Matthew Henry on Leviticus 26:14-39
After God had set the blessing before them (the life and good which would make them a happy people if they would be obedient), he here sets the curse before them, the death and evil which would make them as miserable if they were disobedient. Let them not think themselves so deeply rooted as that God's power could not ruin them, nor so highly favoured as that his justice would not ruin them if they revolted from him and rebelled against him; no You only have I known, therefore I will punish you soonest and sorest. Amo 3:2. Observe,
I. How their sin is described, which would bring all this misery upon them. Not sins of ignorance and infirmity; God had provided sacrifices for those. Not the si…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Leviticus 26:19
I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass--No figures could have been employed to convey a better idea of severe and long-continued famine.
Adam Clarke on Leviticus 26:16
I will even appoint over you terror, etc. - How dreadful is this curse! A whole train of evils are here personified and appointed to be the governors of a disobedient people. Terror is to be one of their keepers. How awful a state! to be continually under the influence of dismay, feeling indescribable evils, and fearing worse! Consumption, שחפת shachepheth, generally allowed to be some kind of atrophy or marasmus, by which the flesh was consumed, and the whole body dried up by raging fever through lack of sustenance. See the note on Lev 11:16. How circumstantially were all these threatenings fulfilled in this disobedient and rebellious people! Let a deist read over this chapter and compare i…
Read the whole note in the consoleJohn Gill on Leviticus 26:20
And your strength shall be spent in vain,.... In endeavouring to till the ground, to plough, or sow, or to dig about the vines or olives, and prune them:
for your land shall not yield its increase; produce corn, and bring forth grass, the one for the use of men, the other for the use of the cattle, and therefore both must starve:
neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits; such as vines, olives, figs, pomegranates, &c. which were very plentiful in the land of Judea, and on which they much lived, and on which their more comfortable subsistence at least depended, see Habakkuk 3:17; all this is the reverse of Leviticus 26:4.
