Leviticus19chapter 19

Leviticus 19:1-2

The command is given to all the congregation of the children of Israel, so what follows falls on farmers, traders and judges rather than on the priesthood alone. Ye shall be holy occurs three times in the book, at 11:44, here, and 20:26, and 1 Peter 1:16 quotes it into the church as be ye holy, for I am holy. The ground offered is the character of the speaker, and the chapter will give that same ground fifteen more times before it ends.

Leviticus 19:3-4

Three commands of the ten stand in these two verses, and the first of them is turned around. Exodus 20:12 reads honour thy father and thy mother, and here it is fear every man his mother, and his father, with the mother named first and fear standing where honour stood. The word rendered idols in verse 4 is elilim, which Adam Clarke renders as nothings, and 1 Corinthians 8:4 says that an idol is nothing in the world. Both verses close on I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 19:5-8

A rule about sacrifice sits in the middle of a chapter about neighbours. The peace offering is eaten on the day it is offered and on the morrow, what remains to the third day is burnt, and eating it then makes the whole offering abominable and unaccepted. Matthew Henry reads that as an offering made according to the law and then lost by what the offerer did afterwards. The verses on theft and lying that follow name no penalty at all, and this one names bearing iniquity and being cut off from among his people.

Leviticus 19:9-10

The corners of the field and the fallen grapes belong to the poor and the stranger, and the law appoints nobody to hand them over. The owner leaves the produce standing and the poor come and take it themselves, which is the arrangement Ruth 2 runs on when a Moabite widow gleans behind the reapers of Boaz. Leviticus 23:22 repeats the rule inside the feast calendar and Deuteronomy 24:19-21 extends it to the olive tree and the vineyard. The stranger is named beside the poor, and the verse closes on I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 19:11-12

The commands run in the order a fraud actually happens. A man steals, deals falsely to cover it, lies to the man he took from, and by verse 12 he is swearing by the name of God to close the argument. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the passage as aimed at the small and little thought of vices of ordinary business rather than at great crimes. The false oath is the one act here that the text calls a profaning of the name of thy God.

Leviticus 19:13-14

The day labourer is paid before nightfall because that money is the evening meal, and Adam Clarke puts it exactly there, that the wage supports the man and his family as fast as it is earned. James 5:4 takes the rule up and says the hire kept back crieth, and Deuteronomy 24:15 gives it with the reason that he setteth his heart upon it. Verse 14 names two crimes the victim cannot detect, since a deaf man does not hear the curse and a blind man does not see what was laid in his path. The enforcement offered is but shalt fear thy God, so the law is written for the cases where no witness exists, and the word stumblingblock occurs here for the first time in Scripture.

Leviticus 19:15-16

Partiality is forbidden in both directions, toward the poor man and toward the mighty one, so pity is named as a way of judging wrongly alongside fear. The word talebearer occurs here for the first time in Scripture. Verse 16 sets the man who carries stories beside the man who stands against the blood of his neighbour, which the older commentators read as conspiring against a life or bearing false witness where a life is at stake.

Leviticus 19:17

The command reaches inside a man, because hatred in the heart is forbidden here where no act has followed it. The remedy the verse gives is speech, an open rebuke standing in the place where a grudge would otherwise sit. Matthew 18:15 carries the same order into the church, telling a man to go and tell his brother his fault between them alone. The closing clause, and not suffer sin upon him, makes silence the thing that leaves the sin standing.

Leviticus 19:18

Love thy neighbour as thyself occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and it is the most quoted verse of Leviticus in the New Testament. Jesus names it the second commandment at Matthew 22:39 and Mark 12:31, Paul says the whole law is fulfilled in it at Romans 13:9 and Galatians 5:14, and James calls it the royal law at 2:8. The chapter gives it no emphasis whatever, setting it between a rule about the corners of a field and a rule about mingled seed and closing it with the same I am the LORD that closes fourteen other sentences here. What it answers is the clause in front of it, since loving a neighbour is set against avenging and bearing a grudge.

