The Logic of Curses: God's De-Creation Mandate Text: Leviticus 26:14-39
Introduction: The Covenant Lord and His Terms
We live in a sentimental age. Our generation wants a God who is a celestial therapist, a divine affirmation machine, a God who is all blessing and no bite. We want the Sermon on the Mount without Sinai. We want the promises of Abraham without the warnings of Leviticus. But the God of the Bible is not a God we get to invent. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, and He sets the terms of His relationship with mankind. That relationship is a covenant.
A covenant, like any binding agreement, has terms. It has stipulations, promises of blessing for faithfulness, and threats of curses for unfaithfulness. The first half of this chapter in Leviticus lays out the glorious blessings that flow from covenant obedience. But our text today deals with the other side of the ledger. It is a detailed, sobering, and terrifying catalogue of the consequences of covenant rebellion. This is not the arbitrary rage of a pagan deity. This is the holy, just, and predictable response of a righteous God to sin. These are not threats designed to terrorize; they are warnings designed to save.
This passage is a diagnostic manual for a decaying culture. As we walk through these verses, you will find that they read like a prophecy of Western civilization's current trajectory. When a people rejects God's statutes, they do not enter a neutral wonderland of secular freedom. They place themselves under the covenant curses. God does not simply abandon them; He actively turns against them. He begins a process of judicial de-creation, dismantling the blessings He once gave. What He built up in love, He will tear down in justice. Understanding this chapter is essential for understanding the world we live in, the nature of our sin, and the glorious salvation found only in the one who became a curse for us.
The Text
'But if you do not obey Me and do not do all these commandments, if, instead, you reject My statutes, and if your soul loathes My judgments so as not to do all My commandments and so break My covenant, I, in turn, will do this to you: I will appoint over you a sudden terror, consumption and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away; also, you will sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies will eat it up. And I will set My face against you so that you will be defeated before your enemies; and those who hate you will have dominion over you, and you will flee when no one is pursuing you. If also after these things you do not obey Me, then I will discipline you seven times more for your sins...
(Leviticus 26:14-39 LSB)
The Anatomy of Apostasy (vv. 14-15)
The curses do not begin without a cause. God establishes the root of the problem first.
"‘But if you do not obey Me and do not do all these commandments, if, instead, you reject My statutes, and if your soul loathes My judgments so as not to do all My commandments and so break My covenant...'" (Leviticus 26:14-15)
Notice the progression here. This is a spiritual cancer that metastasizes. It begins with simple disobedience, a failure to act, "if you do not obey Me." This is a sin of omission. But it doesn't stay there. It moves to active rebellion, "you reject My statutes." The word for reject here means to spurn, to treat with contempt. This is a sin of commission. Finally, it culminates in a deep-seated, visceral hatred: "your soul loathes My judgments." The heart itself has become corrupted. They no longer just break God's law; they hate it. This is the endpoint of all sin: a settled animosity toward the character of God Himself.
When a people reaches this point, they "break My covenant." This is high treason. It is a nation formally declaring independence from the King of kings. And a king does not let such rebellion go unanswered. The verses that follow are not random punishments; they are the direct and logical consequences of this treason. They are the covenant lawsuit being executed by the sovereign Judge.
First Wave: The Center Cannot Hold (vv. 16-17)
The first stage of judgment is an attack on the people's internal and external security.
"I, in turn, will do this to you: I will appoint over you a sudden terror, consumption and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away; also, you will sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies will eat it up. And I will set My face against you so that you will be defeated before your enemies; and those who hate you will have dominion over you, and you will flee when no one is pursuing you." (Leviticus 26:16-17)
God says, "I will appoint over you a sudden terror." This is psychological warfare. It is a culture-wide anxiety, a free-floating dread. Along with this comes disease, "consumption and fever." Public health declines. The people become weak and listless. Their very souls "pine away."
Their economic life is cursed. They work hard, but it comes to nothing. "You will sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies will eat it up." This is the curse of non-productivity, of inflation, of economic ruin where the fruit of your labor is consumed by others, whether by taxation, theft, or foreign powers.
And militarily, they are humbled. "I will set My face against you." This is the key to all the curses. God Himself becomes their adversary. The result is national humiliation. They are "defeated before your enemies," and "those who hate you will have dominion over you." Their foreign policy is a disaster. But the curse goes deeper. It creates a national paranoia: "you will flee when no one is pursuing you." A guilty conscience makes cowards of them all. They are haunted by specters of their own making.
Second and Third Waves: Nature and Chaos (vv. 18-22)
If the first wave of discipline does not bring repentance, God intensifies the pressure.
