Yahweh said to Moses,
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Yahweh said to Moses,
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And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
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And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying:
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Lev 18:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
Lev 18:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
Ver. 1. And the Lord spake.] {See Trapp on "Lev 7:22"}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain After divers ceremonial institutions, God here returns to the…
After divers ceremonial institutions, God here returns to the enforcement of moral precepts. The former are still of use to us as types, the latter still binding as laws. We have here, 1. The sacred authority by which these laws are enacted: I am the Lord your God (Lev 18:1, Lev 18:4, Lev 18:30), and I am the Lord, Lev 18:5, Lev 18:6, Lev 18:21. "The Lord, who has a right to rule all; your God, who has a peculiar right to rule you." Jehovah is the fountain of being, and therefore the fountain of power, whose we are, whom we are bound to serve, and who is able to punish all disobedience. "Your God to whom you have consented, in whom you are happy, to whom you lie under the highest obligations imaginable, and to whom you are accountable." 2. A strict caution to take heed of retaining the relics of the idolatries of Egypt, where they had dwelt, and of receiving the infection of the idolatries of Canaan, whither they were now going, Lev 18:3. Now that God was by Moses teaching them his ordinances there was aliquid dediscendum - something to be unlearned, which they had sucked in with their milk in Egypt, a country noted for idolatry: You shall not do after the doings of the land of Egypt. It would be the greatest absurdity in itself to retain such an affection for their house of bondage as to be governed in their devotions by the usages of it, and the greatest ingratitude to God, who had so wonderfully and graciously delivered them. Nay, as if governed by a spirit of contradiction, they would be in danger, even after they had received these ordinances of God, of admitting the wicked usages of the Canaanites and of inheriting their vices with their land. Of this danger they are here warned, You shall not walk in their ordinances. Such a tyrant is custom that their practices are called ordinances, and they became rivals even with God's ordinances, and God's professing people were in danger of receiving law from them. 3. A solemn charge to them to keep God's judgments, statutes, and ordinances, Lev 18:4, Lev 18:5. To this charge, and many similar ones, David seems to refer in the many prayers and professions he makes relating to God's laws in the 119th Psalm. Observe here, (1.) The great rule of our obedience - God's statutes and judgments. These we must keep to walk therein. We must keep them in our books, and keep them in our hands, that we may practise them in our hearts and lives. Remember God's commandments to do them, Psa 103:18. We must keep in them as our way to travel in, keep to them as our rule to work by, keep them as our treasure, as the apple of our eye, with the utmost care and value. (2.) The great advantage of our obedience: Which if a man do, he shall live in them, that is, "he shall be happy here and hereafter." We have reason to thank God, [1.] That this is still in force as a promise, with a very favourable construction of the condition. If we keep God's commandments in sincerity, though we come short of sinless perfection, we shall find that the way of duty is the way of comfort, and will be the way to happiness. Godliness has the promise of life, Ti1 4:8. Wisdom has said, Keep my commandments and live: and if through the Spirit we mortify the deeds of the body (which are to us as the usages of Egypt were to Israel) we shall live. [2.] That it is not so in force in the nature of a covenant as that the least transgression shall for ever exclude us from this life. The apostle quotes this twice as opposite to the faith which the gospel reveals. It is the description of the righteousness which is by the law, the man that doeth them shall live en autois - in them (Rom 10:5), and is urged to prove that the law is not of faith, Gal 3:12. The alteration which the gospel has made is in the last word: still the man that does them shall live, but not live in them; for the law could not give life, because we could not perfectly keep it; it was weak through the flesh, not in itself; but now the man that does them shall live by the faith of the Son of God. He shall owe his life to the grace of Christ, and not to the merit of his own works; see Gal 3:21, Gal 3:22. The just shall live, but they shall live by faith, by virtue of their union with Christ, who is their life.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And the Lord spake unto Moses,.... He continued speaking…
And the Lord spake unto Moses,.... He continued speaking to him, after he had delivered to him the laws respecting the day of atonement, and the bringing of the sacrifices to the door of the tabernacle, and particularly concerning the Israelites not worshipping devils, as they had done in Egypt: the Lord proceeds to deliver out others, the more effectually to guard against both the immoral and idolatrous practice, of the Egyptians and Canaanites:
saying, as follows.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain A prohibition of conformity to the heathens, ver. 1-5.…
A prohibition of conformity to the heathens, ver. 1-5. Particular laws against incest, ver. 6-18. Against unnatural lusts and barbarous idolatries, ver. 19-23. Enforced from the destruction of the Canaanites, ver. 24-30.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain The people are commanded to avoid the doings of…
CHAPTER XVIII
The people are commanded to avoid the doings of the Egyptians
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and Canaanites, 1-3.
They are to do God's judgments, and to keep his ordinances,
that they may live, 4, 5.
Marriages with those who are near of kin are prohibited, 6.
None to marry with his mother or step-mother, 7, 8;
with his sister or step-sister, 9;
with his grand-daughter, 10;
nor with the daughter of his step-mother, 11;
nor with his aunt, by father or mother, 12, 13;
nor with his uncle's wife, 14;
nor with his daughter-in-law, 15;
nor sister-in-law, 16;
nor with a woman and her daughter, son's daughter, or
daughter's daughter, 17;
nor with two sisters at the same time, 18.
Several abominations prohibited, 19-23,
of which the Canaanites, &c., were guilty, and for which they
were cast out of the land, 24, 25.
The people are exhorted to avoid these abominations, lest they
be treated as the ancient inhabitants of the land were treated,
and so cast out, 26-28.
Threatenings against the disobedient, 29,
and promises to the obedient, 30.
NOTES ON CHAP. XVIII
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Lev 18:1. It being one special design of God…
Lev 18:1. It being one special design of God to preserve his people from the lewd and idolatrous customs of other nations, Moses now receives particular orders to prohibit the Israelites from many of those unnatural practices which were common among the ancient idolaters.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain Holiness of the Marriage Relation
SECOND SECTION
Holiness of the Marriage Relation
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Leviticus 18
“The keeping holy of marriage, of all sexual relations, and of all the relations of life in general.”
Leviticus 18-20
A.—“THE KEEPING HOLY OF MARRIAGE AND OF ALL SEXUAL RELATIONS UNDER THE PENALTY OF THE CHEREM.”—LANGE
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PRELIMINARY NOTE
On the “Prohibited Degrees” and on the Marriage Laws of the Heathen
The law declaring under what conditions sexual intercourse is forbidden is given in the present chapter; the punishment of disobedience in the several cases is declared in Lev_20:10-21. The latter is naturally less full, leaving the punishment in some instances to be inferred from analogy; and in one case it is considered by some commentators that there is a slight extension of the law here given. See on Lev_20:20. The law covers all sexual intercourse whether by formal marriage or by simple concubinage; and when the wives of various persons are mentioned, the term includes their wives when living, and their widows when they were themselves dead. It is remarkable that it makes no exception in favor of such marriages as had occurred among the ancestors of the Israelites, as in the case of Jacob, from which they were themselves descended. (The marriage of Abraham with Sarah was probably with his niece, the word sister allowing of this latitude).
The whole law is expressed in reference to the man, since the inception of such relations rests with him; but it would be a mistake to suppose that a precisely parallel list might be drawn up also for the woman. Differences are introduced by the law of the Levirate marriage (an institution much more ancient than the time of Moses, see Genesis 38), and by the general relation of protector and protected; the law therefore applies to the woman only in the case of those relationships in which the man is forbidden to have intercourse with her. Some of the degrees which are prohibited implicitly are not expressly mentioned: thus connection with a daughter is not mentioned by itself, although necessarily involved in the prohibition of intercourse with a woman and her daughter in Lev_18:17; that with a step-mother is included in Lev_18:8, and is especially mentioned as the subject of one of the curses in Deu_27:23; that with a grandmother is not mentioned at all, either because it was considered unnecessary to do so, or else because it was sufficiently implied by the other prohibitions. The whole law is expressly grounded (Lev_18:2-3; Lev_18:24-27) upon the duty of avoiding the abominable customs of the Egyptians and the Canaanites, so that there was the less necessity for express mention of anything which was not practised by them.
The principle on which the prohibitions rest (Lev_18:6) is expressly declared to be nearness of relationship; and although the Hebrew expression employed for this (lit. flesh of his flesh) might in itself apply only to blood relations, yet it is distinctly extended in the law to relations by affinity also, though not always to the same degree. In the remoter degrees the relationship is affected by other considerations, so that in parallel cases, sometimes one connection is forbidden while the other is not mentioned. Generally, the whole list might be included in the single prohibition that no man might be connected with a woman who stood, or who might come to stand to him in the position of a ward; no one who could be included in the family of which he was head. In this connection the LXX. translation in Lev_18:6 is to be noted: ἄνθρωπος πρὸς πάντα οἰκεῖα σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ οὐ προσελεύσεται. Such a description, however, would not be quite accurate, since the niece is not included in the list of prohibited degrees; and there are two prohibited cases which would not come under the description. These are the maternal aunt, who would form a part of the wife’s father’s or brother’s family; and the wife’s sister, forbidden only during the life-time of the wife.
The prohibited degrees may be conveniently arranged under the three following heads:
a. Relations by Blood
1. Mother, Lev_18:7.
2. Aunt on either side, Lev_18:12-13.
3. Sister and half sister, Lev_18:9; Lev_18:11.
4. Daughter, Lev_18:17.
5. Grand-daughter, Lev_18:10.
b. Direct Relations by Affinity
6. Mother-in-law, Lev_18:17.
7. Step-mother, Lev_18:8.
8. Step-daughter, Lev_18:17.
9. Step-grand-daughter, Lev_18:17.
c. Indirect Relations by Affinity
10. Father’s brother’s wife, Lev_18:14.
11. Brother’s wife, Lev_18:16.
12. Daughter-in-law, Lev_18:15.
In addition to these there is a temporary prohibition of the wife’s sister during the wife’s own life.
Among the heathen these relationships were very differently regarded. Marriage with a sister was permitted among the Egyptians by express law in consequence of the legend in their mythology of the marriage of Osiris with his sister Isis (Diod. Sic. i. 27; Philo de Sp. Legg. near beginning), and this custom continued, at least in the royal family, quite down to the time of their conquest by the Romans (Dio. Cass. xlii. p. 205, E. ed., Hanover, 1606). With regard to marriage with a mother, direct evidence is wanting in regard to the Canaanites, but among the Modes and the Persians it was practised from the earliest times, as also among the Indians and the Ethiopians. (See the authorities in Knobel), and all these nations appear to have permitted also marriage with a daughter. Marriage with a sister, however, was unknown among the Persians until the time of Cambyses, (Herod. iii. 31). Marriage with a step-mother seems to have been universal among Oriental monarchs, and the inheritance of the father’s seraglio one of the marks of succession to his throne. Hence Solomon’s treatment of Adonijah is to be explained when he sought to have Abishag given to him (1Ki_2:13-25). Marriage with a wife’s step-mother, however, is not forbidden, and a notable instance of it is in David’s inheriting the wives of his father-in-law Saul, spoken of as a mark of the Divine favor, 2Sa_12:8.
The marriages here forbidden are spoken of as crimes in the Canaanites for which they were about to be punished. While it is not, necessary to extend this to each particular, still it must be recognized that the prohibited degrees generally were such as could be understood by the light of nature or such dim tradition of the Divine will as might have been accessible to the Canaanites. Accordingly, it is well known that the prohibited degrees among the Greeks and Romans were for the most part the same as in the laws of Moses. Solon indeed permitted marriage with a half-sister by the father only, and Lycurgus with a half-sister by the mother only (Philo de Sp. Legg., pp. 601, F. El., Geneva, 1613); but the early Roman law went even farther than the Levitical in forbidding marriages between uncles and nieces, and between cousins german, which was only relaxed in the 2d cent, before our era (Liv. xlii. 34; Cic. pro Cluent. V. quoted by Clark). Similar laws, too, might be quoted from other nations, showing that those of the Egyptians and Canaanites were simply a license to passion, contrary to what they might have known to be right.
Marriage with a deceased wife’s sister is clearly allowed under the Levitical law, not merely by not being prohibited; but being prohibited during the lifetime of the sister first taken to wife, it becomes doubly certain that it was permitted afterwards. It is even made still more clear by the reason assigned: the relations of two wives of the same man are not apt to be friendly, and Moses would not allow either that the natural affection of sisters should be subjected to this strain, or that the inevitable animosities of the harem should be increased by the previous familiar relation of sisters. On the other hand, the marriage with a brother’s widow was forbidden, evidently because she became the ward of the surviving brother; and because also if the brother had died childless while she remained his wife, the survivor was bound to take her by a Levirate marriage. In either case her children were to be reckoned to the deceased brother, and hence the penalty for violating this precept in Lev_20:21 is that they shall be childless, i.e., that any children born to such a union should be reckoned in the genealogies, not to them, but to the deceased brother. The law therefore in this case must be considered as based upon questions of civil polity and not upon affinity. Hence it does not apply to the parallel case of the deceased wife’s sister; for she could never have formed a part of her brother-in-law’s household under the family system of the Hebrews. In the punishments denounced in Leviticus 20 against the sins here prohibited, it will be found that a distinction is made in the degree of guilt. One, and the larger class, is to be capitally punished (in one case even the bodies of both parties are to be burnt), while in the other class the penalty is simply that “they shall be childless.” It cannot be supposed that a perpetual miracle was to be maintained through all the ages of Israel’s history; but the meaning evidently is that the children of such marriages should be reckoned not to their actual father, but to the former husband of the woman. In the strong feeling of the Israelites in regard to posterity, this penalty seems to have been sufficient. (An instance of this use of the word childless is to be found in Jer_22:30 compared with 1Ch_3:17-18). It is not to be supposed that the more remote of the prohibited degrees were among the abominations for which the Canaanites were to be cut off; but on the other hand adultery and the other horrible sins mentioned in Lev_18:20-23 were undoubtedly among their customs.
Literature.—Michaelis, Laws of Moses; Abhandlung über die Ehegesetze Mosis; Saalschutz, Mos. Recht; Selden, uxor ebr. See also the numerous references in Calmet on this chapter. Also. John Fry, The cases of marriage between near kindred, etc. London, 1756.
Lev_18:1-30
1And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 2Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, I am the Lord your God. 3After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring1 you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances 4[statutes2]. Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances [statutes2], to walk therein: I am the Lord your God. 5Ye shall therefore keep 3my statutes, and 3my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the Lord.
6None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin4 to him, to uncover theirnakedness: I am the Lord. 7The nakedness of thy father, or [even5] the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. 8The nakedness of thy father’s wife shalt thou not uncover: it is thy father’s nakedness. 9The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born6 at home, or born abroad, even their7 nakedness thou shalt not uncoLev Lev_18:10 The nakedness of thy son’s daughter, or of thy daughter’s daughter, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover: for their’s is thine own nakedness. 11The nakedness of thy father’s wife’s daughter, begotten of thy father, she is thy sister, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. 12Thou shall not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s sister:8 she is thy father’s near kinswoman.4 13Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother’s sister: for she is thy mother’s near kinswoman:4 14Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s brother,9 thou shalt not approach to his wife: she is thine aunt. 15Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter in law: she is thy son’s wife; 16thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife: it is thy brother’s nakedness. 17Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son’s daughter, or her daughter’s daughter, to uncover her nakedness; for they are her near kinswomen: it is wickedness. 18Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister,10 to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time.
19Also thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness, as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness. 20Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour’s wife, to defile thyself with her. 21And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech [thou shalt not dedicate any of thy seed to 22Molech11], neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord. Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. 23Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.
24Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out12 before you: 25and the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth13 out her inhabitants. 26Ye shall therefore keep13 my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you: 27(for all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;) 28that the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued13 out the nations that were before you. 29For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people. 30Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not any one of these abominable customs [statutes2], which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the Lord your God.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lev_18:3 “מֵבִיא. Introducturus sum. Present for the future.” Rosenmüller.
Lev_18:3. חֻקָּה .וּבְחֻקּתֵיהֶם is variously and apparently arbitrarily rendered in the A. V. ordinance and statute, beside the occasional renderings, custom, manner and rite. There is no reason why the translation should not be uniform, and as statute is the more common, and hitherto in Lev. the uniform, rendering, this is adopted.
Lev_18:5. One MS. and the LXX. insert twice the word all. At the end of the verse the LXX. adds your God.
Lev_18:6. אֶל־כָּל־שְׁאֵר בְּשָׂרוֹ, lit. to any flesh of his flesh. The distinction between בָּשָׂר and שְׁאֵר is not understood. The derivative of the latter, שַאֲרָה, is used in Lev_18:17 (where only it occurs) of blood relationship. The margin of the A. V. gives “Heb. remainder of his flesh” according to the pointing, שִׁאָר. In Lev_18:12-13, שְּׁאֵר is used alone of near blood relationship.
Lev_18:7. That the copulative וְ ought not to be rendered disjunctively as in the A. V. is evident from the latter part of the verse. LXX. has καί, Vulg. et.
Lev_18:9. מוֹלֶדֶת, according to the Masoretic punctuation, is Hiphil, and must therefore be taken as active, agreeing with mother, and mean “who hath borne children whether at home or abroad.” The A. V., however, in common with all the ancient versions, has taken it as passive, מוּלֶדֶת, agreeing with daughter. For the rightfulness of this, Michaelis earnestly contends (Laws of Moses, Art. 114, 115). See Comment.
