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Leviticus 26 is one of the most important chapters in the Old Testament. It is the chapter of blessings and curses, and in many ways, it summarizes the whole history of Israel—and also the spiritual pattern of every human life. The message is simple but deeply serious: obedience brings blessing, joy, and life; disobedience brings curses, sorrow, and ruin. God gave this warning to Israel before they left Sinai and moved toward Canaan. The first generation was destroyed in the wilderness because they would not obey. Later, before the second generation entered the land, Joshua dramatically placed the people between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim and made them hear the blessings and the curses again. Then he pressed the choice upon them: “Choose this day whom you will serve”—Jehovah or other gods. Everything in this chapter was exactly fulfilled in Israel’s history: when they obeyed, they prospered; when they disobeyed, they were cursed and perished. Leviticus 26 is not only a prophecy of Israel’s history; it is a prophecy of every generation’s history, and even of your own life.
I was thinking: when the formula is so simple, why don’t people obey? Even with our children—the sooner you obey God, the sooner you will be blessed. But why don’t they obey? Before there can be true obedience, there must first be faith in God. The reason you don’t obey God is because you don’t believe Him. You see the world, you see all the wrong things happening, and the devil tries to brainwash you with covetousness and worldly success principles—telling you, “Do this and that, cheat if needed to be successful”—giving you a false illusion of how things work in the world.
So, you cannot understand how obeying God will ever result in receiving blessings in every area of life. Children do not see the connection between obeying their parents and their success in life. Husbands don’t see the connection between God hearing their prayers and living with wisdom and discretion in their lives. Wives don’t see how, when they submit to their husbands, God will bless their home. So they don’t believe, and they do not obey.
It is faith that opens your eyes and enables you to see how obedience is directly linked to all blessings in life. Because you do not have faith, you don’t believe God will bless you, and so you try your own way to succeed in life. Sometimes you think that by continuing in stubborn disobedience, someday you will still be blessed. You may achieve something by being stubborn with human parents, but if you are stubborn and fighting against the Holy, Sovereign God, you can never win. In fact, that stubbornness only brings seven times more punishment upon you. This chapter says He will punish once, then seven times more, and then even more, until He brings either repentance or destruction. God will either break your heart and make you repent, or break your neck and send you to hell. He never allows a lifestyle of disobedience to succeed. A holy God never changes; it is you who must change to be blessed.
There are many who spend 20, 30, or 40 years wasting their lives in the stubbornness of a sinful path. Then, when they start believing and are saved, they realize late in life, “Oh, if I had obeyed earlier, I would have been blessed so long ago; I wasted so many years.” That is why, young people, the sooner you believe, the sooner you will see how obedience alone brings blessings, and you will see your life blessed more and more.
The chapter starts with three areas of obedience. First, the Priority of God. How will that priority reveal itself in life? By protecting the Sabbath, and by piety—behaving with reverence in God’s house. If you obey, He groups all blessings into three Ps: Plenty, Peace, and Presence. Then we started to look at the curses, which come in five levels. We saw the first level in verses 14–17: sudden calamity and terror. Verse 14 shows that if you hate and abhor His words, that is where disobedience starts. Then first, there will be terrible calamity: “I will even appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart” for you or your children. It will be sudden and intense.
To intensify this even more, it is not just sickness, but a financial crisis. Verse 16 says your enemies shall eat what you have sown; you shall sow your seed in vain.
The second set of curses is drought and famine in verses 18–20. We find this passage beginning in verse 18: “And after all this, if you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.” Look at verse 19: “I will break the pride of your power; I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze.” What does that mean? In an agrarian society, He will bring you to absolute poverty and cause you to beg. Look at verse 17: “I will set My face against you.”
Today, we come to three more sets of curses.
Curse number three: the unexpected danger of wild beasts. Verse 21: “Then, if you walk contrary to Me, and are not willing to obey Me, I will bring on you seven times more plagues, according to your sins.”
After this kind of treatment from the living God—calamity in the family and famine—would they still continue in sin? Who would still walk against God? Oh, we do not realize the power of sin! It blinds and hardens us so much. In Revelation, we see great dangers, thunder, demons, earthquakes, and heaven shouting, “Repent!” Yet people still continue in sin with a brazen face and go on unfazed in disobedience. Let us see what God will do.
