymen. Panic does not only destroy courage; it destroys the bond between them:
Fear of their enemies would be so great that the sound of a shaken leaf would make them flee. They would expect injury or death when no one was chasing them (v. 36). They would be no help to one another in their selfish anxiety to save themselves alone.
These warnings did not stay on the page. Israel's later history put them on public display:
Under the heavy weight of these judgements they are suffering at this very hour. Scattered and stripped, wasted and outcast, they are the monuments of the Lord's unbending truth and justice. They read aloud, to all the nations of the earth, a most impressive lesson on the moral government of God. Those nations would gain much by studying that lesson deeply. Our own hearts would do well to think it over too.
The chapter does not stop at the stumbling. The collapse has a purpose beyond itself:
Brought down in this way to the lowest misery and degradation, the goodness of God leads them to repentance. What a lesson to all the nations!
- Presence — Their strength was never numbers or weapons; it was the Lord walking among them, and that arm "could never be stretched out to shield unholiness or disobedience."
- Withdrawal — Take that presence away and courage "against all odds" becomes "abject terror," with no enemy in sight.
- Conscience — The pursuer is inward. "An evil conscience makes a coward," which is why an empty field can rout an army.
- Leaven — Achan's hidden theft shows the size of the cause: "what a man would count a very little evil, if cherished or overlooked, becomes afterwards a source of incalculable weakness."
- Mercy — The misery is not the last word; brought to the lowest point, "the goodness of God leads them to repentance."
And ye shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
Leviticus 26 has piled warning on warning, and here it reaches the lowest point: Israel is outside the land, swallowed up by the countries they fled to. Does "perish among the nations" mean the end of the nation?
This sentence is not a sudden outburst. It closes a long story that started with God wanting to bless.
How ready the Lord was to bless His people! How full was the blessing He could give them, delighting as He would have done to walk among them. But they would not. So God had to deal with them in judgment. Yet how slow He was to anger! He sent each new blow only after the one before it had failed to bring them to repentance. At last exile had to be their lot.
Verse 36 sets the scene. They run in panic, and the place of shelter consumes them.
Fear of their enemies would be so great that the sound of a shaken leaf would make them flee. They would expect injury or death when no one was pursuing them (v. 36). They would be no help to one another in their selfish anxiety to deliver themselves alone. In the lands where they had sought shelter they would be, in effect, "eaten up" (v. 38). Their iniquity would bring more and more suffering in their enemies' lands.
These words did not stay on the page.
This is so exactly true that we can describe the history of that nation, from the days of Moses until now, in one way. It is simply this chapter translated from the language of prediction into the language of history.
That fulfilment is not only a fact about Israel. It is a public lesson about how God governs.
Scattered and stripped, wasted and outcast, they stand as monuments of Jehovah's truth and justice, which never bend. They read aloud, to all the nations of the earth, a striking lesson about the moral government of God. Those nations would gain much by studying that lesson closely. It would do our own hearts good to think about it too.
The word "perish" is real, but it is not the chapter's last word. A few verses later God rules out the total end of the nation.
Yet the whole nation was not to perish. God would not cast them away, nor would He abhor them to destroy them utterly and break His covenant with them. For He was Jehovah their God.
Their survival through such judgment has only one explanation.
This chapter predicts that the people would pass through judgment, devastated by sword, famine and disease. Yet they would go on existing in their enemies' land. Israel's preservation throughout the long period of these executed judgments is a miracle. It cannot be explained in any other way.
If the people broke the agreement made at Mount Sinai, on what ground could they ever be restored? The answer reaches back past Sinai to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the fathers of the nation.
Leviticus 26 shows the results of Israel's disobedience. It brings out all their sad history until they "perish among the nations" (v. 38). But it adds something more. If they confess their sins while scattered — "if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity, then I will remember" — what? My covenant at Mount Sinai? No, but "My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham I will remember, and I will remember the land" (vv. 41, 42). Restoration, then, will be on the ground of the still unfulfilled covenant with the fathers.
Why does a promise made to people long dead still count?
The value of a covenant made with those who have died comes out here. The wrongdoing of later generations cannot set aside a covenant made with people who have already passed away, a covenant that was not cancelled before their death.
