Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Leviticus 20:1
And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying,
The crimes which are condemned in Lev. 18; 19 on purely spiritual ground, have here special punishments allotted to them as offences against the well-being of the nation.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER XX
Of giving seed to Molech, and the punishment of this crime,
1-5.
Of consulting wizards, &c., 6-8.
Of disrespect to parents, 9.
Of adultery, 10.
Of incestuous mixtures, 11, 12.
Bestiality, 13-16.
Different cases of incest and uncleanness, 17-21.
Exhortations and promises, 22-24.
The difference between clean and unclean animals to be
carefully observed, 25.
The Israelites are separated from other nations, that they may
be holy, 26.
A repetition of the law against wizards and them that have
familiar spirits, 27.
NOTES ON CHAP. XX
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
And the Lord spake unto Moses,…. After he had delivered the above laws to him in the preceding chapter, he added penalties, to many of them, or declared what punishment should be inflicted on the transgressors of them:
saying; as follows.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Punishments for the Vices and crimes Prohibited in Ch. 18 and 19. – The list commences with idolatry and soothsaying, which were to be followed by extermination, as a practical apostasy from Jehovah, and a manifest breach of the covenant.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Moral Laws. | B. C. 1490. |
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. 3 And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. 4 And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not: 5 Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people. 6 And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people. 7 Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the LORD your God. 8 And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the LORD which sanctify you. 9 For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.
Moses is here directed to say that again to the children of Israel which he had in effect said before, v. 2. We are sure it was no vain repetition, but very necessary, that they might give the more earnest heed to the things that were spoken, and might believe them to be of great consequence, being so often inculcated. God speaketh once, yea, twice, and what he orders to be said again we must be willing to hear again, because for us it is safe, Phil. iii. 1.
I. Three sins are in these verses threatened with death:–
1. Parents abusing their children, by sacrificing them to Moloch, Lev 20:2; Lev 20:3. There is the grossest absurdity that can be in all the rites of idolatry, and they are all a great reproach to men’s reason; but none trampled upon all the honours of human nature as this did, the burning of children in the fire to the honour of a dunghill-god. It was a plain evidence that their gods were devils, who desired and delighted in the misery and ruin of mankind, and that the worshippers were worse than the beasts that perish, perfectly stripped, not only of reason, but of natural affection. Abraham’s offering Isaac could not give countenance, much less could it give rise to this barbarous practice, since, though that was commanded, it was immediately countermanded. Yet such was the power of the god of this world over the children of disobedience that this monstrous piece of inhumanity was generally practised; and even the Israelites were in danger of being drawn into it, which made it necessary that this severe law should be made against it. It was not enough to tell them they might spare their children (the fruit of their body should never be accepted for the sin of their soul), but they must be told, (1.) That the criminal himself should be put to death as a murderer: The people of the land shall stone him with stones (v. 2), which was looked upon as the worst of capital punishments among the Jews. If the children were sacrificed to the malice of the devil, the parents must be sacrificed to the justice of God. And, if either the fact could not be proved or the magistrates did not do their duty, God would take the work into his own hands: I will cut him off, v. 3. Note, Those that escape punishment from men, yet shall not escape the righteous judgments of God; so wretchedly do those deceive themselves that promise themselves impunity in sin. How can those escape against whom God sets his face, that is, whom he frowns upon, meets as an enemy, and fights against? The heinousness of the crime is here set forth to justify the doom: it defiles the sanctuary, and profanes the holy name of God, for the honour of both which he is jealous. Observe, The malignity of the sin is laid upon that in it which was peculiar to Israel. When the Gentiles sacrificed their children they were guilty of murder and idolatry; but, if the Israelites did it, they incurred the additional guilt of defiling the sanctuary (which they attended upon even when they lay under this guilt, as if there might be an agreement between the temple of God and idols), and of profaning the holy name of God, by which they were called, as if he allowed his worshippers to do such things, Rom. ii. 23, 24. (2.) That all his aiders and abetters should be cut off likewise by the righteous hand of God. If his neighbours concealed him, and would not come in as witnesses against him,–if the magistrates connived at him, and would not pass sentence upon him, rather pitying his folly than hating his impiety,–God himself would reckon with them, Lev 20:4; Lev 20:5. Misprision of idolatry is a crime cognizable in the court of heaven, and which shall not go unpunished: I will set my face against that man (that magistrate, Jer. v. 1) and against his family. Note, [1.] The wickedness of the master of a family often brings ruin upon a family; and he that should be the house-keeper proves the house-breaker. [2.] If magistrates will not do justice upon offenders, God will do justice upon them, because there is danger that many will go a whoring after those who do but countenance sin by winking at it. And, if the sins of leaders be leading sins, it is fit that their punishments should be exemplary punishments.
2. Children’s abusing their parents, by cursing them, v. 9. If children should speak ill of their parents, or wish ill to them, or carry it scornfully or spitefully towards them, it was an iniquity to be punished by the judges, who were employed as conservators both of God’s honour and of the public peace, which were both attacked by this unnatural insolence. See Prov. xxx. 17, The eye that mocks at his father the ravens of the valley shall pick out, which intimates that such wicked children were in a fair way to be not only hanged, but hanged in chains. This law of Moses Christ quotes and confirms (Matt. xv. 4), for it is as direct a breach of the fifth commandment as wilful murder is of the sixth. The same law which requires parents to be tender of their children requires children to be respectful to their parents. He that despitefully uses his parents, the instruments of his being, flies in the face of God himself, the author of his being, who will not see the paternal dignity and authority insulted and trampled upon.
3. Persons abusing themselves by consulting such as have familiar spirits, v. 6. By this, as much as any thing, a man diminishes, disparages, and deceives himself, and so abuses himself. What greater madness can there be than for a man to go to a liar for information, and to an enemy for advice? Those do so who turn after those that deal in the black art, and know the depths of Satan. This is spiritual adultery as much as idolatry is, giving that honour to the devil which is due to God only; and the jealous God will give a bill of divorce to those that thus go a whoring from him, and will cut them off, they having first cut themselves off from him.
II. In the midst of these particular laws comes in that general charge, Lev 20:7; Lev 20:8, where we have,
1. The duties required; and they are two:– (1.) That in our principles, affections, and aims, we be holy: Sanctify yourselves and be you holy. We must cleanse ourselves from all the pollutions of sin, consecrate ourselves to the service and honour of God, and conform ourselves in every thing to his holy will and image: this is to sanctify ourselves. (2.) That in all our actions, and in the whole course of our conversation, we be obedient to the laws of God: You shall keep my statutes. By this only can we make it to appear that we have sanctified ourselves and are holy, even by our keeping God’s commandments; the tree is known by its fruit. Nor can we keep God’s statutes, as we ought, unless we first sanctify ourselves, and be holy. Make the tree good, and the fruit will be good.
2. The reasons to enforce these duties. (1.) “I am the Lord your God; therefore be holy, that you may resemble him whose people you are, and may be pleasing to him. Holiness becomes his house and household.” (2.) I am the Lord who sanctifieth you. God sanctified them by peculiar privileges, laws, and favours, which distinguished them from all other nations, and dignified them as a people set apart for God. He gave them his word and ordinances to be means of their sanctification, and his good Spirit to instruct them; therefore they must be holy, else they received the grace of God herein in vain. Note, [1.] God’s people are, and must be, persons of distinction. God has distinguished them by his holy covenant, and therefore they ought to distinguish themselves by their holy conversation. [2.] God’s sanctifying us is a good reason why we should sanctify ourselves, that we may comply with the designs of his grace, and not walk contrary to them. If it be the Lord that sanctifies us, we may hope the work shall be done, though it be difficult: the manner of expression is like that, 2 Cor. v. 5, He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God. And his grace is so far from superseding our care and endeavour that it most strongly engages and encourages them. Work out your salvation, for it is God that worketh in you.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
LEVITICUS- CHAPTER TWENTY
Verses 1-5:
The practices described in chapter 18 are designated in chapter 20 as crimes against society as well as sins against God and His righteous principles. the present chapter gives the penalties for violation of these laws.
This text defines the penalty for Molech-worship, see Le 18:21. It was a capital crime: death by stoning, see De 13:6-11. The penalty was to be the same for all who connived in this sin, or who ignored it.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
1. And the Lord spake. The prohibition of this superstition was previously expounded in its proper place. God here commands the punishment to be inflicted, if any one should have polluted himself with it. And surely it was a detestable sacrilege to enslave to idols that offspring, which was begotten to God, and which He had adopted in the loins of Abraham, since in this way they not only despoiled God of His right, but, so far as they could, blotted out the grace of adoption. What He had then generally pronounced, He now specially applies, viz., that they should be stoned who offered their seed to Molech; for otherwise they would have tried to escape on the pretense that they had no intention of revolting to other gods. Just as now-a-days, under the Papacy, whatever is alleged from Scripture against their impious and corrupt worship, is coldly and contemptuously received; because they varnish over their idolatries, and so indulge themselves in them in security. But after God has commanded His judges to punish this crime severely, He at the same time declares that, if perchance they should connive at it, and encourage it by their lenity, He Himself will avenge it, so as to punish much more heavily those who may have escaped from the hands of men; and not only so, but that He would implicate all those who might have been aware of it in the same con-detonation.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
Social and Moral Crimes
SUGGESTIVE READINGS
Lev. 20:2.Again thou shalt say to the children of Israel. These denunclations of sin (already denounced in ch. 18.) are to be repeated in the hearing of the nation. The holy God would have these social and moral commands reiterated that they may be emphasised upon the peoples attention. When sins are pleasant to us, when inclination leads us towards them, it is scarcely in human nature to halt at the first command to desist. Evil indulgence deadens sensibility to Gods voice. Although the law of heaven denounces iniquities, yet when the sins are cherished, we are very slow to turn at Gods reproof. Therefore, God speaks once more, Again thou shalt say. For God speaketh once, yea, twice, yet man perceiveth it not (Job. 33:14). He knows our disposition to lurk in the enjoyment of our sins, therefore pursues us with His voice, reiterating the warning words.
Lev. 20:3; Lev. 20:5.I will set My face against that man. Penalty is now attached to prohibition. God emphasises His denunciations by affixing terrible punishments to corrupt deeds. For a sinner will find he has to do with something more than divine expostulations and commands; God is angry with the wicked, and to crimes against righteousness He has attached doom. They who will not pause at persuasions will be overtaken with punishments.
Lev. 20:4.If the people hide their eyes. Connivance at wrong entails joint-guiltiness in the deed, and joint-penalty. Affection and friendship often lead us to wink at errors and misdemeanours in those we love, but we thereby become partakers of their sins (Rev. 18:4), and shall receive of their plagues.
Compare foregoing chapters for suggestive readings on the verses following.
It is specially noticeable that the penalty rather than the sin of all misdemeanour is distinctive of this chapter. If men are not restrained from evil practices which the law has denounced as sin, it may be they will shun them when the law annexes to them death! How gracious is this act of God: making it so clear to us that transgression of the law is not only repulsive to Himas being sin, but also destructive to usas entailing death. There are minds less startled by the heinousness of wrong as God sees it than with the disastrous consequences which wrong brings on themselves. Yet God appeals even to the selfishness of sinners as a motive to shun sin.
Lev. 20:22-27.A separated and sanctified people. God had separated Israel from all the nations of the earth, to exhibit His holy character in their purity and to illustrate the reward of holiness by possessing the land flowing with milk and honey; thus connecting purity with privilege, as cause and consequence. Being thus separated by God (Lev. 20:24), they were to separate themselves by distinctive conduct (Lev. 20:25), and show themselves before the less favoured nations as holy unto the Lord (Lev. 20:26).
If thus it behoved the Jewish people to maintain sanctity, surely we, who are chosen in Christ Jesus and called to be saints, should show forth the virtues of the Lord, and thus connect holiness of life with our enjoyment of the inheritance which is made ours by grace.
HOMILIES
Topic: THE AXE LAID AT THE ROOT OF MORAL EVIL
Here, commandments already given are repeated and enforced with renewed authority and power. Repetition essential to inculcation of knowledge, and fixing indelibly the truths taught. The vices into which Israel was liable to fall are odiously repulsive to the virtuous human mind; how inexpressibly abominable they must have been to the nature of the immaculately holy God! Inward as well as ceremonial purity demanded of the Hebrews, hence the constant call to circumspection and consecration. One great purpose running through the whole economythe recovery of man from the practice, guilt, and penalty of sin. Looking at this chapter in the light of the circumstances under which it was given we learn
I. CONSTANT VIGILANCE ENJOINED AGAINST ENSNARING SIN. The people of Israel were not elected to divine advantages unconditionally, exempted from responsibility for the use they made of their privileges. The elaborate and searching character of the laws by which they were governed denoted (a) that the people were very depraved by nature, and ever prone to sin; (b) that they were liable to yield to temptations arising from remembrances of the sinful habits of the Eyptians; (c) that they would be ever coming in contact with seductions to wrong-doing (Lev. 20:22). Every vicecondemned in this chapteris an outrage upon decency and the moral sense. Nature sets her face against all such iniquity, sets her burning stigma upon immorality. Filthy practices entail retributive consequences. As a great family of which Jehovah was the head, Israel was to guard against everything indecent and indelicate. Nothing could destroy them but inward corruption, every weapon formed against them would be futile if they kept pure in character, faithful in allegiance to the Lord. Abandonment to the abominations of the heathen would bring down the indignation of heaven, and the land whither they were going would cast them out as apostates and reprobates.
