The Prohibitions Have Stated Consequences

Much of this chapter restates chapter 18, but in a different grammar. There the laws were mostly commands, thou shalt not; here they are mostly cases with sentences attached, if a man, then this penalty. The two chapters read best side by side.

Again points back to 18:21, where Molech was first forbidden. The people of the land, ‘am ha’arets, means the whole citizen body acting together. By the time of John 7:49 the same phrase had become a term of contempt for the unlearned crowd.

Why would giving a child to Molech defile the sanctuary? Ezekiel 23:39 answers: when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary. The worshipper carried the one act straight into the other.

Hide their eyes is doubled in Hebrew, ha‘lem ya‘limu, if hiding they hide. The verb ‘alam was used in 5:2–4 of sin that is hidden from a person, done without knowing. Here the hiding is deliberate: the people know, and look away.

His family is mishpachto, his clan, the wider kin group. Whoredom with Molech pictures the god as a lover and the worshipper as unfaithful; all who follow the man into it are counted in the same breach of covenant.

Turning to mediums brings the LORD’s own cutting off, without a human penalty named. 1 Chronicles 10:13 says that Saul died for his transgression, including asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, the act of 1 Samuel 28.

Sanctify yourselves is hitqaddishtem, the reflexive form first used in 11:44. Israel acts upon itself, setting itself apart. The command sits between the prohibitions on Molech and mediums and the list of penalties that follows.

I am the LORD which sanctify you is meqaddishkhem, a title that recurs in 21:8, 22:9, 22:16 and 22:32, and that Exodus 31:13 attaches to the sabbath. Israel sanctifies itself in verse 7, and in the next breath God says he is the one who sanctifies.

Curseth is qillel, from qalal, to be light, so to curse is to treat as trivial. It is the exact opposite of kabbed, honour, from kaved, to be heavy. His blood shall be upon him means his death is his own doing, the formula of Joshua 2:19 and 2 Samuel 1:16.

The Hebrew repeats the adulterer clause, with another man’s wife, then with his neighbour’s wife, perhaps for emphasis, perhaps a scribal doubling. Both die. When scribes brought a woman to Jesus saying Moses commanded stoning (John 8:5), this verse named no method; Deuteronomy 22:24 did, for the betrothed.

Lying with a father’s wife was also a political act. Absalom went in to his father’s concubines on the palace roof in the sight of all Israel (2 Samuel 16:22) to show he had taken David’s place. The law names it simply as uncovering the father’s nakedness.

Confusion is tevel, the word used in 18:23 for sex with an animal, a mixing of what must stay apart. Here it is applied to a man and his daughter-in-law, treating the union as a confounding of the household’s lines.

Where 18:22 addressed the reader directly, thou shalt not lie, this verse states the case in the third person, if a man, and adds that both participants bear the sentence. The prohibition becomes case law in the same way as the other unions in this list.

Burning is the penalty elsewhere only for a priest’s daughter who turns to prostitution (21:9), and Judah ordered it for Tamar before he knew the truth (Genesis 38:24). Wickedness is zimmah, the word 18:17 attached to the same relation.

The animal is killed too, though it is guilty of nothing. The goring ox of Exodus 21:28 is also put to death. The Mishnah (Sanhedrin 7:4) explains that the beast is killed so that it would not be pointed to as the animal through which the offence took place.

Approach is qarav, the verb normally used for drawing near to the altar with an offering. Thou shalt kill shifts into the second person, addressing the community that carries out the sentence directly.

Wicked thing is chesed, a word that almost everywhere else means steadfast love. Here it is a rare homonym meaning disgrace, as in Proverbs 14:34, sin is a reproach to any people. See her nakedness, and she see his, is the only mutual phrasing in the list.

Discovered in 1611 English means uncovered. Her fountain is maqor, the word for the source of the mother’s blood in 12:7. The law of 15:24 treated the same act as seven days of uncleanness; here it is a matter of being cut off, since here it is done knowingly.

A command, thou shalt not uncover, slips into the middle of the case law, repeating 18:12–13 in its original form. They shall bear their iniquity gives no human penalty; the consequence is left in God’s hands.

Childless is ‘ariri, stripped or bare, the word Abraham used when he complained, seeing I go childless (Genesis 15:2). Jeremiah 22:30 uses it of King Coniah: write ye this man childless. A household that ends with no heir is the sentence.

An unclean thing is niddah, the word for menstrual impurity, now used of a forbidden union. The exception is the levirate duty of Deuteronomy 25:5, which is why the Sadducees could pose their riddle of one wife and seven brothers (Mark 12:19–23).

The warning of 18:28 returns almost word for word. Whither I bring you to dwell therein pictures the land as a house Israel is being brought to live in, and a house can refuse to keep its tenants.

Abhorred is quts, to feel loathing or nausea. Numbers 21:5 uses it when Israel says our soul loatheth this light bread. The image of the land vomiting in verse 22 continues: God himself is sickened by what the nation did.

A land that floweth with milk and honey appears only here in Leviticus, the phrase first promised at the burning bush (Exodus 3:8). Separated is hivdil, the verb of dividing, and it runs through the next three verses like a thread.

Put difference is hivdaltem, the same verb as separated in verse 24. Because God has separated Israel from the peoples, Israel separates clean from unclean. The food laws of chapter 11 are recalled as the everyday form of the people’s own distinctness.

Severed is hivdil a third time. That ye should be mine, lihyoth li, echoes Exodus 19:5, a peculiar treasure unto me above all people. Holiness here is framed as belonging, the possessive at the end of the sentence.

The Hebrew says a man or woman in whom is an ’ov, as if the spirit lives in the practitioner. Isaiah 8:19 mocks wizards that peep, and that mutter, perhaps the thin whispering voice mediums used. The chapter ends with its heaviest penalty, stoning, and with its blood formula.