Levítico 26

ARC · Chapter 26/27

1Não fareis para vós idolos, nem vos levantareis imagem de esculptura nem estatua, nem poreis pedra figurada na vossa terra, para inclinar-vos a ella: porque Eu sou o Senhor vosso Deus.

2Guardareis os meus sabbados, e reverenciareis o meu sanctuario: Eu sou o Senhor.

3Se andardes nos meus estatutos, e guardardes os meus mandamentos, e os fizerdes,

4Então eu vos darei as vossas chuvas a seu tempo; e a terra dará a sua novidade, e a arvore do campo dará o seu fructo:

5E a debulha se vos chegará á vindima, e a vindima se chegará á sementeira: e comereis o vosso pão a fartar, e habitareis seguros na vossa terra.

6Tambem darei paz na terra, e dormireis seguros, e não haverá quem vos espante: e farei cessar as más bestas da terra, e pela vossa terra não passará espada.

7E perseguireis os vossos inimigos, e cairão á espada diante de vós.

8Cinco de vós perseguirão um cento, e cem de vós perseguirão dez mil; e os vossos inimigos cairão á espada diante de vós.

9E para vós olharei, e vos farei fructificar, e vos multiplicarei, e confirmarei o meu concerto comvosco.

10E comereis o deposito velho, depois de envelhecido; e tirareis fóra o velho por causa do novo.

11E porei o meu tabernaculo no meio de vós, e a minha alma de vós não se enfadará.

12E andarei no meio de vós, e eu vos serei por Deus, e vós me sereis por povo.

13Eu sou o Senhor vosso Deus, que vos tirei da terra dos egypcios, para que não fosseis seus escravos: e quebrantei os timões do vosso jugo, e vos fiz andar direitos.

14Mas, se me não ouvirdes, e não fizerdes todos estes mandamentos,

15E se rejeitardes os meus estatutos, e a vossa alma se enfadar dos meus juizos, não fazendo todos os meus mandamentos, para invalidar o meu concerto.

16Então eu tambem vos farei isto: porei sobre vós terror, a tisica e a febre ardente, que consumam os olhos e atormentem a alma: e semeareis debalde a vossa semente, e os vossos inimigos a comerão.

17E porei a minha face contra vós, e sereis feridos diante de vossos inimigos; e os que vos aborrecerem de vós se assenhorearão, e fugireis, sem ninguem vos perseguir.

18E, se ainda com estas coisas não me ouvirdes, então eu proseguirei a castigar-vos sete vezes mais por causa dos vossos peccados.

19Porque quebrantarei a soberba da vossa força; e farei que os vossos céus sejam como ferro e a vossa terra como cobre.

20E debalde se gastará a sua força: a vossa terra não dará a sua novidade, e as arvores da terra não darão o seu fructo.

21E se andardes contrariamente para comigo, e não me quizerdes ouvir, trazer-vos-hei pragas sete vezes mais, conforme aos vossos peccados.

22Porque enviarei entre vós as feras do campo, as quaes vos destilharão, e desfarão o vosso gado, e vos apoucarão; e os vossos caminhos serão desertos.

23Se ainda com estas coisas não fôrdes restaurados por mim, mas ainda andardes contrariamente comigo,

24Eu tambem comvosco andarei contrariamente, e eu, mesmo eu, vos ferirei sete vezes mais por causa dos vossos peccados.

25Porque trarei sobre vós a espada, que executará a vingança do concerto; e ajuntados estareis nas vossas cidades: então enviarei a peste entre vós, e sereis entregues na mão do inimigo.

26Quando eu vos quebrantar o sustento do pão, então dez mulheres cozerão o vosso pão n'um forno, e tornar-vos-hão o vosso pão por peso; e comereis, mas não vos fartareis.

27E se com isto me não ouvirdes, mas ainda andardes contrariamente comigo,

28Tambem eu comvosco andarei contrariamente em furor; e vos castigarei sete vezes mais por causa dos vossos peccados.

29Porque comereis a carne de vossos filhos, e a carne de vossas filhas comereis.

