• Ted:
    Notice that all the punishments for disobedience (26:14-46) are about triple the rewards for obedience (26:1-13). Does this mean that God is more mean and cruel than He is nice and kind? No, not at all.

    It means that obedience to God brings a simple, uncomplicated, trouble-free state of contentment, satisfaction, and peace of mind: the things that people constantly claim they want but don't often have. That is because it is human nature to do things "our way" rather than "God's way," and that virtually always leads to complications, snags, and problems.

    For most people, when God disciplines them, the natural reaction is resentment and a tendency to do something even worse just to "get back at God." Well, that almost always is a foolish decision, because God is in control, whether we like it or not. Getting on His bad side is not very wise.

    Leviticus 26:18,21,24,28 indicate that God will punish us seven times over if we continue to disobey Him and, even worse, become hostile toward Him. Wow, that is 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 = 2,401 times the punishment we would have gotten had we just humbled ourselves and obeyed Him in the first place.

    All God wanted to do was to put His dwelling place among the Israelites, walk with them, and enjoy being their God (Leviticus 26:11,12). That is all that He wants to do with us as well; we today are no different than they. But it is human nature to rebel, and the Israelites did just that--not just for forty years in the desert but for hundreds of years after they reached the Promised Land.

    In subsequent books, we will see that, although the Israelites promised to obey God's decrees and demands, they did not do so. Some did, but the majority did not. As such, God drifted further and further away from them, and protected them less and less from their enemies, until Israel and Judah ultimately were taken into captivity by the Assyrians and the Babylonians.

    Fortunately, when Jesus returns, He will give the promised inheritance (which God guaranteed to Abraham in Genesis) to the remnant that remains. And all of the rewards for obedience (Leviticus 26:3-12) will be given, freely and lavishly by God, for 1,000 years: The Millennium.