Leviticus 19:19

Three mixtures are forbidden in one verse, in breeding, in sowing and in cloth, and the text gives no reason for any of them. Keil and Delitzsch read the ban as a guard on the distinctions God set in creation, and other writers point to the priest's garments and the sanctuary curtains, where the two fibres were woven together, and take the mixture as a thing reserved for holy use. Deuteronomy 22:9-11 repeats all three and adds the ox and the ass ploughing together. The verse opens with ye shall keep my statutes, and that is the whole ground it offers.

Leviticus 19:20-22

This is the only ruling in the chapter written as a legal case, with a situation, a penalty and a remedy. The woman is a bondmaid betrothed and not yet redeemed, and the outcome turns on her status, since the death sentence Leviticus 20:10 attaches to adultery is withheld here because she was not free. The word rendered scourged is read by some as a formal inquiry into the case rather than a beating, and the commentators differ over which it is and over who bears it. The man brings a ram to the door of the tabernacle, and these are the only verses in the chapter that send anyone to the altar.

Leviticus 19:23-25

A planted tree is left alone for three years, its fourth crop is given wholly to God, and the owner eats in the fifth. The word used of the young fruit is uncircumcised, which the Torah otherwise applies to men and to the lips of Moses at Exodus 6:12, and to a tree only here. The law assumes a settled people, since it opens with when ye shall come into the land and asks a man to wait four years before he tastes what he planted. The fourth year crop is holy to praise the LORD withal, which puts the first edible harvest in the class of the firstfruits sheaf of Leviticus 23:10.

Leviticus 19:26-28

These three verses forbid the practices of the nations around Israel in eating, in divination and in mourning. The same Hebrew word stands behind the corner of the field in verse 9 and the corner of the head in verse 27, so a farmer leaves the edge of his crop standing for the poor and leaves the edge of his hair alone. Cuttings in the flesh and marks printed on it are both tied here to the dead, and cutting of that kind is what the prophets of Baal practise at 1 Kings 18:28. Deuteronomy 14:1 repeats the prohibition and grounds it in sonship, that ye are the children of the LORD your God, while Leviticus gives no reason beyond I am the LORD.

Leviticus 19:29-30

The reason attached to verse 29 is corporate, that the land itself falls to whoredom and becomes full of wickedness, so the harm named reaches past the household to the country. Verse 30 returns to my sabbaths, which the chapter already commanded at verse 3, and adds reverence for the sanctuary. Naming the sabbath at both ends puts a frame around the commands about neighbours that sit between them.

Leviticus 19:31-32

Familiar spirits and wizards both occur here for the first time in Scripture, and the stated result of consulting them is defilement. Deuteronomy 18:11 sets the same practices in a longer list of what the nations did, and 1 Samuel 28 shows a king of Israel doing what this verse forbids. Verse 32 asks a man to rise up before the hoary head, to honour the face of the old man and to fear his God, so the chapter forbids seeking the dead in one verse and commands standing up for the living aged in the next. Both verses close on I am the LORD.

Leviticus 19:33-34

The love command is given a second time and its object is the foreigner, and these two verses hold the only other occurrence of as thyself in the Torah. The stranger who dwells in the land is counted as one born among you, so the measure set is the treatment a citizen receives. The reason moves off the refrain and onto memory, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt, which is the ground Exodus 22:21 and 23:9 also give. Israel is asked to treat the outsider by remembering what it was to be one.

Leviticus 19:35-37

Verse 35 opens with the sentence that opened verse 15, ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, and applies it to the meteyard, the weight and the measure. The courtroom and the market are put under one rule, so a short measure is handled as a wrong verdict. Proverbs 11:1 keeps that pairing, calling a false balance an abomination to the LORD, and Deuteronomy 25:13-16 gives the law again with divers weights in the bag. The chapter closes on I am the LORD, which falls fifteen times in these thirty seven verses, a third of every occurrence in the book.