Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 26-27.

Today’s passage begins with God repeating His command to worship only Him and not worship idols, images, or objects.  Immediately following this He repeats His command to keep the Sabbath.  These two repeated commands precede what I see as the core of this chapter.   First, God tells the people of Israel, and us, that if they follow His decrees and are careful to obey His commands, He will grant them peace and make them fruitful.  On the other hand, if they, or we, reject His decrees and refuse to follow His commands, He will bring suffering upon us.  How the passage tells us what God will do to those who reject His instruction tells us a lot about why God has given us the commands He has given us.  God says “I will break your stubborn pride.”  Then a little later He says, “If you do not accept my correction,…”  Reading between the lines indicates that God gives us the commands and instructions which He gives us because they are in our best interests.  The good things which God promises to do for us if we obey His commands are the natural consequences of following such a course of action.  The initial punishments which God threatens us with if we fail to follow His commands are designed to turn us from our negative actions before it is too late to avoid the negative consequences of those actions.  If we do God’s will, good things will come to us, because that is the way God made the world to work.  If we reject God’s will, and refuse to follow His instructions, bad things will happen to us, because that is also the result of the way in which the world is designed.  Just as a good parent will punish a child who does things which might cause the child permanent harm before those actions result in permanent harm, so does God punish us, hoping that we will turn from our evil ways before we suffer permanent harm.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.