1“You shall not make idols, and you shall not set up an image or a pillar, and you shall not put a carved stone in your land to bow at it, because I am YHWH, your God.
2“You shall observe my Sabbaths and fear my sanctuary. I am YHWH.
26:2. observe my Sabbaths and fear my sanctuary. What is the reason for mentioning these two here together: Sabbaths and sanctuary? This pronouncement brings together the sanctification of time and the sanctification of space. The Sabbath is the most sacred time. The sanctuary (meaning first the Tabernacle and later the Temple) is the most sacred space. This dual command thus embraces everything.
3“If you will go by my laws, and if you will observe my commandments, and you will do them:
26:3. If you will go by my laws. The key to the relationship between Leviticus’s laws and the Bible’s story is the list of blessings and curses here in Leviticus 26. The list comes at the conclusion and is arguably the culmination of the book. It indicates that all of this law has implications. Leviticus has definite connections to what has come before it. The blessings-and-curses list is the connection to what will follow. It says, plainly enough: the people’s fate will depend on whether they follow these laws or not. The blessings include rain, produce, satiety, security, peace, victory, population, divine presence, and divine relationship. The curses include illness, defeat, wild animals, pestilence, famine, divine rejection, destruction, dispersion, and exile. The blessings and curses thus provide for the eventuality of a variety of essential matters in the realms of nature, human relations (especially political relations), and divine-human relationship. All future stories of the fortunes of the people of Israel in these realms are to be understood, according to this text, as being the results of whether “you will go by my laws, and if you will observe my commandments, and you will do them” (26:3) or “if you will reject my laws, and if your souls will scorn my judgments so as not to do all my commandments, so that you break my covenant” (26:15). Underscoring the literary force of these promises and threats is not only their placement at the conclusion of the book but the fact that the list of curses is the most artfully written section in the book. I call it the most artfully written on the basis of its wording as much as its content, including words of irony (“you will flee though no one is pursuing you,” 26:17), words of horror (“you will eat your sons’ flesh, and your daughters’ flesh you will eat,” 26:29), and words of pathos (“the sound of a driven leaf will chase them,” 26:36). The commandments thus are not presented as a loosely relevant list. They are woven into the fabric of the narrative as essential to the life of the community.
4 then I shall give your rains in their time, and the earth will give its crop, and the tree of the field will give its fruit,
5 and threshing will extend to vintage for you, and vintage will extend to seeding, and you will eat your bread to the full, and you will live in security in your land,
6 and I shall give peace in the land, and you will lie down with no one making you afraid, and I shall make wild animals cease from the land, and a sword will not pass through your land,
7 and you will chase your enemies, and they will fall in front of you by the sword,
8 and five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall in front of you by the sword,
9 and I shall turn to you, and I shall make you fruitful and make you multiply, and I shall establish my covenant with you,
10 and you will eat the oldest of the old, and you will take out the old because of the new,
26:10. the oldest of the old. Old, stored produce will still make good food.
26:10. take out the old because of the new. One will never run out of food. There will be good stored produce right up to the time that the new crops come in, and the old will have to be taken out in order to make room for the new.
11 and I shall put my Tabernacle among you, and my soul will not scorn you,
26:11. my soul. Does God have a soul? This is the only place in the Torah that refers to the deity’s nepeš (although a related verbal form, wayyinn
paš, occurs in Exod 31:17). Elsewhere, the word refers to the living quality in humans and animals and is associated with breath. It is usually understood to mean soul, person, being, and life. It might possibly help us to understand what is meant by creation in the image of God, but that seems unlikely since animals are said to have a nepeš there as well, but they are not said to be in the divine image (Gen 1:24–27). We must be cautious in using the word’s occurrences here to conclude anything about the Torah’s conception of God, because both of these occurrences are in the phrase “my soul will scorn.” This phrase may simply have been a known expression. It also occurs here with humans as the subject (26:15); and it occurs in Jeremiah as well (14:19). It may refer to the personal aspect of God, or it may rather refer to God in no specific way. Rashi (following Siphra) takes the phrase to refer to the departure of the divine presence (Shechinah). Here, too, we must be cautious, first, because that is also the understanding of other metaphorical phrases in the Tanak. Thus the Targum takes the phrase “God hides His face” to mean the departure of the Shechinah as well. And, second, the word Shechinah never occurs in the Torah or anywhere in the Hebrew Bible.
12 and I shall walk among you, and I shall be God to you, and you will be a people to me.
26:12. walk among you. This same term is used to describe God’s walking among humans in the garden of Eden (the Hebrew root 
in the Hitpael; Gen 3:8). This blessing thus hints at a return of the closeness to the divine presence that existed prior to the initial divine-human conflict in Eden.
26:12. I shall be God to you, and you will be a people to me. The last blessing of the list echoes what is thought to be the wording of the marriage ceremony in ancient Israel: “I shall be a husband to you, and you will be a wife to me”—as well as the adoption ceremony: “I shall be a parent to you, and you will be a son/daughter to me” (see, e.g., 2 Sam 7:14).