God says, “I won’t relent. I will send an increase of plagues seven times over.” You see, some fathers with jello-like backbones may relent and give up, but not the Heavenly Father. He brings seven times more as He shoots another flurry of arrows at them from His quiver.
Verse 22 shows the next curse: unexpected wild beasts. A sudden, unnatural danger from an unexpected source. Genesis 9 says God put the fear of man into animals so they would not harm us. But now, animals that should fear man dominate and attack unexpectedly and unprovoked. Because of the lack of rain, famine, and shortage of food, wild animals come into the villages and cities and attack people right in the streets.
Imagine snakes, lions, wolves, and leopards coming to your house, breaking down your doors, and entering your home. The leopard watches for his opportunity, the evening wolf ravages the flock, the bear tears whatever he finds within his reach, and the lion springs upon his prey. What damage will they do? They will bereave you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number. They will eat your children playing outside the house, devour your remaining cows and sheep, and completely reduce you to nothing. With your own eyes, you will see a lion or wolf biting, dragging, and eating your child right before you, and you will not be able to do anything. Look at the end of verse 22: it speaks of how your highways shall be desolate. Why? Like during the days of COVID, nobody dares to even travel through the land because of the wild beasts God has unleashed upon His disobedient people.
We see this taking place periodically in Israel’s history. In 1 Kings 13, there was a prophet who was not obedient to the living God, and a lion came, seized him along the roadside, killed him, and stood right next to his body so others could see the fulfillment of God’s curse for disobedience. Remember in 2 Kings 2 when those youth mocked the prophet of God, saying, “Go up, you baldhead!” Two female bears came out of the woods and devoured 42 of those dishonoring lads. Ultimately, remember when the northern kingdom was crushed by Assyria: a foreign race came in and established a mixed religion—a little Jehovah religion connected with a little Baal religion and a little Ashtoreth religion. What did God do? He sent lions among them, and the paw of the lion gouged out many lives in those days. You see, God fulfilled His prophecy and His curses here.
Well, let me bring you into the 20th century to see the implications. Think of a brazen-faced young girl defying her parents’ words and living a secret double life at school and at work. What happens to her? As she is riding along the road she has always traveled, she suddenly meets with a terrible accident from an unexpected source—a lorry or truck hits her. It may all look like a normal accident caused by an old man driving the truck, and everyone might think it was just a coincidence. Oh, was it really? Or was this a lion’s paw commissioned by the hand of the living God to discipline this girl? There she is in the hospital with a broken foot, bandages on her hand, and her leg hanging in traction. It may look like a sad accident, but in her conscience, there is the roar of a lion. She realizes it was the sovereign hand of God that made the driver turn the wheel and hit her to punish her for her continued disobedience and sin. This is a providential rod calling her to repentance.
Now come with me to the fourth curse: War. Look at verse 23. Can you believe it says this, brethren? “And if by these things you are not turned to Me, but walk contrary to Me…” My, what a foolish course sinners—and even the children of God—can sometimes take! How stubborn sin makes us! That is the horrible nature of sin: until it destroys us, it tries to make us stubborn. Matthew Henry says, “There is nothing gained by striving with Almighty God, for He will break either the heart or the neck of those that contend with Him. And He will bring them either to repentance or to ruin.” The Lord says here again: “I also will walk contrary to you, and I will punish you yet seven times for your sins.”
Not only calamity, famine, and wild beasts—there will also be an invasion of the land. Verse 24: “And I will bring a sword against you that will execute the vengeance of the covenant.” An avenging sword! Enemies will be permitted to come in and attack you with the sword. There will be war.
We know that in the history of Israel, there was much occasional and disorganized military hostility against them. Occasionally, the Midianites would come down and devastate fields for a few seasons. In a disorganized way, the Ammonites or the Philistines would come and plunder them. These were small, one-time attacks where they would plunder, take away the harvest, and leave the people poor. This was God’s rod warning them to repent.
When they didn’t repent and continued to sin, instead of these small groups, God sent well-trained, overwhelming, and invincible nations against them: the Assyrians who marched against the northern kingdom, and the mighty Babylonians who came against the southern kingdom of Judah. Oh, what complete destruction they caused! This is the avenging sword.
When they face such an attack, verse 25 says, “When you gather together within your cities…” What is this foreshadowing? Sieges! The enemy army is so large that the people cannot fight them out in the open, so they shut all the gates and remain behind the big walls of the city. Enemies set up sieges against the cities, cutting off the food and water supply to see how long the people can survive inside. This is exactly what happened when Assyria attacked the north and Babylon attacked the south.
