And they shall confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, in that they trespassed against Me, yea, were hostile to Me. When I, in turn, have been hostile to them and have removed them into the land of their enemies, then at last shall their obdurate heart humble itself, and they shall atone for their iniquity. Then will I remember My covenant with Jacob; I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham; and I will remember the land. For the land shall be forsaken of them, making up for its sabbath years by being desolate of them, while they atone for their iniquity; for the abundant reason that they rejected My rules and spurned My laws. Yet, even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or spurn them so as to destroy them, annulling My covenant with them: for I the Lord am their God. I will remember in their favor the covenant with the ancients, whom I freed from the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God: I, the Lord. (Lev 26:40-45, 1985 JPS Tanakh)
Commenting on the conditional nature of the covenant, evidenced from the above pericope, Jacob Milgrom wrote:
That God’s covenant with Abraham was one of pure grace is totally refuted by the P source itself: hithallēk lěpānay wehyēh tāmîm wě’ettěnâ běrîtî bȇnî ûbȇnekā ‘Walk before me, and be blameless and I will make a covenant between me and you’ (Gen 17:1b-2a). Therefore, the covenant with Abraham is conditioned on Abraham’s blameless behavior, not on God’s grace (details in Waltke 1988; Joosten 1994:154-57; 1996:110-12). Moreover, his descendants are equally bound by this condition: “I have chosen him (Abraham) that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of YHWH by doing righteousness and justice” (Gen 18:19a [JE]). Thus the Abrahamic covenant is not one of grace; it is not even unconditional (which requires a revision of Weinfeld’s [1970] covenant of grant hypothesis, followed by many, most recently Otto 1995b:390). This verse can hardly be called “an expectation” (Weinfeld 1993:249, n. 118) rather than a condition. Similarly, Gen 17:1b hithallēk lěpānay wehyēh tāmîm is not equivalent to Akkadian ittalak maḫriya and (ittalak) šalmiš (Weinfeld: 1993:230), since the latter verbs are perfects, while the former are imperatives so that the covenant (v. 2a) is clearly conditioned on Abraham’s moral rectitude.
Weinfeld’s (1993) contention that royal grants were unconditional has been challenged. As shown by Knoppers (1996) available evidence in the ancient Near East from Mari, Ugarit, Ḫatti (but cf. Weinfeld 1990c), Babylonia, Assyria, and Elephantine shows that such grants, either explicitly or implicitly, are conditional. The recipient and his progeny are expected to provide obligatory service in the form of military service, land cultivation, and/or payment of dues (cf. Gen 18:19).
Crüsemann (1996:305-6) has argued that YHWH’s explicit statement that he never repudiates the covenant (v. 44a) can refer to only the Abrahamic covenant, which “is independent of failure on Israel’s part.” However, as explicated in vv. 40-41, the divine willingness to fulfill the covenant is dependent on Israel’s penitence. Moreover, even the Abrahamic covenant is contingent on the behavior of his progeny “in order that YHWH may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him” (Gen 18:19b). YHWH need not change; his promise remains unbroken. But for it to be realized, Israel must change. Otherwise, Israel remains in exile (the ultimate national punishment) forever. Indeed, as portioned out above, the laws and commandments (vv. 3, 15) that Israel is obligated to obey most easily point to Sinai as their source . . . This view accords with other Pentateuchal sources that aver that Israel will occupy the land or remain on it if it is obedient to the covenant (Exod 23:20-25 [JE]; Lev 18:26-28; 26:14-15, 32-33 [H]; Deut 4:1; 8:1; 11:8 [D]). Thus despite the Abrahamic promise, the eventuality can occur that a sinful Israel will be removed from its land, never to return.
The prophets maintain that God purges the wicked, but not the entire people. Yet his fidelity to Israel is always contingent on the existence of a righteous remnant (e.g., the eight-century Isa 1:18-20; 10:20-22; 17:4-6). Thus God’s covenant with Israel is conditional. To be sure, this view changes in the exile. As indicated in the exilic additions to chap. 22 (vv. 33b-35, 43), the return to the land will take place only after the barren land makes up the number of its violated sabbatical years. Isaiah of the exile transfers the determining factor from the land to the people: Israel must pine sufficiently in the exile (Isa 40:2). However, H and the other preexilic sources maintain that God’s fidelity to his covenant is conditional on the observance of the covenant. (Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB 3B; New York: Doubleday, 2001], 2340-41)