Lev_18:9. The Sam., 18 MSS. and the Syr. have the pronoun in the sing. The Vulg. omits it.
Lev_18:12. In the same construction in the following verse כִּי = for is supplied; it is found here also in 4 MSS. and in the versions generally.
Lev_18:14. The expletive conjunction וְ is here supplied in the Sam., in 25 MSS., and some ancient versions.
Lev_18:18. There can be here no question of the exact literalness of the rendering of the text of the A. V.; that of the margin is not a translation, but a more than doubtful interpretation. It would be an absolute prohibition of polygamy, which is here out of the question, unless stress were laid, as Poole has done, upon the purpose of such marriage, to vex; but the word לִצְרֹר = to press, to bind together, will not justify this.
Lev_18:21. For לְהַעֲבִיר, Sam. and LXX. read לְהַעֲבִיד = to reduce to servitude. A similar idea, to dedicate, may be given to the Heb. word as it stands. Vulg. ut consecrator, and similarly all the ancient versions. So the word is used, Exo_13:12. As this is the first mention of Molech, and there is no word for fire, it is better to keep strictly to the original and translate dedicate. Rosenmuller, traducas. The corresponding expressions in Lev_20:2-4, have simply נָתָּן = to give, without the following verb. According to the Masoretic punctuation Molech is always (except 1Ki_11:7) written with the article הַמֹּלֶךְ, and is rendered here and Lev_20:2-5, by the LXX. ἅρχων, but Jeremiah 32 (Gr. xxxix.) 35, ὁ Μολὸχ βασιλεύς, 1Ki_11:7 (Gr. 5), simply ὁ βασιλεύς, and 2Ki_23:10, ὁ Μολόχ.
Lev_18:26. The Heb. has here the pronoun אַתֶּם in addition to the verbal suffix. It is omitted in the Sam. and in 3 MSS.
Lev_18:24-25; Lev_18:28. In Lev_18:24 מְשַׁלֵּחַ is the Hiphil Part.= I am casting out, and in accordance with this the preterites וַתַּקִא (which has the ו conversive) of Lev_18:25 and כַּאֲשֶׁרּ קָאָה of Lev_18:28 are to be understood.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
This chapter consists of an introductory exhortation, Lev_18:2-5; the laws against incest, Lev_18:6-18; the prohibition of other kind of unchastity and unnatural crimes, Lev_18:19-23; and a concluding exhortation, Lev_18:24-30. “The whole marriage law, as a holy limitation, marks two mutually opposite extremes or forms of excess: first, sins against the blood relationship, or against the fear of desecrating the common source of life, the community of blood, Lev_18:1-18; secondly, sins of the dissolute disposition, the horrible passing over the life-line of pure marriage, or the new relationship, into the various forms contrary to nature, Lev_18:19-30.” Lange.
Lev_18:2-5. This exhortation opens with reminding the people I am the lord your God, and closes with the abbreviation of the same formula: I am the lord. The same expression occurs again in the midst of it (Lev_18:4), and also at the opening of the law itself (Lev_18:6), in the midst of the third division of the chapter (Lev_18:21), and again at the close of the whole. It is designed to impress most strongly upon the minds of the Israelites that the observance of this law is a matter of covenant obligation. And this is enforced by the contrast (Lev_18:3) with the doings of the land of Egypt from which they had been delivered, and the doings of the land of Canaan whose nations were about to be cast out to make room for them. It closes with the promise that if a man do the Divine statutes and judgments, he shall live in them. Not merely, he shall not be cut off by the punishments denounced against the transgression of these laws in Leviticus 20; but he shall gain that true life of communion with God which accompanies the obedience to His commands. Comp. Eze_20:11; Eze_20:13; Eze_20:21; Luk_10:28. “This whole legislation bears on its front the name of Jehovah, the God of Israel, Lev_18:2, in the more definite signification that the Israelites should keep themselves holy in their personality, i.e. true to themselves, suitably to their personality, as Jehovah is holy (Lev_19:2). But the legislation took its occasion in this: that Israel, as the people hallowed by God, should form an instructive and rebuking contrast to the shameful sexual life of the land of Egypt, whence they had just come out, and that still more shameful of the land of Canaan, whither they were going under the leadership of Jehovah.… That this legislation was not able in later days to prevent transgressions, e.g. in the family of David itself, is explained even from the essential nature of law. From this a careful critic would decide for the high Mosaic age of the law rather than for the contrary.
“That a most highly living intelligence pervades the section results from the various significant expressions: the judgments and statutes of Jehovah (Lev_18:4) become for the people the statutes and judgments (first law, and only afterwards the idea (Lev_18:5).” [Patrick says: “The Gemara Babylonica, mentioning these words, saith, it is a tradition of their doctors that by מִשׁפָּטִים are to be understood such natural laws as all mankind are bound to observe, though there were no written commands for them, such as those against idolatry, and those about uncovering the nakedness of such near relations as are here mentioned, and murder, etc. And by חֻקוֹת such laws are meant as depended only on the pleasure of God, and obliged none but those to whom they were given, such as those about meats and garments and leprosy, etc.” F. G.] “That which is contrary to nature in the marriage of relations consists in this: that the man by his family life, which should be the foundation of new bonds of love and new families, mingles again egotistically with his own flesh (אֵל בֹּל־שְׁאֵר בְשָׂרוֹ); and that by profane conduct he exposed the obscure and hallowed origin of his own life (uncovered the shame), and thus repeated the sin of Ham (for the shame of the wife of near kin is also the shame of the father, Lev_20:11). Therefore also it is necessary to explain the saying which if a man do, he shall live in them in its particular connection: all these directions tend to the furtherance of life, especially of the higher life, while the contrasted sexual relations produce death.
“The case of adultery is not considered, since the reference is to widows when connections with those who have been married before are considered.… The determining principle is that of community of blood (שְׁאֵר). But this is itself determined by the fundamental idea that man and wife are one. Hence it follows that the shame of the father’s wife is also the shame of the father himself (Lev_18:7-8). The shame of a grand-daughter was looked upon, since she was a descendant, as the shame of the grandfather himself (Lev_18:10). The shame of the sister in-law was thus also looked upon as the shame of the brother.
“As to the guilt and punishment, the death-penalty stands according to Lev_20:11 sqq. for the carnal intercourse (not merely the marrying) with a father’s wife, with a daughter-in-law, with a half sister “[and hence of course with a full sister]; “the punishment was, indeed, death by fire when one took a woman and her daughter together (that is זִמָּה).” [This necessarily includes the case of a daughter, and of a wife’s mother. Michaelis (Laws, Art. 102) considers זִמָּה as a forensic term used to express those forms of incest in which the woman is under the guardianship of the man, and derives the word from the Arabic in which “Zimm means marriage, and Zimma the state of guardianship (Clientela), from the word Zamm, to connect.” This sense is indeed appropriate for the very few places in which it occurs in the law (Lev_18:17; Lev_19:29; Lev_20:14 bis), but elsewhere it is used for any abominable wickedness (as Job_31:11) especially lewdness (Jdg_20:6). See Gesen. Thes.—F. G.]. “It is said indefinitely of the intercourse with a sister of the father or of the mother, they shall bear their iniquity (עֲוֹן).” [Lev_20:19. Michaelis (Art. 112, 2) observes in regard to these and the following kinds of prohibited marriages, that Moses tolerated “their continuance, if once consummated. At least he nowhere enjoins a separation of the parties.” It might be argued, indeed, that a forbidden marriage was utterly void, and therefore that its sin was constantly renewed as long as the parties continued to sustain towards each other the marriage relation; but certainly the penalty in the two following classes presupposes that they continued to live together.—F. G.]. “In contrast with this, it is said of him who slept with his father’s brother’s wife, they shall bear their sin (חֶטְאָם); they shall die childless” [Lev_20:20]. “So also of the case when any one takes his brother’s wife, that is נִדָּה (Levitical uncleanness), they shall be childless” [Lev_20:21]. “Thus the social punishment is not wholly absent here also, but the principal thing was the threat of the Divine punishment of these connections with childlessness.” [On the meaning of this punishment, see the preliminary note.—F. G.]. “Since in all these cases the willingness on the woman’s side is assumed, the threat of the penalty is for both sides alike. It is worth while to notice also the circumstance that the penal statutes which refer to the marriage of relations are mingled with other penal statutes (Lev_20:13; Lev_20:15-16), a proof that, here in chap. 20 another point of view is brought forward. But if in regard to the prohibition of the marriage with a brother’s widow childlessness was threatened, while later the prohibition could be changed relatively into a command in the ordinance of the Levirate marriage” [the Levirate marriage took place only in case the brother died childless—F. G.]; “still there is made definitely prominent a principal end of the legislation in the manifold threat of childlessness, which evidently extended also over the greater transgressions or reached the Cherem: marriage was to be protected, observed, and kept holy as the nursery for the raising of children, for new families, and truly for pure and hallowed families (comp. Com. on Jno.. p. 47” [Am. Ed., p. 111]).
“It is well known that in the treatment of these prohibited degrees of marriage various motives have been given, among others the following: the diminution and prevention of families in the marriage of relations. This motive comes out strongly here. Also in the expression in Lev_18:5, he shall live by them.” [A broader meaning may be given, as above, to Lev_18:5, and the threat of childlessness has already been explained (prel. note) as referring to the legal reckoning of the children. If childlessness could be proved to be a natural penalty of the inter-marriage of near blood relations, it would yet wholly fail to apply to cases of simple affinity, to which alone the penalty is attached in the law. Very striking is its inapplicability to the marriage with a brother’s wife, for if such a natural law existed, the Levirate marriage would have been wholly useless.—F. G.]. “But no less is there another motive here implied: the respect of kinship, (respectus parentelæ), and even the forcible expression uncover the nakedness only brings out strongly the impiety which, in such cases, uncovers the fountains of its own life, which have been hitherto concealed by natural respect.” [See this point discussed at length in Michaelis (Art. 107) who decides that it had no influence in the Mosaic legislation.—F. G.]. “And it is plain, that with this unnatural going back of men to the roots of their own existence in this perversion of marriage, which is the specific school of the future, into a retrogressive movement, it must immediately follow that family egoism will be at the same time ever more and more cherished; whereas the Theocracy, as the religion of the future, seeks to establish marriage on the basis of ever new conditions of love, for the purpose of building up a most intimate, fellowship in the human family.”14 [See this motive also discussed and rejected by Michaelis, Art. 106.—F. G.].
“It is well known that the hierarchy and its theology has not only not explained ideally the law of the marriages of relations, has not only brought it over unchanged into the new covenant; but has also stiffened it still more by another calculation of the degrees of relationship, by the addition of spiritual relationships, and by the prohibition to marry the sister of a deceased sister15 [wife]. In regard to heathen marriage customs, see Knobel, p. 502 sqq.
“That these marriage laws of Leviticus form a great and sharp contrast to the immoral customs of the Egyptians and the Canaanites expresses the very cause of this legislation. More in regard to the immorality of the heathen may be found in Knobel, p. 502 sqq., in Keil, p. 127 sqq.” [Trans, p. 413 note, p. 418], “and especially in the Historisch-politischen Briefen of I. v. Raumer, p. 29 sqq. It is particularly worthy of notice that the Arabian morals have the greatest resemblance to these morals of the law, which may perhaps be explained from their Semitic character.” [But the legislation of the Japhetic Greeks and Romans, and of the Hindoos for the higher castes was even more strict, as noted by Lange below; and the doom pronounced upon the Canaanites certainly implies that their sins were such as might be recognized in any nation by the light of nature.—F. G.]. “The lascivious service of lust of the Egyptians, illustrated by Ptolemy’s marriage with his sister, and by the history of Cleopatra, would appear the more remarkable since the Egyptian customs and religion on all sides admonished of death; but perhaps, indeed, this fact depends upon a connection between sexual pleasure and the thought of death, as e.g., in war and camp life, such a connection is to be observed. Besides the Arabian customs, the harsher character of the Hindoo and of the Roman legislation is to be particularly noticed.” Lange.
Lev_18:6-18. The phrase uncover the nakedness continued to be used to express sexual intercourse through many ages. Comp. Eze_16:36; Eze_23:18. The list of prohibited degrees begins appropriately with the mother. Her nakedness is described as the nakedness of thy father, since husband and wife constitute “one flesh,” Gen_2:24. “Strictly speaking גִלָּה עֶרְוָה is used only with reference to the wife; but in the dishonoring of his wife the honor of the husband is violated also, and his bed defiled, Gen_49:4.” Keil. Comp. Lev_18:8. Rosenmüller explains the phrase as meaning the nakedness which is (or was) under the control of the father. The Targ. of Jonathan assumes an ellipsis, and renders “a woman shall not cohabit with her father, nor a man with his mother,” which is neither agreeable to the Hebrew, nor consistent with the fact that the whole law is addressed to the man. Aben Ezra, as quoted by Rosenmüller, well expresses the arrangement: “He begins with the father, who precedes the son, and declares forbidden all nakedness of the father and mother; the mother is placed first, then the nakedness of the wife of the father who is not the mother, then the sister who is the daughter of the father or of the mother.” In Lev_18:8 thy father’s wife refers to another wife than the mother of the person addressed, and the term wife is of course broad enough to include the concubine. The sinfulness of this act, as in the case of Reuben (Gen_35:22; Gen_49:3-4) was understood long before the giving of the Mosaic law, and continued to be held in abomination among the Gentiles in Apostolic days (1Co_5:1); nevertheless it was one of the crimes of which Absalom was deliberately guilty (2Sa_16:22), and as already noticed, it was regularly practised by the monarchs of Persia.—Thy father’s nakedness is used in the same sense as in Lev_18:7. Connection with a half-sister on either side being forbidden in Lev_18:9, that with a full sister, since she might, be described as a half-sister on both sides, is doubly forbidden. The expression born at home or born abroad has been variously interpreted. The true sense is undoubtedly that given by Rosenmüller, “a sister in whatever way she may be a sister, whether of the same or of different parents, whether legitimately or illegitimately born.” Thus are included the daughter of either father or mother by either a previous or a subsequent marriage (and these cases would have been much more frequent under laws allowing of divorce and remarriage), or the daughter of the father by another wife; also illegitimate children of either. The marriage of Abraham and Sarah is often referred to as an instance in opposition to this law; but it is more probable that the word sister is there used in the broader sense, and that Sarah was really the niece of Abraham. Lev_18:10. Theirs’ is thine own nakedness.—Because of their direct descent, intercourse with them would involve a sort of incest with one’s self. Of course this would apply à fortiori to the case of a daughter which is not specifically mentioned, but is included in the prohibition of Lev_18:17. The prohibition of Lev_18:11 of the half-sister on the father’s side seems already included in the broader one of Lev_18:9. Various explanations have been given to mark a difference between them, among which perhaps the best is that of Keil: that Lev_18:9 treats of the connection of a son by a second marriage with a daughter by a first marriage, while Lev_18:11 applies to the connection of a son by a first marriage with a daughter by a subsequent marriage; but this seems an undue limitation of Lev_18:9. Probably there was at the time some technical use of the terms which constituted a distinction which is now lost. According to Selden (Uxor Hebr. L. I. c. 4) Lev_18:11 admits of the translation “The nakedness of thy father’s wife’s daughter (but she who is begotten of thy father is thy sister) thou shalt not uncover;” thereby meaning to forbid connection with the daughter of a step-mother, and marking this as a distinct prohibition from that of the half-sister. Intercourse with an aunt on either the father’s or the mother’s side is forbidden in Lev_18:12-13, on the principle of near blood relationship; but there is no prohibition of marriage with the corresponding relation of niece. The reason of this distinction is not apparent. According to Exo_6:20, Moses was himself the offspring of the marriage of Amram with Jochebed, his paternal aunt. This would indicate that this prohibited degree is a matter of the Divine statute rather than of natural law, and was not therefore necessarily extended to the niece. In Lev_18:14 the prohibition is extended to the wife of the paternal uncle, as having become an aunt by her union with the uncle. It would not however follow from this that the law forbade the marriage of a woman with the husband of her aunt, since in consequence of the dependence of the family upon the male in the Hebrew polity, the corresponding relations upon the mother’s side stood in a less intimate relation than those upon the father’s. In the reverse order, however, the prohibition is more stringent upon the woman than upon the man, since a woman is hereby forbidden to marry her husband’s nephew, while the man is not forbidden to marry his wife’s niece. The application of this principle to Lev_18:15 would seem at first sight to lead to the permission of the abominable marriage of a woman with her son-in-law; but this is guarded against by Lev_18:17. The prohibition of intercourse with a brother’s wife in connection with the more ancient custom of the levirate marriage has already been explained in the preliminary note. It is particularly to be observed that the levirate marriage only took place in case the brother had died childless, and she was still his wife at his death, and that even then it was not so much a fresh marriage, as a sort of continuance of the marriage of the deceased by his nearest surviving representative. The prohibitions of Lev_18:17 have already been seen to complement several of the other prohibitions, and the principle which forbids the connection with both a mother and a daughter is extended also to the grand-daughter. On Lev_18:18 see preliminary note.