II. TREMENDOUS RETRIBUTIONS ATTACHED TO WRONG-DOING. Expressions of divine displeasure against sin (in this chapter) are very strong, punishments threatened very awful. It mattered not who the person might be upon whom the guilt of idolatry and licentiousness might be brought, the sentence was to be executed. The penalties seemed severe, but they showed (i.) the holiness of the divine law; (ii.) the detestable nature of sin; (iii.) the retributive character of guilt. The fate of sinful nations was to be a warning to the Hebrews. The revealed indignation of Jehovah against every kind of moral evil, was to lead the people to avoid the approach and appearance of evil. These righteous statutes calculated to awaken devout reflection, rigid self-examination.
Under grace in Jesus Christ we are elected to privileges, predestinated to be conformed to the image of Gods Son. The world is to see the purity of the divine nature reflected in the light of our Christly lives. We are expected, by Him who has called us out of natures darkness, to represent and thus recommend the religion which, like its Author, is pure and undefiled. Unfaithfulness to our sacred trust, unholiness in our lives, will forfeit the favour of our Master, destroy peace, produce spiritual ruin. The grand object of redemption is not mere salvation from sins consequences, but its complete removal from the human soul and the universe of God. Nowhere as in the gospel of Christ does the tire of indignation burn so fiercely against unrighteousness and impurity, its intensest heat is centred in the mysteries and sufferings of the cross.F. W. B.
Topic: CAPITAL OFFENCES
And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people. (Lev. 20:3).
How frequently we read in this chapter of excommunication and death. The words he shall surely be put to death occur again and again; flash after flash of the lightning of divine wrath, peal after peal of the thunder of divine condemnation startle us, as the various crimes are indicated towards which such judgments are directed. As we reverently gaze and listen, we learn
I. TO WHAT DIABOLICAL DEPTHS HUMAN DEPRAVITY CAN SINK. Those who indulged in Molech worship, committed murder of the most horrible kind, and in the heathen temples immoralities of the most degrading and disgusting character were practised. Vice was not confined to public places, but its pollutions cursed the most sacred and delicate relationships in life. Human nature can sink into a condition of degradation, compared with which the natural habits of the brute creation are pure and noble.
II. TO WHAT A FEARFUL EXTENT THE DIVINE ANGER CAN TURN. God is Love, and it is equally clear from nature and revelation He is also holy, just, and true. He is angry with sin, and with the sinner while He loves and indulges in sin, and such announcements of anger against the guilty as this chapter contains, show God is a consuming fire against evil; He sets His face against it, visits its perpetrators with death. Only by infliction of death upon the sinners Substitute, can the claims of divine justice be met, the divine anger against sin be averted.
III. TO WHAT FATAL ISSUES TRANSGRESSION OF THE DIVINE LAWS CONDUCTS. (a) The loss of divine favour. I will set my face against that man. Nothing can be more awful than to incur the antagonism of the Almighty, (b) The loss o congenial society. And will cut him off from among his people. He shall be excommunicated, an exile and outcast for ever. The loss of the favour of God, banishment from the society of the blessed, will constitute the punishment of the finally impenitent.
IV. TO WHAT SOLEMN FACTS THESE DIVINE DEOLARATIONS POINT. Unquestionably: (a) To the heinousness of sin. That it required atonement, to be forgiven; that unforgiven it entailed death. (b) To the righteousness of Gods law. That it denounced every kind of iniquity, could not be broken in the smallest point with impunity. (c) To the holiness of Gods name. Jehovahs nature arrayed against even secret sins; where He dwelt, where His name is recorded, nothing impure must be allowed.
CONCLUSION. Human nature is still the same, prone to depart from the living God, liable to sink to the lowest depths of sensuality and guilt. The anger of God still burns against evil, His face set against evil-doers. Sin, if unrepented unremoved, brings death, destruction from the presence of the Lord. As of old, so now, but with greater freeness and fulness, a way is open for pardon, purity, peace. In the Christian Church, proclaimed in the glad tidings of the gospel, we have
1. Higher examples of holiness. Especially in our Exemplar, Christ Jesus.
2. Loftier precepts to guide us. Ethics of the gospel transcend those of the law.
3. Stronger inducements to urge us. Not fear but love, the gospel motive.
4. Superior prospects to cheer us. Life and immortality have been brought to light by the gospel; we may look forward to an eternity of rest in the Canaan above.F. W. B.
Topic: CONNIVANCE AT INIQUITY
If the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man when he giveth his seed to Molech, etc (Lev. 20:4).
(a) Evils are allowed to pass unrebuked. From indifference: a total unconcern about either right or wrong, piety or sin. Or from indolence: habitual inertia, unwillingness to take any trouble to set wrong-doers right, or rescue the debased from their degradations.
(b) Errors are permitted to flourish unmolested. From contempt of truth: caring nothing for sacred knowledge, content to let others dwell and to dwell themselves in ignorance or delusion, serving Molech or any other fallacy, as they may prefer. Or from false charitableness: pleading that if men but be loyal to the light they had, or faithful to convictions they cherish, as their standard of duty and code of religion, it matters little what errors thrive. But consider
I. APPALLING INHUMANITIES WROUGHT UNDER SANCTION OF RELIGION.
Giveth his seed unto Molech. Tender infants offered up to devouring fires. Heathenism has its frightful records: the car of Juggernauth; the funereal fires for widows: the abandonment of aged parents; children cast into the Ganges; etc
Romanism has its catalogue of enormities; prison tortures; inquisitorial horrors, faggot fires of martyrdom, etc
II. PATHETIC UNCONCERN OVER THE ENORMITIES OF SIN.
Superstition is but one of the many foul products of sin; and the barbarities wrought through superstition are but a fraction of the cruelties developed by sin.
1. There is a common callousness respecting the miseries rampant. The victims of sin are everywherein debased homes, in asylums, in prisons: poverty, brutality, villainy: yet society connives at it all, and avowed Christians lift not the burdens with one of their fingers.
2. A willing ignorance of existing woes prevails. The people of the land hide their eyes. How different this from
The keen spirit,
which Seizes the prompt occasion, makes the thought
Start into instant action, and at once
Plans and performs, resolves and executes!
A true grief for sin, and pity for the sinner, and hatred of what degrades the soul of man and dishonours God, would stir us to generous activity.
III. DELUSIVE SELF SATISFACTION AMID PREVAILING WRONG.
It is not enough that we hide our eyes. When men err and sin around us
1. Not to know may be criminal ignorance. Each man is set in charge with the other; and we owe it to him that we inform ourselves of his condition and conduct. To pass by on the other side is no excuse for letting the sufferer die.
2. Not to share in his deed does not exonerate us from his sins. If we connive at his deed we to a degree both sanction and encourage it. We ought to rebuke the unfruitful works of darkness. But instead of that we give consent by our silence, by our ignoring them.
3. Not to stay the inhumanities which are being inflicted renders us chargeable with complicity. What brutality to stand inactive while children were being sacrificed to Molech! What cruelty to let the helpless suffer, the deceived perish, the sinner be lost!
IV CONNIVANCE AT INIQUITIES SEVERELY ADJUDGED BY GOD.
Then I will set my face against that man (Lev. 20:8)
1. The watchmans duty is to raise the sound of warning. [Comp. Ezekiel 33.]
2. Yet every man who will keep his eyes open sees the occasion and necessity for this ministry of protest, and warning, and rescue. He who sees not is guilty of hiding his eyes from the man. Sinners are everywhere; sufferers are everywhere.
3. Judgment will be based on our actions to others. Inasmuch as ye did it unto me; or, inasmuch as ye did it not (Mat. 25:41; Mat. 25:45).
Note: Our urgent duty in the world is to
(a) Rebuke sin and wrong-doing, and seek to check its ravages.
(b) Be alert amid opportunities to rescue the victims of iniquity from their woes.
(c) Our own salvation is without guarantee unless we also seek by all means to save some. For we may inherit judgment for neglect of those ready to perish.
(d) The very spirit of Christianity incites to eager and loving endeavour to convert the sinner from the error of his ways, save his soul from death, and hide the multitude of his sins.
Topic: THE POSSIBILITIES OF SANCTITY (Lev. 20:7-8)
Certainly this present world (Tit. 2:12) is not very friendly or favourable to active sanctity.
Yet it is the only world in which the human character and life can rise out of sin into active sanctity. Death closes the door on opportunity. As the tree falleth so shall it lie.
Hence the urgency and repetition of this call of God, pleading with men to sanctify yourselves. Is it possible to effect this? How may we thus attain to sanctity? By
I. ABSTINENCE: A STEADFAST NEGATION OF ALL TENDENCIES AND INDUCEMENTS TO IMPURITY
There must be diligent, strenuous and minute regard to every Thou shalt not of Gods Word. Assuredly, all sinful propensity in us must be repressed; all habits of evil denied; all indulgence of impure imaginations and desires refused. Taste not, touch not, handle not. Put off the works of darkness. Crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts. This chapter shows us how in many sinful ways and works of the flesh we must deny ourselves.
In order to this negation of all unholy dispositions and practices we shall need that grace may abound. For sinful man is weak through the flesh. But this grace is available to us in Jesus Christ.
II. OBEDIENCE: THE DILIGENT PRACTICE OF ALL THE DUTIES AND REQUIREMENTS OF HOLINESS.
The affirmative side of sanctity is certainly not less important than the negative. Do this and thou shalt live. Ye shall keep my statutes and do them (Lev. 20:8).
A practical piety is imperative. To secure that the house be empty and swept is something; iniquities cast out of the heart and life: but the good, the true, the devout, the lovely must also be brought in. To have the vine pruned and purged of all dead and fruitless boughs is necessary; but equally it is desiderated that what remains should bring forth much fruit.
He who would sanctify himself must therefore cultivate pure affections, thoughts and desires; practise the duties and obligations of religion, maintain habits of rectitude and godliness: perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord. He who is watchful unto prayer, alive unto God, quick to heed and obey His word, will not fail to attain to these affirmative qualities of sanctity.
III. ASSISTANCE: DIVINE CO-OPERATION SUSTAINING AND SUCCEEDING HUMAN EFFORTS TOWARDS SANCTITY.
Sanctify yourselves (Lev. 20:7), for I am the Lord which sanctify you (Lev. 20:8).
All His
(1) disciplinary corrections and afflictions;
(2) Scripture teachings and promises;
(3) spiritual communications and religious privileges;
(4) gifts and comfort of His Holy Spirit;
(5) purifying power of the indwelling love of Christ, are resources of Gods sanctifying, with which He seals our earnest endeavours after holiness.
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure (Php. 2:12-13).
Topic: THE GRIEF OF UNDUTIFUL CHILDREN
Every one that curseth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death, etc. (Lev. 20:9).
Family life should be a source and centre of consolation, affection and delight; parents proving a comfort and benediction to their children, and children bringing gladness and honour to their parents.
Home is the sphere of harmony and peace.
Fearful is the conception of an accursed family: abusive children, agonized parents! It is the most dreadful perversion which earth contains; love changed into cursing; duty into rebellion; purity into foulness; rest into hateful strife and war It is clearly true of such children that they are
I. A GRIEF TO THEIR PARENTS. Bitter the very thoughthe hath cursed his father or his mother.
1. The grief of blighted hopes. What tender and bright expectations were centred in the little one as parents first looked upon their cherished child!
They are idols of hearts and of households,
They are angels of God in disguise.Chas. M. Dickenson.
Terrible the grief when all glad hopes are desolated, and what promised joy and love only yields a curse.
2. The grief of outraged affection. No stint of fond thought and care is lavished on the child.
How sharper than a serpents tooth it is
To have a thankless child.Shakespeare.
3. The grief of frustrated prayer. Over the childrens heads parents have bowed in supplication to God, and pleadings full of heartfelt fervour have been poured. Yet is this what resultsa curse in the home, a terror to the parental heart!
4. The grief of ruined happiness. How can joy ever again dwell in the parents soul against whom his own child has risen with cursings? It must darken all the light of earthly gladness; and it must deeply shade even the anticipations of heavenfor no place in the Fathers house will be found for a child who brought a curse into his earthly home.
II. A GRIEF TO THEMSELVES. Dreadful the penalties which are threatenedhe shall surely be put to death; his blood is upon him.