13I am YHWH, your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from being slaves to them, and I broke the beams of your yoke and had you go standing tall.
14“But if you will not listen to me and not do all these commandments,
15and if you will reject my laws, and if your souls will scorn my judgments so as not to do all my commandments, so that you break my covenant,
16I, too, I shall do this to you: Then I shall appoint terror over you with consumption and with fever, exhausting eyes and grieving the soul, and you will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will eat it,
17 and I shall set my face against you, and you will be struck before your enemies, and ones who hate you will dominate you, and you will flee though no one is pursuing you.
18And if, even after these, you will not listen to me, then I shall add seven times more to discipline you for your sins:
19 and I shall break your strong pride, and I shall make your skies like iron and your land like bronze,
20 and your power will be used up in vain, and your land will not give its crop, and the tree of the land will not give its fruit.
21And if you will go on with me in defiance and will not be willing to listen to me, then I shall add seven times more striking on you, corresponding to your sins:
22 and I shall let loose the wild animal among you, and it will bereave you, and it will cut off your cattle, and it will diminish you, and your roads will be desolated.
23And if you will not be disciplined for me by these, and you will go on with me in defiance,
24then I shall go on with you, I also, in defiance. And I shall strike you, I too, seven times more for your sins:
25 and I shall bring a sword over you, requiting covenant retribution, and you will be gathered to your cities, and I shall let an epidemic go among you, and you will be put in your enemy’s hand.
26 When I break the staff of bread for you, then ten women will bake your bread in one oven, and they will give back your bread by weight, and you will eat and not be full.
27And if, through this, you will not listen to me, and you will go on with me in defiance,
28then I shall go on with you in a fury of defiance, and I shall discipline you, I also, seven times more for your sins:
29 and you will eat your sons’ flesh, and your daughters’ flesh you will eat,
26:29. you will eat your sons’ flesh and your daughters’ flesh. The blessings and curses are not rewards and punishments. They are a formal part of the biblical covenants (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28)—with exact parallels in legal contracts of the ancient Near East. They express the outcomes of fulfillment or nonfulfillment of the covenant’s terms. A people who is faithful to its God and keeps the Sabbath and honors its parents and does not steal will be prosperous and enduring in its land. A people who loses sight of its commitments and values will suffer. (It should not be hard to think of contemporary parallels.) The frightful curse of eating one’s own children comes true centuries later in one of the most horrifying stories in the Bible (2 Kings 6:24–30). It is not presented there as a punishment. It rather conveys the terrible state of things in Israel in the wake of the heretical reigns of Kings Ahab and Jehoram. There is a big difference between a punishment and a curse, between a threat and a warning.
This explanation is still distressing, but it does not so easily picture the deity as malicious, as people have sometimes taken these curses to mean. The God of the Hebrew Bible is not the “Old Testament God of Wrath,” but rather a deity who is torn between mercy and justice, between affection for humankind and regret over the continuous conflict with them. The curses are a sad outcome of a certain kind of human behavior. But, then, the blessings are the outcome of the other kind.
30 and I shall destroy your high places, and I shall cut off your incense altars, and I shall put your carcasses on your idols’ carcasses, and my soul will scorn you,
26:30. high places. These were large stone platforms where sacrifices were performed. Some were used for worship of YHWH, and others were used for worship of pagan gods; but both kinds are regularly forbidden in the Tanak. High places to the God of Israel are regarded as violations of the laws of centralization of worship at a single site (see comments on Lev 1:3 and 17:4).
26:30. incense altars. These were stands, usually designed, on which incense was burned. Both high places and incense altars have been excavated in Israel.
31 and I shall make your cities a ruin, and I shall devastate your holy places, and I shall not smell your pleasant smell,
26:31. not smell your pleasant smell. The “pleasant smell” has been referred to many times as the product of the burning incense that accompanies the sacrifices. Starting with Noah’s sacrifice after the flood, the smell of sacrifices is meant to be attractive to the deity, but the curse here is that God will refuse to smell it.
32 and I, I, shall devastate the land, so your enemies who live in it will be astonished,
33 and you: I shall scatter among the nations, and I shall unsheathe my sword after you, and your land will be a devastation, and your cities will be a ruin.
26:33. scatter among the nations. Among the worst curses was the curse of exile: for a people to be driven off their land and scattered around the world. This possibility was a reality in the ancient Near East, where exile was a horrifying fate. This curse would come to pass for Israel later in the Tanak, when they would come to know exile at the hands of the Assyrians; and it would come to pass for Judah still later at the hands of the Babylonians. But they would also come to know the blessing of return.