30E destruirei os vossos altos, e desfarei as vossas imagens do sol, e lançarei os vossos cadaveres sobre os cadaveres mortos dos vossos deuses; a minha alma se enfadará de vós.

31E porei as vossas cidades por deserto, e assolarei os vossos sanctuarios, e não cheirarei o vosso cheiro suave.

32E assolarei a terra e se espantarão d'isso os vossos inimigos que n'ella morarem.

33E vos espalharei entre as nações, e desembainharei a espada após de vós; e a vossa terra será assolada, e as vossas cidades serão desertas.

34Então a terra folgará nos seus sabbados, todos os dias da sua assolação, e vós estareis na terra dos vossos inimigos; então a terra descançará, e folgará nos seus sabbados

35Todos os dias da assolação descançará, porque não descançou nos vossos sabbados, quando habitaveis n'ella.

36E, quanto aos que de vós ficarem, eu metterei tal pavor nos seus corações, nas terras dos seus inimigos, que o sonido d'uma folha movida os perseguirá; e fugirão como de fugida da espada; e cairão sem ninguem os perseguir.

37E cairão uns sobre os outros como de diante da espada, sem ninguem os perseguir; e não podereis parar diante dos vossos inimigos.

38E perecereis entre as gentes, e a terra dos vossos inimigos vos consumirá.

39E aquelles que entre vós ficarem se derreterão pela sua iniquidade nas terras dos vossos inimigos, e pela iniquidade de seus paes com elles se derreterão.

40Então confessarão a sua iniquidade, e a iniquidade de seus paes, com os seus trespassos, com que trespassaram contra mim; como tambem elles andaram contrariamente para comigo,

41Eu tambem andei com elles contrariamente, e os fiz entrar na terra dos seus inimigos; se então o seu coração incircumciso se humilhar, e então tomarem por bem o castigo da sua iniquidade,

42Tambem eu me lembrarei do meu concerto com Jacob, e tambem do meu concerto com Isaac, e tambem do meu concerto com Abrahão me lembrarei, e da terra me lembrarei.

43E a terra será desamparada d'elles, e folgará nos seus sabbados, sendo assolada por causa d'elles; e tomarão por bem o castigo da sua iniquidade, em razão mesmo de que rejeitaram os meus juizos e a sua alma se enfastiou dos meus estatutos.

44E, demais d'isto tambem, estando elles na terra dos seus inimigos, não os rejeitarei nem me enfadarei d'elles, para consumil-os e invalidar o meu concerto com elles, porque Eu sou o Senhor seu Deus.

45Antes por amor d'elles me lembrarei do concerto com os seus antepassados, que tirei da terra do Egypto perante os olhos das nações, para lhes ser por Deus: Eu sou o Senhor.

46Estes são os estatutos, e os juizos, e as leis que deu o Senhor entre si e os filhos de Israel, no monte Sinai, pela mão de Moysés.

📖 Chapter study

Summary

God lays out a clear set of blessings for obedience (rain, abundance, peace, victory) and progressive curses for disobedience (disease, defeat, famine, exile), ending with the promise of restoration if the people repent.

Explanation

This chapter serves as the theological summary of the entire Sinai covenant: obedience brings life and prosperity; persistent rebellion brings ever more severe consequences, unfolding in five cycles of escalating intensity. Remarkably, even after describing the worst-case scenario — exile among the nations — God promises that if the people confess their iniquity and humble themselves, he will remember his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and will not abandon them completely. This pattern (sin, consequence, repentance, restoration) repeats throughout the whole biblical history of Israel, especially in the historical and prophetic books. The central message: God is just in disciplining, but his covenant commitment outlasts human failure.

Fun facts

  • The promise that 'the land shall enjoy her sabbaths' during the exile (v. 34-35) is quoted almost word for word in 2 Chronicles 36:21 as the theological explanation for the 70 years of Babylonian captivity — as though the land were collecting the sabbatical years Israel had failed to observe.
  • This chapter is a classic example of the ancient Near Eastern covenant-treaty format, which always included a section of blessings and curses — the same structure reappears in expanded form in Deuteronomy 28.