1. Gods anger will be upon him. A wicked son or daughter knows this awful fact before the judgment day arrives; God loathes the child who curses a parent It is a terrible thought to carry through life.
2. Human contempt will be won. For all respect and trust is forfeited by a child whose behaviour is so cruel; society shuns the unnatural creature where his or her conduct is known.
3. Conscience can never have peace. Children who have outraged home and left the parental roof have been harrowed through years with the woes of an accusing conscience, and traversed lands and seas to weep over a parents grave.
4. A retributive justice pursues them. Their own crime re-appears against them: for the very quality in themselves that rendered them capable of cursing their parents will betray itself in all relationships in after years, making them hateful and hated, and lay them open to the consequences. And this vile quality will re-appear in their offspring, and win back from their own childrens lips like curses which they once uttered themselves. God follows such cruelty to parents with relentless rigour. Penalty overtakes this crime in this life and doom awaits it hereafter.
III. A GRIEF TO GOD.
1. Undutifulness to parents is inseparable from impiety towards God. Such sons and daughters are always godless, alien from all sacred duties and claims: a smoke in Gods nostrils, a dishonour to His laws.
2. Outrage to parental relationship and feeling is felt by God as an outrage on His own Fatherly love and grace. He feels a parents grief; and wrong done to so tender a relationship is a wound to the divine Fathers heart.
3. In His beloved Son and holy child Jesus God shows the fulness of affection which should mark a child: and it degrades the very name of a son and a child, the relationship which Jesus assumed, when it brings a curse upon human parents instead of love.
4. Home is Gods earthly type of heaven: and a home filled with cursing is a peculiar abomination to Him who designed our earthly homes to be a foretaste here of the Fathers house above. It is a most offensive and sorrowful evidence of the ravages which sinthe abominable thing God hateshas wrought in His world. How different this delineation of a cursing child from the poetic and the divine idea of a child.
A sweet new blossom of humanity
Fresh fallen from Gods own home to flower on earth.
Let parents, with diligent prayer and training, bring their children to Jesus; who alone can cast out the evil spirit from a child. [Compare Mat. 18:14; Mat. 18:21.]
Topic: THE HEBREW CHURCH
And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people that ye should be mine (Lev. 20:26).
The Hebrews were not only a royal nation, with Jehovah for their King, but they constituted an established church, not by the edict of any earthly monarch or political assembly, but by a royal proclamation from the Court of Heaven. That the people might know and ever remember the high dignity thus conferred upon them, Moses was directed to proclaim the fact in association with the promulgation of laws demanding holiness of heart and life. The Hebrew Church was composed of persons
I. SEPARATED FROM THE WORLD, have severed you from other people. They had been delivered from Egypt, protected, preserved, guided, exceeding great and precious promises vouchsafed to them, beside laws for the regulation of their lives. They had been severed from other nations that they might become distinguished for purity, and be the means of blessing the world.
II. SEPARATED FROM SIN. Ye shall be holy unto me. All the rites and ceremonies imposed upon them were to this end. The divine image, lost by the fall, was to be restored. Holiness, to which the people were called, would not only produce happiness in the restored, but yield pleasure to Jehovah, whose name is holy.
III. CONSECRATED TO THE LORD. Holy unto me. The people were not to live for self-gratification, they were not their own or at their own disposal, their wills were to fall in with the divine will, they were to be holy for Jehovahs sake All the services of the tabernacle, every sacrifice offered, would remind the worshippers of their duty to surrender themselves unreservedly to Him who had set them apart for His own service and glory.
IV. OWNED OF THE LORD. That ye should be mine. Herein we see the condescension of Jehovah, to take into His possession, as His intimate friends, such unworthy creatures as the Hebrews were. We see His infinite goodness in providing for their wants and educating them for a sublime position among the nations of the earth. He owned them, they were therefore to feel themselves at His disposal, and to act implicitly under His direction.
The same things hold good in the Christian Church. Believers are to come out from the ungodly, be distinct from the world. They are to be separate from sin and touch not the unclean thing. They are to be consecrated to the Lord, their motto For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. They are not their own, but bought with a price, even the precious blood of Christ. Let us warn others against sin; watch over our own hearts; pray for help to resist every temptation; avoid everything likely to contaminate; avail ourselves of every aid to growth in grace and progress in holiness.F. W. B.
Topic: GODLY DISTINCTIVENESS (Lev. 20:22-26)
It manifests itself in, and results from:
I. A UNIQUE CODE OF MORAL AND SACRED LAWS.
Ye shall keep all My statutes and all My judgments, and do them (Lev. 20:22).
No other people had a standard of morals, or a directory of religious regulations comparable to these.
II. A STUDIOUS AVOIDANCE OF THE CUSTOMS OF UNGODLINESS.
Ye shall not walk in the manners of the nations, etc (Lev. 20:23).
Conformity to the world was prohibited. However sanctioned, or desirable, or seemingly harmless, the customs of the ungodly were to be shunned.
III. A CAUTIOUS SELECTION OF SOCIAL ENJOYMENTS AND INDULGENCES.
Ye shall put difference between clean and unclean, etc (Lev. 20:25).
Palate not to be gratified, tables not to be spread with promiscuous viands. Gods wish and word were to rule them in every enjoyment; and self restraint was to mark them in every gratification.
IV. A HERITAGE OF SPECIAL PRIVILEGES AS GODS PEOPLE.
Ye shall inherit their land, a land that floweth with milk and honey, etc (Lev. 20:24).
Sinners lose earthly felicities, as the penalty of their impiety: therefore I abhorred them (Lev. 20:23).
The godly possess rich heritage of good as the mark of Gods favour: I will give it unto you to possess (Lev. 20:24).
V. A SEAL OF DIVINE SANCTITY RESTING UPON THEM.
They show themselves to be
1. Divinely separated (Lev. 20:24) from other people. Their history and career attest Gods dealing with them as with no other people.
2. Divinely sanctified. (Ye shall be holy unto me: for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people (Lev. 20:26). For the very beauty of the Lord rests upon the character and conduct of those He redeems.
Note:
(a) God claims His people: they are not their own; may not follow their own desires and delights, He is their law, they must surrender to Him. That ye should be mine (Lev. 20:26). It is a blessed fact to belong to God: but it carries its obligations.
(b) Priviliges are conditioned upon fidelity (Lev. 20:22). The inheritance would be forfeited if obedience were withheld. All Gods covenant promises to us wait upon our loyalty to Him. Ye are my friends if ye do, etc.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
PUNISHMENT FOR UNHOLINESS 20:127
MOLECH WORSHIP 20:15
TEXT 20:15
1
And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying,
2
Moreover, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.
3
I also will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.
4
And if the people of the land do at all hide their eyes from that man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and put him not to death;
5
then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that play the harlot after him to play the harlot with Molech, from among their people.
THOUGHT QUESTIONS 20:15
448.
How could the strangers be held responsible in the same way as the children of Israel?
449.
Who are the people of the land in Lev. 20:2?
450.
Just what is involved in being cut off from among the people?
451.
In what way does the worship of Molech defile the sanctuary and profane the holy name of God?
452.
Why would the people of the land be tempted to hide their eyes and not put such a one to death?
453.
Why include the family of the violator in his punishment?
454.
Was sex a part of the worship of Molech? Discuss.
PARAPHRASE 20:15
The Lord gave Moses these further instructions for the people of Israel: Anyonewhether an Israelite or a foreigner living among youwho sacrifices his child as a burnt offering to Molech shall without fail be stoned by his peers. And I Myself will turn against that man and cut him off from all his people, because he has given his child to Molech, thus making My Tabernacle unfit for Me to live in, and insulting My holy name. And if the people of the land pretend they do not know what the man has done, and refuse to put him to death, then I Myself will set My face against that man and his family and cut him off, along with all others who turn to other gods than Me.
COMMENT 20:15
Lev. 20:1-5 God is indeed interested in the reformation of those who sin. However in the cases before us all attempts at reformation have failed and the instruction of others by the death penalty is the only alternative. We must add that the reputation of God is at stake; the honor of His name must be upheld. He can have no competitors!
We have considered in detail the worship of Molech in Lev. 18:21. The entire community of Israel as well as those who sojourned among them are here called to share in the punishment of this idolator. Ginsburg gives a most instructive description of the action of stoning:
Stoning was the first and the severest mode of capital punishment among the Hebrews, the three others being burning, beheading, and strangling. The Jewish canonists have tabulated the following eighteen cases in which death by stoning was inflicted: (1) of a man who has commerce with his own mother (chap. Lev. 20:11); (2) or with his fathers wife (chap. Lev. 20:12); (3) or with his daughter-in-law (chap. Lev. 20:12); (4) or with a betrothed maiden (Deu. 22:23-24); (5) or with a male (chap. Lev. 20:13); (6) or with a beast (chap. Lev. 20:15); (7) of a woman who was guilty of lying with a beast (chap. Lev. 20:16); (8) the blasphemer (chap. Lev. 24:10-16); (9) the worshipper of idols (Deu. 17:2-5); (10) the one who gives his seed to Molech (chap. Lev. 20:2); (11) the necromancer; (12) the wizard (chap. Lev. 20:27); (13) the false prophet (Deu. 13:6); (14) the enticer to idolatry (Deu. 13:11); (15) the witch (chap. Lev. 20:17); (16) the profaner of the Sabbath (Num. 15:32-36); (17) he that curses his parent (chap. Lev. 20:9); and (18) the rebellious son (Deu. 21:18-21). As the Mosaic legislation only directs that the lapidation is to take place without the precincts of the city (chap. Lev. 24:14; Num. 15:36), and that the witnesses upon whose evidence the criminal has been sentenced to death are to throw the first stone (Deu. 17:7), the administrators of the law during the second Temple decreed the following mode of carrying out the sentence. On his way from the court of justice to the place of execution a herald preceded the criminal, exclaiming, So-and-so is being led out to be stoned for this and this crime, and so-and-so are the witnesses; if any one has to say anything that might save him, let him come forward and say it. Within ten yards of the place of execution he was publicly admonished to confess his sins, within four yards he was stripped naked except a slight covering about his loins. After his hands had been bound, he was led upon a scaffolding about twice the height of a man. Here wine mingled with myrrh was mercifully given to him to dull the pain of execution, and from here one of the witnesses pushed him down with great violence so that he fell upon his back. If the fall did not kill him, the other witnesses dashed a great stone on his breast, and if this did not kill him, all the people that stood by covered him with stones. The corpse was then nailed to the cross, and afterwards burnt. Hereupon the relatives visited both the judges and the witnesses to show that they bore no hatred towards them, and that the sentence was just. Not unfrequently, however, the excited multitude resorted to lapidation when they wished to inflict summary justice. This description will explain why the Jews said to Christ that the woman had to be stoned, and why He replied to her accusers that he who is without sin should cast the first stone (Joh. 8:5; Joh. 8:7); why the Jews wanted to stone Christ when they thought He was blaspheming (Joh. 10:31), and why they offered Him wine mingled with myrrh before his crucifixion (Mat. 27:34; Mat. 27:38; Mar. 15:23).
How is it that God speaks of cutting off the idolator when sentence has already been passed upon him and he is to be (or has been) stoned? We believe Lev. 20:3 is discussing an undetected offender, whereas the evidence was not sufficient to convict him. God knows he is guilty and will not allow him to appear in the tabernacle and defile His sanctuary or treat lightly the holy name of God.
It is tragically true that some who are blood guilty of lasciviousness or licentiousness often appear before God in His assembly. The very people who offered their children to Molech afterward came to the sanctuary to worship God. Cf. Jer. 7:9-10; Eze. 23:37-39. Then and now God will not ignore this affrontery to Him.
Since it would be impossible to participate in this type of idolatry without involving the whole family, the whole family will share the punishment.
FACT QUESTIONS 20:15
462.
In what way was the death penalty reformatory?
463.
In what sense is Gods reputation in the balance?
464.
List nine of the eighteen offenses that carried the death penalty.
465.
Describe in your own words the death march and the act of stoning.
466.
Explain Lev. 20:3.
467.
We have some today who are like these idolators. In what way?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XX.
(1) And the Lord spake unto Moses.It is difficult to account for the position of this chapter. Naturally we should expect it to follow Leviticus 18. If Leviticus 20 contains the penalties attached to the sins enumerated in Leviticus 18, we should expect it immediately to follow that chapter. It may, however, be that before enacting these severe punishments, the Lawgiver wanted to appeal to the high calling of the nation, to qualify them by the sublime precepts laid down in Leviticus 19 for obedience to the laws in Leviticus 18, and that in the chapter before us the civil punishments are set forth as an alternative for those who will not be guided by the spiritual sentiments enunciated in Leviticus 19.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Lev 20:1
‘And Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,’
It is again stressed that these are God’s word, given to Moses. They possibly indicate another separate revelation.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Lev 20:12 And if a man lie with his daughter in law, both of them shall surely be put to death: they have wrought confusion; their blood shall be upon them.
