Then the Land Will Enjoy Its Sabbaths
27 “‘If you in spite of this won’t listen to me, but walk contrary to me, 28 then I will walk contrary to you in wrath. I will also chastise you seven times for your sins. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you. 31 I will lay your cities waste, and will bring your sanctuaries to desolation. I will not take delight in the sweet fragrance of your offerings. 32 I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it will be astonished at it. 33 I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw out the sword after you. Your land will be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. 34 Then the land will enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemies’ land. Even then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. 35 As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, even the rest which it didn’t have in your Sabbaths when you lived on it. 36 “‘As for those of you who are left, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight; and they shall flee, as one flees from the sword. They will fall when no one pursues. 37 They will stumble over one another, as it were before the sword, when no one pursues. You will have no power to stand before your enemies. 38 You will perish among the nations. The land of your enemies will eat you up. 39 Those of you who are left will pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers they shall pine away with them.
The last stage is exile, and the length of it is calculated as the rest the ground was owed and never given.
The fifth stage brings the siege to its end, and the description is unbearable and brief Leviticus 26:29. Then the cities are laid waste, the sanctuaries desolate, and the people scattered among the nations Leviticus 26:33.
And then a reason is given for the length of the exile that has nothing to do with the people at all.
34 Then the land will enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemies’ land. Even then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. 35 As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, even the rest which it didn’t have in your Sabbaths when you lived on it.
The seventh-year rest was legislated at the start of the previous chapter Leviticus 25:4, and the arrangement depended on trusting a harvest that had not come. This passage assumes it will not be kept, and states what happens: the ground takes what it is owed while nobody is there.
The exile is therefore arrears rather than a sentence chosen for severity. Centuries later the chronicler closes his history by counting it exactly that way — the captivity lasted until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths, to fulfill seventy years 2 Chronicles 36:21.
What is described of the survivors is the strangest part of the chapter, and it is psychological. I will send a faintness into their hearts... the sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight; and they shall flee, as one flees from the sword. They will fall when no one pursues Leviticus 26:36.
They are not being hunted. The terror has become detached from any danger, and men stumble over each other running from a noise. That is the exact reversal of the promise a few verses earlier, that they would lie down, and no one will make you afraid Leviticus 26:6.
And the last note of the section is the slowest: those who are left will pine away in their iniquity Leviticus 26:39. Not destroyed — wasting, over years, in somebody else's country.
It is the lowest point the book reaches, and the next verse begins with the word if.
settled What this mark means