Leviticus 26:31

31. I will make your cities waste Palestine is filled with ruined cities. Says Porter, in his Giant Cities of Bashan: “Every opening to the right and left revealed ruins; now a tomb in a quiet nook; now a temple in a lonely forest glade; now a shapeless and nameless heap of stones and fallen columns; and now, through a long green vista, the shattered walls and towers of an ancient city. The country is filled with ruins. In every direction to which the eye turns, in every spot on which it rests, ruins are visible so truly, so wonderfully, have the prophecies been fulfilled. Every view we got in Bashan was an ocular demonstration of the literal fulfilment of the curse pronounced on the land by Moses more than three thousand years ago. One day I climbed a peak which commands the sea of Galilee and the Jordan valley up to the waters of Merom. I was able to distinguish, by the aid of a glass, in a region thirty miles long by ten wide, every spot celebrated in sacred history. My eye swept the sea from north to south, from east to west; not a single sail, not a solitary boat, was there. My eye swept the great Jordan valley, the little plains, the glens, the mountain sides from base to summit not a city, not a village, not a house, not a sign of settled habitation was there, except a few huts at Magdala and the shattered houses of Tiberias. Desolation keeps unbroken sabbath in Galilee now. Nature has lavished on the country some of her choicest gifts a rich soil, a genial climate but the curse of Heaven has come upon it because of the sin of man.” Keith, after enumerating a large number of celebrated cities in the Holy Land lying in utter desolation, exclaims: “How marvellously are the predictions of their desolation verified, when, in general, nothing but ruined ruins form the most distinguished remnants of the cities of Israel; and when the multitude of its towns are almost all left, with many a vestige to testify of their number, but without a mark to tell their name.”

Your sanctuaries By the use of the plural number there may be an implied reference to idolatrous temples, but it is more probable that the future sanctuary cities, Bethel, Shiloh, and Jerusalem, are proleptically referred to, including the numerous synagogues scattered over the land.

I will not smell the savour In other words, “I will not smell with pleasure, 1 will not enjoy, the savour of your sweet odours.” Only the penitent, obedient, and devout heart can please God or appropriate spiritual good. The mere mechanical performance of sacrifice and burning of incense, dissevered from the appropriate state of the moral and religious sensibilities, is a solemn mockery and abomination. See Introductory notes 7 and 8. Isaiah 1:11-15.