Lev 20:12
Lev 18:23, “Neither 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.”
1Co 14:33, “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
For Sins Against the Sixth, Second, and Fourth Commandments
v. 1. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, v. 2. Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech, v. 3. And I will set My face against that man, v. 4. And if the people of the land do anyways hide their eyes from the man when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, v. 5. then I will set My face against that man and against his family, and will cut him off and all that go a-whoring after him, v. 6. And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, v. 7. Sanctify yourselves, therefore, and be ye holy; for I am the Lord, your God, v. 8. And ye shall keep My statutes and do them. I am the Lord which sanctify you. v. 9. Fore very one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death; he hath cursed his father or his mother,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
The subject of Lev 18:1-30, is resumed in this chapter; but that which was before considered as sin only is now regarded as crime, and penalties are attached according to the heinousness of the offense. For example, the sin of “giving of his seed to Molech,” or which is the same thing, “letting any of his seed pass through the fire to Molech,” had been forbidden as a sin in Lev 18:21; now it is condemned as a crime. The various penalties assigned in this chapter are
(1) burning with fire (Lev 18:14);
(2) stoning with stones (Lev 18:2, Lev 18:27);
(3) being put to death in a manner not specified (Lev 18:9, Lev 18:10, Lev 18:11, Lev 18:12, Lev 18:13, Lev 18:15, Lev 18:16);
(4) being cut off from among his people, either by God himself (Lev 18:4, Lev 18:5, Lev 18:6) or by an agency not specified (Lev 18:17, Lev 18:18);
(5) bearing his iniquity (Lev 18:17, Lev 18:19, Lev 18:20);
(6) childlessness (Lev 18:20, Lev 18:21).
The first of these penalties, burning with fire, does not mean that those on whom it was inflicted were burnt alive, but that their dead bodies were burnt after they had been stoned to death, as in the case of Achan (Jos 7:25). It is the punishment for taking a mother and daughter together into the same harem (Lev 18:14). Stoning with stones is appointed for crimes which are at once offenses against religion and morals, viz. giving of his seed to Molech (Lev 18:2), and witchcraft (Lev 18:27). The other form of putting to death, which no doubt was strangling, is the penalty assigned to cursing parents (Lev 18:9), adultery (Lev 18:10), marriage or intercourse with a stepmother (Lev 18:11) or stepdaughter (Lev 18:12), the sin of Sodom (Lev 18:13), and bestiality (Lev 18:15, Lev 18:16). Cutting off from his people may be effected either by death (Lev 18:4, Lev 18:5, and perhaps 6), which is the penalty for Molech-worship, connivance at Molech-worship, and dealing with witches; or by excommunication (Lev 18:17, Lev 18:18), which was the punishment for intercourse with a sister, or with one who was unclean by reason of her monthly sickness (see Exo 31:14).
The phrase, bearing his iniquity, means that the man continues in the state of a criminal until he has been cleansed either by suffering the punishment of his offense or making atonement for it, which sometimes he might, sometimes he might not, do. The man who committed incest with a sister would “bear his iniquity” (Lev 18:17), because he would be put in a state of excommunication without permission of restoration by means of sacrificial offerings. And so with the man who took his aunt by blood (Lev 18:19) or by marriage (Lev 18:20) as his wife,he would not be allowed to recover his status by offering sacrifice. Childlessness, the punishment for marrying an uncle’s or brother’s wife, probably means that in those eases the offender’s children should not be counted as his own, but should be entered in the genealogical register as his uncle’s or his brother’s children.
Lev 20:2, Lev 20:3
The close connection between giving of his seed unto Molech and defiling my sanctuary, and profaning my holy name, is explained and illustrated by Ezekiel in the judgment on Aholah and Aholibah. “They have caused their sons, whom they bare unto me, to pass for them through the fire, to devour them. Moreover this they have done unto me: they have defiled my sanctuary in the same day, and have profaned my sabbaths. For when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it; and, lo, thus have they done in the midst of mine house” (Eze 23:37-39). Not only was the juxtaposition and combination of the worship of Molech and Jehovah an offense to him whose name is Jealous, but at the time that Molech-worship was carried on in the valley of Hinnom, idols were set up in the court of the temple itself, as we learn from the Book of Kings and from Jeremiah. “But they set their abominations in the house, which is called by my Name, to defile it. And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which! commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin” (Jer 32:34, Jer 32:35). And of Manasseh it is related, “He built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord said, In Jerusalem will I put my Name. And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he made his son pass through the fire” (2Ki 21:4-6).
Lev 20:4, Lev 20:5
There is to be no connivance with Molech-worship. The penalty is death, and is to be carried out by the proper tribunals, whose business it was to see that the stoning took place. So in Deuteronomy the duty of killing those who entice to idolatry is laid down. “Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shall thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people” (Deu 13:8, Deu 13:9). In the case of Molech-worship God declares that, if the tribunals of the nation fail to adjudge the penalty of death to the offender, he will himself lake the matter into his hands, and cut him off with his family and all that follow him in his sin of unfaithfulness.
Lev 20:6
God will also himself cut off from among his people any that, not content with lawful and godly knowledge, turn after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them.
Lev 20:7, Lev 20:8
A positive command, Sanctify yourselves therefore, and he ye holy: for I am the Lord your God, is introduced early in the list of penalties to show what is the main purpose of the latter. The only way in which the nation can recover holiness lost by the sins of its members, is by the punishment of the latter, or by their purification by means of sacrifice, according to the nature of the offense.
Lev 20:9
See above, the note on Lev 19:14, which shows how God’s word is made of none effect by man’s traditions. God says that a man who curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death. Human authority, incontrovertible throughout a great part of Christendom, declares that in most cases it is no grave sin.
Lev 20:10
The Hebrew punishment for adultery is more severe than that of most other nations. Death is again pronounced as the penalty of both adulterer and adulteress in Deu 22:22. The crime is that of a man with a married woman, whether the man be married or not; it is not that of a married man with an unmarried woman, which, in a country where polygamy was allowed, could not be regarded in the same light.
Lev 20:11, Lev 20:12
It should be noted that intercourse with a stepmother or daughter-in-law are put, by the punishment inflicted upon them, on the same level with adultery and unnatural crimes (Lev 20:10, Lev 20:13, Lev 20:15, Lev 20:16).
Lev 20:13-19
(See Le Lev 18:22, Lev 18:17, Lev 18:23, Lev 18:9, Lev 18:19, Lev 18:12.)
Lev 20:20, Lev 20:21
They shall die childless; 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” (Gardiner).
Lev 20:22, Lev 20:23
The fact of the nations of Canaan being abhorred by God because they committed all these things shows that the Levitical code forbidding all these things was no part of any special law for that nation alone, hut a republication of that Law which is binding on all nations because written on the conscience. The prohibited degrees in the Book of Leviticus form a part of the moral, not of the ceremonial, law, and are, therefore, of permanent and universal, not only of temporary and national, obligation.
Lev 20:24-26
The Israelites are to avoid all defilement, moral and ceremonial, because they are God’s own possession, separated from other people, and holy unto him.
Lev 20:27
Those that deal in witchcraft are to be stoned.
HOMILETICS
Lev 20:1, Lev 20:21
The difference between the religious and the secular law
is more marked in modern nations than in the Hebrew commonwealth; the primary object of the first being to forbid and prevent sin; of the second, to protect life and property. The distinction is shown by the separation of the eighteenth and the twentieth chapters; but as in the Mosaic legislation both the law which denounces sin and the law which pronounces penalties for crime proceeded from God, it was not necessary that the boundaries between the two should be marked and defined with the same exactness as when man is legislator; for man cannot venture to gauge the relative enormities of sins, and assign to them their respective punishments, except so far as he is led by the hand by the revelation of God. He can only judge of wrongs and injuries to his fellow-men. In the present age of the world, when the State and the Church are no longer identical, as they were in the case of the Israelites, each law fulfils its function best by confining itself to its proper sphere. The religious law, basing itself on the Divine Law, prohibits and denounces sin; the secular law, being an elaboration by the human intellect of the idea of justice in its various applications to the events of human life, condemns and punishes crimes, by which wrong is done to others.
Lev 20:6, Lev 20:27
The pursuit of knowledge by right means
is one of the highest and noblest occupations of the intellect of man, but the seeking after knowledge by unlawful means is so criminal as to lead God to cut off the presumptuous seeker from among his people. It was grasping after a forbidden knowledge by unrighteous means that brought death into the world (Gen 3:6). All dealing in necromancy and witchcraft involves this sin on the part of the inquirer into futurity, whether those whom they consult be merely deceivers or not.
Lev 20:9
Just as the negative law, “Thou shalt do no murder,” involves the positive law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour,” so the law forbidding to curse a father or a mother contains within it the law of reverential submission to parents and to all in authority.
Lev 20:26
The command, “Ye shall be holy unto me: for I the Lord am holy,” is binding upon Christians far more strongly than on the Israelites. For
I. CHRISTIANS HAVE A POWER GIVEN THEM WHEREBY THEY CAN BE HOLY WHICH THE ISRAELITES HAD NOT. St. Paul, having declared that the final purpose of God’s election and our adoption in Christ is “that we should be holy and without blame before him in love” (Eph 1:4), goes on to say that to those who believed, on hearing the gospel of their salvation preached, there was given the earnest of the Holy Spirit, with which they were sealed unto the day of redemption (Eph 1:13, Eph 1:14). The Spirit of holiness is given to every baptized Christian soul, in a way in which he was not imparted to the Israelites, the dispensation of types and shadows having given place to that of spiritual realities, and the promised Comforter having been sent, not only to be with us, but to be in us (Joh 14:16, Joh 14:17; Joh 16:7-15).
II. CHRISTIANS HAVE IN CHRIST AN EXAMPLE OF DIVINE HOLINESS WHICH THE ISRAELITES HAD NOT. They are therefore able to realize more fully than the Israelites the manner in which they are to “be holy, for the Lord your God is holy.” They see before them the example of One who is God, and who emptied himself of his glory and power, and was made man, and lived a life of perfect holiness on earth. On this model they can, by the help of that Spirit vouchsafed to each Christian, form their own lives. It is an ideal never to be attained, but yet to have an ideal is an inexpressible help.
III. CHRISTIANS, BY THEIR UNION WITH CHRIST AS THEIR HEAD, RECEIVE FROM HIM OF HIS HOLINESS. God has given Christ “to be the Head over all things to the Church, which is his body” (Eph 1:22, Eph 1:23), and has gathered “together in one all things in Christ” (Eph 1:10), that we “may grow up into him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ: from whom the whole body maketh increase unto the edifying of itself in love” (Eph 4:15, Eph 4:16). “Christ is the Head of the Church, as the husband is head of the wife” (Eph 5:23), and “we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (Eph 5:30). The Word is “full of grace and truth and of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace” (Joh 1:14-16). From the mystical union between Christ and his Church there flow down graces upon those who are the members of his Church.
IV. CHRISTIANS CAN BY FAITH APPROPRIATE TO THEMSELVES OF THE HOLINESS OF CHRIST. By faith the holiness, whereby satisfaction was made by Christ for the sinfulness of all mankind, may be so realized by the believing Christian as to be regarded as though it were his own in respect to his own sins.
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR
Lev 20:1-5
Human sacrifices.
cf. Gen 22:1-19; Mic 6:7. In this chapter we come to a catalogue of capital crimes. Upon the whole list of cases we need not dwell; but the first has some interest as raising the question of “human sacrifices.” How early the terrible practice of offering “the fruit of the body” in atonement for” the sin of the soul” arose, we can scarcely say. It has been supposed to be as early, at all events, as the time of Abraham. Some entertain the notion that the sacrifice of Isaac was primarily a temptation to imitate the custom existing in the land. But if the horrible custom existed in Abraham’s day, nothing could more clearly convey that the Divine pleasure rested in other sacrifices altogether than the details of the escape of Isaac. The custom of human sacrifices was widespread, as investigations show. Here and elsewhere the Lord sets his face against them. Let us see if we can grasp the principle involved.
I. HUMAN SACRIFICE IS THE NATURAL CLIMAX OF THE SACRIFICIAL IDEA. “If no scruples,” says Ewald, “held a man back from giving the dearest he had when a feeling in his heart drove him to sacrifice it to his God just as it was, then he would easily feel even the life of a beloved domestic animal not too dear to be given up at his heart’s urgent demand, Nay, only in the offering up of life or soul, as the last that can be offered, did it seem to him that the highest was presented. But the logical consequence of such feelings was that human life must ultimately be looked upon as incomparably the highest and most wondrous offering, whether the life offered be that of a stranger or, as that which is dearest to one, that of one’s own child, or even of one’s self. Thus human sacrifice was everywhere the proper crown and completion of all these utterances of the fear of God.” The case of Abraham is one in point. When God for wise purposes demanded the surrender of the only begotten and well-beloved son, Isaac, he asked the patriarch for the greatest conceivable sacrifice; and, so far as intention is concerned, Abraham made the surrender. It has been called on the patriarch’s part a “magnificent and extraordinary act of romantic morals.” While, therefore, it was in reality, as we shall see, a condemnation of human sacrifices as such, it illustrates their real spirit.
