(26)And when I have broken the staff of your bread.--Better, when I break you the staff of bread, that is, when God cuts off their supply of bread, which is the staff of life. "To break the staff of bread" denotes to take away or to destroy the staff or the support which bread is to man. This metaphor also occurs in other parts of Scripture (Isaiah 3:1; Ezekiel 4:16; Ezekiel 5:16; Ezekiel 14:13; Psalm 105:16). This, in addition to the pestilence in the cities, which will drive them to deliver themselves up to the enemy, or rather the cause of this pestilence will be the famine which will rage in the town whither they fled for protection.

Ten women shall bake your bread in one oven.--Better, then ten women, &c., that is, so great will be the famine when God cuts off the supply, that one ordinary oven will suffice to bake the bread of ten families, who are represented by their ten women, whilst in ordinary times one oven was only sufficient for one family.

And they shall deliver you your bread again by weight.--When it is brought from the bake-house each one will not be allowed to eat as much as he requires, but will have his stinted allowance most carefully served out to him by weight. Parallel to this picture of misery is the appalling scene described by Ezekiel, "I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care, and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment; that they may want bread and water, and be astonished one with another, and consume away for their iniquity" (Ezekiel 4:16-17).

26:14-39 After God has set the blessing before them which would make them a happy people if they would be obedient, he here sets the curse before them, the evils which would make them miserable, if they were disobedient. Two things would bring ruin. 1. A contempt of God's commandments. They that reject the precept, will come at last to renounce the covenant. 2. A contempt of his corrections. If they will not learn obedience by the things they suffer, God himself would be against them; and this is the root and cause of all their misery. And also, The whole creation would be at war with them. All God's sore judgments would be sent against them. The threatenings here are very particular, they were prophecies, and He that foresaw all their rebellions, knew they would prove so. TEMPORAL judgments are threatened. Those who will not be parted from their sins by the commands of God, shall be parted from them by judgments. Those wedded to their lusts, will have enough of them. SPIRITUAL judgments are threatened, which should seize the mind. They should find no acceptance with God. A guilty conscience would be their continual terror. It is righteous with God to leave those to despair of pardon, who presume to sin; and it is owing to free grace, if we are not left to pine away in the iniquity we were born in, and have lived in.And when I have broken the staff of your bread,.... Brought a famine, at least a scarcity of provisions upon them, deprived them of bread, the staff of life, by which it is supported; or however made it very scarce among them, so that they had hardly a sufficiency to sustain nature, and perhaps the blessing of nourishment withheld from that; see Isaiah 3:1,

ten women shall bake your bread in one oven; for want of wood, according to Jarchi; or rather through scarcity of bread corn, they should have so little to bake every week, that one oven would be sufficient for ten families, which in a time of plenty each made use of one for themselves; and so Aben Ezra says, it was a custom in Israel for every family to bake in an oven by themselves, which they ate the whole week. Ten is a certain number for an uncertain, and denotes many, as in Zechariah 8:23. Making and baking bread was the work of women in the eastern countries, as we find it was particularly among the Persians (n), and continues to this day among the Moors and Arabs (o):

and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight; there being not enough for everyone to eat what they pleased, but were obliged to a rationed allowance, therefore everyone in the family should have their share delivered to him by weight; see Ezekiel 4:16,

and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied; not having enough to eat to satisfaction; or what they did eat, God would withhold a blessing from it for their nourishment, the reverse of Leviticus 26:5.

(n) Herodot. Polymnia, sive. l. 4. c. 187. (o) Shaw's Travels, p. 241. Ed. 2.