“Keeping the seed sacred to its purpose, is as has been said the fundamental thought of our section. Hence over against the physico-spiritual sins against nature of marriage of blood relations is placed, as the other extreme, the violation of nature in desecrating the blood with beasts or demons. The first sin is, indeed, a violation of nature which can take place in marriage itself, the transgressing the unapproachableness of a woman in her sickness. But a sickness in sexual relation is certainly the condition of menstruation, Lev_18:19.” [After the list of prohibited degrees, whether of consanguinity or of affinity, naturally follows the prohibition of other unlawful conditions of sexual intercourse. First is mentioned that of which there was the greatest danger of violation. The feminine uncleanness here named is the נִדָּה, including both the monthly uncleanness (Lev_15:33) and the uncleanness after childbirth (Lev_12:2). The violation of this is enumerated by Ezek. (Lev_18:6; Lev_22:10) among sins of a most serious character. Next comes adultery (Lev_18:20), then the giving of the seed to Molech (Lev_18:21), and finally sodomy (Lev_18:22), and bestial sins (Lev_18:23).—F. G.]. “The second sin is adultery: it defiles a man in three and four ways, since he commits treason against the teleology of his seed, against his personal dignity, against the sacrifice of his pleasure, and against his betrayed neighbor. On the punishment of adultery see Knobel, p. 506.” [Both parties were to be put to death, Lev_20:10; Deu_22:22; Comp. Joh_8:5. Knobel further notes that other nations of antiquity were less rigorous; they generally punished the adulterer with a fine (Diod. 12, 21), but also more severely. Among the Egyptians the adulterer must submit to a thousand blows and have his nose cut off (Diod. 1, 78); among the Indians both pecuniary and bodily punishment as well as exile and death were commanded (Manu 8, 352 ss.); among the Greeks, the woman suffered repudiation and infamy, while the adulterer could be put to death or receive from the court a severe bodily punishment (Wachsmuth II. 1, p. 272). Knobel further mentions the punishments among the Moslems and the modern Orientals.—F. G.]. “The third sin is the sacrifice to Molech, here manifestly infanticide and falling away from the name of Jehovah at once. Knobel: “By this is meant not a mere lustration by means of fire, but an actual burning. See Movers. Phonizier I., p. 328 sqq. On the Molech sacrifice, see the same, p. 506. Opposed to this, the deductions of Keil, that the expression here indicates only a lustration or a februation (P. 130, 131 [Trans. p. 416, 417]) can hardly be maintained.” [The precise purport of this prohibition is very uncertain. In Deu_12:31, it is mentioned as a sin of the Canaanites that “even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods,” and the Israelites are warned against imitating them. It is generally assumed by commentators that the deity there intended is Molech, and that by seedin our passage is meant children, and that thus both refer to the same thing. But here we have no mention of fire (see Textual Note 9), and it is at least doubtful if seed here means offspring. Although explanations are offered by the commentators of such an abrupt change of subject, yet it is far more in accordance with the context and the general purpose of the chapter to understand seed here simply of the semen. Too little is now known of the worship of Molech at this very ancient date to determine precisely the meaning of the expression. It is noticeable, however, that there is no other prohibition of the foul habit of masturbation, for which there seems to be need; may it not be conjectured that this act was known as “giving one’s seed to Molech,” and was associated with the practices of idolatry? The sin, whatever it was, connected itself with the worship of a false god as is shown by the clause neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God. It was not only itself to be punished with death by stoning; but punishment was also denounced against any one who saw the sin committed and did not expose it (Lev_20:2-6). If the above conjecture is right, it was very natural that in after times this custom should have advanced, as it did, to the actual burning of children as a sacrifice to Molech (2Ki_23:10; Eze_16:20-21, etc.), though even this is explained by many of merely passing the children between two fires.—F. G.]. “The fourth sin is the especially abominable sin of Sodom, Pœderastia, for which the Canaani es at last received the sentence, that their land should “spue them out;” nature herself could no more endure them. See 1 Kings, Commentary p. 56” [Trans. p. 75?] “The fifth sin is the acme of abominableness, conjunction with a beast, and yet this was something that occurred, or else the law would not have spoken of it. According to Herodotus and Pindar, women at Mendes let themselves be mounted by a he-goat (Herod. 2, 46, etc.).” Knobel. See similar examples given by the same.” [The fearful prevalence of Sodomy, (which takes its name from a Canaanitish city), in the Rome of Apostolic days is evident from Rom_1:24; Rom_1:27, as well as from the classic authors. The practice of it seems to have been inveterate among the Hebrews, 1Ki_14:24. “Lev_18:22. The ancient Persian law sternly condemned this offence (Vendid. viii. 10 ap. Knobel). Also the Hindoo law (Menu xi. 174, 175), and the Koran, vii. 78–80. Lev_18:23. The story of Pasiphæ may furnish proof that the early Greeks abhorred this offence. The Hindoo law punishes it severely Menu xi. 17, Gentoo laws, p. 280. The Moslem law condemns it, Hedaya II., p. 27.” Clark.—F. G.]. “The following inculcation of these prohibitions, Lev_18:24-30, contains the most expressive apology for the conquest of Canaan on the part of the Israelites; and that this was no partiality of Jehovah, is plain from the fact that He threatens the Israelites with entirely the same punishment in case they should sin in the same way, and moreover, that He enacts the death penalty for the single offender.” Lange.
The poetic representation of the land as vomiting out its inhabitants is founded upon a truth which required that the laws of this chapter should be made binding upon the stranger that sojourneth among you as well as upon the Israelites themselves (Lev_18:26). The land which the ancestors of Israel were not allowed to possess, “because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full” (Gen_15:16), had now become filled with a mass of festering moral corruption. Its inhabitants were to be cast out and the holy people planted in their stead. It could not be allowed that “the stranger” should again introduce the pollutions which were now being so severely punished.
The only punishment here threatened for the violation of these precepts is first the national one, in case the sins became national, of being treated as their predecessors had been; and secondly, the individual punishment for individual offenders (Lev_18:29), they shall be cut off from among their people. They were to be excommunicated as violators of the holiness required of the covenant people. Israel, however, constituted a state as well as a church, and later, in Leviticus 20, the civil punishment of these crimes is fully prescribed. Here the legislator speaks of the sin rather than of the crime, and consequently of the spiritual rather than the civil penalty.
The preterites of Lev_18:25וַתָּקִא (A. V. vomiteth out) and Lev_18:28קָאָה (A. V. spued out) must necessarily be determined in their sense by the whole context, and especially by the מְשַׁלֵּחַ = I am casting out, of Lev_18:24. The whole transaction is represented as one in progress, as in Lev_20:23 (where the same participle is used), and from any fair consideration of these chapters in themselves it would be impossible to infer that the casting out of the Canaanites was already an accomplished fact. It is therefore quite unnecessary to speak of these preterites (Keil), as prophetic.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
I. We have here set forth (Lev_18:5) the principle which St. Paul declares (Rom_10:5; Gal_3:12) to be the fundamental principle of the whole law,—that salvation depends upon obedience. On this ground he shows that man can never attain justification, since it is impossible for him to offer a perfect obedience. The law by a practical demonstration of this fact becomes “our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” Nevertheless, “the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (Rom_7:12), and the faith which leads to salvation is dead without the earnest effort at obedience. Hence God sets forth His laws as that which if a man do he shall live in them, and it has ever proved that the path of obedience is the path of life in every sense.
II. “The family relationship is itself ordained by God. It is the birthplace of the children of God—the first school, and generally the source of all chastity and good manners. Any injury inflicted on it would undermine the temporal and eternal welfare both of individuals and of the people. In this lies the abomination of incest. This is the reason of that natural horror of it which God has implanted in us. This is the reason that, among all nations, marriage within certain degrees was forbidden, although the laws of the most moral nations wavered in respect to the exact boundaries.… Because this was the reason of the prohibited degrees, we see also why, in the family of the first men, when there was no difference between family and people, brothers and sisters might marry without sin.” O. von Gerlach.
III. The Canaanites were to be punished for their offences against the marriage law. But they would not have been guilty if they had had no knowledge that what they did was wrong, (Rom_4:15; Rom_5:13). It is therefore evident that there must be a natural law or a tradition of primeval revelation which should have enabled them to recognize the sinfulness of their customs.
IV. Although the Mosaic legislation recognizes polygamy and divorce on trivial grounds, yet still it cannot be arrayed as in opposition to the higher law of Christian purity. On the contrary, like the laws of revenge and many others, these laws were restrictions leading the people as they were able to bear it towards the higher law of the Gospel. That they fell short of this was simply because God suffered it to be so temporarily “because of the hardness of men’s hearts.”
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
“The chapter about the forbidden degrees of marriage has in its immediate form a much greater meaning for dogmatics, morals, and the legal and ecclesiastical ordinance of marriage, than it has for homiletics. The New Testament explanation and application of this law is so great a subject and work, that here we must refer to the literature relating thereto. But indirectly, these laws are a treasury also for homiletics. By the prohibition of the marriage of relations, God ever forms new sets of relationships. By this He brings to view the universal relationship which lies upon the foundation of human manifoldness and diversity. He manifests harmony in the contrasts of genealogies. He freshens anew the duty of love in a thousand ways; and freshens, too, marriage in a thousand ways through love. Sexual love, in its dignity, is here hallowed through the law. Strangers and aliens become, by this divine ordinance, relatives, brothers and friends; a holy web of love, in spite of single desecrations, spreads from town to town, from land to land, from people to people. The egoism of family, rank, and class, is a kind of heathenism which this law combats with a prefigurative force, and Christianity meets by its consecration of the state of betrothal on the foundation of Christian brotherly love and universal philanthropy. The expression of these prohibitions of marriage designates the transgressions without any anxious fear except to oppose with strong words the lack of fear in life, and to create a holy fear before the sources of life, the mysterious darkness of the continuous creation of man. When the ideality of the legal life fails, there is made prominent the marked unhallowed nakedness and rudeness of the sexual relations. The various forms and degrees of guilt are to be noticed. Over against the offences against the family life in too near relationship, come the horrors of the sexual crimes against nature (Lev_18:21 sqq. Comp. Romans 1). The flagrant violation of nature is emphasized by the threat that the violated nature, the horrified land, would itself undertake the punishment, and spue out such sinners. But the positive punishments also were not to be omitted (chap. 20). And it must not be overlooked that Jehovah introduces and closes these commands with the explanation of His name Jehovah, His holy personality. The establishment of personal dignity in a kingdom of true personal continuance in love, is the purpose of the law.” Lange.
Besides its moral and social bearings, the Levitical law has another and most important aspect. It has been found historically that all great deviations from the faith bear fruit, sooner or later, in sensual sins; and conversely, all relaxation of the law of sexual purity has sustained itself by the denial or perversion of fundamental doctrine. The Levitical law was therefore a safeguard of the truth, and herein men received an essential part of their training, not merely for the high morality, but also for the high religious truth of the Gospel. We see at Corinth how danger to the one went hand in hand with danger to the other.
Footnotes:
[1]Lev_18:3 “מֵבִיא. Introducturus sum. Present for the future.” Rosenmüller.
[2]Lev_18:3. חֻקָּה .וּבְחֻקּתֵיהֶם is variously and apparently arbitrarily rendered in the A. V. ordinance and statute, beside the occasional renderings, custom, manner and rite. There is no reason why the translation should not be uniform, and as statute is the more common, and hitherto in Lev. the uniform, rendering, this is adopted.
[3]Lev_18:5. One MS. and the LXX. insert twice the word all. At the end of the verse the LXX. adds your God.
[4]Lev_18:6. אֶל־כָּל־שְׁאֵר בְּשָׂרוֹ, lit. to any flesh of his flesh. The distinction between בָּשָׂר and שְׁאֵר is not understood. The derivative of the latter, שַאֲרָה, is used in Lev_18:17 (where only it occurs) of blood relationship. The margin of the A. V. gives “Heb. remainder of his flesh” according to the pointing, שִׁאָר. In Lev_18:12-13, שְּׁאֵר is used alone of near blood relationship.
[5]Lev_18:7. That the copulative וְ ought not to be rendered disjunctively as in the A. V. is evident from the latter part of the verse. LXX. has καί, Vulg. et.
[6]Lev_18:9. מוֹלֶדֶת, according to the Masoretic punctuation, is Hiphil, and must therefore be taken as active, agreeing with mother, and mean “who hath borne children whether at home or abroad.” The A. V., however, in common with all the ancient versions, has taken it as passive, מוּלֶדֶת, agreeing with daughter. For the rightfulness of this, Michaelis earnestly contends (Laws of Moses, Art. 114, 115). See Comment.
[7]Lev_18:9. The Sam., 18 MSS. and the Syr. have the pronoun in the sing. The Vulg. omits it.
[8]Lev_18:12. In the same construction in the following verse כִּי = for is supplied; it is found here also in 4 MSS. and in the versions generally.
[9]Lev_18:14. The expletive conjunction וְ is here supplied in the Sam., in 25 MSS., and some ancient versions.
[10]Lev_18:18. There can be here no question of the exact literalness of the rendering of the text of the A. V.; that of the margin is not a translation, but a more than doubtful interpretation. It would be an absolute prohibition of polygamy, which is here out of the question, unless stress were laid, as Poole has done, upon the purpose of such marriage, to vex; but the word לִצְרֹר = to press, to bind together, will not justify this.
[11]Lev_18:21. For לְהַעֲבִיר, Sam. and LXX. read לְהַעֲבִיד = to reduce to servitude. A similar idea, to dedicate, may be given to the Heb. word as it stands. Vulg. ut consecrator, and similarly all the ancient versions. So the word is used, Exo_13:12. As this is the first mention of Molech, and there is no word for fire, it is better to keep strictly to the original and translate dedicate. Rosenmuller, traducas. The corresponding expressions in Lev_20:2-4, have simply נָתָּן = to give, without the following verb. According to the Masoretic punctuation Molech is always (except 1Ki_11:7) written with the article הַמֹּלֶךְ, and is rendered here and Lev_20:2-5, by the LXX. ἅρχων, but Jeremiah 32 (Gr. xxxix.) 35, ὁ Μολὸχ βασιλεύς, 1Ki_11:7 (Gr. 5), simply ὁ βασιλεύς, and 2Ki_23:10, ὁ Μολόχ.
[12]Lev_18:24-25; Lev_18:28. In Lev_18:24 מְשַׁלֵּחַ is the Hiphil Part.= I am casting out, and in accordance with this the preterites וַתַּקִא (which has the ו conversive) of Lev_18:25 and כַּאֲשֶׁרּ קָאָה of Lev_18:28 are to be understood.
[13]Lev_18:26. The Heb. has here the pronoun אַתֶּם in addition to the verbal suffix. It is omitted in the Sam. and in 3 MSS.
[14]Comp. Winer, Art. Ehe. Herzog’s Real-Encyclopädie, Ehe bei den Hebräern u. a. Lexica. H. Spoudlin, Ueber das Eheverbot wegen rerwandtschaft und das verbrechen des Incestes, Zurich, 1844. The same, p. Leviticus 13 : “die richtige Begrundung von Augustin.”
[15]“Here comes into notice the illiberal article in the English law, which has already produced many tragic occurrences.”
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 1. Purity in those connected through the relationship of…
1. Purity in those connected through the relationship of parent and child.
The first Pentad: Kinship of the first degree, Lev_18:6-10.
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The second Pentad: Kinship of the second degree, Lev_18:11-15.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (1) And the Lord spake unto Moses.—Unlike the preceding…
XVIII.
(1) And the Lord spake unto Moses.—Unlike the preceding Divine communications, which treated of the ritual and ceremonial pollutions, the enactments which Moses is here commanded to communicate direct to the children of Israel, or their representatives, the elders, affect their moral life—precepts which form the basis of domestic purity, and which are the foundation of human happiness.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. H. Mackintosh 1880 · Public Domain Leviticus 18 - 20
Leviticus 18 - 20
This section sets before us, in a very remarkable manner, the personal sanctity and moral propriety which Jehovah looked for, on the part of those whom He had graciously introduced into relationship with Himself and, at the same time, it presents a most humiliating picture of the enormities of which human nature is capable.
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"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, l am the Lord your God." Here we have the foundation of the entire superstructure of moral conduct which these chapters present. Israel’s actings were to take their character from the fact that Jehovah was their God. They were called to comport themselves in a manner worthy of so high and holy a position. It was God’s prerogative to set forth the special character and line of conduct becoming a people with whom He was pleased to associate His name. Hence the frequency of the expressions - "I am the Lord." "I Am the Lord your God." "I the Lord your God am holy." Jehovah was their God, and He was holy; hence, therefore, they were called to be holy likewise. His name was invoked in their character and acting.
This is the true principle of holiness for the people of God in all ages. They are to be governed and characterised by the revelation which He has made of Himself. Their conduct is to be founded upon what He is, not upon what they are in themselves. This entirely sets aside the principle expressed in the words, "Stand by thyself, I am holier than thou;" a principle so justly repudiated by every sensitive mind. It is not a comparison of one man with another; but a simple statement of the line of conduct which God looks for in those who belong to Him. "after the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do; and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do; neither shall ye walk in their ordinances." The Egyptians and the Canaanites were all wrong. How was Israel to know this? Who told them? How came they to be right, and all besides wrong? These are interesting inquiries; and the answer is as simple as the questions are interesting. Jehovah’s word was the standard by which all questions of right and wrong were to be definitely settled in the judgement of every member of the Israel of God. It was not, by any means, the judgement of an Israelite in opposition to the judgement of an Egyptian or of a Canaanite; but it was the judgement of God above all. Egypt might have her practices and her opinions, and so might Canaan; but Israel were to have the opinions and practices laid down in the word of God. "Ye shall do my judgements, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the Lord your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgements; which, if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the Lord."
