Leviticus 26:33-46
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.
Deuteronomy 4:25-27
Threat and Blessing following Covenant Disobedience
4:25 After you have produced children and grandchildren and have been in the land a long time, if you become corrupt and make an image of any kind and do other evil things before the Lord your God that enrage him,
4:26 I invoke heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that you will surely and swiftly be removed from the very land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess. You will not last long there because you will surely be annihilated.
4:27 Then the Lord will scatter you among the peoples and there will be very few of you among the nations where the Lord will drive you.
Deuteronomy 28:64
28:64 The
Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone.
Deuteronomy 32:26-28
The Weakness of Other Gods
32:26 “I said, ‘I want to cut them in pieces.
I want to make people forget they ever existed.
32:27 But I fear the reaction of their enemies,
for their adversaries would misunderstand
and say, “Our power is great,
and the Lord has not done all this!”’
32:28 They are a nation devoid of wisdom,
and there is no understanding among them.
Deuteronomy 32:1
Invocation of Witnesses
32:1 Listen, O heavens, and I will speak;
hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.
Deuteronomy 9:6-7
9:6 Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the
Lord your God is about to give you this good land as a possession, for you are a stubborn
people!
The History of Israel’s Stubbornness
9:7 Remember – don’t ever forget – how you provoked the Lord your God in the desert; from the time you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place you were constantly rebelling against him.