Leviticus18chapter 18

Leviticus 18:6-8

Verse 6 is the heading, and everything through verse 18 works it out. The Hebrew behind close relative is she'er besaro, the remnant of his flesh, so the stated ground of the law is shared flesh. The Babylonian Talmud, formed around 500 AD, records at Megillah 31a that this chapter is the synagogue reading for the afternoon of the Day of Atonement.

Albert Barnes suggests the joining word can be read as even, so the nakedness of father and mother is one nakedness. He grounds this in Genesis 2:24, where husband and wife are one flesh. He adds that the prohibitions are addressed to men.

Verse 7 has covered the man's mother, so the father's wife here is another wife of his father. Albert Barnes points to Reuben at Genesis 49:3 and 49:4, and to 1 Corinthians 5:1, where Paul confronts a church over a man living with his father's wife. The case reappears in both Testaments.

The sister is covered twice, by blood at verse 9 and by household at verse 11, and verse 10 gives a reason where most of the list gives none. Verse 9 reaches a half sister born at home or elsewhere, which takes in Sarah at Genesis 20:12, daughter of Abraham's father though not of his mother. The law came at Sinai, centuries after the patriarchs, and Genesis stands as written.

Both aunts are named, the father's sister and the mother's sister, each a blood relation one generation above him. Exodus 6:20 says that Amram took Jochebed his father's sister to wife, and Moses is the son of that marriage. The man who carries this law down the mountain is the child of a union it forbids, and the text records both facts and reconciles neither.

Leviticus 18:14-16

These three are relations by marriage, the uncle's wife, the son's wife and the brother's wife, and none of them shares his blood. Judah and Tamar at Genesis 38 is the case of verse 15, and Deuteronomy 25:5 sets a named exception beside verse 16 for a brother who died childless. John the Baptist applies verse 16 to Herod at Mark 6:18, and it costs him his head.

John Gill reads the rule as binding both while the son lives and after his death. The son's wife is one flesh with the son, and the son is of the father's flesh and blood. So the tie holds after the marriage ends.

Albert Barnes and Adam Clarke read the rule as bounded by the childless case, so a widow without children was to be taken by the brother. Matthew Henry holds that the exception served Israel's commonwealth only. Once that ended, he says, the rule stands without exception.

Leviticus 18:17-18

Verse 17 forbids a woman and her daughter together and calls it "depraved", a verdict the list rarely gives. Adam Clarke reads verse 18 as forbidding two sisters while the first is alive, pointing to Leah and Rachel in Genesis 29 and 30. The margin reads one wife to another, which would reach polygamy itself, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown report both readings and settle neither.

Albert Barnes gives the literal sense of the word behind rival as to bind or pack together. John Wesley reads the verse against a motive, taking a second wife in order to vex or punish the first. The limit is the first wife's lifetime.

Leviticus 18:19-20

Verse 19 turns the law on a man and his own wife during the separation of Leviticus 15:19, and verse 20 turns it on his neighbor's wife. Ezekiel 22:10 and 22:11 charge Jerusalem with these two offences side by side, and Ezekiel 18:6 lists both among what a righteous man leaves alone. A prophet writing centuries later reads this chapter as a charge sheet.

John Gill and Adam Clarke both read this verse with the seventh commandment at Exodus 20:14. Gill draws attention to the word defile. The adulterer stains himself, and Gill cites Proverbs 6:32 for a blot on his name that is never wiped away.

Molech occurs here for the first time in Scripture, set in the middle of the sexual law with no transition, and the offence named is against the name of God. Adam Clarke lists two readings, a child burned as a sacrifice or a child led between two fires as a dedication. Leviticus 20:2 through 20:5, 2 Kings 23:10 and Jeremiah 32:35 show the practice running on in Israel for centuries.

Leviticus 18:22-23

Two verdicts close these verses, abomination at verse 22 and confusion at verse 23. The word rendered confusion is tebel, and it occurs once more in Scripture, at Leviticus 20:12. It carries the sense of a mixture of things that belong apart, which is the objection Leviticus 19:19 makes to a field sown with mingled seed. Romans 1:26 and 1:27 take up verse 22, and Leviticus 20:13 and 20:15 attach the penalties.

The verse names a woman as the one who acts, the only clause in the chapter to do so. Adam Clarke ties the practice to Egypt and cites Herodotus as a witness to a case there. Matthew Henry says these sink people lowest.

Leviticus 18:24-25

The ground of the conquest stated here is the conduct of the nations. Genesis 15:16 held Abraham's descendants back four hundred years until the iniquity of the Amorites was full, and Deuteronomy 9:5 says Israel enters because of the wickedness of those nations. Adam Clarke calls verse 25 a personification, the land given a moral sense so sharp that it sickens and will "vomit out its inhabitants".

The land itself is punished. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the removal of the Canaanites as a judicial sentence from a ruler whose laws had been long outraged. Matthew Henry compares the land's disgust to Lot's grief over the wickedness of Sodom.

Leviticus 18:26-28

The threat turns on Israel: the land "will vomit you out as it spewed out the nations before you". Leviticus 25:23 gives the reason, that the land is God's and Israel are foreigners and residents with him, and the rule binds native and foreigner alike. Second Kings 17:7 and 17:8 report the northern kingdom carried away for walking in the customs of the nations the LORD drove out.

The verse restates verse 24 as settled history, spoken to a people who have yet to enter the land. Matthew Henry marks a turn in these chapters. After ceremonial rules, God returns to moral precepts, which Henry holds binding still while the ceremonial ones remain as types.

The verse sets a past act beside a future threat. The land spewed out the nations and will vomit Israel out on the same terms. Matthew Henry carries the image past the land, to sinners whom the earth has cast out and hell has swallowed, and reads it as a warning against sin.

Leviticus 18:29-30

The penalty is to be cut off from among his people, which commentators read as civil execution, exclusion from the congregation, or a judgment God carries out himself. The Mishnah, compiled about 200 AD, opens tractate Kerithot by counting thirty-six transgressions with this penalty, most of them from this chapter. Verse 30 calls them "abominable customs", answering the customs of verse 3, and closes on the words of verse 2.

Matthew Henry reads the charge as a guard. Admitting one sinful custom, he warns, opens the way to many, so steady keeping of God's ordinances is the best protection. Adam Clarke says the same of worship, that one who goes no farther than what is written is unlikely to take up a false creed.