II. HUMAN SACRIFICE IS AT THE SAME TIME SUCH A MONSTROUS AND EXTRAVAGANT EXPRESSION OF THE SACRIFICIAL IDEA THAT NOTHING BUT A DIVINE COMMAND WOULD WARRANT THE ENTERTAINMENT OF IT. What distinguishes Abraham’s case in connection with the proposed sacrifice of Isaac from that of all other sacrifices of human life is that he had a command of God to go upon, while the others followed the devices of their own hearts. So sacred should human life appear to men, that the idea of taking it away should only be entertained under the most solemn sanctions. Besides, but for the sin-distorted mind of man, it would appear that the consecration of human beings as “living sacrifices,” is in itself far higher and nobler than their death (Rom 12:1). To take innocent infants and place them in the flaming arms of Molech must appear a most monstrous and exaggerated expression of the sacrificial idea.
But would God, in any circumstances, command human sacrifices? As a matter of fact, men were sacrificed through capital punishment. The present chapter is full of capital crimes. Men died under the direction of God for their crimes. This, however, is not the sacrificial idea, which involves the sacrifice of the innocent in the room of the guilty. This was doubtless what led the infants to be favourite sacrifices with the heathenthe innocency of the sufferer constituted the greater appeal to the angry deity. We observe, then
III. THAT GOD FORBADE, UNDER THE PENALTY OF DEATH, HUMAN SACRIFICES, AND IN THE ONLY CASE WHERE lie SEEMED TO DEMAND A HUMAN SACRIFICE HE HAD PROVIDED A SUBSTITUTE. He made the offering of children to Molech a capital crime. This was not aimed at the idolatry only, but at the unwarranted exaggeration of the sacrificial idea. Besides, in the ease of Isaac, just when Abraham was about to slay him, God interposed with a provided substitute. All God required in Abraham’s peculiar case was the spirit of surrender. He guards, therefore, his prerogative of dealing with life, and enjoins his people only to take human life away when he directs them. They are not to presume to offer such a sacred gift as human lie upon his altar in the way of sacrifice. They may dedicate themselves and their children as living beings to his service, but their death he requires not in such a voluntary fashion at their hands.
IV. AT THE SAME TIME, WE FIND HUMAN LIFE REGULARLY SACRIFICED IN THE ORDER OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE AND AT THE CALL OF DUTY. That is to say, though we have not monstrous and unhallowed sacrifices required of God at his altars, he does make demands on men and women to surrender, like Abraham, their sons, or to surrender themselves at the call of duty. This is indeed as real a sacrifice as in the arms of Moloch, and at the same time a far nobler one. In fact, self-sacrifice seems to be a law of providence in the case of all who would be truly noble in their careers. The voluntary element, coming in along with the sweet reasonableness of the sublime necessity, vindicates the morality of the whole transaction. Men and women cheerfully lay down their lives in gradual sacrifice to duty’s call, or sometimes in sudden and immediate sacrifice. And the act is moral as welt as heroic.
V. THIS LEADS TO A LAST OBSERVATION, THAT HUMAN SACRIFICE HAD ITS GREAT CULMINATION AND CLIMAX IN THAT OF JESUS CHRIST, For what God did not require from Abrahamthe actual sacrifice of his sonhe has required of himself. The demand for a human sacrifice made only apparently in the case of Isaac, was made really in the case of Christ. An innocent, sinless human being was once commanded by his God and Father to lay down his life and bear, in doing so, the sins of man. Hence we find him saying, “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again” (Joh 10:17). It would seem a harsh command, a cruel necessity, were it not that the Father and Son are essentially one, and the commandment that the Son should die was virtually Divine self-sacrifice. “He who is sent is one in being with him who sends.” The atonement of Christ is really the self-sacrifice of God.
Hence the only human sacrifice demanded is God incarnate responding to himself. The necessity for thus atoning for human sin at the expense of self-sacrifice is in the main mysterious. But its very mystery makes it more deeply profitable to faith. How great must God’s love be when it leads him to lay down his own life and die ignominiously in the interests of men! The ram which was offered in the stead of Isaac is the type of the self-sacrificing Jesus who was offered for us.R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
Lev 20:1-5
Sin at its worst.
There is, perhaps, no development of sin which is more shocking to the renewed mind of man, and more offensive to the pine and gracious heart of God, than that which is here condemned. The verses intimate
I. THAT SIN SOMETIMES LEADS TO A SHOCKING DISTORTION OF THE HUMAN JUDGMENT. How, we naturally ask, could men ever come to believe in the desirableness of such inhuman rites as those here prohibited? That any Divine Being could possibly be conciliated by the infliction of a cruel death, by the offering up of little children to consuming fires, by this presentation on the part of their own parents! How revolting and incredible seem such ideas! There is no account to be given of it hut that sin, as it goes on its maleficent path, not only disfigures the life and corrupts the heart, but also degrades and distorts the understanding of men. It ends in the “evil eye” and so in the “great darkness” of the soul (Mat 6:23).
II. THAT GOD CANNOT AND WILL NOT PERMIT THE GLORY WHICH IS DUE TO HIMSELF TO BE GIVEN TO ANOTHER. “I will set my face against that man” (Lev 20:3). God has emphatically said, “My glory will I not, give to another” (Isa 42:8). The “face of the Lord is against” them that withhold their homage from the Creator, and offer worship and tribute to false gods. This,
(1) not on the selfish ground that he can claim and secure something for himself which he desires, after the manner of men, but
(2) on the ground that it is in itself right and fit that men should worship the one true God, and
(3) also because idolatry is not only a guilty but a mischievous principle working every imaginable harm to those who commit it. If we are keeping back from God and giving to another or to ourselves the thought, interest, affection, regard, which is due to him, we must remember that we make the Almighty our enemy; his “face is against us.”
III. THAT DELIBERATE TRANSGRESSION MAKES ALL WORSHIP UNACCEPTABLE, IF NOT SINFUL. The man who, while flagrantly violating the Law of Jehovah by “giving his seed unto Molech,” presented himself, at the same time, before the tabernacle, was only “defiling the sanctuary” of the Lord and “profaning his holy Name” (Lev 20:3) by such worthless devotion. God did not desire to see in his presence a man who was willfully and wantonly committing such a heinous sin. No man is more welcome to the throne of grace than the penitent sinner who is burdened with a sense of guilt and who craves the mercy and help of the Divine Saviour. But let not that man who is cherishing sin in his soul think that his offering is accepted of the Lord. It is hypocrisy, profanation (see Psa 1:1-6 :16; Isa 1:11, Isa 1:12).
IV. THAT UNREPENTED SIN MUST BEAR ITS DOOM. “He shall surely be put to death,” etc. (Lev 20:2); “I will cut him off from among his people” (Lev 20:3). There is no provision here stated of mercy for the penitent. Probably none was allowed; the exigencies of the situation demanded death under any circumstances. Under the present dispensation there is an offer of Divine mercy to the penitent, whatever their sins may be, however many, however great. But the impenitent must lay their account with the fact that they have offended One who “will by no means clear the guilty,” who will “surely” punish and destroy.
V. THAT CONNIVANCE AT DEADLY SIX IS A GUILTY PARTICIPATION IN WRONG, AND MUST SHARE ITS MISERABLE DOOM. (Lev 20:4, Lev 20:5.) There are evils at which no friendship however dear, no kinship however close, may dare to wink. We must unsparingly denounce and even determinedly expose.
VI. THAT THOSE WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CHURCH‘S WELFARE MUST WARN–REPEATEDLY AGAINST THE MOST DANGEROUS SINS. Again, “Thou shalt say,” etc. (Lev 20:1).C.
Lev 20:6
Credulity and faith.
This, also, is an injunction which Moses had given before, and which he was instructed to repeat (see Le Lev 19:31). Our thought may be directed to
I. THE PREVALENCE OF IMPOSTURE. There has never been a time nor a land without its “familiar spirits,” its “wizards,” or impostors of some kind and name. Men have claimed the power of gaining extraordinary access to the spiritual world, or superhuman knowledge of the future, and they have imposed on the ungoverned curiosity of their simple neighbours. The presence of such workers in magic is almost universal. The love of power and the love of money will account for it. So must it be while there is
II. THE CORRESPONDING PREVALENCE OF CREDULITY. The number of “the simple” is very large everywhere. Men and women are always to be found, in pitiful abundance, who will respond to any claim made upon their belief. There is hardly an absurdity too glaring, a falsehood too palpable to be discredited by all. Let the impostor only he confident and pretentious enough, and he will find a number who will listen with eagerness and believe without question or proof.
III. ITS UTTER DELUSIVENESS. The entire system is false and rotten throughout; it is a mass of trickery, delusion, and disappointment.
1. Those who practice it soon impose upon themselves; they come to believe that they are really admitted to the secrets of the other world, and they are the victims of their own roguery. Sin tests no one so hard as the sinner himself; its rebound is terrible and deadly. He who, with guilty selfishness, would deceive his fellows, will soon entangle his foot in his own net and perish in his own snare (Psa 7:15; Psa 9:15).
2. They also grossly deceive their neighbours. They who listen to their voice believe that they are holding intercourse with heaven, or are gaining instruction from those supernaturally endowed, when the truth is they are only dealing with men who are unusually wicked, and who should only be heard to be disregarded or denounced.
IV. ITS SINFULNESS IN THE SIGHT OF GOD. Resort to imposture is positively wrong. In this book God uttered and repeated his Divine prohibition, and he strengthened his law by attaching the heaviest penalties to disobedience: “I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off,” etc. The heinousness of the practice probably lay in the fact that it was a deliberate departure from the Lord himself. There was his house, and there were his prophets to resort unto; to pass these by in order to consult pretenders and impostors was to forsake God and to go “a whoring” after other beings and other things. And thus our thought is directed to
V. THE EXCELLENCY OF A REASONABLE FAITH. The children of Israel had such access to the spiritual world and such knowledge of the future as it was good for men to have. Was not God himself, in manifested presence and in revealing grace, in their camp? Was he not speaking to them as to the future that was before them? Was he not ready to give them prophets who would not impose on them with shameful lies, but guide them with the word of truth? We, too, have all we need without having recourse to subtle and spiritualistic arts. We have:
1. The Word of God upon our tables and in our minds.
2. The devout counsels of wise and holy men.
3. The promised guidance of the Spirit of God.
Fictitious arts are sinful and delusive. The wisdom that is from God is not only sound bat sufficient. That which is more than this “cometh of evil.”C.
Lev 20:7, Lev 20:8
Sanctity-demand, inducement, promise.
Once “again” (Lev 20:2) Moses utters the Divine will in this great matter of holiness (see Le Lev 11:44; Lev 19:2). We have
I. GOD‘S IMPERATIVE DEMAND OF SANCTITY. “Sanctify yourselves.” “Ye shall keep my statutes, and do them.” The Creator of the universe, the Author of our being, the Father and Sustainer of our spirits, has sovereign right to speak to us in such decisive tones. He demands of us that we shall be “holy,” i.e.,
(1) that we shall expel from heart and life all those sinful habits by which men have defiled themselves: thus shall we “be severed from other people” (Lev 20:26), whose spirit and life are hateful; and
(2) that we shall approach him, honour him, and pay him the tribute he asks of us, and also act righteously and blamelessly toward our fellows, “keeping his statutes and doing them.”
II. THE HIGH INDUCEMENT HE PRESENTS TO US. “Be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God.” We may gird ourselves to good and great things, animated by different motives; of these some may be higher, others lower. God summons us to be holy for the highest reason of all, viz. because we shall thus resemble him. “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1Pe 1:16). Other reasons abound: holiness
(1) is the best thing in itself;
(2) saves us from many and great spiritual evils;
(3) delivers us from dark and awful penalties;
(4) allies us to the noblest created beings, etc.; but the best and loftiest of all considerations is that
(5) it makes us like God, the Holy One, himself. His spirit is our spirit; his principles, our principles; his life, our life. We are “the children of our Father who is in heaven.”