26:33. unsheathe my sword. To appreciate the horror of the metaphor of God saying He will go after Israel unsheathing a sword, one should recall that this is exactly what the Egyptians say that they will do to Israel in the Song of the Sea (Exod 15:9). That is, God, who is Israel’s protector, threatens a curse in which God would become like Israel’s enemies. It is one’s worst nightmare: that one’s loving, protecting parents become a horrible threat.
34Then the land will accept its Sabbaths: all the days of devastation, while you are in your enemies’ land. Then the land will cease and accept its Sabbaths.
35All the days of the desolation it will cease, the amount that it did not cease on your Sabbaths when you lived on it.
36And those of you who remain: I shall bring faintness in their hearts in their enemies’ lands, and the sound of a driven leaf will chase them, and they will flee like the flight from a sword, and they will fall when there is no one pursuing,
37 and they will stumble, each over his brother, as in front of a sword, when there is no one pursuing, and you will not have a footing in front of your enemies,
38 and you will perish among the nations, and your enemies’ land will eat you up,
39 and those of you who remain will rot for their crime in your enemies’ lands, and also for their fathers’ crimes with them they will rot.
40“When they will confess their crime and their fathers’ crime for their breach that they made against me, and also that they went on with me in defiance,
26:40. their crime and their fathers’ crime. On one hand, this is yet another reminder that it takes generations before the God of Israel will take such actions. On the other hand, it means that the Israelites must recognize that it is not only their own offenses that have led to these things. They must come to terms with their parents’ offenses as well. The ultimate revelation of the divine at Sinai includes the fact that the deity “reckons fathers’ crime on children and on children’s children, on third generations and on fourth generations.” Now the perspective is turned to those children, generations later; and we learn from the Torah, no less than from Freud, that humans must look back not only at the good that their parents and grandparents did but also at their errors and faults. It is an essential part of understanding how we came to be what we are.
41so I, I also, would go on with them in defiance, and I brought them into their enemies’ land; or if then their uncircumcised heart will be humbled and then they will accept their crime,
42then I shall remember my covenant of Jacob, and I shall remember also my covenant of Isaac and also my covenant of Abraham, and I shall remember the land.
43 And the land will be left from them, and it will accept its Sabbaths while it is devastated from them, and they will accept their crime, because and only because they rejected my judgments and their soul scorned my laws.
44“And even despite this, when they were in their enemies’ land I did not reject them and did not scorn them, to finish them, to break my covenant with them, because I am YHWH, their God!
45So I shall remember for them the covenant of the first ones, whom I brought out from the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations to be God to them. I am YHWH.”
46These are the laws and the judgments and the instructions that YHWH gave between Him and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai by Moses’ hand.
26:46. These are the laws and the judgments and the instructions. The present age plainly appears to value the ethical more than the ritual in religion. Some even feel the need to justify ritual by attempting to connect each ritual act to some ethical value: “We keep kosher to remind us to care about animals; we wear fringes to remind us to be kind....” This is misleading. Certainly ritual acts can have consequences in the ethical realm, but that is not their reason for being. If we are to understand Leviticus, we must have an appreciation of what ritual meant in its society intrinsically. Ritual can have aesthetic, psychological, and inspirational value. It has the potential of generating feelings of closeness to the sacred as well as feelings of identity, stability, and security. For some, it means, in a world of uncertainty, to be told what the “right” things are, what acts one can perform to feel that one is acting in accordance with nothing less than the will of the creator of the universe. In the matter of purity, for example, one can believe that, when one has had contact with any of a group of things that intimidate us but that are physiological facts of life (blood and other bodily fluids, bodily sores, death), one can do things that remove the condition that this contact has produced—and thus remove the fear. In the matter of sacrifice, as we have observed, the ritual has an impact on one’s feeling of guilt. In the observance of the holidays, the ritual contributes to feelings of festivity and communal celebration—and the sanctification of time. And in the variety of elaborate ceremonies performed at the Tent of Meeting, officiated by the specially garbed priests, accompanied by the burning of incense, the ritual contributes an aesthetic component to religion as well. All of this is known—consciously or intuitively—to those who have found meaning and even enjoyment in the practice of the rituals of their own religion. The ritual and the ethical are two components of religion—and of Leviticus—that do not justify each other, but rather unite and produce mutual support. Indeed, it is instructive that Leviticus, a book that is so fundamentally concerned with distinction, does not make any explicit distinction between its ethical and its ritual laws. Sometimes they are mixed together, but they are never identified as two distinct categories of law.
We do a disservice when we interpret ritual matters in terms of ethical justifications. We move ourselves even farther from the appreciation of ritual and the awe before the holy. Similarly, when we say that the Hebrew word qdōš means a neutral kind of “separate” rather than meaning “holy, sacred,” we further lose our feeling for holiness. And perhaps we err similarly when we say that Hebrew 
t means “to miss the mark” rather than “to sin,” to do something wrong that places us in a state that needs to be remedied through atonement and/or sacrifice and/or compensation.