Verse-by-verse explanation

  1. Levítico 26:1This chapter opens like the text of a covenant contract: it lists the blessings that would come if the people kept the rules, and the curses that would come if they did not. The ban on idols is the starting point for the conditions of this agreement.
  2. Levítico 26:2Keeping the Sabbaths and revering the sanctuary sums up, in a single line, two central themes of the whole book — sacred time and sacred space — right before the chapter’s list of blessings and curses begins.
  3. Levítico 26:3This conditional — “If ye walk in my statutes” — opens the entire section of blessings that follows: everything that comes next depends directly on that obedience.
  4. Levítico 26:4The first promised blessing is very concrete: rain at the right time, the land yielding its produce, trees bearing fruit — food security as the direct result of obedience.
  5. Levítico 26:5The image here is one of continuous abundance: threshing would last until the grape harvest, and the grape harvest until sowing time, with no gap of scarcity between one harvest and the next.
  6. Levítico 26:6In this list of blessings, peace in the land appears alongside two very concrete threats of the ancient world: wild animals and war. Sleeping in safety was not just a figure of speech — it literally meant not fearing an attack by a wild beast or an enemy army during the night.
  7. Levítico 26:7Military security was also part of the package of blessings: chasing the enemies and watching them fall before the people, not the other way around.
  8. Levítico 26:8Notice that the ratio is not constant: five chase a hundred, twenty times as many, but a hundred chase ten thousand, a hundred times as many. This is not arithmetic, it is deliberate exaggeration: the advantage grows far beyond what the number of people would explain.
  9. Levítico 26:9Beyond the material blessings, the text promises something more personal: God would look on the people with favor, make them grow in number, and confirm His covenant with them.
  10. Levítico 26:10The image of abundance reaches an extreme: so much food stored up that the old supply would have to be cleared out to make room for the new — the opposite of any scenario of scarcity.
  11. Levítico 26:11The high point of the blessings is not material but relational: God’s own tabernacle would be set in the midst of the people, and He would not grow weary of them.
  12. Levítico 26:12“I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people” is the classic covenant formula used at several points in the Bible — mutual presence as the core of the relationship.
  13. Levítico 26:13The chapter recalls where it all began: the exodus from Egypt, described here with the image of breaking the bars of the yoke and making the people walk upright — the physical opposite of the stooped posture of someone carrying a slave’s yoke.
  14. Levítico 26:14“But if ye will not hearken unto me” is the turning point of the chapter: from here on begins the list of consequences for taking the opposite path from obedience.
  15. Levítico 26:15The text distinguishes mere disobedience from active rejection: here the people’s soul would come to “abhor” the laws and break the covenant on purpose, not just through occasional carelessness.
  16. Levítico 26:16The first level of consequence mixes physical illness — terror, a fever that consumes the eyes — with economic frustration: planting without reaping, because the enemies themselves would eat the harvest.
  17. Levítico 26:17Defeat before the enemies, domination by those who hate them, and even fleeing when no one is chasing them — an image of panic so strong that fear itself created danger even without a real threat.
  18. Levítico 26:18Here appears the pattern that repeats through the rest of the chapter: if the people still would not listen, the punishment would be multiplied “seven times more” — an escalation in stages, not a single punishment.
  19. Levítico 26:19Heaven like iron and earth like brass are images of extreme drought: a sky that lets no rain fall, and ground that lets nothing sprout — a poetic way of describing the coming famine, within a punishment list that keeps worsening.
  20. Levítico 26:20The second stage of the escalation repeats the theme of futility: strength spent for nothing, land producing nothing, trees bearing no fruit — the same problem as at the start, now intensified.
  21. Levítico 26:21The trigger for the escalation repeats: continuing to walk “contrary” to God would bring plagues seven times greater than before.
  22. Levítico 26:22The third level involves wild beasts loose among the people, killing children, destroying livestock, and reducing the number of people — to the point that the roads themselves would become deserted, too dangerous to travel.
  23. Levítico 26:23Once again the text marks the trigger: if even these things brought no change, and the people kept walking the same contrary path.
  24. Levítico 26:24The response would be proportional: God would likewise “walk contrary” to them, striking seven times more because of their sins — the same pattern of escalation, now in its fourth round.