III. HIS PROMISED HELP. “I am the Lord which sanctify you.” The action of God upon our souls has been treated, both by the foolish and by the wicked, as a reason for human impassiveness. Foolish men have said, “God is working for us and in us, therefore it would be irreverent for us to attempt to do anything; we should only interfere.” Wicked men have said, “God works for us, therefore we may safely live in comfortable unconcern and guilt while we wait his time of deliverance.” The “children of wisdom” have said, “God is ready to work with us, there[ore let us strive with all our energies, for, with his help, we shall not strive in vain.” This is the apostle’s argument: “Work out your own salvation, for it is God which worketh in you,” etc. (Php 2:12, Php 2:13). All our endeavours might be unavailing; we might contend against the strong current of sin and be baffled and borne along its stream, but if God himself is sanctifying us, we shall prevail. Let us go forth unto the struggle, for we shall assuredly succeed. God sanctifies us in such wise that he acts with us while he acts in us and for us. He sanctifies us by
(1) the truth of his Word (Joh 17:17): this we are to consult; by
(2) the privileges of the sanctuary (Eze 37:28): of these we are to avail ourselves; by
(3) his providential discipline (Heb 12:10): to this we are to submit; by
(4) the indwelling of his Holy Spirit (Rom 15:16): for this we are earnestly to pray and expectantly to wait.C.
Lev 20:9 (latter clause)
The unforgiven.
“His blood shall be upon him;” “their blood shall be upon them” (Lev 20:13, Lev 20:16, Lev 20:27). These words have a deeper significance than a mere repetition of the sentence, “He shall be put to death.” They signify this: his sin cannot be forgiven him. It was the blood of the animal that “made atonement for the soul” (Lev 17:11). It was the shed blood, therefore, that was associated, in thought, with the penalty due to sin. And when the legislator said.
“His Mood shall be upon him,” he meant his penalty shall rest upon himit shall not be borne and taken away by the blood of the substituted victim. In other words, “He shall bear his iniquity,” or the penalty of his iniquity, himself (see Le Lev 7:18). There have always been, and there will always be, in the world “the unforgiven;” men, like Cain, who bear about them the brand of an unpardonable offense; sons and daughters who have erred and have not been taken back into parental love; criminals that have lost the place in society which they have no hope of regaining; forlorn wretches that have so sinned against their conscience that they cannot forgive themselves, and have abandoned themselves to a terrible despair. But what of the Divine forgiveness or refusal to forgive? We are taught
I. THAT PROVISION WAS MADE IN THE LAW FOR THE PARDON OF MANY OFFENSES. This was the end of all the sin and trespass offerings, and on the Day of Atonement “all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions” were “borne away” into the uninhabited land, into the wilderness of oblivion (Lev 16:21, Lev 16:22).
II. THAT UNDER THE LAW THERE WERE OFFENSES WHICH COULD NOT BE THUS ATONED, AND WERE NOT FORGIVEN. Those who wrought shameful acts of idolatry or immorality could bring no oblation to the altar; they could look for no mercy; no blood of atonement was availing; their “blood was upon them ;” they died before the Lord.
III. THAT, UNDER THE GOSPEL, MERCY IS OFFERED FOR THE WORST TRANSGRESSORS IF THERE BE PENITENCE AND FAITH. The one “unpardonable sin” (Mar 3:29) is either
(1) a sin which was possible in the days of the Incarnation and is absolutely beyond commission now, or
(2) consists in that hardening of the heart against the Spirit’s influence which results in final impenitence. But where there is repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, there is an open gate into the kingdom of God’s mercy, into eternal life. No heinousness of offense, no multiplicity of transgressions, bars the way. “By him all that believe are justified from all things, from which they could not be justified by the Law of Moses” (Act 13:39).
IV. THAT MANY SOULS, THOUGH WALKING IN THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL, ARE CONTENT TO RANK AMONG THE UNFORGIVEN. In the light, in the full sunshine of privilege and opportunity, there are thousands of men who do not find, because they will not seek, the mercy and the friendship of God. They live unforgiven; “their blood is upon them.” They go through life
(1) with an oppressive sense of condemnation upon them;
(2) excluding themselves from purest spiritual blessedness (Psa 32:1, Psa 32:2);
(3) voluntarily unfitted for the highest service man can render his brother.
V. THAT THE IMPENITENT PASS INTO THE FUTURE WITH UNFORGIVEN SIN UPON THEIR SOUL. How terrible to pass beyond the line which bounds the period of probation with our “blood upon us;” to pass on
(1) to condemnation and reproach at the bar of God,
(2) to exile from the heavenly city,
(3) to the retribution which the justice of God must inflict!
Go, in the day of grace, to the “Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” through whom there is “remission of sins” (Luk 24:47).C.
Lev 20:23 (latter part)
God’s displeasure with ourselves.
“They committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.” This expression arrests us by
I. ITS SOMEWHAT STARTLING STRENGTH. “I abhorred them.” Does God positively abhor man? the Creator his creature? the Father his child? Are we to understand that the Lord, who is “gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy,” feels an actual abhorrence of those beings to whom he is so nearly and intimately related, those human spirits he formed for himself, to reflect his own image and to enjoy his own immortal blessedness? The word startles us; it may well alarm us; it suggests the question, Is it possible that we also may become such that our God may be compelled to look on us with a displeasure which amounts to abhorrence? We look at
II. THE SAD AND SOLID TRUTH WHICH IT CONTAINS. “God hates the sin and loves the sinner,” we say, and truly. Yet this sentence does not cover the whole truth of the case. God does pity the sinner, and seeks to save him. But he is displeased with him also. Of anything like malignity or ill will we rejoice to know that the holy and gracious One is absolutely incapable; but we are bound to believe that he feels a sacred and holy resentment against those who violate the laws of righteousness.
1. Scripture plainly affirms that he does. “Therefore I abhorred them;” “God is angry with the wicked every day” (Psa 7:11); “the Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers” (Zec 1:2); “they vexed his Holy Spirit” (Isa 63:10); “he looked on them with anger” (Mar 3:5); to “them that obey unrighteousness” God will render “indignation and wrath” (Rom 2:8).
2. It is impossible wholly to separate the act from the agent. An act has no moral qualities at all apart from the disposition and character of him who does it. If our indignation is aroused by any shameful deed, it is because some one has wrought that which is wrong, and our feeling must extend to the perpetrator as well as to the crime. In theory it must do so; in fact it does so. We cannot see our own children doing that which is guilty without being displeased with them as well as excited with indignation against the wrong they have done. Our feelings of holy anger, indignation, righteous grief, etc; may not be precisely, identical with those which are in the heart of God when he looks down on the sins of his human children, but they answer to them; they correspond with them; they enable us to understand how he, our Divine Father, feels toward us when we do those things which are offensive and grievous in his sight. Let us lay it well to heart that by
(1) our positive transgressions of his holy Law,
(2) our keeping back from him the love and the service which are his due,
(3) the continued rejection of his overtures of mercy and reconciliation in Christ Jesus, we are offending, displeasing, grieving God.
These our sins are drawing down upon our own souls the awful anger; the high displeasure, of that Almighty God in whom we live, who has ourselves and our future in his right hand of power, whom it is our chief duty, and should be our first desire, to conciliate and please. We glance at
III. THE WELCOME TRUTH WITH WHICH IT IS CONSISTENT. While God bates sin and is divinely displeased with the sinner, he yet pities the sinner and seeks to save him. He condemns, but he invites. “Is Ephraim my dear son? since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still” (Jer 31:20). As a human father over his lost son or erring daughter, only with immeasurably deeper love, he yearns over his wayward children, and goes out to welcome them home, when, returning to themselves, they return unto him (Luk 15:11-24).C.
Lev 20:24
Three aspects of human life.
The verse suggests three thoughts concerning our human life
I. THE EXCELLENCY OF OUR ESTATE. “A land that floweth with milk and honey.” God .gave the Israelites an excellent inheritance when he led them into the land. of promise. For beauty, variety of scenery, fertility, etc; it was all that could be desired. Our present estate as citizens of time is one rich and full, a “land flowing,” etc. We have:
1. The beauty and grandeur of the world.
2. Human love in its manifold forms, conjugal, parental, filial, fraternal, etc.
3. Sufficiency of all kinds of palatable food.
4. Intellectual gratifications.
5. Spiritual relationships and the sacred, enduring joys which belong to these.
II. THE TENURE UNDER WHICH WE HOLD POSSESSION. “I will give it unto you to possess it.” We reckon that we “possess” many things. We call them “ours.” We endeavour to secure them to ourselves by carefully drawn documents and witnesses. But what, when all has been done that can be done, is the tenure under which we hold everything? It is not the consent of man, but the will of God. God said to Israel concerning the country of the Canaanites, “Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it.” He thought well to take it away from its former occupants and give it to them. There were, no doubt, the best reasons for this exchange; but Jehovah evidently assumed his perfect right to dispose as seemed well to him of his own. God always has the best grounds on which to deal with us, raising up or laying low; he never acts capriciously; but he often acts without assigning reasons to us, and in such wise that we cannot make any conjecture thereupon that is even probably true. We must recognize the fact that we hold everything at his will, and be perfectly ready to lay it down or to hand it on to another at the bidding of the Supreme. This is true of
(1) our property and position,
(2) our mental powers,
(3) our health, and
(4) our life on earth.
III. THE PAINFUL NEED TO SEPARATE OURSELVES FROM OTHERS. “I am the Lord your God, which have separated you flora other people.” By their daily habits and social customs (Lev 20:25), the Jews were cut off from intercourse with other people: intermarriages were strictly prohibited (Deu 7:3, Deu 7:4); they were to maintain a studied separateness from all surrounding nations. The conscientious service of God our Saviour involves some separateness on our part.
1. We have to form ourselves into separate societies, Christian Churches. From these we are bound, in faithfulness, to exclude those who do not profess to love our Lord Jesus Christ. This will produce resentment on their part, and cause them to ascribe to pride that which is due to simple loyalty to the Master.
2. We have to separate ourselves from those persons and things whose association would be injurious to the cause of Christ; from
(1) unholy friendships,
(2) institutions and customs which have evil features or evil tendencies,
(3) the abounding spirit of worldliness and selfishness.
We are bound to make it clear and plain to all that we are “on the Lord’s side,” and on the side of all those righteous and holy principles which he commends to us.C.
HOMILIES BY J.A. MACDONALD
Lev 20:1-27
Sin unto death.
The offenses described in this chapter were mentioned before. Such is our obtuseness that we need “line upon line.” Adorable is that goodness of God which takes such pains with us. We have here
I. PRESUMPTUOUS SINS AND THEIR PENALTY.
1. Parents giving their seed to Moloch.
(1) This infernal god was the King of Tophet (Isa 30:33), and, in malignity, not to be distinguished from Satan. The sacrifices he demanded were human. By a refinement of cruelty he required parents to immolate their own offspring. They were offered to him in the horrible torments of fire. Nothing could be more devilish.
(2) In denouncing death as the penalty for this sin, the reason given is that it “defiled the sanctuary and profaned the holy Name” of God (Lev 20:3). The temple and the Shechinah were in the land, and to commit this wickedness there was consequently to commit the highest crime against the most awful sacredness. Also the body of man is the temple of God, and to give that temple to Molech was, in this sense, to defile the temple of God (see 1Co 6:15; 1Co 10:21).
(3) The penalty is denounced in order upon the Hebrew first. Having more light, he is in a higher degree responsible, and therefore is the first named to suffer (comp. Rom 2:9). Let not Protestant Christians forget their great responsibility.
(4) But the “strangers that sojourn in Israel” are amenable to the same punishment. They must not abuse their hospitality by showing an example of wickedness. This consideration should restrain the licentiousness in foreign countries of some of our travelers.
2. Persons having dealings with necromancy.
(1) The principals in this. Those “who have familiar spirits,” or demons attendant upon them and obedient to their calls. “Wizards,” or wise ones, viz. to pry into the “depths of Satan “(Lev 20:27). Such persons are accounted guilty of the highest crime, and were doomed to suffer death by stoning, without mercy.
(2) Their customers. Those who have recourse to such abandoned persons to discover things which it has not pleased God to reveal. Such pruriency into Divine mysteries is defiling (Lev 20:6; Lev 19:31).
(3) Those who would be sanctified by God must first sanctify themselves from these abominations. If they refuse to do this, God will sanctify himself of them by cutting them off (Lev 20:6, Lev 20:8).
3. Children who curse their parents.
(1) Those guilty of this irreverence must be woefully destitute of the fear of God (see Lev 19:32). Our fathers according to the flesh are to us representatives of our Father in heaven.
(2) So heinous is this crime that it must be punished with death. There is no atonement for it. “His blood shall be upon him.” He must be made himself the sacrifice for his sin. What an admonition to the fast youth of modern times!
4. Excesses in uncleanness.
(1) Death, in one form or another, is the penalty for the horrible crimes specified (Lev 20:10-21). “Their blood shall be upon them;” “they shall be cut off from among their people;” “they shall bear their iniquity;” “they shall be stoned;” “they shall be burnt;” “they shall die childless.”
(2) In this last the retribution must come speedily. Their cutting off out of the land of the living must be before any issue could come of their crime. It may also imply that any issue they may have already should be involved in the punishment of their sin (comp. Num 16:32; Jos 7:24).
II. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WITNESSES.
1. To withhold testimony against sin is to incur its guilt.
(1) It is here taken as complicity in the crime. He that “hides his eyes from the man” that giveth his seed to Moloch, so as to let him escape the hands of justice, is said to “commit whoredom with Moloch” (Lev 20:4, Lev 20:5). What a lesson is here to “peaceable” Christians who let swearers and other public offenders go unreproved!
(2) He that “hides his eyes,” in this case, is visited with excommunication. For complicity in this gross idolatry, here described as “whoredom,” God, as a jealous husband, gives his writing of divorcement. “I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people.” Not only is he expelled from the Church, but also from the nation, if not in addition doomed to suffer a violent death (comp. Le Lev 17:10; Lev 26:17; Jer 44:11-14; Eze 14:7-9; Eze 15:7).
(3) For this culpable want of zeal for the honour of God, the tacit accomplice in the abominations of Molech involves also his family in his punishment (Lev 20:5). How many illustrations of this principle have we in the history of the kings! (see Exo 20:7). Sin is a desperate evil, and requires a strong hand to deal with it.
2. The testimony against sin is a sanctification to the witness (Lev 20:7, Lev 20:8).
(1) The faithful witness thereby sanctifies himself.
(a) He clears himself of all complicity.
(b) He approves himself to God as zealous for his truth, purity, and honour.
(c) He fulfils the part of a true patriot; for nations are exalted by righteousness and ruined by crime.
Public duty may cost us inconvenience, but it must not be neglected.
(2) He is sanctified by the Lord (Lev 20:8). God will honour them that honour him.
(a) He will bring them to dwell in the land (Lev 20:22). This possession was the earnest of the better Canaan. It was a “land flowing with milk and honey.”
(b) He will watch over them as a proprietor over precious treasure. “They shall be mine” (Lev 20:26; Exo 19:5, Exo 19:6; Deu 7:6; Psa 135:4). “Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.”J.A.M.
HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD
Lev 20:1-27
Punishments assigned to presumptuous sins.
I. THE LAW OF SOCIETY RESTS ON THE HIGHER LAW OF GOD. All legislation should be thus divinely sanctioned. The Bible is not a statute-book for nations, but a book of principlesto give light to the mind and heart of man as man. We must not enforce human law on Divine grounds, but we can use Divine revelation to ascertain the most satisfactory laws.
II. PUNISHMENTS vary from age to age and country to country, but the reason of punishment remains. The honour of the Law satisfied is the way of life opened.
III. The comparison between the Law and the gospel suggested by this chapter reveals the grace of God, the progress of humanity, the ultimate destiny of the race. The gradual extinction of the sins is the extinction of the laws which provided against them. “If ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the Law” (see Gal 5:1-26, and comp. Jas 1:1-27, Jas 2:1-26). The perfect law of liberty is a fulfillment of the old law, and therefore a blotting out of the handwriting of ordinances and nailing of them to the cross of Christ.R.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Lev 20:1-5. And the Lord spake, &c. In ch. Lev 18:21 this dedication of children to Molech, is forbidden in more general terms. It is there said, thou shalt not let any of thy offspring pass through the fire to Molech: where the reader will observe, that the words, the fire, are in Italics, and, consequently, not in the Hebrew. Accordingly, Houbigant is of opinion that the phrase signifies to become servants to; and that it expresses dedicating children in perpetual servitude to the worship of Molech, and therefore he renders it, non mittes ad Molech semen tuum in servitutem, thou mayest not send thy offspring into servitude to Molech: and he observes, that the word fire is never used, where Molech is spoken of: but he certainly forgot, 2Ki 23:10 where it is expressly said, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech: and I have no doubt but that in many other places in Scripture, where passing through the fire is spoken of, reference is made to this same idol. Calmet has a very learned and excellent dissertation upon this subject. He informs us from the Rabbins, that “this idol was of brass, sitting upon a throne of the same metal, adorned with a royal crown; having the head of a calf, and his arms extended, as if to embrace any one. When they would offer any children to him, they heated the statue within by a great fire; and, when it was burning hot, they put the miserable victim within his arms, which was soon consumed by the violence of the heat: and, that the cries of the children might not be heard, they made a great noise with drums and other instruments about the idol.” Others relate that the idol was hollow, and within it were contrived seven partitions, one of which was appointed for meal or flour; in the second, there were turtles; in the third, an ewe; in the fourth, a ram; in the fifth, a calf; in the sixth, an ox; and in the seventh, a child. All these were burned together by heating the statue in the inside. Parkhurst observes, that “it appears from the substance of this idol, which was brass; from its having the head of a calf (the animal-emblem of fire😉 from its being divided into seven partitions, answering to the seven planetary spheres or orbits; and from the horrid rites performed to it, that it was intended as a representative of the solar fire. This is also confirmed by its name melek, the king: [the LXX several times render it, when meaning the idol, the ruler:] for, as a king, in his political capacity, acts where he is not, by means of others; so the solar fire in our system does, in some sense, act where it is not, by means of the light which it is continually sending forth, and putting in motion. It has been doubted, whether in that shocking rite of making their children pass through the fire to Molech, they were always destroyed or burnt to death or not. Whoever will attentively consider the following passages in the Hebrew Bible, will be strongly inclined to the affirmative; Eze 16:20-21; Eze 37:28.: Compare Jer 32:35 with Jer 7:31. Some savages of Florida, we are informed by some writers, used to sacrifice their first-born, if a male, to the sun; see Ceremonies and Religious customs, vol. 3: p. 129:” see also 2Ch 28:2. 2Ki 23:10. Those who desire further information on this subject, we refer to Calmet and Selden’s Dissertations, and Bishop Newton’s Notes on Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book i. ver. 392.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
FOURTH SECTION
Punishment for Unholiness
Keeping Holy the Holy Congregation by Cutting off Irreparable Transgression.Lange
Lev 20:1-27
1And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 2Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. 3And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. 4And if the people of the land do any ways hide1 their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not: 5then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people. 6And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul,2 and will cut him off from among his people. 7Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God.3 8And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the Lord which sanctify you.
9For4 every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood5 shall be upon him.
10And the man that committeth adultery with another mans wife, even he that commiteth adultery with his neighbors wife,6 the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. 11And the man that lieth with his fathers wife hath uncovered his fathers nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood5 shall be upon them. 12And if a man lie with his daughter in law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have wrought confusion; their blood5 shall be upon them. 13If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 14And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you. 15And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast. 16And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood5 shall be upon them. 17And if a man shall take his sister, his fathers daughter, or his mothers daughter, and see her nakedness, and she see his nakedness; it is a wicked thing; and they shall be cut off in the sight of their people: he hath uncovered his sisters nakedness; Hebrews 7 shall bear his iniquity. 18And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered [uncovered8] her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people. 19And thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mothers sister, nor of thy fathers sister: for he uncovereth his near kin: they shall bear their iniquity. 20And if a man shall lie with his uncles wife, he hath uncovered his uncles nakedness: they shall bear their sin; they shall die childless. 21And if a man shall take his brothers wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brothers nakedness: they shall be childless.
22Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out. 23And ye shall not walk in the manners [statutes9] of the nation,10 which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them. 24But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people. 25Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living [omit living11] thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean. 26And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine. 27A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lev 20:4. On the daghesh in and , see Text. Note10 on Lev 4:13.
Lev 20:6. . Four MSS. and Onk. read which De Rossi prefers on account of the following . For the last, however, the Sam. reads .
Lev 20:7. The Sam., 4 MSS. and LXX. read: for I, the Lord your God, am holy.
Lev 20:9. = for is omitted in two MSS., the LXX. and Vulg.
Lev 20:9; Lev 20:11-12; Lev 20:16. On the plural form for blood, comp. Gen 4:10; Exo 22:1.
Lev 20:10. Three of Kennicotts MSS. omit the first clause of this verse. Rosenmller considers that the repetition involves a distinction for the sake of emphasis, making in the second clause=relation, so that there is a prohibition, first of adultery in general, then specifically, of adultery with the wife of a relative. For this sense of the word he refers to Deu 13:7 : 2Sa 13:3. S. Augustine (Qu. 73 in Hept.) takes the same view.
Lev 20:17. The LXX., Syr. and Vulg. have the plural.
Lev 20:18. The same word should receive the same translation in both clauses.
Lev 20:23. Statutes. See Text Note2 on Lev 18:3.
Lev 20:23. The Sam. reads and so one MS. followed by all the ancient versions, as seems to be required by the following they committed. If is not unlikely that may have dropped out of the text.
Lev 20:25. There is nothing to express the word living in the Heb., and it is better omitted, as the reference is wholly to the dead bodies of these animals.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The whole of Langes Commentary on this chapter is here given.
Our section forms a completion of the prohibitions which have preceded in Leviticus 18, while it still further joins the punishment of death to several of the very sins there mentioned. Yet this is certainly no mere appendix, but proceeds from an entirely new point of view. There the fundamental idea was: the sexual relations, particularly, the theocratic seed, must be kept holy; here the fundamental idea is: the holy land must be kept holy, it must not be outraged or stirred up to reaction and revolt through an abomination which might determine it to spue out the Israelites also (as a person spues out something nauseous from his mouth), Lev 20:22. Lev 18:28 had already expressed this thought, but from the point of view that the land would be thereby desecrated. It is also here clearly brought out that the land would be taken away from the Canaanites on account of their constant abominations, and given to the people of Israel; but that the like punishment should befall them also, if they did not keep the land clean by executing the penalty of death upon the offenders. In the conception of the sickened land and the revolted nature lies evidently the idea of the people consumed by unnatural sins. [A simpler view of the relation of this to chs. 18 and 19 is given by Clark: The crimes which are condemned in those chapters on purely spiritual ground, the absolute prohibition of Jehovah, have here special punishments allotted to them as offences against the well being of the nation. In Leviticus 19 there is no mention at all of punishment except in the single case of the betrothed slave (Lev 20:20-22); in Leviticus 18 there is no specific punishment attached to each offence, but only the general statement (Lev 20:2830) of the penalty to fall upon the trangressor of any of the statutes and upon the land as a whole. For the purpose of civil government, therefore, the present chapter is a necessary supplement.F. G.]
Already (schon frher) has the decree of the death-penalty been brought forward for sins that were committed, (Num 15:30). By this we can only understand stubborn or arrogant sins; therefore not every conscious sin, as opposed to the unconscious, but every sin which was maintained in opposition to the theocratic jurisdiction. Single sins might always prove to be such; but the abominations here mentioned were, for the most part, deadly sins, those most befitting the Cherem, as blaspheming the name of Jehovah, Lev 24:11, and desecrating the Sabbath, Num 15:32.
But also we have here different grades of punishment with the different grades of offence. The first class of sins is devilish, Lev 20:1-7; the second class brutal, even beastly, Lev 20:10-16; the third, of the carnal nature, unruly, Lev 20:17-21.
First Class
1. The sacrifice to Molech. It is to be understood that the stranger was included with the Israelite under this prohibition; for if, in general, no sacrifice to false gods were allowed in the land, so certainly not the sacrifice to Molech. The Jew, however, would become more wicked by such an offering than a heathen. It is also here plain that what is spoken of is the giving up of children to death. [The expressions used here, Lev 20:2-4, are an abbreviated form of that in Lev 18:21. It may be doubted whether they refer to children at all, or if so, to putting them to death. See Textual Note and Comm. on Lev 18:21.F. G.]
In regard to this, it sounds like a charge to execute immediate judgment on the spot: the people of the land shall stone him with stones, properly, bury him under thrown stones. [Doubtless in a primitive state of society all punishment was somewhat summary, and this particular punishment is often provided for in the law, Lev 20:27; Lev 24:14; Num 15:35-36; Deu 13:10; Deu 17:5; Deu 21:21; Deu 22:21; Deu 22:24, etc. But, nevertheless, it was only to be administered on sufficient evidence, and with due forms of law, Deu 17:6; Deu 19:15, etc.F. G.]In this case the avenging is Gods personal affair: Jehovah sets His face against him to consume him out of Jehovahs people; for his sin is a three-fold one: he has given his seed to Molech, and therein has judged himself; he has defiled the sanctuary of Jehovah, that is, the land hallowed by His sanctuary; and he has profaned Jehovahs holy name, and desecrated the religion of His name. And even if the people should let him go unpunished in the last case, Jehovah Himself will pursue him and even his race with His judgment, until He has exterminated all who are associated in his guilt. So strongly rules the absolute Personality against all behaviour that opposed personality. The judgment is in this case as immanent in the guilty as a consuming fire. One might also suppose that the face of Jehovah, in a constructio prgnans, here signified the Angel of His presence, and thus expressed the thought that the spirit of the revealed religion would exterminate the abominations mentioned together with their authors. There were two grades, however, in complicity in this guilt: in the first grade, it is an apostasy to these men (as e.g. in the case of heathen wives); in the second grade, through this to Molech. Lev 20:5.[It is noticeable that while the prohibition of the sin in Lev 20:1-5 extends to the stranger on the ground that such abomination was not to be tolerated at all in the consecrated land; yet the extension of the penalty to complicity in the sin by concealment is applied only to the people of the land (Lev 20:4)that is, to native Hebrews (comp. Lev 4:27), and also to them alone (Lev 20:2) is committed the execution of the penalty.F. G.]