They were inside the walls, so they thought they would be safe, right? No. The Lord punishes them inside: “I will send pestilence among you.” Outside the walls are lethal enemies executing the curse, and inside the walls, there is no peace either. As you are trapped inside, closely packed and living in tight quarters, God says, “I will send pestilence.” Waterborne and filth-related diseases come upon you.
With thousands of people trapped in close proximity without modern plumbing, human waste inevitably contaminated the limited internal water supply. Hygiene deteriorated; they couldn’t wash their clothes or bodies. This triggered massive outbreaks of dysentery, cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, bacterial or viral infections, body lice, severe skin infections, and even smallpox, measles, or bubonic plague—killing far more people than the enemy’s swords. That city becomes like a boiling pot of fever within.
Look at verse 26: “When I have cut off your supply of bread…” What a striking phrase: “break your staff of bread.” You see, bread is likened to the crutch upon which human life leans. We need to be supported by bread. What happens if you don’t have any food or bread? You collapse in the dust from starvation. And that was the promise: “I will break your staff of bread; you are not going to have anything to eat.”
Then what happens? Verse 26 says ten women will bake your bread in one oven. What is that referring to? In the ancient world, a common sight in a prosperous nation and in Israel was sweet, rising loaves of bread swelling in the oven of each woman. But now, grain and flour will become so scarce that one oven will be enough to handle the flour and grain of ten women. “They shall deliver your bread again by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied.”
“I will break your staff of bread.” We find this took place historically in the life of Israel. In the northern kingdom, in 2 Kings 6, Syria surrounded Samaria. The city was under siege. Why? Because of their disobedience. It was said in the city that a donkey’s head was sold for 80 pieces of silver. A donkey’s head! Who would want to eat a donkey’s head? But because things had gotten so bad, a donkey’s head became a rare delicacy costing 80 pieces of silver.
It also says that half a cab (about one and a half kilograms) of dove’s dung cost five silver pieces. Who would want that? But if you are hungry and starving, you will eat anything.
Even after enduring all this, if you do not repent, notice verse 27: “And after all this, if you do not obey Me, but walk contrary to Me, then I also will walk contrary to you in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.”
We already saw this exactly fulfilled in 2 Kings: as the king was walking on the wall, a woman cried out to him and said, “Oh king, another woman and I made an agreement. We said, ‘We will boil my son and eat him today, and tomorrow we will boil and eat your son.’ So we boiled my son and ate him the first night, but the next night she hid her son!” How terrifying!
Oh, these were not empty threats. What a remarkable prophecy—and all fulfilled in history! It was exactly fulfilled. Oh, what a wicked curse that was brought upon the disobedient people of God!
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The Fifth Curse: Destruction and Exile (Leviticus 26:27–39)
Now we come to the fifth and final curse in verses 27 through 39: complete destruction and exile.
In spite of all the previous warnings—calamity, famine, wild beasts, and war—the people remain beast-like in their defiance. Instead of responding to God with contrition, heartbroken confession, and an amending of their ways, they persist in rebellion. Then comes final, total destruction.
Verse 31 says that the Lord will lay waste to their cities and make their sanctuaries desolate. Verse 32 tells us that God Himself will bring the land to desolation. Then verse 33 declares: “I will scatter you among the nations and draw out a sword after you; your land shall be desolate and your cities waste.”
You can read in the history books of the terrible destruction that came upon those people. The historian Josephus gives a vivid account of the actual fulfillment of this passage in history. God did exactly what He said He would do. It is perhaps the saddest story in the history of any nation; human words cannot fully explain the devastation that came upon them. They cried and wept for seventy years in captivity.
Even their enemies were astonished. Verse 32 speaks of how their enemies would be appalled at them. Even hostile nations wondered: Why are these people suffering so much? This nation used to be so glorious; it was once the head of all nations, and now it is completely gone! Enemies hissed at them and said, “How can it be that this glorious nation has become merely a pile of rubble?” As Jeremiah 18:16 records: “I will make their land desolate and a perpetual hissing; everyone who passes by it will be astonished and shake his head.”
What a colossal fall this nation experienced. Thousands upon thousands—lakhs of them—were killed and destroyed by their enemies, with most perishing in the judgment.
