The Land Is Not Indifferent to What Happens Within It

The formula introduces a chapter that later Jewish practice read aloud on the afternoon of the Day of Atonement, placing it straight after chapter 16 in the synagogue year as it stands after it in the book.

I am the LORD your God is the sentence that opens the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2). Here it stands alone as the first thing said, before any rule, and it returns word for word as the chapter’s last line in verse 30.

Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, is the past; Canaan, whither I bring you, is a Hebrew participle, I am bringing you, the present journey. Some Egyptian royal houses married brother to sister, and the Ptolemies later made it a habit. Ordinances here are the nations’ own chuqqoth, their statutes.

Judgments, mishpatim, are case rulings; ordinances, chuqqim, are fixed decrees. Israel is given both, in exchange for the chuqqoth of verse 3. To walk therein makes law a road to travel, not a fence to stand behind.

He shall live in them is quoted by Ezekiel three times (20:11, 13, 21) and by Nehemiah 9:29, and Paul cites it in Romans 10:5 and Galatians 3:12. I am the LORD, shortened from verse 4, becomes the chapter’s signature line.

Near of kin is she’er besaro, literally flesh of his flesh. She’er is the ordinary word for meat, so the phrase means one’s own body. To uncover nakedness is the chapter’s euphemism for sexual relations, used over twenty times from here to verse 19.

The father’s nakedness and the mother’s are named in one breath, and the Hebrew treats an act with the mother as a violation of the father too. The phrase recalls Ham, who saw the nakedness of his father (Genesis 9:22), an incident the Book of Genesis records with deep shame.

A father’s wife is a stepmother or another of his wives. Reuben lay with Bilhah, his father’s concubine (Genesis 35:22), and lost his birthright for it (49:4). Paul cites this very offence in Corinth, that one should have his father’s wife (1 Corinthians 5:1).

Born at home, or born abroad may mean born within the household or outside it, perhaps from another marriage. Abraham and Sarah were half-siblings (Genesis 20:12), and when Amnon forced Tamar she pleaded that David would give her to him (2 Samuel 13:13). This verse forbids both.

Theirs is thine own nakedness: a granddaughter is the man’s own flesh. The chapter never names a man’s own daughter explicitly, a gap long noticed. Verse 17 covers her by implication, and the logic of this verse applies even more directly.

This overlaps verse 9 but closes a gap: a half-sister born to another of the father’s wives. In a household with several wives, such a sister might grow up in another tent and seem less than a sister. She is thy sister, the verse insists.

A father’s sister is forbidden. Amram, the father of Moses and Aaron, married Jochebed his father’s sister (Exodus 6:20). The law now given through Moses would have forbidden his own parents’ marriage, and the Book of Exodus records it without comment.

Near kinswoman is she’er again, flesh. The mother’s sister is forbidden with the same reason given in verse 12 for the father’s sister, so both sides of the family are covered in two parallel verses.

The uncle’s wife is forbidden, and the offence is framed as uncovering the nakedness of the uncle himself. Aunt is dodah, from dod, uncle, the same word the Song of Solomon uses for my beloved.

The daughter-in-law is kallah, the bride of the household. Judah went in to Tamar, his son’s widow, not knowing who she was (Genesis 38:15–18). Judah’s confession there, she hath been more righteous than I, came before this law was given.

A brother’s wife is forbidden, with the one exception of Deuteronomy 25:5, where a brother dies childless. John the Baptist told Herod Antipas, It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife (Mark 6:18). Henry VIII argued this verse to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

A woman and her daughter, or her granddaughters, may not both be taken. Wickedness is zimmah, a word for a deliberate plan, often a lewd one. It is the first moral term the chapter attaches to any of its rulings.

To vex her is litsror, to make her a rival; the noun tsarah, rival wife, is what Peninnah was to Hannah (1 Samuel 1:6). Jacob married two sisters, Leah and Rachel, and the Book of Genesis spends chapters on the rivalry. In her life time leaves marriage after her death open.

Put apart for her uncleanness is niddah, the term of 15:19. Ezekiel 18:6 lists keeping this rule among the marks of a righteous man, and Ezekiel 22:10 lists breaking it among Jerusalem’s sins.

Lie carnally is literally give thy lying for seed. The Hebrew here avoids the Decalogue’s verb for adultery, na’af (Exodus 20:14), and describes the act instead. To defile thyself names the result for the man himself, not only the wrong to the neighbour.

The Hebrew says only to make pass over to Molech; through the fire is printed in italics in the King James as a supplied phrase, drawn from 2 Kings 23:10. Many scholars think Molech is melek, king, given the vowels of boshet, shame. Seed means children.

Abomination is to‘evah, making its first appearance in Leviticus. In Genesis the word described what Egyptians found abhorrent: eating with Hebrews (43:32) and shepherds (46:34). As with womankind is literally the lyings of a woman, the plural phrase used again in 20:13.

Confusion is tevel, from balal, to mix, the verb of Babel where the LORD did confound the language (Genesis 11:9). This is the only verse in the list that addresses a woman directly as the actor: neither shall any woman stand before a beast.

Which I cast out is a Hebrew participle, whom I am driving out, since the conquest is still ahead. God told Abraham that the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full (Genesis 15:16); this verse describes the fullness he spoke of.

Vomiteth, qi’, is the verb used when the fish vomited out Jonah (Jonah 2:10). The land is pictured as a body that cannot keep down what fills it. I do visit is paqad, to attend to or call to account.

Your own nation is ’ezrach, the native born, a word from a root meaning to spring up, like a plant rooted in the soil. The stranger, ger, stands beside him under the same statutes; neither is exempt.

The King James prints this verse in brackets as a parenthesis, an aside explaining why. The men of the land before you were the Canaanites, and the tense is past: the verdict on their practices has already been reached.

Spue is the 1611 spelling of spew. As it spued out the nations is in the past tense, though the Canaanites were still in the land; the future is spoken of as done. 2 Kings 17:7–23 explains the fall of the northern kingdom in terms close to this verse.

The souls that commit them is plural: nephashoth. Alongside the national threat of verse 28, the individual penalty is cutting off, so the chapter holds both a people and each person accountable at once.

Mine ordinance is mishmarti, my charge, what is given to be guarded, the word used of the priests’ duty at the tabernacle (8:35). Abominable customs is literally statutes of abominations: the nations’ ways are called statutes, the word of verse 3. The chapter ends as it began, I am the LORD your God.