It will be well for my reader to get a clear, deep, full, practical sense of this truth. The word of God must settle every question and govern every conscience. There must be no appeal from its solemn and weighty decision. When God speaks, every heart must bow. Men may form and hold their opinions; they may adopt and defend their practices; but one of the finest traits in the character of "the Israel of God" is profound reverence for, and implicit subjection to, "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord." The exhibition of this valuable feature may, perhaps, lay them open to the charge of dogmatism, superciliousness, and self-sufficiency, on the part of those who have never duly weighed the matter; but, in truth, nothing can be more unlike dogmatism than simple subjection to the plain truth of God; nothing more unlike superciliousness than reverence for the statements of inspiration; nothing more unlike self-sufficiency than subjection to the divine authority of holy scripture.
True, there will ever be the need of carefulness as to the tone and manner in which we set forth the authority for our convictions and our conduct. It must be made manifest, so far as it may be, that we are wholly governed, not by our own opinions, but by the word of God. There is great danger of attaching an importance to an opinion merely because we have adopted it. This must be carefully guarded against. Self may creep in and display its deformity in the defence of our opinions as much as in anything else; but we must disallow it, in every shape and form, and be governed, in all things, by "Thus saith the Lord."
But, then, we are not to expect that everyone will be ready to admit the full force of the divine statutes and judgements. It is as persons walk in the integrity and energy of the divine nature that the word of God will be owned, appreciated, and reverenced. An Egyptian or a Canaanite would have been wholly unable to enter into the meaning or estimate the value of these statutes and judgements, which were to govern the conduct of the circumcised people of God; but that did not, in any wise, affect the question of Israel’s obedience. They were brought into a certain relationship with Jehovah, and that relationship had its distinctive privileges and responsibilities. "I am the Lord your God." This was to be the ground of their conduct. They were to act in a way worthy of the One who had become their God, and made them His people. It was not that they were a whit better than other people. By no means. The Egyptians or Canaanites might have considered that the Israelites were setting themselves up as something superior in refusing to adopt the habits of either nation. But, no; the foundation of their peculiar line of conduct and tone of morality was laid in these words, "I am the Lord your God."
In this great and practically-important fact, Jehovah set before His people a ground of conduct which was immovable, and a standard of morality which was as elevated, and as enduring, as the eternal throne itself. The moment He entered into a relationship with a people, their ethics were to assume a character and tone worthy of Him. It was no longer a question as to what they were, either in themselves or in comparison with others; but of what God was in comparison with all. This makes a material difference. To make self the ground of action or the standard of ethics is not only presumptuous folly, but it is sure to set one upon a descending scale of action. If self be my object, I must, of necessity, sink lower and lower every day; but if, on the other hand, I set the Lord before me, I shall rise higher and higher as, by the power of the Holy Ghost, I grow in conformity to that perfect model which is unfolded to the gaze of faith in the sacred pages of inspiration. I shall, undoubtedly, have to prostrate myself in the dust, under a sense of how infinitely short I come of the mark set before me; but, then, I can never consent to the setting up of a lower standard, nor can I ever be satisfied until I am conformed in all things to Him who was my substitute on the cross, and is my Model in the glory.
Having said thus much on the main principle of the section before us - a principle of unspeakable importance to Christians, in a practical point of view - I feel it needless to enter into anything like a detailed exposition of statutes which speak for themselves in most obvious terms. I would merely remark that those statutes range themselves under two distinct heads, namely, first, those which set forth the shameful enormities which the human heart is capable of devising; and, secondly, those which exhibit the exquisite tenderness and considerate care of the God of Israel.
As to the first, it is manifest that the Spirit of God could never enact laws for the purpose of preventing evils that have no existence. He does not construct a dam where there is no flood to be resisted. He does not deal with abstract ideas, but with positive realities. Man is, in very deed, capable of perpetrating each and every one of the shameful crimes referred to in this most faithful section of the book of Leviticus. If he were not, Why should he be told not to do so. Such a code would be wholly unsuitable for angels, inasmuch as they are incapable of committing the sins referred to; but it suits man, because he has gotten the seeds of those sins in his nature. This is deeply humbling. It is a fresh declaration of the truth that man is a total wreck. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, there is not so much as a single speck of moral soundness, as looked at in the light of the divine presence. The being for whom Jehovah thought it needful to write Leviticus 18 - 20 must be a vile sinner; but that being is man - the writer and reader of these lines. How plain it is, therefore, that "they that are in the flesh cannot please God." (Rom. 8) Thank God, the believer is "not in the flesh, but in the Spirit." He has been taken completely out of his old creation standing, and introduced into the new creation, in which the moral evils aimed at in this our section can have no existence. True, he has gotten the old nature; but it is his happy privilege to "reckon" it as a dead thing, and to walk in the abiding power of the new creation, wherein "all things are of God." This is Christian liberty - even liberty to walk up and down in that fair creation where no trace of evil can ever be found; hallowed liberty to walk in holiness and purity before God and man; liberty to tread those lofty walks of personal sanctity whereon the beams of the divine countenance ever pour themselves in living lustre. Reader, this is Christian liberty. It is liberty, not to commit sin, but to taste the celestial sweets of a life of true holiness and moral elevation. May we prize more highly than we have ever done this precious boon of heaven - Christian liberty!
And, now, one word as to the second class of statutes contained in our section - namely, those which so touchingly bring out divine tenderness and care. Take the following: "and when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the Lord your God." (Lev. 19: 9, 10) This ordinance will meet us again in Lev. 23, but there we shall see it in its dispensational bearing. Here, we contemplate it morally, as unfolding the precious grace of Israel’s God. He would think of "the poor and stranger;" and He would have His people think of them likewise. When the golden sheaves were being reaped, and the mellow clusters gathered, "the poor and stranger" were to be remembered by the Israel of God, because Jehovah was the God of Israel. The reaper and the grape-gatherer were not to be governed by a spirit of grasping covetousness, which would bare the corners of the field and strip the branches of the vine, but rather by a spirit of large-hearted, genuine benevolence, which would leave a sheaf and a cluster "for the poor and stranger," that they, too, might rejoice in the unbounded goodness of Him whose paths drop fatness, and on whose open hand all the sons of want may confidently wait.
The Book of Ruth furnishes a fine example of one who fully acted out this most benevolent statute. "And Boaz said unto her, (Ruth,) At meal-time come thou hither, and eat of the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar. And she sat beside the reapers: and he reached her parched corn, and she did eat, and was sufficed and left. And when she was risen up to glean, Boaz commanded his young men, saying, Let her glean even among the sheaves, and reproach her not: and let fall also some of the handfuls of purpose for her, and leave them, that she may glean them, and rebuke her not." (Ruth 2: 14-16) Most touching and beautiful grace! Truly, it is good for our poor selfish hearts to be brought in contact with such principles and such practices. Nothing can surpass the exquisite refinement of the words, "let fall also some of the handfuls of purpose for her." It was, evidently, the desire of this noble Israelite that "the stranger" might have abundance, and have it, too, rather as the fruit of her own gleaning than of his benevolence. This was the very essence of refinement. It was putting her in immediate connection with, and dependence upon, the God of Israel, who had fully recognised and provided for "the gleaner." Boaz was merely acting out that gracious ordinance of which Ruth was reaping the benefit. The same grace that had given him the field gave her the gleanings. They were both debtors to grace. She was the happy recipient of Jehovah’s goodness. He was the honoured exponent of Jehovah’s most gracious institution. All was in most lovely moral order. The creature was blessed and God was glorified. Who would not own that it is good for us to ’be allowed to breathe such an atmosphere?
Let us now turn to another statute of our section. "Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob Him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning." (Lev. 19: 13) What tender care is here! The High and Mighty One that inhabiteth eternity can take knowledge of the thoughts and feelings that spring up in the heart of a poor labourer. He knows and takes into account the expectations of such an one in reference to the fruit of his day’s toil. The wages will, naturally, be looked for. The labourer’s heart counts upon them; the family meal depends upon them. Oh! let them not be held back. Send not the labourer home with a heavy heart, to make the heart of his wife and family heavy likewise. By all means, give him that for which He has wrought, to which he has a right, and on which his heart is set. He is a husband, he is a father; and he has borne the burden and heat of the day that his wife and children may not go hungry to bed. Disappoint him not. Give him his due. Thus does our God take notice of the very throbbings of the labourer’s heart, And make provision for his rising expectations. Precious grace! Most tender, thoughtful, touching, condescending love! The bare contemplation of such statutes is sufficient to throw one into a flood of tenderness. Could any one read such passages and not be melted? Could any one read them and thoughtlessly dismiss a poor labourer, not knowing whether he and his family have wherewithal to meet the cravings of hunger?
Nothing can be more painful to a tender heart than the lack of kindly consideration for the poor, so often manifested by the rich. These latter can sit down to their sumptuous repast after dismissing from their door some poor industrious creature who had come seeking the just reward of his honest labour. They think not of the aching heart with which that man returns to his family, to tell them of the disappointment to himself and to them. Oh! it is terrible. It is most offensive to God, and to all who have drunk, in any measure, into His grace. If we would know what God thinks of such acting, we have only to hearken to the following accents of holy indignation: "Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them that have reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." (James 5: 4) "The Lord of Sabaoth" hears the cry of the aggrieved and disappointed labourer. His tender love tells itself forth in the institutions of His moral government; and even though the heart should not be melted by the grace of those institutions, the conduct should, at least, be governed by the righteousness thereof. God will not suffer the claims of the poor to be heartlessly tossed aside by those who are so hardened by the influence of wealth as to be insensible to the appeals of tenderness, and who are so far removed beyond the region of personal need as to be incapable of feeling for those whose lot it is to spend their days amid exhausting toil or pinching poverty. The poor are the special objects of God’s care. Again and again He makes provision for them in the statutes of His moral administration; and it is particularly declared of Him who shall, ere long, assume, in manifested glory, the reins of government, that "He shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their souls from deceit and violence; and precious shall their blood be in his sight." (Psalm 72: 12-14)
May we profit by the review of those precious and deeply practical truths! May our hearts be affected, and our conduct influenced by them. We live in a heartless world; and there is a vast amount of selfishness in our own hearts. We are not sufficiently affected by the thought of the need of others. We are apt to forget the poor in the midst of our abundance. We often forget that the very persons whose labour ministers to our personal comfort are living, it may be, in the deepest poverty. Let us think of these things. Let us beware of "grinding the faces of the poor." If the Jews of old were taught by the statutes and ordinances of the Mosaic economy, to entertain kindly feelings toward the poor, and to deal tenderly and graciously with the sons of toil, how much more ought the higher and more spiritual ethics of the Gospel dispensation produce in the hearts and lives of Christians a large-hearted benevolence toward every form of human need.
True, there in urgent need of prudence and caution, lest we take a man out of the honourable position in which he was designed and fitted to move - namely, a position of dependence upon the fruits, the precious and fragrant fruits, of honest industry. This would be a grievous injury instead of a benefit. The example of Boaz should instruct in this matter. He allowed Ruth to glean; but he took care to make her gleaning profitable. This is a very safe and a very simple principle. God intends that man should work at something or another, and we run counter to Him when we draw our fellow out of the place of dependence upon the results of patient industry, into that of dependence upon the results of false benevolence. The former is as honourable and elevating as the latter is contemptible and demoralising. There is no bread so sweet to the taste as that which is nobly earned; but then those who earn their bread should get enough. A man will feed and care his horses; how much more his fellow, who yields him the labour of his hands from Monday morning till Saturday night.
But, some will say, "There are two sides to this question." Unquestionably there are; and, no doubt, one meets with a great deal amongst the poor which is calculated to, dry up the springs of benevolence and genuine sympathy. There is much which tends to steel the heart, and close the hand; but, one thing is certain - it is better to be deceived in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred than to shut up the bowels of compassion against a single worthy object. Your heavenly Father causes His sun to shine upon the evil and on the good; and sendeth rain upon the just and upon the unjust. The sure sunbeams that gladden the heart of some devoted servant of Christ are poured upon the path of some ungodly sinner; and the self-same shower that falls upon the tillage of a true believer, enriches also the furrows of some blaspheming infidel. This is to be our model. "Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Matt. 5: 48) It is only as we set the Lord before us, and walk in the power of His grace, that we shall be able to go on, from day to day, meeting with a tender heart and an open hand every possible form of human misery. It is only as we ourselves are drinking at the exhaustless fountain of divine love and tenderness, that we shall be able to go on ministering to human need unchecked by the oft-repeated manifestation of human depravity. Our tiny springs would soon be dried up were they not maintained in unbroken connection with that ever-gushing source.
The statute which next presents itself for our consideration, exemplifies, most touchingly, the tender care of the God of Israel. "Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the Lord." (Ver. 14) Here, a barrier is erected to stem the rising tide of irritability with which uncontrolled nature would be almost sure to meet the personal infirmity of deafness. How well we can understand this! Nature does not like to be called upon to repeat its words, again and again, in order to meet the deaf man’s infirmity. Jehovah thought of this, and provided for it. And what is the provision? "Thou shalt fear thy God." When tried by a deaf person, remember the Lord, and look to Him for Grace to enable you to govern your temper.
The second part of this statute reveals a most humiliating amount of wickedness in human nature. The idea of laying a stumbling-block in the way of the blind, is about the most wanton cruelty imaginable; and yet man is capable of it, else he world not be warned against it. No doubt, this, as well as many other statutes, admits of a spiritual application; but that in nowise interferes with the plain literal principle set forth in it. Man is capable of placing a stumbling block in the way of a fellow-creature afflicted with blindness. Such is man! Truly, the Lord knew what was in man when He wrote the statutes and judgements of the Book of Leviticus.
I shall leave my reader to meditate alone upon the remainder of our section. He will find that each statute teaches a double lesson - namely, a lesson with respect to nature’s evil tendencies, and also a lesson as to Jehovah’s tender care.*
{*Verses 16 and 17 demand special attention. "Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people." This is a most seasonable admonition for the people of God, in every age. A talebearer is sure to do incalculable mischief. It has been well remarked that a talebearer injures three persons - he injures himself, he injures his hearer, and he injures the subject of his tale. this he does directly; and as to the indirect consequences, who can recount them? Let us carefully guard against this horrible evil. May we never suffer a tale to, pass our lips; and let us never stand to hearken to a talebearer. May we always know how to drive away a backbiting tongue with an angry countenance, as the north wind driveth away rain.
In verse 17, we learn what ought to take the place of tale bearing. "thou shalt in anywise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him." In place of carrying to another a tale about my neighbour, I am called upon to go directly to himself and rebuke him, if there is anything wrong. This is the divine method. Satan’s method is to act the talebearer.}
C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain MORAL UNCLEANNESS AND ITS PUNISHMENT. This being the subject…
MORAL UNCLEANNESS AND ITS PUNISHMENT. This being the subject of the three following chapters (chapters 18-20), they naturally form a sequence to chapters 11-17, which have dealt with ceremonial uncleanness and its purification. It is a remarkable thing that, except by implication in connection with the sin offerings and the trespass offerings and the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement, there has not yet been a single moral precept, as such, in the Book of Leviticus, and there has been very little recognition of sin as distinct from pollution. All has been ceremonial. But the ceremonial is typical of the moral, and from the consideration of ceremonial uncleanness and its remedy, we now proceed to the consideration of moral uncleanness and its penalty. It is to be noticed too that, while the ensuing laws are commanded as the positive injunction of God (verses 2, 30), which of itself is sufficient to give them their authority and force, they are still founded, like the ceremonial prohibitions, upon the feelings of repugnance implanted in the mind of man. To enter into the marriage relation with near relatives is abhorrent to a sentiment in mankind so widely spread that it may be deemed to have been originally universal, and the same abhorrence is entertained towards other foul sins of lust. Ugliness, which creates disgust by its ugliness, symbolizes sin; immorality, which inspires abhorrence by its immoral character, proves itself thereby to be sin. The section deals first with sin in the marriage relation, next with sexual impurities connected with marriage, then with other cases of immorality, and lastly with the penalties inflicted on these sins in their character of crimes.
