Leviticus 26:14-16 English Standard Version

Punishment for Disobedience

14 “But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, 15 if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, 16 then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.

Let us not be confused about covenant conditions. Israel had just been set free from slavery in Egypt. God in remembrance of His promise to Abraham showed Himself to be a God that keeps His word. 

At this time God has made a covenant with Israel based on His laws, precepts and degrees. This is a covenant with His people where He had given His word to Abraham. This warning applies to those He has saved. The rest of the world remains under the curse inflicted by the disobedience of Adam.

Israel has the opportunity to walk with God, to obey God and avoid the curse of if.

“If you will not listen and will not do ALL these commandments….”

God in all His wisdom has chosen to save a people that proved over and over again in the chronicles of history that they could not keep all His commandments, precepts and decrees.

He did this to show His forbearance.

Nehemiah 1:9 English Standard Version (ESV) but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.

History shows that they returned to God and He kept taking them back, over and over again.

He did so to make His name known to all the world, every lost soul.