Leviticus 26:5, commentary and pictures

The verse is part of God's covenant blessings to Israel, spoken from the pillar of cloud, conditional on obedience to His commandments, including keeping His Sabbaths and reverencing His sanctuary. Obedience would make Israel the most powerful people on the earth, while refusal would require Him in justice to treat them as apostates. By obedience on earth, people bear witness to God's goodness, and He rewards that obedience with abundance and safety.

Its harvest language means continuous, unbroken agricultural plenty, where threshing lasts until the grape harvest and grape gathering lasts until sowing and planting time, so one harvest continues until the next season and planting follows at once. The obedient will eat bread to the full and dwell safely in their land, with abundance and security. The promise belongs with rain in due season, the land yielding its increase and trees yielding fruit, enemies perishing, and God not abhorring Israel but walking with them to be their God while they are His people.

The blessings stand opposite the threatened curse for disobedience and disregard of God's requirements: crop failure and hardship, broken pride of power, heaven as iron and earth as brass, strength spent in vain without yield, suffering under foreign rule, withdrawal of prosperity, and in justice being treated as apostates. The promises are conditional on faithfulness, so later suffering under foreign rule shows the curse that followed disobedience, not a claim to the blessings promised to the obedient. The chapter is an admonition for people living at the end of the world, where greater light brings greater responsibility, obedience bears witness to God's goodness, and the prophecy's time is nearly accomplished, pointing to the soon coming of the One whose right it is to reign to receive the kingdom and sit on His Father's throne.