Vers. 1-5 form an introduction to the Hebrew code of prohibited degrees of marriage and of forbidden sins of lust. The formal and solemn declaration, I am the Lord your God, is made three times in these five verses. This places before the people the two thoughts:
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1. That the Lord is holy, and they ought to be like him in holiness;
2. That the Lord has commanded holiness, and they ought to obey him by being holy. Because the Lord is their God, and they are his people, they are, negatively, to refrain from the vicious habits and lax customs prevalent in the land of Egypt wherein they dwelt, and in the land of Canaan whither they were going, the sensuality of which is indirectly condemned by the injunctions which command purity in contrast to their doings; and, positively, they are to keep God"s statutes, and his judgments, as laid down in the following code, which if a man do, he shall live in them. The latter clause is of special importance, because it is repeated in the same connection by Ezekiel, (Eze_20:11, Eze_20:13, Eze_20:21) and in the Levitical confession in the Book of Nehemiah, (Neh_9:29) and is quoted by St. Paul in a controversial sense. (Rom_10:5 Gal_3:12) Its full meaning is that by obedience to God"s commands man attains to a state of existence which alone deserves to be called true life life which connects him with Jehovah through his obedience" (Clark). And this involves the further truth that disobedience results in death. Accordingly, St. Paul uses the text as being the testimony of the Law with regard to itself, that salvation by it is of works in contrast with faith. (Cf. Luk_10:28) We have no evidence to tell us what were the doings of the land of Canaan in respect to the marriage relation, but this chapter is enough to show that the utmost laxity prevailed in it, and we may be sure that their religious rites, like those of Midian (Numbers 25), were penetrated with the spirit of licentiousness. With regard to the doings of the land of Egypt, we have fuller information. We know that among the Egyptians marriage with sisters and half-sisters was not only permissible, but that its propriety was justified by their religious beliefs, and practiced in the royal family (Died. Sic., 1:27; Die. Cass., 42). Other abominations condemned in this chapter (verse 23) also, as we know, existed there (Herod., 2:46), and if queens could be what in later times Cleopatra was, we may imagine the general dissoluteness of the people. Among Persians, Medes, Indians, Ethiopians and Assyrians, marriage with mothers and daughters was allowed, and from the time of Cambyses, marriage with a sister was regarded as lawful (Herod., 3:31). The Athenians and Spartans permitted marriage with half-sisters. All these concessions to lust, and ether unclean acts with which the heathen world was full (verse 22; Rom_1:27), were fallings away from the law of purity implanted in the heart of man and now renewed for the Hebrew people.
Vers. 1-18. The restraints thrown about marriage by God"s Law
are not meant to confine within the narrowest limits that which is a necessary evil, but to guard a holy institution, and prevent its being corrupted by abuse. Manichaeanism and asceticism, which is essentially Manichaean in its character, denounce the body and the bodily affections as being in themselves bad; stoicism strives to crush out or eradicate natural feelings, to make place for a passionless calm. God"s Law and the doctrine of the Church declare that it is the abuse, not the use, of the body that is wrong; and, like the better forms of philosophy, occupy themselves with regulating, controlling, ruling man"s passions, instead of vainly attempting to kill them. "Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge". (Heb_13:4)
I MARRIAGE WAS INSTITUTED AS THE PRIMEVAL LAW AT THE CREATION OF WOMAN. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth". (Gen_1:27, Gen_1:28) "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh". (Gen_2:23, Gen_2:24)
II PARALLEL BETWEEN THE MARRIAGE LAW AND THE SABBATICAL LAW.
1. The sabbatical law, in like manner as the marriage law, was instituted at the creation. (Gen_2:3)
2. Both laws took a special form for the patriarchal and Israelitish Churches.
3. In both cases an alteration was made by the authority of our Lord, the obligation of the laws still continuing as before. The form which the law of the sabbath took for the Jewish people may be seen in the seventh commandment and other Mosaic injunctions respecting the seventh day. The law of marriage likewise underwent a change from its original character, and instead of enjoining monogamy, it allowed polygamy; and "because of the hardness of men"s hearts," it permitted divorce for light causes. (see Mat_19:3-12) The manner of observing the sabbatical law was changed for Christians by the authority which cur Lord declared himself to possess for the purpose, (Mat_12:8) and which the constant habit of the earliest Christians, of assembling on the first day of the week and regarding it as the commemoration of the Resurrection day, proves him to have exercised. In like manner, he restored the law of monogamy, (Mat_19:8) and withdrew the license for divorce, except in the one case of adultery on the part of the wife. (Mat_19:9) In respect to the Levitical restraints on marriage he made no change, as is again proved to us by the universal recognition of these obligations on the part of the early Christians.
III ADDITIONAL SANCTITY WAS ADDED TO MARRIAGE BY CHRISTIANITY. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, St. Paul points out the analogy which exists between the relation of husbands to wives, and of wives to husbands, and the relation of Christ to the Church, and of the Church to Christ. "The husband is the head of the wife, ever as Christ is the head of the Church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church: for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church". (Eph_5:23-32) An inference has been drawn from these words that Christ instituted holy matrimony as a sacrament of the Christian Church. Such inference is altogether false. Marriage was not considered one of seven sacraments until the days of the Schoolmen; but the passage exhibits the holiness of marriage in a new light, and gives a new reason for its being regarded as holy. The "mystery" is the analogy which exists between married persons and Christ and the Church. St. Paul quotes the words of institution from the Book of Genesis, showing what a high estate matrimony is, and gives this further reason for its holiness, which had not previously been known to exist. Such a thought as this takes marriage out of the sphere of carnal things, refining, purifying, and sanctifying it in a manner not yet appreciated wherever celibacy is regarded as a higher and holier condition.
IV THE CAUSES FOR WHICH MATRIMONY WAS ORDAINED. "First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name. Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication. Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity" (Form of Solemnization of Matrimony). The third of these causes has been too often forgotten in the Christian Church, and the second has been too much dwelt upon; the consequence of which has been a low estimate of marriage, and therefore of woman. St. Paul"s words ought to show us that it is this characteristic which gives its Christian aspect to marriage.
V DUTIES OF HUSBANDS AND WIVES TOWARDS EACH OTHER. On the one side, love and protection; (Eph_5:25) on the other side, love and submission. (Eph_5:24, Eph_5:33)
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR Chapter 18Unworldliness.
Cf. Rom_12:2. The next element in the morality required of the Lord"s people is non-conformity to this world. We are such imitative creatures that we are prone to do as our neighbours do, without questioning the propriety of their conduct. Whenever we adopt the ordinary standard of life, without inquiring how it is related to the Divine standard, we are conforming to the worldly spirit. The worldly conduct may be much higher in one age than in another, and in one country than in another; but the essence of worldliness is unquestioning conformity to the standard of our neighbours.
In the present chapter we have a fearful picture of the morality, or rather immorality, of Canaan. It may be read in connection with Rom_1:18-32, as showing the depth to which unrestrained desire may descend. Not only do the Canaanites appear to have indulged in the most reckless licentiousness with nearest relatives, but also to have indulged in sodomy, and even to have descended to carnal intercourse with beasts. That is to say, they gave up their high vantage-ground as intellectual and moral beings, and descended to the level of brute beasts. (cf. 2Pe_2:12) We would require to go to the dark places of heathenism, which are still "full of the habitations of cruelty", (Psa_74:20) to find an exact parallel at present for Canaan. The progress of civilization has smoothed the surface of society, however little it may have touched its heart. But what we must notice is that the principle of worldly conformity may be just as active in our boasted civilization, as in the darkest haunts of heathenism.
I THE HIGHEST CIVILIZATION IS NO SUFFICIENT REASON FOR A CERTAIN LINE OF CONDUCT. The Israelites had been developed in Egypt, which was then at the head of civilization. It would be a very great temptation, therefore, to these liberated bondmen to walk according to the customs and ordinances of Egypt. They would be tempted to do many things on no higher ground than that they had seen them done in Egypt. No wonder, therefore, that the Lord admonishes them in these terms: "After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do" (verse 3).
And yet is not this exactly the position taken up by many at this hour? They do many things "on the very highest authority." The reason of the course, its moral value, is never thought of, but simply the precedent which can be produced for it. This spirit of" simian imitation" is worldliness pure and simple. The highest civilization is not necessarily moral, much less religious: why should I conform to the demands of a capricious code of laws, which may have no valid moral principle within them at all? God surely has not given us reflection and conscience to be ignored in such a way as this.
II PREVAILING CUSTOM IS NO SUFFICIENT REASON EITHER FOR A CERTAIN LINE OF CONDUCT. The Israelites, in coming into Canaan, would find the inhabitants the freest and easiest possible in the matter of morals. No restraint appears to have been put upon their passions. They did whatever was right in their own eyes. Their lusts were their law. Now, were the Israelites to go into the land in the "jolly-good-fellow" style, they would be popular at once. The entrance into Canaan would in such a case have been an easy and triumphal march. Conformity to prevailing custom would have made the immigration a God-send to the beastly inhabitants. It would have given novelty to their desires. Hence God warns his people in the words, "And after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances" (verse 3).
The snare of popularity prevails at present as powerfully as it did when Israel was about to enter Canaan. There is a great disposition with professedly religious people, "when at Rome, not to quarrel with the pope." Conformity to prevailing custom is a popular role to play. It costs nothing, except indeed the sacrifice of principle, and it gains in the worldly sense much. But no thinking mind imagines it is a rule of human conduct which will stand a moment"s consideration. Why should I yield to what may be a senseless and even an immoral custom, simply because it is a custom? I have not been endowed with reason for such an irrational result as this.
III WHEN MEN SACRIFICE THEIR MANHOOD TO WORLDLY CONFORMITY, THEY FIND EVENTUALLY THAT THEY HAVE TAKEN A SUICIDAL COURSE. The course of the Canaanites was a suicidal one. The land was spuing them out (verse 28). The selfish, lustful lives they led, the brutalities they practiced, became their scourge, and they were fading away. The same result is found among the heathen nations. The sacrifice of manhood to bestiality must pay the penalty of eventual extinction.
And though at first sight the operation of the principle may be retarded by the higher morale of civilization, there can be no doubt that the suicidal character of worldly conformity is a real experience. An individual loses mental as well as moral power, who conforms without question to the worldly customs of his time, and thus sacrifices his manhood. The easygoing, popular individual, who does this, that, and the other, for fear of being thought singular, is found to have very little strength of mind to begin with, and less every day he lives. In fact, nature is constructed upon the principle that the despised talent of manhood is forfeited when not employed, and there is a clear descent in the scale of being.
IV GOD HAS GIVEN US SUFFICIENTLY PLAIN STATUTES AND LAWS TO BE-INFORCE US IN OUR COMBAT WITH THE WORLD. "Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the Lord your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments; which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the Lord "(verses 4, 5). "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God". (Rom_12:2) Transformation, "transfiguration" (metamorfousye ; cf. Mat_17:2 Mar_9:2) as we might call it, that is, a bringing of ourselves into conformity to a Divine ideal; this is what unworldliness consists in. We do not cease to be worldly when we surrender half a dozen suspicious pleasures. We cease to be "worldly" only when we refuse to accept of the prevailing worldly standard as our law of life, and seek earnestly to know "what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.
And to help us to this God has not only given us a book so plain and practical upon matters of daily life that he that runs may read; but he has also embodied his ideal in the perfect manhood of his Son. We have simply to ask the question, "What would Christ, were he in our circumstances, do?" and instantly we are enabled to decide on an appropriate and an unworldly course of action. It is this manly rule of life to which we are called. To bow down to the customs of even the best society or the highest civilization without inquiring how these customs stand towards the Divine
Law, is to sacrifice our birthright of manliness for a mess of the rudest pottage. R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY J.A. MACDONALD Vers. 1-30. Abominable doings.
This chapter contains laws against abominations practiced by the heathen, together with reasons why they must be avoided by the people of God. Foremost amongst these reasons is
I THAT THEY ARE FORBIDDEN BY GOD. This is the highest reason, for:
1. He is the supreme Arbiter of men (verses 5, 6, 24): "I am the Lord.
(1) He is our Creator. His power over the work of his hands is absolute. It is our wisdom to confess this without gainsaying.
(2) He is our Governor. He has not abandoned his creation to mechanical laws. The providence of his intelligence is everywhere and ever active. This his people saw in the miracles of the Exodus.
(3) Moral beings are morally responsible to a God of holiness and truth. His will is law. It is truth. It is purity.
2. He is the covenant Friend of his people (verses 1, 4, 30): "I am the Lord your God.
(1) The covenant relationship is set forth in this declaration. It therefore suggests all the promises:, Blessings pertaining to this life; also to that which is to come. What glorious blessings!
(2) Gratitude is appealed to here. Love should constrain us. The obedience of love is the purest. It is most acceptable to God. It is most perfect; for the whole being is in it.
II THAT THE HEATHEN HAVE PRACTISED THEM.
1. They were the doings of the Egyptians (verse 3).
(1) The corrupt state of heart which prompted them, and which was aggravated by their repetition, was that from which the children of Israel suffered cruel and relentless persecutions and oppressions. The bitter experience they had of these abominations should lead them scrupulously to avoid them.
(2) If they had learnt to follow their vices, it is time to unlearn them, now that they have been delivered from Egypt. Providence furnishes men with opportunities favourable to repentance and reformation. We are answerable for these.
2. They were the doings of the Canaanites.
(1) Customs common to the heathen should be viewed with suspicion by the people of God. The practices of custom come to be called "ordinances" (see verse 3). Ordinances of man must not be confounded with ordinances of God.
(2) We need admonition here. It is easy to flow with the stream; difficult to stem the torrent. We must brace ourselves to this. We should look to God to nerve our resolution.
III THAT THE MATTER IS VITAL.
1. God leads his people into temptation.
(1) Thus he led his people into Egypt. Now he conducts them in amongst the Canaanites. "Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?". (see Isa_45:7 Amo_3:6)
(2) Yet is not God the Author of moral evil. Physical may exist apart from moral evil. Witness the afflictions of Job. (see also Joh_9:1-3)
(3) God leads men into temptation, not that they may fall into it, but that they may learn to resist it, and so form a strong moral character.
2. There is life in the Law to those who can keep it.
(1) In so far as it is fulfilled, it brings the benefits of a wise and good code. (Deu_4:8 Neh_9:13, 14 Psa_147:19, Psa_147:20)
(2) But who can so fulfill it as to ensure eternal life? No one. (see Luk_10:25-28 Rom_10:5)
(3) Therefore faith is declared to be the principle of justification. (Heb_2:14) Upon this Paul founds his reasoning. (Gal_3:10-14 Rom_1:16, 17 Php_3:9)
3. Ruin is denounced upon the transgressor.
(1) Faith is the principle of a true obedience. The transgressor of the Law denies his faith and comes under the curse (Heb_10:38 Deu_27:26 Jer_11:3)
(2) For his sake the land is cursed (verse 25). So defiled may it become as to be unfit for the tabernacle of God. The curse upon the ground for man"s sake came in the form of a deluge of water; it will yet come in a flood of fire. (Gen_3:17 Gen_5:29 2Pe_3:7)
(3) The transgressor is cut off from among his people. (verse 29; comp. 1Co_3:17) The abomination in which he is held is vigorously set forth under the figure of the land vomiting and spuing out its inhabitants (verses 25, 28). So were the Egyptians ejected. So were the ancient Canaanites. (see Gen_15:16 Rev_3:16) So in turn were the Israelites. (Eze_20:11, Eze_20:13, Eze_20:21) We should not be highminded, but fear. (Rom_11:19-21 Heb_4:11) "Lay the car of your faith to the gates of the bottomless pit, and hear the doleful shrieks and outcries of damned sinners, whom earth hath spewed out, and hell has swallowed, and tremble lest this be your portion at the last" (M. Henry). J.A.M.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON Vers. 1-4. Two aspects of sin.
There are many ways in which sin may be regarded. Directed by these words, we may look at it in
I ITS UGLY ASPECT AS SEEN IN HUMAN ILLUSTRATIONS. The children of Israel were warned to separate themselves in every way from "the doings of the land of Egypt" and from "the doings of the land of Canaan" (verse 3). These were to be a beacon to them; they were things to be hated and shunned. To those who had not been brought down themselves to the same low moral level, these doings would appear the shameful things they were base, corrupt, vile. It is well for us to glance at, though not to dwell upon, sin in its last and worst developments, in its final issues; to see and understand what it leads to and ends in. Look at intemperance, dishonesty, cruelty, cupidity, profanity, impurity, as these sins are seen in their full development and complete outworking; see how utterly vile and hideous they appear to those in whom any purity is left.
You would not resemble these; you start and shrink at the very thought of it; then do not move one inch down the smooth decline, do not take one step along "the primrose path of dalliance" with temptation. If we would keep well away from the beginnings of evil, we shall find a strong inducement to purity and honour by one thought of "the doings of the land" of impurity and shame.
II ITS EVIL ASPECT AS GATHERED FROM THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD. "I am the Lord your God... Ye shall not do... Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the Lord your God." These solemn and weighty words introduce the prohibition of various evil lusts; these unholy passions were not only to be loathed and shunned because of the shamefulness of them in themselves and because of the evil consequences they would entail, but also and chiefly because they were imperatively disallowed by God. "I am the Lord... ye shall not do these things," etc. God"s decisive disapproval is enough for us; it is final; it should be all-prevailing. For:
1. His sovereignty suffices, without further thought. He is "the Lord our God." Surely our Divine Creator, he from whom we came, in whom we live, without the continual exercise of whose power we should cease to be, to whom we owe all that we are and have, has sovereign right to decide concerning us, what things we may do and what things we shall shun. It is enough, it is more than enough, that the Lord our God says, concerning anything, "Ye shall not do it.
2. Nevertheless, there is the further thought that God knows best what is good and evil. He who made us, who "knows what is in man," who sees the end from the beginning, and knows what are the tendencies and issues of all things, can surely decide better than we can what are the desirable relations we should hold with our fellows; how near we may approach them; what may be our alliances and intimacies with them, etc.; which is the right and true path in which to walk.
3. And there is this additional thought that his Divine interest in us is equal to his Divine knowledge of us. We are sure that God will not deny us any really desirable thing; that he seeks our happiness and well-being; that if he limits our liberty or narrows our delights, it is purely because he is working out our true and lasting good.
