Leviticus19chapter 19

Leviticus 19:9-10

The edges of the field and the fallen grapes are left "for the poor and the foreigner", and the law appoints nobody to hand them over. The owner leaves the produce standing and the poor gather it themselves, the arrangement Ruth 2 runs on when a Moabite widow gleans behind the reapers of Boaz. Leviticus 23:22 repeats the rule, and Deuteronomy 24:19-21 extends it to the olive tree.

Albert Barnes widens the terms, taking the grapes as fallen fruit of any kind and the vineyard as any fruit garden. He explains the foreigner as one who could own no land in Israel, and so had no harvest of his own. Clement of Alexandria reads the rule as teaching owners generous sharing.

Leviticus 19:11-12

The commands run in the order a fraud happens: a man steals, lies and deceives to cover it, and by verse 12 swears falsely by the name of God. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the passage as aimed at the small, little-thought-of vices of ordinary business. The false oath is the one act here said to "profane the name of your God".

John Gill ties the oath to the frauds of verse 11, a man swearing he holds no deposit of another's or that a debt is owed when it is not. Matthew Henry adds that the name is also profaned when it is used for trifles. A sworn lie is worse than a spoken one.

Leviticus 19:13-14

The hired hand is paid before morning because the wage is his next meal, and Adam Clarke says it supports his family as fast as it is earned. Verse 14 names two wrongs the victim cannot detect, a curse the deaf do not hear and a stumbling block the blind do not see. The only enforcement is "you shall fear your God", so the law covers cases with no witness.

curse the deaf: Gregory the Dialogist reads the deaf as anyone absent who cannot hear what is said about him, and the blind as anyone without the discernment to avoid offence. Adam Clarke forbids any advantage taken of a neighbor's ignorance, simplicity or inexperience. Albert Barnes compares Deuteronomy 27:18.

Leviticus 19:15-16

Partiality is forbidden in both directions, "to the poor or favoritism to the rich", so pity is named as a way of judging wrongly alongside fear. Verse 16 sets the man "spreading slander among your people" beside the man who would "endanger the life of your neighbor". The older commentators read that second charge as conspiring against a life or bearing false witness where a life is at stake.

Adam Clarke traces the word for slanderer to rachil, a trader or peddler, one who travels dealing in other people's secrets. For the second command Albert Barnes gives two readings, standing up as an accuser against a neighbor's life, or standing idle while that life is in danger. Either way justice is obstructed.

The command reaches inside a man, forbidding hatred in the heart before any act has followed it. The remedy is speech, since "Directly rebuke your neighbor" puts an open word where a grudge would sit, and Matthew 18:15 carries the same order into the church. The closing clause, "so that you will not incur guilt on account of him", makes silence the thing that leaves the sin standing.

The words "love your neighbor as yourself" appear here first in Scripture, and no verse of Leviticus is quoted more in the New Testament. Jesus names it the second commandment at Matthew 22:39, and Paul and James cite it at Romans 13:9 and James 2:8. The chapter closes it with the same "I am the LORD" as fourteen other sentences and sets it against revenge and a grudge.

Three mixtures are forbidden, 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, while other writers point to the priestly garments and take the mixture as reserved for holy use. The only ground offered is the opening sentence, "You are to keep My statutes".

Leviticus 19:20-22

This is the chapter's one ruling written as a legal case, and the death sentence of Leviticus 20:10 is withheld "because she had not been freed". The phrase "due punishment" is read by some as a formal inquiry and by others as a beating. The man brings "a ram to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting", and no other verse in the chapter sends anyone to the altar.

Matthew Henry explains why a penalty falls at all. The betrothal gave the union the honor of marriage, so the wrong was punished, while her unfreed status kept it from the penalty for adultery with a free woman. He adds that the gospel knows no such distinction between bond and free.

The verse calls the act a sin twice. Forgiveness comes through the priest's atonement with the ram, as it does for the guilt offerings of 5:16 and 6:7. Matthew Henry reads the penalty and the offering together as guarding the honor of marriage, even where the marriage had only begun with betrothal.

Leviticus 19:23-25

A planted tree is left three years, its fourth crop is "consecrated as a praise offering to the LORD", and the owner eats in the fifth. The Hebrew behind "forbidden" is the word uncircumcised, which the Torah uses of men and of the lips of Moses at Exodus 6:12, and of a tree only here. The law assumes a settled people who wait four years to taste what they planted.

Matthew Henry records two uses for this fruit. It was given to the priests or eaten before the LORD with joy, like the second tithe. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown quote Michaelis, who took the earlier ban to mean pinching off the young fruit by hand.

John Gill reads the promise as a harvest large enough to make up for the three years without fruit and the fourth year given to God. The owner eats from the fifth year on. Gill grounds the promise in the closing words, I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 19:26-28

These verses forbid the practices of the nations in eating, in divination and in mourning. One Hebrew word names the edge of the field in verse 9 and the side of the head in verse 27, so a farmer leaves both edges alone. Deuteronomy 14:1 grounds the ban on cutting for the dead in sonship, while Leviticus gives no reason beyond "I am the LORD".

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown trace the fashion to Egypt, where hair was cropped to leave a circle on the crown and the beard was dressed square. Adam Clarke judges the exact custom hard to recover. He cites Herodotus on Arabs who cut their hair round in honor of Bacchus.

John Gill describes the cuttings as made with the nails, tearing the cheeks, or with a knife or razor. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown describe tattoo marks made with a hot iron or with ink or paint. Adam Clarke cites Virgil on such grief.

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.

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that this command often stands beside bans on idolatrous practice, and here it follows the pagan customs of verses 26 to 29. Matthew Henry reads sabbath and sanctuary as Israel's guard against heathen superstition. The same command returns at 26:2.

Leviticus 19:31-32

Mediums and spiritists are first named in Scripture here, and the stated result of seeking them is that "you will be defiled by them". In 1 Samuel 28 a king of Israel does what this verse forbids. Verse 32 then says to "rise in the presence of the elderly", so the chapter forbids seeking the dead in one verse and commands standing for the living aged in the next.

John Gill reports the rabbinic reckoning that sixty years brought old age and seventy brought gray hair. Albert Barnes notes that the outward respect of standing is tied directly to the fear of God. Matthew Henry grounds it in God as the Ancient of Days.

Leviticus 19:33-34

The love command is given a second time, and its object is the foreigner, in the only other place the Torah says "as yourself". The foreigner is to be treated "as native-born", so the measure is the treatment a citizen receives. The reason moves from the refrain to memory, "for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt", the ground Exodus 22:21 and 23:9 also give.

John Wesley gives more than one sense to the equal standing, and in the matter of church privileges he limits it to proselytes. He reads the memory of Egypt as knowledge of a stranger's fears and distresses, which calls for pity. Matthew Henry notes that all nations are of one blood.

Leviticus 19:35-37

In the Hebrew, verse 35 opens with the sentence that opened verse 15 and applies it to "measures of length, weight, or volume". The courtroom and the market are put under one rule, so a short measure is handled as a wrong verdict, and Proverbs 11:1 keeps that pairing. The chapter closes on "I am the LORD", which falls fifteen times in these thirty-seven verses.

John Wesley explains the ephah as the common dry measure and the hin as the common liquid measure, standing for all others. Adam Clarke notes that the Hebrew word for weights means stones, since weights appear to have first been formed from stones. The verse grounds honest trade in the exodus.

Adam Clarke derives statutes from a root meaning to trace out, the path of duty God has marked, and ordinances from a root meaning to discern or determine. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the closing I am the LORD as a claim to the authority of Creator, Deliverer and Sovereign. Matthew Henry pairs careful observing with obeying.