Text -- Leviticus 26:30-46 (NET)

26:30 I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars, and I will stack your dead bodies on top of the lifeless bodies of your idols. I will abhor you. 26:31 I will lay your cities waste and make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will refuse to smell your soothing aromas. 26:32 I myself will make the land desolate and your enemies who live in it will be appalled. 26:33 I will scatter you among the nations and unsheathe the sword after you, so your land will become desolate and your cities will become a waste. 26:34 “‘Then the land will make up for its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land will rest and make up its Sabbaths. 26:35 All the days of the desolation it will have the rest it did not have on your Sabbaths when you lived on it. 26:36 “‘As for the ones who remain among you, I will bring despair into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a blowing leaf will pursue them, and they will flee as one who flees the sword and fall down even though there is no pursuer. 26:37 They will stumble over each other as those who flee before a sword, though there is no pursuer, and there will be no one to take a stand for you before your enemies. 26:38 You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will consume you.

Restoration through Confession and Repentance

26:39 “‘As for the ones who remain among you, they will rot away because of their iniquity in the lands of your enemies, and they will also rot away because of their ancestors’ iniquities which are with them. 26:40 However, when they confess their iniquity and their ancestors’ iniquity which they committed by trespassing against me, by which they also walked in hostility against me 26:41 (and I myself will walk in hostility against them and bring them into the land of their enemies), and then their uncircumcised hearts become humbled and they make up for their iniquity, 26:42 I will remember my covenant with Jacob and also my covenant with Isaac and also my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. 26:43 The land will be abandoned by them in order that it may make up for its Sabbaths while it is made desolate without them, and they will make up for their iniquity because they have rejected my regulations and have abhorred my statutes. 26:44 In spite of this, however, when they are in the land of their enemies I will not reject them and abhor them to make a complete end of them, to break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. 26:45 I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out from the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord.’”

Summary Colophon

26:46 These are the statutes, regulations, and instructions which the Lord established between himself and the Israelites at Mount Sinai through Moses.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Lev 26:30

¹ sn Regarding these cultic installations, see the remarks in B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 188, and R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 2:903. The term rendered “incense altars” might better be rendered “sanctuaries [of foreign deities]” or “stelae.”

² tn The translation reflects the Hebrew wordplay “your corpses…the corpses of your idols.” Since idols, being lifeless, do not really have “corpses,” the translation uses “dead bodies” for people and “lifeless bodies” for the idols.

³ tn Heb “and my soul will abhor you.”

NET Notes: Lev 26:31

¹ tn Heb “And I will give your cities a waste”; NLT “make your cities desolate.”

NET Notes: Lev 26:33

¹ tn Heb “and I will empty sword” (see HALOT 1228 s.v. ריק 3).

NET Notes: Lev 26:34

¹ tn There are two Hebrew roots רָצָה (ratsah), one meaning “to be pleased with; to take pleasure” (HALOT 1280-81 s.v. רצה; cf. “enjoy” in NASB, NIV, NRSV, and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452), and the other meaning “to restore” (HALOT 1281-82 s.v. II רצה; cf. NAB “retrieve” and B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 189).

NET Notes: Lev 26:35

¹ tn Heb “it shall rest which it did not rest.”

NET Notes: Lev 26:36

¹ tn Heb “And.”

NET Notes: Lev 26:37

¹ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) is used in a concessive sense here.

² tn The term rendered “to stand up” is a noun, not an infinitive. It occurs only here and appears to designate someone who would take a powerful stand for them against their enemies.

NET Notes: Lev 26:39

¹ tn Heb “in” (so KJV, ASV; also later in this verse).

² tn Heb “fathers’” (also in the following verse).

NET Notes: Lev 26:40

¹ tn Heb “And.” Many English versions take this to be a conditional clause (“if…”) though there is no conditional particle (see, e.g., NASB, NIV, NRSV; but see the very different rendering in B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 190). The temporal translation offered here (“when”) takes into account the particle אָז (’az, “then”), which occurs twice in v. 41. The obvious contextual contrast between vv. 39 and 40 is expressed by “however” in the translation.

² tn Heb “in their trespassing which they trespassed in me.” See the note on Lev 5:15, although the term is used in a more technical sense there in relation to the “guilt offering.”

³ tn Heb “and also which they walked.”

⁴ tn Heb “with me.”

NET Notes: Lev 26:41

¹ tn Heb “or then,” although the LXX has “then” and the Syriac “and then.”

² tn Heb “and then they make up for.” On the verb “make up for” see the note on v. 34 above.

NET Notes: Lev 26:42

¹ tn Heb “my covenant with Abraham I will remember.” The phrase “I will remember” has not been repeated in the translation for stylistic reasons.

NET Notes: Lev 26:43

¹ tn Heb “from them.” The preposition “from” refers here to the agent of the action (J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 455).

² tn The jussive form of the verb with the simple vav (ו) here calls for a translation that expresses purpose.

³ tn The verb is the Hophal infinitive construct with the third feminine singular suffix (GKC 182 §67.y; cf. v. 34).

⁴ tn Heb “from them.”

⁵ tn Heb “because and in because,” a double expression, which is used only here and in Ezek 13:10 (without the vav) for emphasis (GKC 492 §158.b).

⁶ tn Heb “and their soul has abhorred.”

NET Notes: Lev 26:45

¹ tn Heb “covenant of former ones.”

sn For similar expressions referring back to the ancestors who refused to follow the stipulations of the Mosaic covenant see, for example, Deut 19:14, Jer 11:10, and Ps 79:8 (see B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 192, and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 471).

NET Notes: Lev 26:46

¹ tn Heb “gave” (so NLT); KJV, ASV, NCV “made.”

² tn Heb “by the hand of” (so KJV).