  25. Levítico 26:25This stage spells out the mechanism: the sword of war, the people gathered inside besieged cities, then pestilence, and finally being handed over into the enemy’s power — a very specific sequence of collapse.
  26. Levítico 26:26Normally each woman had her own oven for her own household’s bread. Ten women sharing a single oven shows how much famine would shrink the flour supply, and even then the bread would be handed out weighed and rationed, not freely as before.
  27. Levítico 26:27The trigger for the escalation repeats one last time before the most severe level of all, described in the verses that follow.
  28. Levítico 26:28This time the language shifts in tone: God would “walk contrary unto you also in fury” — a greater degree of emotional intensity than in the previous rounds of the escalation.
  29. Levítico 26:29This is the most shocking line in the list of curses: it describes the extreme desperation of famine during a siege, the kind of scenario 2 Kings reports actually happened at Samaria. The text is not commanding this, it is warning about the worst outcome of ignoring the covenant.
  30. Levítico 26:30The image reaches its most shocking extreme: the destruction of the pagan altars, with the people’s own corpses thrown on top of the carcasses of the idols they had worshipped — a desecration reaching even beyond death.
  31. Levítico 26:31Here the text directly reverses a phrase repeated throughout the whole book: instead of an accepted sweet savor, God says He will no longer smell “the savour of your sweet odours” — an explicit rejection of the sacrificial system.
  32. Levítico 26:32The devastation of the land would be so great that even the enemies who came to live there would be appalled at the state it was left in.
  33. Levítico 26:33The final scene of the escalation is complete exile: the people scattered among the nations, cities deserted, the land laid waste — the total collapse of the national life described in the earlier chapters.
  34. Levítico 26:34The exile is tied here directly to the law of the sabbatical year from chapter 25. If the people never let the land rest every seven years, the exile is described as the land’s way of finally collecting the rest it was owed — punishment for one broken law, not a generic guilt.
  35. Levítico 26:35The explanation behind the land’s forced rest during the exile: it was finally receiving the sabbatical years the people had never given it while they lived there — an overdue settling of accounts.
  36. Levítico 26:36The survivors in exile would live in such deep fear that even the sound of a leaf blowing in the wind would make them flee as if from a sword — pure psychological dread, with no real threat behind it.
  37. Levítico 26:37Stumbling over one another as if fleeing a sword, even with no one chasing them — the same image of irrational panic continues, showing just how thoroughly the people’s confidence would be shattered.
  38. Levítico 26:38The lowest point of the escalation: perishing among the foreign nations, consumed by the very land of the enemies who had captured them.
  39. Levítico 26:39Those who survived would “pine away” in guilt in the lands of their enemies — the text ties this consequence both to the people’s own wrongdoing and to that of their ancestors, an accumulated debt across generations.
  40. Levítico 26:40Here begins the turning point of the chapter: confession. Acknowledging one’s own guilt and that of one’s ancestors was the first step out of the cycle of punishment that had been described.
  41. Levítico 26:41The condition for restoration appears clearly: if the people’s heart, described as “uncircumcised” in this symbolic sense, would humble itself and accept the punishment as just, rather than simply complain about it.
  42. Levítico 26:42After the whole list of punishments, the chapter changes direction: even with the people in exile, the text recalls that the promise made generations earlier to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still stands — punishment is not the relationship’s final end.
  43. Levítico 26:43The text once again explains the reason for the land’s forced rest, again tying the devastation to the people’s rejection of the laws and contempt for the statutes — but now as part of a sincere acceptance of guilt.
  44. Levítico 26:44Even after this whole escalation of punishment, there is a limit: God promises not to reject the people completely or break the covenant entirely, even while they are still in enemy territory.
  45. Levítico 26:45The reason for the forgiveness returns to the original covenant with the ancestors, made when the people were brought out of Egypt in the sight of the other nations — the same historical foundation used throughout the book.
  46. Levítico 26:46The chapter closes with a formal note: these are the statutes, judgments, and laws given between God and the people of Israel, on Mount Sinai, through Moses — closing this great block of laws in the book.

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