Therefore, if we would not "condemn ourselves in those things which we allow", (Rom_14:22) we must not only shrink from those evils which show themselves in the "doings of the land" of ungodly men, but also consult the commandment of the Lord. We must ask ourselves what those actions and relations are which he has forbidden. We must remind ourselves of his sovereignty over us, his knowledge of us, and his good pleasure toward us; we must. also sedulously banish from our mind as well as put away from our life the evil thing to which we may be tempted. C.
HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD Vers. 1-30. Verse 3). And those who defer religious decision until a season of immunity from danger arrives, may tarry in vain. The wilderness has its lawless manners as well as the settled country. How necessary to be upon our guard lest we be corrupted by the customs of our neighbours! Happy the college, the mart, the home, that is less likely to contaminate than to purify!
II COMPLIANCE WITH THE LAWS OF GOD IS THE BEST PRESERVATIVE AGAINST IMITATING SINFUL CUSTOMS. He runs quickest away from evil who pursues the good in front of him. Simply to retreat from danger, backing from it, is a slow and insecure method. We want more than negative righteousness, we need positive fulfillment of holy commands to ensure us against adopting odious habits. It is not safe to take men as our patterns of behaviour. "Be ye imitators of God as beloved children," Egyptians and Canaanites were equally unfit to be followed. The Apostle Paul did not set up his own life as a model except in so far as he also imitated Christ. (1Co_11:1) Obedience is here described in three ways, as doing the judgments of God, keeping his ordinances, and walking therein (verse 4). Great is the privilege that moderns enjoy in having so many copies of God"s Word multiplied as to be easily accessible to all. Surely we ought to meditate therein day and night, that we may order our steps thereby.
III OBEDIENCE MAY BE STIMULATED BY REFLECTION.
1. Upon the right of God to issue commands. "I am Jehovah" is his claim to attention as the Fount of law, and a claim which no thoughtful mind should reject. The ever-living Almighty Holy One possesses in himself every attribute that demands our homage. To withhold it is to violate congruity, to act in a manner out of harmony with what fitness requires.
2. Upon our acceptance of his lordship over us. "I am the Lord your God." We have entered into covenant relationship with him, and we break the terms of agreement if we fail to keep his statutes. The plural form of "God" may, without forcing, be taken here to indicate that the Israelites had deliberately bound themselves to the one Jehovah as their "Gods," instead of the idols of the nations round. God is our Father, how shall we be disobedient children? our King, how can we act as rebellious subjects? our Lawgiver, how can we dare to transgress his commandments?
3. Upon the blessedness attained by observance of God"s statutes. "Which if a man do, he shall live in them." Man thought to increase his power by tasting forbidden fruit, but he lost his life, and only regained it in proportion as he returned to obedience. It is true that the impossibility of perfectly keeping the Law foreshadowed the necessity of another way of salvation, but according as the Israelites adhered to the Law in letter and spirit, so they experienced happiness and the favour of God, which is life indeed. We rejoice in the gospel plan of faith in Christ, not as making the Law inoperative, but as enabling us to fulfill its aim, to accomplish its real design sanctification of life; and therein delivered from thraldom, we enter upon the life eternal that comprehends all blessing. We listen to the Law now, not as if it were the stern prescription of a hard Taskmaster, but as the instruction of a loving, all-wise Friend, which the more closely we follow, the more prosperous our career will be. "Freely we serve, because we freely love. S.R.A.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Ye shall do My judgments
Lev_18:1-5
Ye shall do My judgments
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Safety in the observance of Gods laws
This preface of some is taken generally to concern all the laws of God; the observation whereof is ever the sure safety of a state public or private, for it is not the munition of walls, leagues, and alliance with foreign princes, largeness of confines, plenty of treasure, or such like, that preserve a commonwealth, but careful and diligent observation of public laws ordained of God for the good of man.
It is said that Lacedemon flourished whilst Lycurguss laws were observed: much more any commonwealth when Gods be kept. For what comparison betwixt mans laws and Gods? Demosthenes saith, It was the manner of the Loerenses, that if any man would publish and devise a new law he should put his neck into a halter ready to be put to death, if the law were not good, by which means they made men more careful to observe old and ancient, tried and known laws, than with busy heads to make new. Now what laws so old and so approved good as Gods laws? Ever, therefore, are they to be regarded and hearkened unto. Others take this preface particularly of these laws concerning marriage now following, that if they be carefully kept, a kingdom long flourisheth, and if not, soon ii cometh to a fearful fall. For so odious and abhorred of God is the unlawful mixture of man and woman that the Lord cannot long withhold great judgments. And thus much remember as you read them ever, that these laws do not concern the Jews only, as the ceremonial laws now spoken of and judicial did, but these laws belong to all men and women and to all succeeding times, being eternal, immutable, grafted by God in mans nature and given by Him for holiness sake. Note all the words well that God would not have them like either the Egyptians or Canaanites, and wish with me that there was a like law against our being like foreign nations near us, with ruffs dipped in the devils liquor called starch, Turkish heads, Spanish backs, Italian waists, &c., giving daily occasion to the mockers that say French nets catch English fools. (Bp. Babington.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain CHAPTERS 18, 19, and 20, by a formal introduction…
THE LAW OF HOLINESS: CHASTITY
Lev_18:1-30
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CHAPTERS 18, 19, and 20, by a formal introduction {Lev_18:1-5} and a formal closing, {Lev_20:22-26} are indicated as a distinct section, very commonly known by the name, "the Law of Holiness." As this phrase indicates, these chapters-unlike chapter 17, which as to its contents has a character intermediate between the ceremonial and moral law-consist substantially of moral prohibitions and commandments throughout. Of the three, the first two contain the prohibitions and precepts of the law; the third (chapter 20), the penal sanctions by which many of these were to be enforced.
The section opens (Lev_18:1-2) with Jehovahs assertion of His absolute supremacy, and a reminder to Israel of the fact that He bad entered into covenant relations with them: "I am the Lord your God." With solemn emphasis the words are again repeated, Lev_18:4; and yet again in Lev_18:5 : "I am the Lord." They would naturally call to mind the scene at Sinai, with its august and appalling grandeur, attesting amid earthquake and fire and tempest at once the being, power, and unapproachable holiness of Him who then and there, with those stupendous solemnities, in inexplicable condescension, took Israel into covenant with Himself, to be to Himself "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." There could be no question as to the right of the God thus revealed to impose law; no question as to the peculiar obligation upon Israel to keep His law; no question as to His intolerance of sin, and full power and determination, as the Holy One, to enforce whatever He commanded. All these thoughts-thoughts of eternal moment-would be called up in the mind of every devout Israelite, as he heard or read this preface to the law of holiness.
The prohibitions which we find in chapyrt 18 are not given as an exhaustive code of laws upon the subjects traversed, but rather deal with certain gross offences against the law of chastity, which, as we know from other sources, were horribly common at that time among the surrounding nations. To indulgence in these crimes, Israel, as the later history sadly shows, would be especially liable; so contagious are evil example and corrupt associations! Hence the general scope of the chapter is announced in this form (Lev_18:3): "After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their statutes."
Instead of this, they were (Lev_18:4) to do Gods judgments, and keep His statutes, to walk in them, bearing in mind whose they were. And as a further motive it is added (Lev_18:5): "which if a man do, he shall live in them"; that is, as the Chaldee paraphrast, Onkelos, rightly interprets in the Targum, "with the life of eternity." Which far-reaching promise is sealed by the repetition, for the third time, of the words, "I am the Lord." That is enough; for what Jehovah promises, that shall certainly be!
The law begins (Lev_18:6) with a general statement of the principle which underlies all particular prohibitions of incest: "None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness"; and then, for the fourth time, are iterated the words, "I am the Lord." The prohibitions which follow require little special explanation. As just remarked, they are directed in particular to those breaches of the law of chastity which were most common with the Egyptians, from the midst of whom Israel had come; and with the Canaanites, to whose land they were going. This explains, for instance, the fulness of detail in the prohibition of incestuous union with a sister or half-sister (Lev_18:9, Lev_18:11), -an iniquity very common in Egypt, having the sanction of royal custom from the days of the Pharaohs down to the time of the Ptolemies. The unnatural alliance of a man with his mother prohibited in Lev_18:8, of which Paul declared {1Co_5:1} that in his day it did not exist among the Gentiles, was yet the distinguishing infamy of the Medes and Persians for many centuries. Union with an aunt, by blood or by marriage, prohibited in Lev_18:12-14, -a connection less gross, and less severely to be punished than the preceding, - seems to have been permitted even among the Israelites themselveswhile in Egypt, as is plain from the case of Amram and Jochebed. {Exo_6:20} To the law forbidding connection with a brothers wife (Lev_18:16), the later Deuteronomic law, {Deu_25:5-10} made an exception, permitting that a man might marry the widow of his deceased brother, when the latter had died without children, and "raise up seed unto his brother." In this, however, the law but sanctioned a custom which-as we learn from the case of Onan {Genesis 38} -had been observed long before the days of Moses, both by the Hebrews and other ancient nations, and, indeed, even limited and restricted its application; with good reason providing for exemption of the surviving brother from this duty, in cases where for any reason it might be repugnant or impracticable.
The case of a connection with both a woman and her daughter or granddaughter is next mentioned (Lev_18:17); and, with special emphasis, is declared to be "wickedness," or "enormity."
The prohibition (Lev_18:18) of marriage with a sister-in-law, as is well known, has been, and still is, the occasion of much controversy, into which it is not necessary here to enter at length. But, whatever may be thought for other reasons as to the lawfulness of such a union, it truly seems quite singular that this verse should ever have been cited as prohibiting such an alliance. No words could well be more explicit than those which we have here, in limiting the application of the prohibition to the lifetime of the wife: "Thou shalt not take a woman to her sister, to be a rival to her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her lifetime" (R.V). The law therefore does not touch the question for which it is so often cited, but was evidently only intended as a restriction on prevalent polygamy. Polygamy is ever likely to produce jealousies and heart burnings; but it is plain that this phase of the evil would reach its most extreme and odious expression when the new and rival wife was a sister to the one already married; when it would practically annul sisterly love, and give rise to such painful and peculiarly humiliating dissensions as we read of between the sisters Leah and Rachel. The sense of the passage is so plain, that we are told that this interpretation "stood its ground unchallenged from the third century B.C. to the middle of the sixteenth century A.D." Whatever opinion any may hold therefore as to the expediency, upon other grounds, of this much debated alliance, this passage, certainly, cannot be fairly cited as forbidding it; but is far more naturally understood as by natural implication permitting the union, after the decease of the first wife. The laws concerning incest therefore terminate with Lev_18:17; and Lev_18:18, according to this interpretation, must be regarded as a restriction upon polygamous connections, as Lev_18:19 is upon the rights of marriage.
It seems somewhat surprising that the question should have been raised, even theoretically, whether the Mosaic law, as regards the degrees of affinity prohibited in marriage, is of permanent authority. The reasons for these prohibitions, wherever given, are as valid now as then; for the simple reason that they are grounded fundamentally in a matter of fact, -namely, the nature of the relation between husband and wife, whereby they become "one flesh," implied in such phraseology as we find in Lev_18:16; and also the relation of blood between members of the same family, as in Lev_18:10, etc. Happily, however, whatever theory any may have held, the Church in all ages has practically recognised every one of these prohibitions, as binding on all persons; and has rather been inclined to err, if at all, by extending, through inference and analogy, the prohibited degrees even beyond the Mosaic code. So much, however, by way of guarding against excess in such inferential extensions of the law, we must certainly say: according to the law itself, as further applied in Lev_21:1-4, and limited in Deu_25:5-10, relationship by marriage is not to be regarded as precisely equivalent in degree of affinity to relationship by blood. We cannot, for instance, conceive that, under any circumstances, the prohibition of the marriage of brothers and sisters should have had any exception; and yet, as we have seen, the marriage between brother and sister-in-law is explicitly authorised, in the case of the levirate marriage, and by implication allowed in other cases, by the language of Lev_18:18 of this chapter.
But in these days, when there is such a manifest inclination in Christendom, as especially in the United States and in France, to ignore the law of God in regard to marriage and divorce, and regulate these instead by a majority vote, it assuredly becomes peculiarly imperative that, as Christians, we exercise a holy jealousy for the honour of God and the sanctity of the family, and ever refuse to allow a majority vote any authority in these matters, where it contravenes the law of God. While we must observe caution that in these things we lay no burden on the conscience of any, which God has not first placed there, we must insist-all the more strenuously because of the universal tendency to license-upon the strict observance of all that is either explicitly taught or by necessary implication involved in the teachings of Gods Word upon this question. Nothing more fundamentally concerns the well being of society than the relation of the man and the woman in the constitution of the family; and while, unfortunately, in our modern democratic communities, the Church may not be able always to control and determine the civil law in these matters, she can at least utterly refuse any compromise where the civil law ignores what God has spoken; and with unwavering firmness deny her sanction, in any way, to any connection between a man and a woman which is not according, to the revealed will of God, as set before us in this most holy, good, and beneficent law.
The chapter before us casts a light upon the moral condition of the most cultivated heathen peoples in those days, among whom many of the grossest of these incestuous connections, as already remarked, were quite common, even among those of the highest station. There are many in our day more or less affected with the present fashion of admiration for the ancient (and modern) heathenisms, who would do well to heed this light, that their blind enthusiasm might thereby be somewhat tempered.
On the other hand, these laws show us, in a very striking contrast, the estimate which God puts upon the maintenance of holiness, purity, and chastity between man and woman; and His very jealous regard for the sanctity of the family in all its various relations. Even in the Old Testament we have hints of a reason for this, deeper than mere expediency, -hints which receive a definite form in the clearer teaching of the New Testament, which tells us that in the Divine plan it is ordained that in these earthly relations man shall be the shadow and image of God. If, as the Apostle tells, {Eph_3:15, R.V} "every family in heaven and on earth" is named from the Father; and if, as he again teaches, {Eph_5:29-32} the relation of husband and wife is intended to be an earthly type and symbol of the relation between the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church, which is His Bride, -then we cannot wonder at the exceedingly strong emphasis which marks these prohibitions. Everything must be excluded which would be incompatible with this holy ideal of God for man; that not only in the constitution of his person, but in these sacred relations which belong to his very nature, as created male and female, he should be the image of the invisible God.
Thus, he who is a father is ever to bear in mind that in his fatherhood he is appointed to shadow forth the ineffable mystery of the eternal relation of the only-begotten and most holy Son to this everlasting Father. As husband, the man is to remember that since he who is joined to his wife becomes with her "one flesh," therefore this union becomes, in the Divine ordination, a type and pattern of the yet more mysterious union of life between the Son of God and the Church, which is His Bride. As brothers and sisters, again, the children of God are to remember that brotherly love, in its purity and unselfish devotion, is intended of God to be a living illustration of the love of Him who has been made of God to be "the firstborn among many brethren". {Rom_8:29} And thus, with the family life pervaded through and through by these ideas, will license and impurity be made impossible, and, as happily now in many a Christian home, it will appear that the family, no less truly than the Church, is appointed of God to be a sanctuary of purity in a world impure and corrupt by wicked works, and, no less really than the Church, to be an effective means of Divine grace, and of preparation for the eternal life of the heavenly kingdom, when all of Gods "many sons" shall have been brought to glory, the "many brethren" of the First Begotten, to abide with Him in the Fathers house forever and ever.
After the prohibition of adultery in Lev_18:20, we have what at first seems like a very abrupt introduction of a totally different subject; for Lev_18:21 refers, not to the seventh, but to the second, and, therewith also, to the sixth commandment. It reads: "Thou shalt not give any of thy seed to make them pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God."
But the connection of thought is found in the historical relation of the licentious practices prohibited in the preceding verses to idolatry, of which this Molech worship is named as one of the most hideous manifestations. Some, indeed, have supposed that this frequently recurring phrase does not designate an actual sacrifice of the children, but only their consecration to Molech by some kind of fire baptism. But certainly such passages as 2Ki_17:31 Jer_7:31; Jer_19:5, distinctly require us to understand an actual offering of the children as "burnt offerings." They were not indeed burnt alive, as a late and untrustworthy tradition has it, but were first slain, as in the case of all burnt sacrifices, and then burnt. The unnatural cruelty of the sacrifice, even as thus made, was such, that both here and in Lev_20:3 it is described as in a special sense a "profaning" of Gods holy name, -a profanation, in that it represented Him, the Lord of love and fatherly mercy, as requiring such a cruel and unnatural sacrifice of parental love, in the immolation of innocent children.
The inconceivably unnatural crimes prohibited in Lev_18:22-23 were in like manner essentially connected with idolatrous worship: the former with the worship of Astarte or Ashtoreth; the latter with the worship of the he-goat at Mendes in Egypt, as the symbol of the generative power in nature. What a hideous perversion of the moral sense was involved in these crimes, as thus connected with idolatrous worship, is illustrated strikingly by the fact that men and women, thus prostituted to the service of false gods, were designated by the terms qadesh and qadeshah, " sacred," "holy"! No wonder that the sacred writer brands these horrible crimes as, in a peculiar and almost solitary sense, "abomination," "confusion."
