“Yes, if you go against me and don’t listen to me, I will increase your calamities sevenfold, according to your sins. I will send wild animals among you; they will rob you of your children, destroy your livestock and reduce your numbers, until your roads are deserted.”-Leviticus 26:21-22
We are now going over the negative ramifications that will result when one breaks YHWH’s covenant.
I know it’s human nature to want to ignore the negative and only focus on the blessings.
However, God’s Law and God’s universe doesn’t work that way.
This is a stark view of the other side of the covenant resulting from DISOBEDIENCE.
When we don’t obey His commands, God views this as hostility against Him.
He has given these warnings for a reason.
So let’s pay attention and be diligent students of His Word.
From verse 18, we’re given an interesting expression:
“I will make your sky like iron, your soil like bronze“
Essentially, what this means is that the sky will no longer pour forth rain and the ground will completely dry up and lose all of its moisture (springs will stop flowing).
The result of these things happening is of course major crop failure!
Moving on, in verse 21, we’re told that if the people still remain obstinate and refuse to pay heed to YHWH’s Word, even more intense punishments will be sent their way.
The bad things described are framed as being the exact opposites from the blessings that come from obedience.
For instance, obey Me and “I will” keep wild animals from harming you, your family and your farm animals.
Disobey me and “I will” sick these wild animals on you and they will kill your children and destroy your flocks and herds.
I want to introduce the Hebrew expression used in this verse concerning the Lord “sending” wild animals to harm the people.
This phrase is interesting because it is a rarely used word construction.
Here is the expression:
VE-HISHLACHTI
It carries the sense of “aggressively driving forward” or “causing a stampede”.
Again, as I’ve mentioned before, this isn’t really about YHWH removing his hand of protection or allowing the animals to attack His rebellious people.
No, this is about God taking proactive action, sicking wild beasts on the people and causing the wild beasts to increase in numbers.
In some supernatural way, he is going to program the primitive minds of these carnivorous beasts to aggressively hunt down humans.
This shouldn’t surprise us because as we saw in the Book of Exodus, the usual way God doles out punishments is by using the normal everyday things of nature but using them in an intense and amplified manner.
Recall the plagues of Egypt.
All of them consisted of things that exist and normally occur in nature.
The Nile normally gave birth a to high number of frogs, BUT not to the extent that huge populations of them crawled across the land of Egypt like a huge moving Persian rug.
Egypt, like any other nation, had their share of flies and gnats, BUT not to the extent that they attacked and tortured both people and animals to nearly the point of death.
I believe most people on this planet have gotten boils, BUT not to the extent that they would cover somebody from head to foot and only affect one people group.
And finally, hearkening back to my last post, hurricanes do occur from time to time, BUT a category 5 hurricane the size of a small country that strikes in such a pinpointed fashion so as to cause maximum damage to a major American city resulting in the severe coast-to-coast disruption of essential energy and grain supplies is a rare event indeed.
Think about what it says in the Book of Revelations when it talks about YHWH judging the world.
Again, all that God is going to do is take the things of nature and pump up the volume.
We’re told that at God’s command, the heat of the sun is going to burn hotter and brighter to the point where it will torture the earth’s inhabitants.
One question that has perplexed astronomers for quite some time is why hasn’t our planet been hit by meteors and comets over the last several thousands of years when pretty much every other solid body in our universe has been hit by these flying objects?
Well, they’re not going to have to wonder anymore because in the Book of Revelations, we’re told that again at God’s command, our planet is going to be subjected to catastrophic collisions by meteors that are going to seriously mess up our ecological system.
And get this.
Revelations also tell us that wild beasts are going to roam the earth looking for human prey to kill.
How in the world is this going to happen?
Given our modern technology and the weapons we currently possess, if we chose to do so, we could literally wipe out an entire species at whim.
So how in the heck are things going to reach the point where the unbeliever is going to walk around afraid of being attacked by wild animals.
Well, read the Scripture for the answer.
It says that God will give authority to his angels to cause these things to happen.
What’s written in the Book of Revelations, the last book of the Bible, is EXACTLY what we’re studying here in Leviticus, one of the earlier books of the Bible.
YHWH’s response to man’s rebellion has NOT changed.
For YHWH is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
CONNECTING THIS TEACHING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT
“I looked, and there in front of me
was a pallid, sickly-looking horse.
Its rider’s name was Death,
and Sh’ol followed behind him.
They were given authority to kill
one-quarter of the world by war,
by famine, by plagues
and with the wild animals of the earth.”
-Revelations 6:8
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