"If also after these things you do not obey Me, then I will discipline you seven times more for your sins. I will also break down your pride of strength; I will also give your sky over to become like iron and your earth like bronze... If then, you walk in hostility against Me... I will send out among you the beasts of the field, which will bereave you of your children..." (Leviticus 26:18-22)
The phrase "seven times more" does not mean a literal sevenfold increase. It signifies a complete, perfect, and intensified judgment. God is turning up the heat. He targets their "pride of strength." Every nation has something it trusts in other than God, its military might, its economic prowess, its technological superiority. God says He will break that very thing.
He does this by turning creation against them. "Your sky over to become like iron and your earth like bronze." This is ecological disaster. Drought, famine, and environmental collapse. When man rebels against the Creator, the creation itself rebels against man. The dominion mandate given in Genesis is reversed. Instead of subduing the earth, the earth subdues them.
If they persist in walking "in hostility" with God, at cross-purposes to Him, the de-creation continues. "I will send out among you the beasts of the field." The ordered world of civilization begins to break down. The barrier between the wild and the civilized erodes. This can be literal wild animals, but it also represents the rise of brutish, violent men. Crime rates soar. The roads become unsafe. Children are no longer safe. Society becomes feral.
Fourth Wave: God Himself as the Enemy (vv. 23-26)
The warnings now become terrifyingly direct. It is no longer just the consequences of sin that they face, but God Himself.
"And if by these things you do not accept My discipline, but walk in hostility against Me, then I will walk in hostility against you; and I, even I, will strike you seven times for your sins. I will also bring upon you a sword which will execute vengeance for the covenant..." (Leviticus 26:23-25)
This is one of the most fearsome statements in Scripture: "then I will walk in hostility against you." God Himself enters the field as their enemy. He brings the "sword," "pestilence," and siege. He is executing "vengeance for the covenant." This is not random violence; it is the enforcement of the contract they signed and then broke.
The result is a complete societal breakdown, symbolized by the "staff of bread" being broken. Famine becomes so severe that "ten women will bake your bread in one oven." An oven was a family possession. This means ten families are sharing one, and the bread is so scarce it is rationed by weight. The basic unit of society, the family, is shattered by starvation. They eat, but are never full. It is a life of constant, gnawing emptiness.
The Final Wave: Total De-Creation and Exile (vv. 27-39)
If all this does not bring repentance, God brings the final, awful judgment.
"then I will walk in wrathful hostility against you... Further, you will eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters you will eat. I then will destroy your high places... I will give your cities over as a waste... You, however, I will scatter among the nations..." (Leviticus 26:28-33)
God now walks against them in "wrathful hostility." The discipline is complete. The result is the ultimate horror: cannibalism. "You will eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters you will eat." A society that rejects God, the author of life, will eventually begin to consume its own children. This is the endpoint of rebellion. It happened literally in the siege of Samaria and Jerusalem, and it happens metaphorically in any culture that sacrifices its future on the altar of its present lusts.
God then destroys the very center of their rebellion: their false worship. He smashes their "high places" and "incense altars." He shows the utter impotence of their idols by throwing their dead bodies onto the rubble of their dead gods. He makes their sanctuaries and cities desolate. The land itself is so ruined that even their enemies are appalled by it.
The final curse is exile. "I will scatter you among the nations." They lose the land, the inheritance, the place of blessing. And even in exile, there is no peace. They are consumed by weakness and paranoia. "The sound of a driven leaf will pursue them." They live in constant, irrational fear. They stumble over each other in a panic when no one is chasing them. They rot away in their iniquity, and the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.
The Curse-Bearer
This is a dark and dreadful passage. It is the anatomy of societal collapse under the judgment of God. And it should drive us to our knees. For we see our own sins, and the sins of our nation, written all over these verses. We have rejected His statutes and our souls have loathed His judgments. The early stages of these curses are already upon us. So where is the hope?
The hope is found by looking at this list of curses and realizing that one man in history endured all of them, perfectly and completely, in the place of His people. On the cross, Jesus Christ was appointed a "sudden terror." He was defeated by His enemies. The Father "set His face against Him." He was stripped of His strength. He cried out in the agony of a spiritual drought. He was cast out of the city, into the wilderness, into exile. He was surrounded by the "beasts" who mocked him. God Himself walked in "wrathful hostility" against Him, striking Him for our sins. He bore the full, undiluted, "seven times" curse of the broken covenant.
The Apostle Paul tells us that "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13). He absorbed the totality of Leviticus 26 into Himself so that we, by faith in Him, might receive the totality of the blessings. He was scattered so we could be gathered. He was struck down so we could be raised up. He was abandoned so we could be welcomed home.
Therefore, this passage is a dire warning to all who remain in their rebellion. The curses are real, and they are coming. But for those who are in Christ, this passage is a staggering measure of the love of God. It shows us the hell that He saved us from, by enduring it Himself. Our only sane response is to flee from our sin and cling to our curse-bearing Savior, and to walk in the obedience of faith, which is the only path to blessing.