The Rebuke - Part II

The Abarbanel presents a different view of these curses. He says that this neat division between the first and the second temple is a chimera. The Abarbanel believes that the return to Israel after the Babylonian exile was not a redemption from G-d. It was an opportunity for the Jewish people to return to the land of their forefathers after 70 years of exile in correspondence to the number of years that the Shmitta cycle was ignored by the Jewish people during the first temple (as does Nachmanides). The temple was to be rebuilt, and then all the Jews who had gathered there would repent for all of their other sins that they and their forbears had transgressed. The temple being rebuilt wasn’t an immediate promise for a new golden age. It was to serve as an opportunity to usher in the messianic age - to unify and to come close to G-d.

Even Nachmanides agrees that while the Jews did admit that they had done wrong. He explains:

If you will look at the redemption (mentioned in the curses in Leviticus) it only promises that G-d will remember the covenant of our forefathers, and our connection to the land of Israel. There is no mention of G-d’s forgiveness,or of His loving his people as in days gone by (in the first temple). G-d also doesn’t promise that he will gather the remnants of the Jews from the diaspora. This was the case in Babylon. Only the tribes of Yehuda and Binyamin, and those connected to those tribes - a small percentage of the tribes which all were exiled to Babylon returned to Israel. They returned in poverty under the rule of the kings of Persia. They also did not repent completely. They only admitted their sins, as is written in the book of Daniel (Ch.9 5-8)....

The Abarbanel furthers this argument, saying in Devarim that Jews only had control over the land of Israel during the Maccabean era from 140 BCE to 63 BCE. Thereafter, Judea became a province of Rome, and was under Roman rule. Thus the Jews held sovereignty over the land of Judea and its environs for 77 years. This is scarcely a sign of redemption.

The poor response rate of the Jews who did not heed the call of Ezra and Nehemiah to return to Israel, coupled with the lack of an authentic attempt of the Jews to return to G-d, effectively doused any flame or opportunity for the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people.

Thus, the Abarbanel argues that the second set of curses also apply to the first and second temple periods. This allows the Abarbanel to say that the covenant which was described in Leviticus to apply equally to both first and second sets of curses. G-d will never forget us, and He will never forget his covenant with us, despite protestations of Christian theologians to the contrary.