Leviticus20chapter 20

Leviticus 20:1-3

Chapter 18 listed the things Israel may not do and chapter 20 sets the price on them, beginning with the one that costs a child. The name Molech occurs five times in the Torah and four of them fall in this chapter, the fifth at 18:21. The sentence is stoning, and the hands named are the people of the land, so the community carries out the judgment itself. Verse 3 adds a second sentence no court can execute, since God says he will set his face against that man and cut him off from among his people.

Leviticus 20:4-5

The law then turns on the people who watch and say nothing. The phrase rendered hide their eyes occurs nowhere else in the King James text, and it describes a whole town agreeing to see nothing. God answers by setting his face against the man and against his family, so looking away carries a sentence of its own. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the words as conniving at what a neighbour does rather than as failing to notice it.

Leviticus 20:6-8

The list of penalties breaks off here for two verses about holiness. Turning after those that have familiar spirits is called going a whoring after them, the same words used of Molech in verse 5, so the text treats the practice as unfaithfulness rather than as a technique. Verses 7 and 8 then put both halves of holiness side by side, sanctify yourselves and I am the LORD which sanctify you, and Gill reads the first as the separation a man makes and the second as the work God does in him.

Leviticus 20:9-10

Two of the ten commandments get their penalty here, the fifth and the seventh. Jesus cites the law on cursing a parent in the argument over corban at Matthew 15:4 and Mark 7:10, where the wording matches Exodus 21:17 as closely as it matches this verse. Verse 10 names the adulterer and the adulteress together and sentences both, which is worth holding beside John 8:3, where only the woman is brought.

Leviticus 20:11-13

Three offences from the chapter 18 list are given the same sentence and the same closing formula, their blood shall be upon them. That formula occurs eleven times in the King James text and six of them stand in this chapter, laying the guilt of the execution on the offender rather than on the court that carries it out. Paul takes up the first of the three at 1 Corinthians 5:1, where a man has his father's wife, and what he calls for there is expulsion from the assembly.

Leviticus 20:14-16

Verse 14 carries the one sentence in the chapter executed by fire, and the text is silent on whether the burning follows a death already inflicted. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read stoning first and burning afterwards from the pattern at Joshua 7:15, while Adam Clarke suggests a branding that left the offender marked for life. Verses 15 and 16 order the animal killed along with the person, which Keil and Delitzsch take as removing the memory of the act rather than as punishing the beast.

Leviticus 20:17-19

The penalty changes register at verse 17. The sentences here are being cut off in the sight of their people, bearing his iniquity, and bearing their iniquity, and no human hand is told to do anything about any of them. Matthew Henry reads the wording as guilt left standing against a man who was never brought to trial, carried forward to be reckoned for rather than purged with sacrifice.

Leviticus 20:20-21

These two carry a sentence found in no other law, which is childlessness. The words die childless occur once in the King James text and this is the place, so what is taken here is a future rather than a life. Deuteronomy 25:5 commands a man to marry his dead brother's widow, so verse 21 speaks of a brother still living, and John the Baptist applies it to Herod at Mark 6:18.

Leviticus 20:22-24

The chapter stops listing offences and gives the land a part to play. The word spue occurs twice in Leviticus, at 18:28 and here, and both times the ground is the one doing it, so the country itself is described as reacting to what happens on it. Verse 23 states the reason the nations before them were removed, that they committed all these things, and the same threat now stands over Israel on the same terms. Adam Clarke reads the warning alongside Genesis 15:16 and the cup of Canaanite iniquity coming full.

Leviticus 20:25-26

The clean and unclean list of chapter 11 comes back here with a stated purpose, which is separation. Verse 26 gives ye shall be holy for the third time in Leviticus, after 11:44 and 19:2, and 1 Peter 1:16 carries the refrain into the church. Leviticus never explains why one creature is clean and another unclean, and the one reason it offers is the close of verse 26, that God severed them from other people that they should be his. Mark 7:19 and Acts 10:9 to 16 are where the New Testament takes up the food law, and each of them does something different with it.

Leviticus 20:27

The chapter closes on the sentence it opened with, stoning by the community. Verse 6 dealt with the man who goes to a medium and this verse deals with the medium, so the practice is answered at both ends of the chapter. Familiar spirits and wizards enter Scripture at 19:31, and the thread runs from here to Saul at Endor in 1 Samuel 28, to Manasseh in 2 Kings 21:6, and to Isaiah 8:19. Matthew Henry reads the penalty as removing a standing temptation from among the people rather than as reaching the practitioner alone.