But what about the survivors? There were some who survived the initial slaughter. Verse 36 speaks of the intense paranoia of those who remained: “And as for those of you who are left, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a shaken leaf shall cause them to flee.” After the Israelites of the northern kingdom were scattered among foreign nations and Judah was carried off to Babylon, the survivors lived in constant fear that more punishments from the living God were coming.
Matthew Henry remarked: “Those that cast off the fear of God expose themselves to the fear of everything else.”
In Jeremiah 42 and 43, we read of a remnant that escaped the initial destruction and fled to hide among the large population of Egypt. They thought they would escape the avenging sword of Jehovah in that heavily populated part of the world. Yet history records that Nebuchadnezzar marched down into Egypt, searched out all those Israelites who had fled there for refuge, and put them to the sword. They defied God, and they could not escape His curse or His avenging sword, no matter where they fled.
The remaining people were scattered, bringing a deeply sad end. Verse 38 says: “You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.” The ten northern tribes were scattered, lost all hope, and lived and died among the nations, never returning as a distinct body. Only Judah and Benjamin returned after seventy years. God ultimately executed His written judgment against them. All of this stands recorded in history—confirmed by the actions of men fulfilling the decrees of God.
Is this not a profound earthly picture of hell and eternal judgment? Weeping, wailing, and the gnashing of teeth in a land of total alienation and darkness! Matthew Henry wrote: “The design of the rod is to humble sinners, to soften them, and to bring them to repentance. But those who will not be reformed by the judgments of God must expect to be ruined by the judgments of God.”
That is the exposition of this text. I know it is not a pretty passage, but it is the plain Word of God.
Application 1: God Disciplines in Every Generation
Someone might say, “Oh Pastor, this is all Old Testament history—famine, wild beasts, agriculture, siege, and war. We live in an upgraded generation! We live in smart cities, so nothing like this will happen to us.”
For your information, the Book of Revelation shows that our God is sovereign over every era. He will punish sin and disobedience even in an AI-driven, high-tech generation.
Notice the exact same pattern in the Book of Revelation through the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven bowls—each increasing in severity when people refuse to repent:
- The First Two Seals: Great wars, the sudden collapse of international peace treaties, neighbors turning against neighbors, and essential supplies being cut off.
- The Third Seal: Supply chains completely disintegrate into a world where basic survival becomes a luxury—where a person works an entire day just to afford a single loaf of bread or a liter of milk.
- The Fourth Seal: A quarter of the earth’s population dies from war, starvation, and disease, accompanied by severe psychological breakdowns and terrible destruction.
- The Trumpets: The first trumpet brings the burning up of one-third of the earth’s vegetation, trees, and green grass, leading to immediate, inescapable global shortages. The second trumpet brings warfare upon the oceans—resembling what we see today near strategic straits like the Strait of Hormuz—causing catastrophic supply chain failures. The third trumpet brings freshwater poisoning, where one-third of the world’s rivers and springs become bitter and toxic, causing vast numbers of people to die simply from drinking contaminated water. The fourth and fifth trumpets bring atmospheric disruptions, blistering heat from the sun, and overwhelming psychological torment—where demonic forces bring mental pain so intense that people actively seek death, yet cannot find it.
We see this same pattern executed on a global scale. As one commentator observed:
“A godless life invites the ravages of the enemy. God withdraws His protection and adversaries sweep down upon the sinner. The wild beasts of hell viciously bite and tear inside—your conscience and your soul waging war against you—tearing apart your family and your children. They who repudiate the divine government are taken captive by the devil to do his will and serve their enemies. Sin is very cruel. It slays its victims; it slaughters their virtue, their peace, their happiness, their hopes, and destroys precious souls.”
If God operates this way on a global scale, do you think He will not act on a personal level to bring His children to repentance?
Let me remind you as I did previously: be sensitive to God’s rod in your life. If you face repeated trials, sudden financial crises, or constant troubles in your life and family, do not assume these are mere coincidences or accidental bad luck. Consider whether they are the Father’s rod sent to humble you and bring you to repentance. When troubles come repeatedly, one after another, it can be a clear indication that God is speaking to a continued, besetting sin that you have harbored for days, months, or years. He wants you to confess and turn from that sin. The best way to halt the rod of God is to confess and repent today, that you may experience His restoration and blessing.
