Verse Lens · Expanded explanation
Leviticus 26:18 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 18. 18And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse introduces a sevenfold escalation after continued refusal.
Read It With
- Leviticus 26:14-26
Place Leviticus 26:18 inside 26:14-26. This verse introduces a sevenfold escalation after continued refusal. Its surrounding procedure or case makes the larger point: The warning moves from disease and failed sowing through defeat, wild animals, sword, pestilence, and bread scarcity in repeated sevenfold escalations.
Why This Verse Appears Here
The unit needs this detail before it can reach its next action or distinction: this verse introduces a sevenfold escalation after continued refusal.
Follow the Context
- The unit opens the particular procedure, case, scene, or instruction named “Refusal brings escalating terror, crop loss, defeat, and hunger.”
- The warning moves from disease and failed sowing through defeat, wild animals, sword, pestilence, and bread scarcity in repeated sevenfold escalations.
- The unit closes with this interpretive boundary: The rhetoric does not identify the cause of any modern illness, disability, invasion, famine, or personal loss.
What This Verse Is Not Saying
Leviticus 26:18 does not turn its distinct contribution—introduces a sevenfold escalation after continued refusal—into a free-standing rule; the rhetoric does not identify the cause of any modern illness, disability, invasion, famine, or personal loss.
What Remains True
The sevenfold escalation is covenant rhetoric within Israel's land story, not a mathematical code for predicting disasters.
How It Can Shape Life
- Do not map wars, pandemics, or market losses onto a prophetic countdown; investigate causes and protect people.
Teach It Back
Explain Leviticus 26:18's contribution to Leviticus 26:14-26. Name the category involved, what the surrounding verses add, any material uncertainty, and what the verse does not authorize.
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Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read Leviticus 26:14-26 — Refusal brings escalating terror, crop loss, defeat, and hungerSources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
Where care is needed
Interpreters disagree over treaty parallels, compositional setting, the difficult term qeri, historical referents, the relation of individual and corporate responsibility, and how later Jewish and Christian communities receive covenant sanctions. Confidence is highest in the chapter's escalating rhetoric and final remembered-covenant turn.
These are the sources used directly for this lens. Language, grammar, disagreements, and the complete source shelf remain attached to the full thought-unit research record.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact reader-facing KJV wording, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage for this thought unit.
Exact location: Leviticus 26:14-26, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Leviticus
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Hebrew wording, morphology, ritual and legal vocabulary, names, clause relationships, KJV language controls, and translation limits.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Lev.xml, Masoretic words and morphology for 26:14-26
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Leviticus with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
eBible.org distribution of the NET Bible, PDF generated 2025-12-31
Supports: Unit-bounded translator notes on Hebrew, syntax, ritual vocabulary, measures, textual questions, and older-English wording; silence is not treated as evidence.
Exact location: NET Bible Leviticus PDF, complete PDF pp. 1-99, translation and translator notes for 26:14-26
Open source ↗