John Calvin Commentary Leviticus 26:21

"And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins." — Leviticus 26:21 (ASV)

And if you walk. Translators give various renderings of the word קרי,²²⁶ keri. The Chaldee takes it to mean with hardness, as if it were their purpose to contend against God. Jerome renders it ex adverso mihi (in opposition to me); but, since the word signifies an accidental occurrence, or contingency, this sense has seemed to me the most appropriate.

To “walk at adventures” (fortuito) with God, therefore, is equivalent to passing by His judgments with their eyes shut. They even stupefy themselves by ascribing their adversities to fortune, and thus they are not humbled beneath His mighty hand. For from this arises unconquerable obstinacy, when the sinner imagines that whatever he suffers happens by chance.

Therefore, Jeremiah denounces the Jews in a severe reproof because they supposed that evil and good did not proceed from the ordinance and decree of God (Lamentations 3:38). For this engenders brutal madness, so that wretched men rush with all their might to their own destruction.

It is therefore quite consistent that if people do not heed God’s judgments, but rush onward like furious beasts, His encounter with them will be, so to speak, fortuitous, when He smites them indiscriminately, from right to left, high and low, as we say in French aller a tors et travers. This, therefore, the sinner eventually obtains by his stupid obstinacy: overwhelmed by his manifold punishments, he sees no end to his troubles.

Meanwhile, there is no doubt that Moses rebukes the iron obstinacy of the people, as David declares, that with the gentle God will be gentle, but that He will be stubborn, as it were, with the perverse (Psalms 18:25–26). He finally points out the source of obstinacy: when the sinner is intoxicated by his stupidity into contempt for God, while he turns away from himself, as much as possible, the sense of His wrath.

Let us, then, learn to withdraw our thoughts from vague speculations to the consideration of God’s hand in all the punishments which He inflicts, because from this will arise acknowledgment of our guilt, which may lead to repentance. Otherwise, that will occur which Isaiah seems to have taken from this passage: God’s anger will never be turned away; but that, when we think that we are acquitted, His hand will be stretched out still (Isaiah 9:12).

²²⁶ “Fortuito.” — Lat. A noun from קרה, to meet, to run against, to occur. It is not from S M. that C. has learnt what he here correctly states, viz., that the Chaldee Paraphrast, or Onkelos in his Targum on the Pentateuch gives קשיו, hardness, as his interpretation of the word. — W