Judgment belongs to God's government. Grace is another thing, and confusing the two damages both.
We are very prone to confuse two things that Scripture clearly distinguishes: God's government and God's grace. This confusion causes many evils. It is sure to weaken our sense of the dignity and seriousness of government. It also weakens our sense of the purity, fullness and height of grace.
- Patience first. The exile came last, not first; every earlier blow was an appeal that failed to bring repentance.
- Consumed. The lands they fled to for shelter became the very thing that ate them up.
- Prediction. Israel's history since Moses is this chapter turned from prediction into history.
- Preserved. They perish, yet the nation is not destroyed. Only a miracle explains such survival.
- Remembered. Restoration rests on the older covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not on the broken agreement at Sinai. Government and grace must never be confused.
And they that remain of you shall waste away through their iniquity in your enemies' lands; and also through the iniquities of their fathers shall they waste away with them.
Leviticus 26 promises blessing for obedience and warns of judgment after judgment for those who refuse to repent, ending with the people scattered in their enemies' lands. Verse 39 is the lowest point of that warning, and it raises two hard questions: what does it mean to rot away because of iniquity, and why are the fathers' sins named as well?
The verse is not a sudden stroke. It is the end of a chain in which each judgment answers a refusal to repent.
Then comes the effect of the broken covenant, described at length: judgments in stages, growing greater as they keep refusing to repent, ending in total scattering, and in their being consumed in their enemies' land.
Exile could look like proof that God was too weak to defend His people from invaders. The reason lay elsewhere.
But why should they experience the bitterness and degradation of exile? Why waste away in the land of their enemies? Jehovah was their God. Exile could never come from His being unable to shield them from the invader. But it could come from His being unwilling to do it.
The ESV says "rot away"; older translations read "waste away" or "pine away". The words describe more than a body wearing out. Writing on the same phrase in Ezekiel, one commentator shows what is left when guilt has nowhere to go.
The destruction that began was so sweeping that nothing would remain for them but wasting away in their iniquities and groaning to one another. Jehovah Himself was treating the sanctuary as common by His judgment, just as they had by their transgressions and their detestable practices. What a picture of despair! The sorrow lies too deep for tears, and an overwhelming sense of guilt forces people to abandon hope.
The verse adds the iniquities of the fathers. So does God punish children for what their parents did? One writer points to the exact wording God used, and to what God says elsewhere:
He has Himself assured us that He "visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation." But He then adds a most necessary guard against what would otherwise be misread: "of those who hate Me." And elsewhere the Lord condemns in the strongest terms the proverb Israel had taken up from just such a misreading: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." (Ezekiel 18) He not only says, but swears, that they will have no reason to use such a proverb. The son will not bear the iniquity of the father, and the father will not bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous will be on him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be on him. And the repentance of anyone will turn away his doom.
The chapter itself shows the way out. In the verses that follow, the people confess their own iniquity and their fathers' together. A later generation did this. One writer shows how deep their confession went.
They also confessed the iniquities of their fathers, and they did so because the Lord's hand had been on them for this very reason. It was because of the sins of their fathers that they had suffered captivity in Babylon... So they went down to the root of all the evil, and told out before God their fathers' sins as well as their own. Their humbling on that day, therefore, was no mere surface work.
These warnings did not stay on the page. One commentator counts their fulfilment as proof that this book is inspired:
God calls this nation to blessing, yet He threatens it with the most awful judgments and disasters. And all of these have become historical facts. Jewish history, over many weary centuries, records how these solemn words kept coming true. So this chapter gives us very valuable and powerful evidence of inspiration: it foretold the curses, and history fulfilled them to the letter.
Verse 39 is the floor, not the end. One commentator reads even this lowest point as God's kindness at work.
When they are brought down like this to the lowest misery and shame, the goodness of God leads them to repentance. What a lesson to all the nations!
- Graduated — the judgments in this chapter rise step by step as the people refuse to repent. Verse 39 is the last rung, not a random blow.
- Willing, not weak — exile never proved that God could not protect His people. It proved He chose not to.