In these days of ours, when it has become the fashion among a certain class of cultured writers-who would still, in many instances, apparently desire to be called Christian-to act as the apologist of idolatrous, and, according to Holy Scripture, false religions, the mention of these crimes in this connection may well remind the reader of what such seem to forget, as they certainly ignore; namely, that in all ages, in the modern heathenism no less than in the ancient, idolatry and gross licentiousness ever go hand in hand. Still, today, even in Her Majestys Indian Empire, is the most horrible licentiousness practised as an office of religious worship. Nor are such revolting perversions of the moral sense confined to the "Maharajas" of the temples in Western India, who figured in certain trials in Bombay a few years ago; for even the modern "reformed" Hindooism, from which some hope so much, has not always been able to shake itself free from the pollution of these things, as witness the argument conducted in recent numbers of the Arya Patrika of Lahore, to justify the infamous custom known as Niyoga, practised to this day in India, e.g., by the Panday Brahmans of Allahabad; -a practice which is sufficiently described as being adultery arranged for, under certain conditions, by a wife or husband, the one for the other. One would fain charitably hope, if possible, that our modern apologists for Oriental idolatries are unaccountably ignorant of what all history should have taught them as to the inseparable connection between idolatry and licentiousness. Both Egypt and Canaan, in the olden time, -as this chapter with all contemporaneous history teaches, -and also India in modern times, read us a very awful lesson on this subject. Not only have these idolatries led too often to gross licentiousness of life, but in their full development they have, again and again, in audacious and blasphemous profanation of the most holy God, and defiance even of the natural conscience, given to the most horrible excesses of unbridled lust the supreme sanction of declaring them to be religious obligations. Assuredly, in Gods sight, it cannot be a trifling thing for any man, even through ignorance, to extol, or even apologise for, religions with which such enormities are both logically and historically connected. And so, in these stern prohibitions, and their heavy penal sanctions, we may find a profitable lesson for even the cultivated intellect of the nineteenth century!
The chapter closes with reiterated charges against indulgence in any of these abominations. Israel is told (Lev_18:25, Lev_18:28) that it was because the Canaanites practised these enormities that God was about to scourge them out of their land; -a judicial reason which, one would think, should have some weight with those whose sympathies are so drawn out with commiseration for the Canaanites, that they find it impossible to believe that it can be true, as we are told in the Pentateuch, that God ordered their extermination. Rather, in the light of the facts, would we raise the opposite question: whether, if God indeed be a holy and righteous Governor among the nations, He could do anything else either in justice toward the Canaanites, or in mercy toward those whom their horrible example would certainly in like manner corrupt, than, in one way or another, effect the extermination of such a people?
Israel is then solemnly warned (Lev_18:28) that if they, notwithstanding, shall practise these crimes, God will not spare them any more than He spared the Canaanites. No covenant of His with them shall hinder the land from spueing them out in like manner. And though the nation, as a whole, give not itself to these things, each individual is warned (Lev_18:29), "Whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that do them shall be cut off from among their people"; that is, shall be outlawed and shut out from all participation in covenant mercies. And therewith this part of the law of holiness closes, with those pregnant words, repeated now in this chapter for the fifth time: "I am the Lord (Heb. Jehovah) your God!"
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Incestuous Marriages: Domestic Purity
Incestuous Marriages: Domestic Purity
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Lev_18:2.—Speak unto them and say, I am the Lord your God. Jehovah is the sole lawgiver, His word the one law to His people: ungodly customs and usages claim no heed from them: what He wills is absolute. Relationship to, and fellowship with God are based upon implicit obedience. There must be cheerful acceptance of His authority in all the details of life. Ethics are to be decided by the word divine, for who but “the Lord” should erect the standard of rectitude for man?
Lev_18:3.—After the doings of the land of Egypt. The Israelites dwelt amid a people of corrupt and debasing habits for so long a period that it was with difficulty they purged themselves from sympathy with familiar evils. They who enter upon the new life of grace in Christ Jesus find that their “old sins” follow close upon their steps and exert seductive influence. To “cast out the old leaven” is a necessity still, if we would enjoy the favours of our redeemed lot and our new-covenant relationships. What “Egypt” approved or “Canaan” practised may no longer regulate the godly life; but, What saith the Lord?
Lev_18:5.—He shall live in them. Social health and spiritual blessedness will always attend obedience to God’s just and benign “statutes.” Violation of the laws of humanity, the laws of rectitude and purity, bring physical decrepitude and social disaster.
Here note that these words form the basis of the Old Testament doctrine of salvation by works Obedience secures life—sacred and eternal life. These words are quoted by the prophet Ezekiel (Lev_20:11; Lev_20:13; Lev_20:21), and by the Apostle Paul (Rom_10:5; Gal_3:12.), as summarizing the teachings of Moses’ dispensation—the merits of works, justification by obedience. We, in gospel times, realise life through faith; salvation in Christ’s merits, and not in our own. Yet the beneficent law stands for ever: that observance of God’s law is salutory; for “life” is most truly realised now by those whose conduct is godly, and blessed rewards are assured hereafter to those who do those things which please the Lord.
Lev_18:6-18.—None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin. The prohibited cases of intercourse or marriage are: the son’s own mother, and consequently, by inference, the daughter’s own father (Lev_18:7); a stepmother, and, by inference, a stepfather (Lev_18:8); a full sister or half sister (Lev_18:9); a granddaughter (Lev_18:10); a half-sister (Lev_18:11); an aunt (Lev_18:12); an aunt by marriage (Lev_18:13-14); a daughter-in-law (v 15); a brother’s wife (Lev_18:16); a step daughter, and a step-granddaughter (Lev_18:17); polygamy is interdicted (Lev_18:18), the adding “a wife to her sister,” and this during the wife’s “lifetime.” The inference in each case carries prohibition also to the corresponding relationship: as e.g., half-brother (Lev_18:9); uncle (Lev_18:12); son-in-law (Lev_18:15), and so on throughout. Every marriage alliance is to be ruled by the initiatory definition (Lev_18:6), “Near of kin”; and the instances specified show this near kinship to include cases of consanguinity and also equally of marriage relationship. Let this interpretation be applied to the question of the “deceased wife’s sister.”
The important law running through all these regulations is: Fidelity in wedlock; scrupulous honour in the marriage relationship; the door is to be closed on all occasion of jealousy or illicit love. Home bonds are to be cherished as all too sacred and precious for passion or caprice to trifle with. God will have family obligations loyally and vigorously maintained.
Lev_18:19-23 Crimes against Purity. How shamefully vile humanity may become! What a gross being is he whom God pities and would save; and how low has he fallen whom Christ would lift up to sanctity and bliss!
Lev_18:24-30. The land is defiled. The well-being of a land depends on the morality of its inhabitants. National decay sets in when the people become abandoned. The records of national life, from ancient times till now, emphasise the precept, “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Pro_14:34).
SECTIONAL AND TOPICAL HOMILIES
Topic: UNACCOMMODATING GODLINESS (Lev_18:1-5)
“After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do; and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do,” etc.
Danger lurks in example; customs lure us from strict integrity; easy to fall in with prevailing habits, sentiments, ideas. With “men of this world” who have no disposition to “come out from among them, be separate, and touch not the unclean thing,” the current maxims and methods are accepted without challenge, they stream along with the flow of social life; they yield themselves unresistingly to the popular course.
Herein lies the distinction, the distinguishing element of piety; it refuses to allow custom to dominate either conscience or conduct.
I. WORLDLY SEDUCTIONS EVERYWHERE ENVIRON THE GODLY LIFE.
“After the doings of the land of Egypt, and after the doings of the land of Canaan.”
1. Ensuarements are not escaped by change of place. He who thinks to flee the world by exchanging “Egypt” for “Canaan,” will find the world still at his heels. To quit your gentle home for the cloister or the nunnery; to forsake one sphere of business for another in hope of fleeing the sanctioned malpractices of trade; to attempt to be “not of the world” by any process of mere exclusion and avoidance of places and people, is a fallacy; for evil is everywhere, in some guise or disguise; and from the snares of sin and the sanctions of impiety there is no hiding-place in “this present evil world.”
2. Ensnarements are not left behind with the advance of years Forty years were spent by the Israelites in the desert, between “Egypt” and “Canaan”; yet that distance of time would not liberate them from the seductions of worldliness. What they left behind them in “Egypt” they would meet again, in altered forms, in “Canaan,” when at length they reached that land. No Christian ever advances beyond the reach of evil and the subtleties of the world. What he had to fight with during his Egyptian life he will have to fight with all his career through. Time does not rid the godly of this seductive peril.
3. Ensnarements are not absent from coveted scenes of privilege. “Canaan” was the hope and desire of every Israelite. It was a “goodly land,” the inheritance of faith, the goal of pilgrimage. “Egypt” was a scene of bondage and grief, type of a sinner’s lot ere redeemed. But “Canaan” was suggestive of liberty, prosperity, privilege, symbol of the Christian life of sacred rest, freedom, and joy in the Lord. Yet even within “Canaan” the snares of sin would be encountered; no release from danger, a stern necessity to “watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation”; and this in most delightful and hallowed hours, amid spiritual favours and privileges. Even the happiest Christian life is encompassed about with “the sins that so easily beset us.” [See Addenda to chapter xviii., Custom.]
II. SANCTIONED IMPIETIES MUST BE EVERYWHEREE SHUNNED BY THE GODLY LIFE.
The Egyptians were the most civilised and majestic people of the age; and their “doings” and “ordinances” may represent the usages of society and culture: the customs of refinement and respectability. The Canaanites were a rude and unpolished people, easy and free; and their “doings” and “ordinances” answer to the popular maxims and habits, the pleasures and practices current among the less educated, the customs of the masses.
1. Wherever our place, whatever our station, godliness repudiates and renounces sin. Yes: and every form of sin; personal or social; secret or open; sanctioned or unpopular. The man of God loathes impurity, shuns impiety. Not fashioning himself to the standard of morals around him, he has “no fellowship with the unfaithful works of darkness, but rather reproves them.”
2. An accommodating conscience, and an obliging disposition, must be allowed no sanction in commerce with the world. “After their doings ye shall not do!” “Neither shall ye walk in their ordinances.”
And to my mind, tho’ I am a native here,
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honoured in the breach than in the observance.—Hamlet.
3. Amid prevailing error it is the business of godliness to show the right and good. What else is the significance of our Lord’s words: “Ye are the light of the world”; “ye are the salt of the earth”? It is neither convenient or advantageous to assume this attitude of resistance against the cherished “ordinances” of social, literary, or professedly religious life. But the Christian is among men with a divine business, to put wrong to the blush; to pronounce by his virtues against all vice, by his spirituality against all earthliness of soul, by his self-denials against all low indulgence, by his lofty worship against all dead formality or careless irreverence. Religion is the fearless yet beautiful exhibition of the
Piety, whose soul sincere,
Fears God, and knows no other fear.
III. AN INFLEXIBLE DIVINE STANDARD EVERYWHERE REGULATES THE GODLY LIFE.
1. The standard of divine relationship. “I am the Lord your God” (Lev_18:2). Israel’s “doings” were to take tone and character from this fact—their God was the Lord; He was theirs, and they His. Living under the influence of that solemn relationship, their conduct should harmonise with His perfections—“holy as He is holy.” It is the hourly obligation of the Christian, to “walk worthy of the Lord,” to “walk so as also He walked.”
2. The standard of divine teachings. God has told us His will; in precept and commandment we have our directory of conduct. His word is to be “a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.” None can err through lack of instruction. “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word.” This is the law for Israel everywhere: “Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein” (Lev_18:4).
3. The standard of divine claims. God’s ordinances were not imperious exactions; He deserved all He asked of Israel in return for His grace and love to them. Already they were, by His almighty arm, redeemed from “Egypt,” and they were journeying to “Canaan, whither I bring you.” They owed Him loyal obedience, loving regard, cheerful acquiesence. “What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits towards me?” “How much owest thou unto my Lord?” What claim on your life comes from His cross?
4. The standard of divine promise. “Keep my statutes, which if a man do he shall live in them” (Lev_18:5). Present gains and comforts, eternal life and bliss. For “godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come.” [See Addenda to chap. xviii., Religion.]
Topic: NONCONFORMITY TO THE WORLD
“After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do” (Lev_18:3).
Israel now under the drill and discipline of Jehovah. The pilgrimage through the wilderness to be a period of moral probation. Moral precepts now associated with positive commands. The need of this injunction seen from—
I. THE INHERENT PROPENSITY OF HUMAN NATURE TO WORLDLINESS. Indulgence of animal appetites, exclusive concern for present enjoyment, inclination to conform to prevailing customs, worldliness congenial, and therefore easy to our fallen nature; these things show the need for the call to nonconformity to the world.
II. THE EXALTED MISSION TO WHICH ISRAEL WAS CALLED. The nation was selected to be the repository of divine truth, the community among which Jehovah would specially display His goodness and glory. Israel was not to move with the evil stream of tendency making for unrighteousness, but to become singular, come out from the ungodly, and touch not the unclean thing. This, the true idea of a Church—drawn out, separated from the world. Christ taught that those who escape a worse than Egyptian bondage are to be known by the nonconformity to the world, separation from sin, “light of the world,” “salt of the earth,” “city set on a hill.”
To become thus peculiar and distinguished for holiness would require, on the part of Israel—as it does of Christians—(a) Deep rooted repugnance to sin; (b) resolute resistance of temptation; (c) prayer for divine assistance; (d) heroic struggles after self-conquest. To achieve victory over the world is life, to sustain defeat is death. While in the world, let us seek not to be of it. While not praying to be taken out of the world, we should pray to be kept from the evil.—F.W.B.
Topic: THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE
“If a man do, he shall live in them” (Lev_18:5)
The legislation to which Israel was expected to submit was not an arbitrary and despotic code of laws imposed to humble them and force them into subjection; but a government of righteousness that would secure the glory of God and, at the same time, the salvation of man. Jehovah entered into covenant with His people, and engaged to fulfil all His gracious promises, if only the conditions were secured upon which their fulfilment was made to hinge. The way of life and the way of death were set before the people; they were exhorted to embrace the former, warned to escape the latter. Punishment was annexed to disobedience, reward to doing well. Thus the world was taught through the Mosaic legislation—
I. THAT LIFE IS NOT AN IDLE DREAM. Time was not to be spent in self-gratification, or wasted in wanton wickedness. Life, though brief, and like a vapour, to be turned to something real, spent in doing the will of God. Life not a period for lounging or loitering, but for service, conflict, progress. It is the morning, the seed time of eternity; let us improve each golden opportunity, and remember whatsoever we sow that shall we reap,
We live in thoughts, not breath; in deeds, not years;
In feelings, not in figures on the dial:
We must count time by heart-throbs,
He most lives, who thinks most, feels the noblest,
Acts the best.
II. THAT MAN IS NOT A CREATURE OF CIRCUMSTANCES. Israel was not to be the victim of the environments of Egypt, from which they had just emerged; nor of the influences that would encircle them in the land towards which they were journeying. They were not to drift but to live—not to be moulded by circumstances, but conquer them, and leave the stamp of their piety and loyalty wherever they went. They had the faculty of reason, the prerogative of choice, were responsible for the use they made of the privileges they enjoyed. Though Jehovah commanded, He did not coerce, the people were left free to obey or rebel. With life attached to obedience, surely the people would be led to (a) resist every seduction to disobedience; (b) avoid every place, person, and thing that would suggest sin and incite to wrong doing; (c) covet above everything else the favour of the great king, who declared Himself, “I am the Lord your God.” Concerning the commandments of the gospel, in the language of its glorious Author, “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.”—F. W. B.
Topic: GOD’S HOLY NAME
“Neither shalt thou profane the Name of thy God” (Lev_18:21).
Peculiar solemnity attached to the divine name; it conveyed to the minds of the Hebrews ideas of the infinite greatness and glory of Jehovah’s nature. It was hedged in by special sanctity, and gave infinite importance and power to everything to which it was attached. The sacredness of the name of the Lord, and the command to keep it holy—
I. SHOWED HOW CLOSELY HE IDENTIFIED HIMSELF WITH HIS PEOPLE. He was one with them, called them into close fellowship, and His honour was bound up with their character and conduct. If Israel fell into sin and shame, Jehovah’s name was profaned.
II. SHOWED HOW IMMACULATELY PURE JEHOVAH IS. His name was emphatically holy and distinguished from all other names known in earth and heaven. The nature of Jehovah so transparently pure that every kind of evil, however trivial in appearance, was to be scrupulously avoided for His sake.
III. SHOWED HOW HEINOUS ALL SIN IS. Sin is odious and repulsive when we remember (a) Its brutish and fiendish influences; (b) how it defiles the perpetrator, and contaminates society; (c) how it brings punishment here and torment hereafter. But sin appears most abominable in its nature and awful in its consequences when regarded as an insult to the Almighty, a profanation of His holy name. Let us hate and forsake sin because God hates it; let us view it in the light of Gethsemane and Calvary. The love of Christ will not only conquer our selfishness, and constrain us to holy consecration, but make us hate and forsake every form of iniquity in thought, word, and deed. Life will not be the dragging out of a miserable existence, but a triumphant march to the heavenly Canaan, if we seek to become cleansed from all unrighteousness, and to “perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord.”—F. W. B.
