Among the covenant curses, introduced in Leviticus 26 and then restated or elaborated upon in Deuteronomy 28, is the threat of God making the sky and ground hard or hostile for persistent sinners among the Israelites. In Leviticus 26:19, the prophetic curse involves the sky becoming like iron and the ground like bronze. Deuteronomy 28:23, however, says that the sky will be bronze and the ground iron. The reversal does not teach a contradiction, as would be the case if, say, Leviticus said God will kill Israelite sinners (as it does in 26:25, 30) but Deuteronomy said God would discipline them without killing any of them. Here is each verse with the respective preceding verse for the sake of illuminating the immediate context of judgment:
Leviticus 26:18-19—"'"If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. I will break your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze."'"
Deuteronomy 28:22-23—"The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron."
The association of iron with the sky and bronze with the ground in Leviticus 26:19 is indeed quite clearly inverted in Deuteronomy 28:23, though Moses otherwise perfectly captures the harshness and calamity of the parallel verse in Leviticus 26. In Leviticus, God himself is presented as speaking; in Deuteronomy, Moses speaks on behalf of God. Nothing would even superficially appear contradictory between the two passages, save for how the order of the two substances in question is reversed. As can be easily recognized from the prior verse in each case and from the broader context, the sky and ground will provide no relief to the unrepentantly wicked Israelites. And since the wording is plainly figurative, the literal meaning is that whether like bronze or iron, the heavens and earth will provide no relief in the rigid affliction of deviant Israel.
Whether they look above or below, the Israelites are promised difficulty as they persist in disobeying God's laws. God would never turn from them so completely as to allow them to face utter extinction or to forsake his covenant with them and their ancestors (Leviticus 26:44-45), yet he would progressively remove his covenant blessings. Certainly, the Old Testament goes out of its way to aggressively acknowledge, in agreement with logic, that whatever morality exists is the same for everyone whether they are Jews or Gentiles and regardless of where or when they live (such as in Leviticus 18:1-30, 20:1-27, Deuteronomy 9:4-6, 12:29-31, 18:9-13, 20:16-18, Ezekiel 5:5-7, and Ecclesiastes 12:13-14) save for logically necessary exceptions [1]. The divine covenant made with ancient Israel, in contrast, entails special blessings and curses if the Israelites do not adhere to universal morality, for God formally reveals the details of ethics to them and offers prosperity if they, in a unique covenant relationship, will do what is already obligatory.
And with disobedience comes devastation. Both Leviticus 26:19 and Deuteronomy 28:23 communicate the same fundamental idea: wherever the unrepentant Israelites turn, they will face hardship as God's protective blessings are withheld. Each statement is figurative with a literal parallel to the situation of rebellious Israel, and that Moses inverts which of the same two metals is referenced with respect to the sky and ground does not contradict this concept at the heart of the covenant curses. Leviticus and Deuteronomy do not contradict each other or pure logic itself (which would render them necessarily false) on this point. The inverted matching of bronze and iron with the sky and ground does not matter because the idea at hand is not about the sky literally being just bronze or just iron. The exact pairing is not the core of the message from God to Israel.
[1]. To give a Biblical example of this, while sacrificing an animal to Yahweh away from the entrance to the tent of meeting (in a field, at their home, etc.) is severely condemned as bloodshed in Leviticus 17:1-9, someone living in another nation would not be able to uphold this. By logical necessity, then, either they are not obligated to sacrifice in this location because they are incapable of keeping the obligation, making this requirement not obligatory for them, or it is sinful for them to sacrifice to Yahweh altogether because they lack access to the tent of meeting. There is no other logically or Biblically valid alternative, for cultural relativism is both logically impossible and contrary to Biblical doctrines.
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