Now, child of God, while there is a profound sense in which God deals with us in loving paternal chastisement, we must never become so presumpuous as to think, “Because I am a child of God and have eternal security, I can spit in my Father’s face with continuous disobedience and assume nothing more than mild chastisement will happen.” No! As Hebrews 10:31 warns believers: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” And as Hebrews 12:29 reminds us: “Our God is a consuming fire.”
Application 2: The Necessity of Divine Warnings
Secondly, “motivational negativism” is not bad psychology. Modern teaching often claims that we must always be positive and completely avoid negative warnings because negative statements supposedly demotivate and discourage people. If that were true, we would be claiming to be wiser than God!
God certainly gives positive encouragement. In the first thirteen verses of Leviticus 26, He lists wonderful blessings. But in His infinite wisdom, He knew that positive promises alone were not enough. Because human nature is so deeply affected by sin, we also need long, solemn passages that fill us with holy fear regarding the curses of disobedience. Notice the proportion in this chapter: 13 verses of blessings, followed by 26 verses—double the length—of warnings and curses!
Someone might allege that God is a poor psychologist. On the contrary, the living God, the Ancient of Days, knows human nature perfectly. He knows that a mere positive appeal does not penetrate deeply enough into the human heart. Man needs negative threats as a blessed means of grace. As you read the Word of God from Genesis through Revelation, you find these solemn warnings repeated continuously—some of them fierce in their intensity. Even when man was in a state of innocence in the Garden, God included a negative warning: “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Therefore, we must not listen to the world’s opinion that we must always be positive, never talk about negative things, and never issue warnings. A godly, biblical ministry will boldly sound the trumpet of warning. It will not be merely a user-friendly, entertaining, or purely positive ministry, but a balanced, expositional ministry.
Some might ask, “Why would a pastor preach all the way through Leviticus, from chapter 1 to chapter 27?” Because it is God’s Word! We do not merely select popular, favorite texts; we survey the full territory of God’s spoken Word to His people, ensuring our ministry reflects biblical proportions.
Understand that such a ministry is rare in these days. Pray that this ministry continues to sound the truth for many years to come. Pray that it speaks not only of the pleasant slopes and fertile valleys of divine grace, but that it also graphically warns about the grisly consequences of venturing out onto sinful railroad trestles—warning of the destruction that comes if you walk under the dark bridge of disobedience to the living God.
Application 3: A Solemn Call to the Unrepentant
The Levitical curses are a vivid type of eternal judgment. If a person refuses to repent despite repeated warnings and chastisements, it demonstrates that they were never truly saved.
Israel is not only a picture of the child of God under discipline; Israel is also a type of the stiff-necked sinner who refuses to repent. For the ungodly, repeated and progressive calamities in life are not fatherly chastisement, but divine judicial retribution. There are those who harden their necks in sin, and God visits them with raw judgment.
The commentator Andrew Bonar wrote extensively on how the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem—including the terrifying breakdown of natural human affection—serve as a profound depiction of hell itself. He described it as natural relationships tormenting each other in despair, displaying the same teeth-gnashing hatred toward one another as found in the lake of fire with the devil and his angels.
Hell will be an awful place—a boiling pot of judgment in the lake of fire.
I am not addressing the established Christian at this point; I am speaking to the sinner. Sinner, God has extended to you the sweet overtures of the Gospel. For some of you, God has also brought the smarting blows of His providential rod against you to stop you in your tracks. I plead with you: do not stiffen your neck! Do not plug your ears to this warning! You will gain nothing by striving against the living God. He will either break your heart in repentance or break your neck in judgment.
I plead with you: bow your heart to the living God. May this solemn passage flash upon the screen of your mind a sobering image of the sinner’s eternal fall, and may it arrest you tonight! May you look at that drop and say, “I do not want to perish in such a way.”
May you hear the rumble and the roar of the oncoming train of judgment in this passage. May you realize your dangerous location standing upon an accursed trestle of sin. What you must do right now is cry out to the Lord Jesus Christ! Ask Him to extend His mercy, swoop down as on eagles’ wings, pluck you off that dangerous bridge of destruction, and bring you to a place of safety.
That is what you need to do tonight: you need to be rescued by the Son of God from eternal destruction. If you find yourself in the middle of that bridge of sin, hearing the roar of God’s approaching judgment and feeling the vibration of the rails beneath your feet, cry out to the living God this very hour! Cry out to the Son of God that He would have mercy upon you so that you will not be destroyed.
May God bless the expounding of His Holy Word.