- Wasting — to rot away in iniquity is to carry sin you never confess, a despair too deep for tears.
- Inherited — God visits the fathers' sins on those who share the fathers' hatred of Him. The cure is confession that goes to the root, naming their sins as well as our own.
- Restored — the lowest point is where God's goodness turns them to repentance, and every nation has a lesson to learn from it.
And they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, through their unfaithfulness wherein they were unfaithful to me, and also that they have walked contrary unto me,
Leviticus 26 promises blessing for obedience, then lists judgment after judgment, ending with Israel scattered and wasting away in enemy lands. At verse 40 the tone changes: God says what His people will one day confess, and their whole future turns on it.
After the darkness of the earlier verses, hope appears. One writer sets out the two things that must happen:
With verse 40 a ray of light begins to shine. A door of hope opens, if two things happen. First, they must confess their iniquities. Second, they must accept the punishment that their iniquities have brought on them. Notice that God mentions this second condition twice. That marks it as very important. You can see both things in Daniel's prayer (Dan. 9), and he got a quick answer. A man may confess his sin. But if he still fights against the punishment it brings, that shows his confession is only on the surface. It has no real depth of sorrow for sin. This is as true for us today as it was for Israel long ago. The way God governs His children is always in love, but it is also in strict righteousness.
The verse asks for more than a personal admission. It reaches back a generation. The same act appears later in Israel's history. The exiles who returned home confessed their own sins and their fathers' sins together:
They also confessed the iniquities of their fathers. They did so because the Lord's hand had been on them for this very reason. It was because of the sins of their fathers that they had suffered captivity in Babylon... So they went down to the root of all the evil, and told out before God their fathers' sins as well as their own. Their humbling on that day, therefore, was no mere surface work.
The same writer adds a test that keeps confession honest: "To confess our sin while still holding on to it is only mockery."
The confession includes something harder than admitting failure. It admits that God was right to oppose them. He walked contrary to them because they first walked contrary to Him.
They will confess how thoroughly contrary to God they have been, and that God has been right in being contrary to them (vv. 40-41). They will be humbled as never before, to accept the full responsibility of their guilt. Zechariah 12:10-14 implies this, when they look on Him whom they pierced and break down in genuine repentance and faith.
Accepting the punishment is not defeat. One writer calls it the place where blessing begins.
Happy is it when the soul bows to the hand of God, accepting the punishment of our sins. It is the place of blessing. Israel's blessing began there... And so, after they had failed in the kingdom, as they had failed in the wilderness, their blessing lay in Babylon as before it lay outside the camp. They must accept the punishment of their sins and go there.
If blessing waits on Israel's repentance, does the whole future hang on a people who have already failed? Older translations read the verse as a statement — "And they shall confess their iniquity" — not as a condition. One writer builds on that wording.
Does anyone object that this blessed change is sometimes made conditional on Israel's repentance? The answer is that the objection has no real force. Jehovah has promised, with no conditions, that He will work in their hearts at the moment known only to Him. And this chapter itself confirms it — a chapter full of accusation and furious anger against them for their wickedness. Yet here there is no condition but an express prediction, "And they shall confess their iniquity"... Where His word does lay down a condition, He Himself makes that condition good in their souls.
When the confession comes, God remembers a covenant — but not the one made at Sinai.
Leviticus 26 shows what came of Israel's disobedience. It traces their whole sad history until they "perish among the heathen" (v. 38). But it adds that if, in their dispersion, they will confess their sins... then God will remember — what? My covenant at Mount Sinai? No, but "My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember, and I will remember the land" (vv. 41, 42). So their restoration rests on the covenant with the fathers, a covenant God has still not fulfilled.
- Confess — The door opens with words. Israel owns its own sin and the fathers' sin, digging to the root instead of skimming the surface.
- Accept — True confession also takes the punishment. Fighting the punishment proves the confession was shallow.
- Bow — Accepting God's hand is not the end of blessing but its start. That is where Israel's recovery began.
- Predicted — The verse reads as a promise, not a gamble. God Himself will work in their hearts the repentance He asks for.
- Remembered — He then remembers not Sinai but His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That covenant is still unfulfilled, and Israel's restoration rests on it.