Leviticus 26:46

Verse Leviticus 26:46. These are the statutes, and judgments, c.] Leviticus 26:15. This verse appears to be the proper concluding verse of the whole book and I rather think that the Leviticus 27 originally followed the Leviticus 25. As the law was anciently written upon skins of parchment, sheep or goat skins, pasted or stitched together, and all rolled up in one roll, the matter being written in columns, one of those columns might have been very easily displaced, and thus whole chapters might have been readily interchanged. - It is likely that this might have been the case in the present instance. Others endeavour to solve this difficulty, by supposing that the Leviticus 27 was added after the book had been finished; and therefore there is apparently a double conclusion, one at the end of the Leviticus 26 and the other at the end of the Leviticus 27. However the above may have been, all the ancient versions agree in concluding both the chapters in nearly the same way; yet the 26th chapter must be allowed to be by far the most natural conclusion of the book.

THE most important points in this chapter have already been particularly noticed in the notes; and to those on the Leviticus 26:15, Leviticus 26:15, Leviticus 26:34, Leviticus 26:34, and Leviticus 26:44, Leviticus 26:44 verses, the reader is especially referred. How unwilling is God to cast off his people! and yet how sure is their rejection if they refuse to obey and live to him! No nation has ever been so signally elected as the Jews; and yet no nation has ever been so signally and so awfully reprobated. O Britain, be not high-minded, but fear! Behold here the goodness and severity of God!