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Biblion Bible Commentary

Read the introduction to Leviticus · About this commentary

I Will Walk Among You

Leviticus 26:1-13

1 “‘You shall make for yourselves no idols, and you shall not raise up a carved image or a pillar, and you shall not place any figured stone in your land, to bow down to it; for I am Yahweh your God. · WEB

The blessings are harvests, sleep and safety, and the last of them is God walking about in the camp as though he lived there.

The chapter opens with two prohibitions and a positive command, and between them they summarize the whole book. No idols, no carved image, no standing stone Leviticus 26:1; and you shall keep my Sabbaths, and have reverence for my sanctuary Leviticus 26:2.

The promises then begin with weather, which is where a farming country's life is decided: I will give you your rains in their season Leviticus 26:4.

What follows is a picture of abundance drawn in terms of overlapping work. Your threshing shall continue until the vintage, and the vintage shall continue until the sowing time Leviticus 26:5. Each harvest runs so long that it meets the next one — a year with no gap in it, which for people who had known hunger is a more vivid promise than any figure.

Then security, and again it is described domestically rather than militarily: you shall lie down, and no one will make you afraid Leviticus 26:6. Sleep is the measure of peace.

The military promises are extravagant and deliberately disproportionate — five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand Leviticus 26:8. The ratios do not scale evenly, which is the point: the numbers are not doing arithmetic.

And the storehouse image is the most homely in the chapter. You shall eat old supplies long kept, and you shall move out the old because of the new Leviticus 26:10. The problem is running out of room, and last year's grain has to be shifted to make space.

Then the promises stop being about produce.

I will set my tent among you, and my soul won't abhor you. I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you will be my people Leviticus 26:11–12.

That is the summit of the book. Everything in Leviticus — the offerings, the cleanness laws, the priesthood, the day of atonement — exists so that this sentence can be true, and here it is stated as the reward rather than the burden.

The verb walk is the one used of God in the garden Genesis 3:8, and the promise is echoed at the end of Scripture where God's dwelling is with men Revelation 21:3.

And the closing verse names what he did to make it possible: I have broken the bars of your yoke, and made you walk upright Leviticus 26:13. People who had been bent over now stand, and the God who freed them moves about among them.

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