Topic: CONJUGAL CHASTITY; OR, HOLINESS IN THE HOME (Lev_18:1-30)
In this chapter moral precepts are associated with ceremonial observances. The home life of Israel was to be kept pure, sexual intercourse to be righteously restricted. The people among whom Jehovah would dwell must be clean in their domestic habits, pure in their social relationship. The natives of Canaan became so addicted to the vices here interdicted that by a retributive providence they became exterminated. These statutes, being moral, are of perpetual obligation; were not destroyed, but fulfilled in the ethical teaching of Christ and His Apostles. The fire of divine anger against impurity burns with greater intensity in the New Testament than in the Old. Observe—
I. THAT THE SOCIAL AFFECTIONS OF HUMAN NATURE ARE PRONE TO BECOME WICKED AND WILD.
Man was made at first with social instinct and affections; therefore, it is “not good for him to be alone.” In the one help-meet made for him would be found congenial society, conjugal bliss. In the first family marriage relationships were entered upon among its own members, but as the race multiplied it was to the general advantage of families to marry out of their own circles, that the purity and unity of the race might be preserved. Bounds within which the affections might be indulged were divinely revealed, and the displeasure of the Almighty unmistakably announced against every infringement or perversion. The natural propensity to inordinate affection is confirmed (a) By history. Nations and individuls, mentioned in sacred and profane history, present sad proofs of the excesses into which social love will run when the reins are thrown upon the neck of lust. (b) By observation. In our own land and age, amid abounding religious advantages, and restraining influences of civilisation, what vice, immorality, conjugal unfaithfulness, and domestic impurity, abound! Deeds of infamy are done that the powers of darkness may blush to look upon, which the stern hand of the law and the sweet influence of the gospel are aiming to prevent and remove. (c) By experience. “When we would do good evil is present with us,” and the most invincible enemy we have to contend with in our hearts is the Goliath of lust. Our animal passions are our “body of death,” that often wrings from us the doleful exclamation, “O wretched man that I am.” Pure Platonic love is a splendid but Utopian idea. The best of men have found it necessary to watch carefully the issues of life, to keep the body under subjection, lest passions intended to play honourably become prolific sources of corruption and misery.
II. THAT GOD HAS THEREFORE PROMULGATED SUITABLE LAWS TO RESTRICT THE SOCIAL AFFECTIONS OF HUMAN NATURE.
The springs of national purity are in the homes of the people; when the home life is corrupt the knell of a nation’s greatness is tolled by the hand of doom. Expediency, conscience, and self-love might, in some instances, suggest restrictions in the indulgence of sensuous affection; but nothing short of such regulations as those here enjoined could effect the desirable end. And these regulations were enforced with great authority—on the ground of Jehovah’s sovereignty and holiness, “I am the Lord your God.” From such an authority there could be no appeal, for it respect and obedience would be demanded. Thus, all incest and unchastity were (a) detestable to Jehovah; (b) an outrage upon human nature; (c) incompatible with man’s physical, mental, and moral well-being; (d) in antagonism to the laws and forces of the universe. These statutes exhibit the wisdom and goodness of our great Creator; that as a holy and righteous Father He cares for the best interests of His children by wedding holiness and happiness in indissoluble union. Having made man, He knew what was in him, what was best for him; being his natural and moral governor He could justly impose what prohibitions He saw fit.
III. THAT THOSE LAWS DEMAND IMPLICIT OBEDIENCE FROM ALL WHO KNOW THEM
Whether positive or moral, divine precepts ought to be obeyed, for (a) they are all sovereign. Emanate from the King of kings, from the Source of all authority and power. God has absolute right to command or restrain. (b) They are all humane. Everything interdicted would be good for man to shun, for vice is cruel, degrading and filthy. (c) They are all salutary. The Individual, the Family, the Church, the State, all made healthy, pure and strong by avoidance of every species of immorality, by the practice of moral virtues.
(1) To keep these divine commandments was life. They tended to prolong his life, make it worth living, secure the favour of the Almighty, which is better than life.
(2) To break them was death. Those who indulged in corrupt heathenish habits would be cut off from among the people. Immorality debases, deteriorates, and entails death. Let but the divine laws regarding purity be rigidly observed, the social fabric of a nation will rest upon a rock; neglected, it will sink into the mire of corruption, into the pit of oblivion. To go on in sin that grace may abound is a foul heresy, injurious to man, detestable to God. The gospel gathers up the teachings of the law and the prophets, and shows that “to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.”—F. W. B.
ILLUSTRATIVE ADDENDA TO CHAPTER 18
CUSTOM:
“Man yields to custom, as he bows to fate,
In all things ruled—mind, body, and estate.”
—CRABBE.
“Custom calls me to’t:—
What custom wills, in all things should we do it?”—Coriolanus, II. 3.
“New customs
Tho’ they be never so ridiculous,
Nay, let them be unmanly, yet are followed.”
—Henry VIII., I. 3.
RELIGION:
“The body of all true religion consists, to be true, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections”—BURKE.
“Piety, like wisdom, consists in the discovery of the rules under which we are actually placed, and in faithfully obeying them.”—FROUDE.
“Life and Religion are one, or neither is anything. I will not say neither is going to be anything. Religion is no way of life, no show of life, no observances of any sort. It is neither the food nor medicine of being. It is life essential.”—GEO. MACDONALD.
“A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.”—MADAME DE STAEL.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain Subdivision 1. (Lev 18:1-30; Lev 19:1-37; Lev 20:1-27.)
Subdivision 1. (Lev 18:1-30; Lev 19:1-37; Lev 20:1-27.)
Precepts for the whole people.
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1. The first section takes up what is fundamental to all relationship, from which duty arises to one’s neighbor. Relations of sex are the foundation of the family, as the family is the foundation of the state. The order is therefore perfect, as all Scripture is. The links thus formed are the strongest that exist amongst men naturally, and in their violation lead to the worst confusion.
(1) We have here first the exhortation to obedience; a law given in which is life. Of this naturally there can be no just question. Men’s vices are physically their destruction, and rob human life of all that makes it worthy of the name: "My son, forget not My law, but let thine heart keep My commandments: for length of days, and years of life, and peace shall they add to thee. . . . Fear the Lord, and depart from evil: it shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones" (Pro 3:1-2; Pro 3:7-8). It must of necessity be so, if God be over all, and the "Lord’s eyes are over the righteous."
(2) In the next place, we find the limit imposed upon marriage in regard to blood-relationship. Here abundant reasons evidence that character of the divine law which has been announced above. The laws of heredity show that in a fallen race, the inheritance of disease to which all are liable is intensified where similar tendencies are found in both parents. In the need also of looking outside the circle of near relationship for partners, the selfishness of man finds a divine restraint, and the bonds which unite man with man at large are strengthened and multiplied. Besides which the intimacies of the home and family are guarded from abuse.
(3) Thirdly, impurities apart from the question of marriage are denounced, -confusions and abominations of which man can easily nevertheless be guilty, and of which in fact the heathen world was full.
(4) For these sins the land to which they were going was casting out its inhabitants; and they are warned that for such things if practiced, it would cast out them also. God’s righteousness is equal to all His creatures and Israel, now cast out of their land, are witnesses to it.
2. The nineteenth chapter shows the duties flowing from covenant-relationship: "I am Jehovah," fifteen times repeated, is the declaration by which every commandment is enforced. Fellowship with a holy God must be in holiness: "Ye shall be holy; for I Jehovah your God am holy."
There is a mingling together of various conditions which have for most forbidden attempt to divide the chapter into sections and where this has been made it is very little satisfactory. May there not be for us in this the lesson that the law as a whole is a web so woven as not to admit of separation, even as the righteousness it enjoins, if fulfilled, would be like the priest’s robe, woven without seam. There was but One who ever wore on earth this beauteous covering.
3. Then in the twentieth chapter we have the penalties by which the law just given is sealed, or actualized as law, for a law without penalty is none at all. The three divisions of the chapter are plain enough, but I cannot go more deeply into them.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain Law of Forbidden Degrees of Marriage, and of Chastity
Law of Forbidden Degrees of Marriage, and of Chastity
3. Some of the unions here forbidden as incestuous were permitted among the nations of antiquity. The early Egyptians, e.g. permitted marriage with a full sister. Abraham married his half-sister (Gen_20:12), a practice here forbidden (Lev_18:9, Lev_18:11). 6. Uncover their nakedness] i.e. marry.
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8. Father's wife] This is not the same as 'mother' in the previous v. so that polygamy is here presupposed. It was common, perhaps universal, in the East at the time of Moses. The Mosaic Law did not seek all at once to abolish polygamy, which might have been the occasion of great hardship in the circumstances. But it certainly discouraged it, and by regulating and restraining it prepared the way for its gradual extinction: cp. the remarks on slavery among the Hebrews at Exodus 21.
16. This law was not absolute, the so-called levirate marriage, or marriage with the widow of a deceased brother, being not only permissible but almost compulsory: see on Deu_25:5.
18. In her life time] This implies that after the death of the first wife a man might marry her sister. It is not a law against polygamy but only against a special form of it, viz. marrying two sisters. The restriction is professedly made in the interests of domestic peace and happiness. For to vex her RV reads, 'to be a rival to her': cp. the case of Leah and Rachel, the wives of Jacob, who were sisters (Genesis 29, 30).
21. Cp. Lev_20:1-5. Molech] ('king') the firegod of the Ammonites and Canaanites, and especially of the Phœnicians, to whom children were sacrificed in burnt-offering. Pass through the fire] see 1Ki_11:5-7; 2Ki_3:27; 2Ki_23:10; 2Ch_33:6; Jer_7:31; Jer_32:35. The idea underlying child sacrifice is probably that of propitiating the deity by offering the most valued possession: see 2Ki_3:27, and cp. the case of Abraham and Isaac (Gen_22:12). The penalty of this most inhuman form of worship was death by stoning: see Lev_20:2. It should be observed that the exact meaning of the expression 'pass through the fire' is uncertain. The rite may have been a kind of ordeal by which it was sought to ascertain the mind of the deity by observing whether the child passed through the fire unscathed or not.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain 1. Different Unholy Relationships
V. PRACTICAL HOLINESS IN DAILY LIFE
1. Different Unholy Relationships
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CHAPTER 18
1. Separation and obedience (Lev 18:1-5)
2. Unholy relationships (Lev 18:6-18)
3. Vile and abominable practices (Lev 18:19-23)
4. Judgment threatened (Lev 18:24-30)
This section of Leviticus contains the words of Jehovah addressed to His people, whom He had redeemed and in whose midst He dwelt. They are to be a holy people. About thirty times in this section we find the solemn word “I am Jehovah. Ye shall be holy: for I, Jehovah your God, am holy.” This is Jehovah’s calling for His people. Four times in the beginning of this chapter the Lord tells His people “I am Jehovah” (verses 2, 4, 5 and 6). His name was upon them and therefore they are to manifest holiness in their life and walk. This demand and principle is unchanged in the New Testament, in the covenant of grace. His people are exhorted to walk “as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance, but as He, who hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written, Be ye holy for I am holy” (1Pe 1:14-16). Brought nigh by blood, knowing the blessed relationship into which Grace of God has brought us, our solemn duty is to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God. The Spirit of God, the Spirit of holiness and power, is bestowed upon us that we can walk in the Spirit and fulfill not the lusts of the flesh. Israel was not to walk after the doings of the land of Egypt which they had left, nor after the doings of the land of Canaan whither they were going. And the church is told the same thing in the New Testament. “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness through greediness” (Eph 4:17-19).
And Jehovah’s words reveal all the degradations and vile abominations human nature, the nature of sin and death, is capable of. He is the searcher of hearts and Jehovah only can sound the depths of the desperately wicked heart of man. The incestuous relationships against which the Lord warns were commonly practised among the Gentiles. These unholy impure things are still common in the world, not alone among the heathen, but also in the so-called civilized world. The laxity of the marriage laws, divorces and other evils in the same line are the curse of our age. Polygamy is forbidden in verse 18. All that would destroy the sanctity of the family and bring in abuse is solemnly warned against and forbidden. In the New Testament the Spirit of God emphasizes the absolute purity of the family relation and how the Christian family is to be a witness of the holiness and love of Jehovah to make known the mystery of Christ and the church (Eph 5:22-32).
Molech worship is forbidden. Read 1Ki 5:7; 2Ki 23:10; Jer 32:35; Jer 7:31; Jer 19:5). The awful worship of Molech is described in these passages. The most unnatural crimes and vile things mentioned in verses 22-23 were connected with the idolatries of the nations which surrounded Israel. These things were practised in Egypt and in Canaan. Rom 1:18-32 gives the inspired history of the degradation of the Gentile world. Idolatry and moral degradation always go together. The fearful road of the apostasy in Christendom is no exception. Rejection of God’s revelation leads into idolatry (not necessarily idols of wood and stone) and moral declension. The days of Lot, the grossest licentiousness of Sodom, are predicted to precede the coming of the Son of man (Luk 17:26-32).
A solemn warning concludes this chapter. The inhabitants of Canaan were to be cast out on account of their vileness. Jehovah would not spare His people if they practised these things. They did commit all this wickedness. Israel cast out of the land, the homeless wanderer bears witness to the fulfillment of this solemn warning.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain Unlawful Marriages
Unlawful Marriages
v. 1. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
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v. 2. Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them, I am the Lord, your God. Because the Lawgiver was Jehovah God, the covenant God, therefore the observance of these laws was a matter of covenant obligation.
v. 3. After the doings of the land of Egypt wherein ye blood shall ye not do, and after the doings of the land of Canaan whither I bring you shall ye not do; neither shall ye walk in their ordinances. The children of Israel were absolutely to avoid all practices, whether they were of Egyptian or Canaanitish origin, which desecrated the marriage relation or showed immorality in any form. The propagation of the human race is to take place in lawful wedlock only, and unlawful marriages, illegal sexual intercourse, and degenerate lusts are an abomination to the Lord.
v. 4. Ye shall do My judgments and keep Mine ordinances to walk there in; I am the Lord, your God. His authority, as the only true God, was absolute.
v. 5. Ye shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, both those precepts which concerned them only, as the people of the Lord in a peculiar sense, and the ordinances which were natural laws, and which all men should recognize as binding upon them, also the Egyptians and Canaanites; which if a man do, he shall live in them, for a perfect keeping of the Law will have the enjoyment of eternal life as its reward, Luk 10:28; I am the Lord.
v. 6. None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness; I am the Lord. The literal translation is: "Any man at all, to any flesh of his flesh shall he not come near to uncover shame. " That is the fundamental rule: Sexual intercourse, the peculiar relation which is characteristic of the married state and is absolutely prohibited outside of holy wedlock, should not take place within the second degree of relationship, whether by blood (consanguinity) or by marriage (affinity).
v. 7. The nakedness of thy father or the nakedness of thy mother shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. This refers to a man’s own, natural mother.
v. 8. The nakedness of thy father’s wife, the stepmother, thou shalt not uncover; it is thy father’s nakedness.
v. 9. The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father or daughter of thy mother, that is, the half-sister, whether she be born at home or born abroad, that is, in a former marriage, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover.
v. 10. The nakedness of thy son’s daughter or of thy daughter’s daughter, of the granddaughter, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover; for theirs is thine own nakedness, intercourse with them would be equivalent to violation of the offender’s own flesh.
v. 11. The nakedness of thy father’s wife’s daughter, begotten of thy father, the daughter of a man’s stepmother and his natural father, his half-sister by a second marriage: she is thy sister, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.
v. 12. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s sister, that is, his full sister, the man’s aunt; she is thy father’s near kinswoman, by blood-relationship.
v. 13. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother’s sister; for she is thy mother’s near kinswoman.
v. 14. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s brother, of an uncle by blood-relationship; thou shalt not approach to his wife; she is thine aunt. This has been looked upon as an extension of the general rule, but since husband and wife are looked upon as one flesh, the principle will apply also in this case, where the honor of the uncle would be violated by intercourse.
v. 15. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter-in-law; she is thy son’s wife; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.
v. 16. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife, of the sister-in-law;it is thy brother’s nakedness. This prohibition was intended only for such cases in which the brother had left children; for if the brother died childless, the so-called levirate marriage was ordered, Deu 25:5-10.
v. 17. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, who in this event would become the stepdaughter, either at the same time or in successive marriages; neither shalt thou take her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter, the step-granddaughter, to uncover her nakedness; for they are her near kinswomen; it is wickedness.
v. 18. Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, one wife to another, in the relationship known as bigamy, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time. Any violation of the original rule of God, which provided for only one man and one woman in holy wedlock, is bound to result in disagreeable features, even if the Lord did consent to such marriages in the Old Testament.
v. 19. Also thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness, for carnal intercourse, as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness, whether during the menstrual period, or during a prolonged flow, or during the weeks of uncleanness after childbirth.
v. 20. Moreover, thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbor’s wife, as spoken of Leviticus 15-18, in the sin of adultery, to defile thyself with her, for this was a transgression which was to be punished by stoning both the man and the woman. Lev 20:12; Deu 22:22; Joh 8:5. Thus the Lord regulated the sexual life of the children of Israel.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0
translationWords
Yahweh
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Moses
people group
Israel
God
Egypt
life
Canaan
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 18:1–20:27 Chapters 18 and 20 primarily discuss sexual matters,…
18:1–20:27 Chapters 18 and 20 primarily discuss sexual matters, warning against engaging in pagan practices both religious and secular. These chapters bracket exhortations to pursue holiness in everyday life (ch 19).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.