2. Also the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits (necromancers) and after wizards (LXX. = ventriloquists, = singing magic charms, both not exegetically exhaustive) to go a whoring after themi.e., to engage in apostasy from Jehovah to dark forms of superstition,therefore against these also Jehovah will set His face. It helps them nothing if they remain unpunished of men; they fall before the more searching sentence upon presumptuous wickedness. Jehovah pursues them even to their extermination, for they are not to corrupt His people for Him.
In regard to these sins it is said, on the other hand: Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: raise yourselves to the dignity of theocratic personalities, for your God is in Jehovah, the absolute, pure Personality. While they observe the ordinances of this Holy Being, they must understand that it is He who is training them to be a holy people.
Second Class
First Case.Next the text speaks of the unnatural and profligate child that curseth his father or his mother. He shall be surely put to death. And herewith commences the new class. But since the expression begins with for (), it gives to the clause at the same time a symbolic character in reference to the former class: profaning the name of Jehovah is like this sin of cursing father or mother, since He, as the Holy One, creates for Himself His holy people. But for the second class the expression is characteristic, his blood shall be upon him, or upon them, Lev 20:9; Lev 20:11-13; Lev 20:16. It is to be observed that Lev 20:14 brings out an increase in regard to this form of punishment; but Lev 20:15 certainly falls under one category with Lev 20:16. The ordinance of punishment, equalizing the guilt of the unnatural curser with that of the shedding of blood, brings upon him the penal retribution of the latter. Lev 20:9.
Second and Third Cases.The crime of adultery with a neighbors wife, and the crime of incest with a fathers wife (a step-mother) are equalized under the sentence of blood-guiltiness which incurred death, and this for both man and woman alike. Lev 20:10-11.
Fourth Case.The same applies to incest with a daughter-in-law, (mixing, confusion, defilement). [Lev 20:12.]
Fifth Case.Pderasty, moreover, is designated as an abomination, as contrary to nature, a revolting crime; and the punishment of death is here expressly made prominent. This sin is called (abomination, horror). [Lev 20:13.]
Sixth Case.The double incest is made most particularly prominent when a man lies both with a mother and her daughter. They were to be burnt with each other (without doubt, their bodies after they had been stoned). This sin is called (a refined or unheard of deed of shame. The law brings out prominently that such moral enormities should not exist in Israel). The same penalty was, moreover, imposed upon the daughter of a priest who became a whore, because she had put her father to shame, Lev 21:9. So Achan was first stoned in the valley of Achor, then burned, since he had brought a curse, a corrupting complicity in guilt upon Israel, Joshua 7. But Josiah set burning against burning, the theocratic burning against the burning to Molech, when he burned the bones of the priests upon their altars, and thereby purified Judah and Jerusalem (2Ch 34:5; comp. 2Ki 23:10). With this appears the embryo of the Gehenna, as it comes out in symbolic form in the Old Testament, Isa 66:24. The Gehenna is thus a representation of the fire of Molech, and over it also the fire of judgment has at last come. Lev 20:14. The Old Testament fire penalty was only symbolical, and involved no unnatural torture, like the medival mimicry of the flames of hell. In this case, the offender was first put to death; and the same is true of the Old Testament hanging.
Seventh and Eighth Cases.Copulation with a beast, either by a man or a woman. With the beastly human being, the beast itself was also to be destroyed. For examples, see Knobel, p. 507. [Lev 20:15-16.]
Third Class
First Case.Copulation with a half-sister. [This also, as in Lev 18:9, necessarily covers the case of a full sister, for she was both the daughter of the father and the daughter of the mother.F. G.] They shall be cut off in the sight of their people.Thus they should form a warning spectacle. Here the crime is described as and disgrace and misdeed, [Lev 20:17.]
Second Case.He that lay with a menstruous woman, who in such wise uncovered the fountain of her bloodso to speakexposed her life-spring. The penalty of death is for both. The sentence sounds with a more gentle expression: destruction out of the midst of the people. [Lev 20:18. The punishment here refers to the act knowingly committed; in Lev 15:24 the light penalty is given for the same act unintentionally committed.F. G.]
Third Case.Intercourse with an aunt on either the fathers or the mothers side. They shall bear their iniquity.Thus sounds the sentence indefinitely, in transition to the following. [Lev 20:19.]
Fourth Case.If one takes the wife of his brother, it is (it induces the curse of the first degree); The penalty is childlessness, and is thus entirely a divine dispensation (Lev 20:21). Here, as has been said, the prohibition can, in the case of the Levirate marriage (Deu 25:5-10), become a commandan evidence of the nicety of the law. [On the meaning of the penalty of childlessness see the preliminary note to Leviticus 18. It would be entirely out of analogy with the Divine dealings with man to suppose a perpetual special interposition through all the ages of Israels history in every case of violation of this law, and there is nothing in the character of the forbidden relation to induce childlessness under those ordinary Divine appointments which we call natural laws. It is also much more in accordance with the general character of this chapter that the penalty should be understood of something inflicted by statute law,the reckoning of the issue of such marriages to another than the actual father. So rightly S. Augustin, Qu. 76 in Hept. It is a striking fact that this penalty was still carried out in the one case of the prohibited degrees, when the prohibition was changed to a command. In the Levirate marriage no heirs were begotten to the actual father, but they were reckoned to the deceased brother.F. G.]
In conclusion, another exhortation follows which, in the first place, marks out the ordinances as judgments (ideas); secondly, expresses the incongruity between the unnatural behaviour and the nature of the land of God, for which even Israel could be spued out from it; and this brings out, in the third place, that for such very things the heathen were thrust out of the land. To this threat a promise is appended in conclusion. [Lev 20:24.] And with this is connected a noble idea: in the separation of clean beasts from the unclean, the separation of Israel from the heathen is to be symbolically mirrored forth. The closing sentence [Lev 20:27] would be unintelligible as a repetition (from Lev 19:31); evidently it is the germ of the prohibition of false enthusiasm and prophecy in Israel itself (see Deu 19:11 sqq.). [In Lev 19:31, in accordance with the general character of chaps. 18 and 19, we have simply the prohibition on the spiritual ground of the opposition to Gods will, without mention of specific punishments; here we have throughout civil penalties attached to the various offences as against the theocratic state. Accordingly those that have familiar spirits or are wizards require to be mentioned again in order that the death penalty may be denounced against them.F. G.]
Lev 20:25 is particularly important, since it contains the key to the understanding of the Levitical distinction between clean and unclean animals. Men have sought for physiological reasons for this distinction, and quite lately an Israelitish author has referred to the discovery of the Trichina as the foundation of the prohibition of swines flesh. In regard to many of the unclean animals, there is indeed the reason of the physiological unhealthiness of the flesh, or of the physical aversion to their hateful appearance; to which may be added, as connected, something of the physical effect of the blood of wild beasts. Also the limitation of Israel to the use and sacrifice of domestic animals must have an economic significance, and be, so to speak, for the benefit of the State, since it worked against the dissipations of the ancient hunting and the luxury of the heathen, and with the cultivation of the land, furthered at the same time domestic simplicity and contentment. [This must be understood to apply only in a limited degree to the Israelites; for they were allowed freely to hunt and eat all clean wild animals, as the roebuck and the hart (Deu 12:15, etc.). In regard to all physiological and other reasons, it is always to be remembered that no animals are intrinsically unclean; none were excepted from the grant to Noah, and none from the Christian abrogation of the distinction. The law was wholly temporary, added because of transgressions, to constitute Israel a peculiar people.F. G.] But the symbolic meaning of the animal world, as a representation of Israel among the Gentiles, is here expressly brought out as the religious main reason. Israel was to have a constant representation of its separation from the heathen world in the separation of the clean animals, and thus also the heathen world, by which it was surrounded, and from which it was to understand that it differed in religion and in morals, was to be represented in the sphere of the unclean animals. The sacred observance of the laws of food was thus a constant reminder for Israel of its theocratic sanctity and dignity. Thus it is plain that the old distinction between clean and unclean animals must fall away after the boundary between Israel and the heathen has fallen. But it is also to be recollected that Judaism clung very strongly to the old distinction, as it did no less to the prohibition of the use of blood; and the Apostolic ordinance in regard to the last particular and cognate subjects is explained to mean that these laws, which had been ended as religious dogmas, must yet continue for a time as Christian customs for the sake of a united Christian fellowship. The shadowing forth of the heathen world in the world of unclean beasts, which is here expressly brought out, is denied by Keil, in opposition to Kurtz, without reason (p. 95). [Much as we may admire the beauty and force of the symbolism here presented by Lange, it is difficult to see how it is here expressly brought out, or even in any way alluded to in the text. Certainly the observance of the distinction among animals is placed upon a religious ground, and this observance would contribute to make of Israel that separate people which God had called them to be. Naturally then might the Israelites themselves have compared the heathen to unclean animals; but, so far is such an idea from finding countenance in the word of God that it is only recognised to be removed, and the heathen are first represented as unclean animals in the vision of St. Peter (Act 10:10-16) at the moment when such distinctions were forever to be done away. The object of the law was to make the distinction of animals fixed and unalterable; but in regard to the heathen, to encourage them to offer sacrifices and partake in the worship of God, and thus to be drawn into ever increasing nearness of relation to Him.F. G.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
I. In chap. 18 the law is given simply as the will of God. Here punishments are attached to disobedience as to civil offences against the theocratic state. There seems no reason why these two chapters should have been separated except to mark this distinction emphatically. Obedience to Gods law is required simply because it is His will, and this is set forth by itself; afterwards and separately, punishments are provided for these among His people who refuse to be guided by Him.
II. In the frequent expression his or their blood shall be upon him or them is a plain intimation that the offender alone is responsible for the evil that comes upon him. The divine law, whether natural or revealed, is inexorable, and he who thrusts himself across its path necessarily incurs its penalties. There is no occasion for a Divine interposition to punish, and there is no room for the charge of severity; the offender braves an irresistible will, and in doing this must himself alone be held responsible for the result.
III. The beast involved in the guilt of man or woman must be put to death with them. There could be no moral guilt on the part of the beast, because there was no moral responsibility; but yet he must perish because he had been associated in human sin. Whether this was in order to remove the tool of sin from sight simply, or whether it was because of the association of human sin with the beast; in either case it is plain that it was commanded not for the sake of the beast, but of man. Here we have one of the many instances in the law in which human associations and feelings are cared for and protected, and used also as means for the advancement of holiness.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Lange: The chapter of the great theocratic rigor (Leviticus 20) forms a contrast to the chapter of the great theocratic mildness and purity of life. Here the various measures of punishment come into consideration. Burning with fire, as a symbolical addition to the punishment of death, is only connected with the dead body which has been put to death by stoning. Then follows the particular capital punishment; and next to this indefinite forms of punishment, he shall bear his iniquity; and finally the punishment of childlessness, in which also we are certainly to suppose a physical basis. The conception of the abominations is the conception of that which is against nature (Romans 1), of that which, even according to natural instinct, is perverse, horrible, and a revolt against the moral law in mans nature; but in regard to this, indeed, nature itself comes to the judgment like a spirit of retribution.
The law of this, as of many other chapters, is enforced on the ground that the Israelites were called to be a holy people. With how great additional force must this apply to Christians. Not only the Israelite, but the stranger also, defiled Gods sanctuary and profaned His holy name by sin. The same thing must be true always; there is no escape from responsibility because one chooses not to acknowledge allegiance to God. The Divine commands still rest upon him. Only he has less help and support in keeping them while he remains aloof from the commonwealth of Israel.
Footnotes:
[1]Lev 20:4. On the daghesh in and , see Text. Note10 on Lev 4:13.
[2]Lev 20:6. . Four MSS. and Onk. read which De Rossi prefers on account of the following . For the last, however, the Sam. reads .
[3]Lev 20:7. The Sam., 4 MSS. and LXX. read: for I, the Lord your God, am holy.
[4]Lev 20:9. = for is omitted in two MSS., the LXX. and Vulg.
[5]Lev 20:9; Lev 20:11-12; Lev 20:16. On the plural form for blood, comp. Gen 4:10; Exo 22:1.
[6]Lev 20:10. Three of Kennicotts MSS. omit the first clause of this verse. Rosenmller considers that the repetition involves a distinction for the sake of emphasis, making in the second clause=relation, so that there is a prohibition, first of adultery in general, then specifically, of adultery with the wife of a relative. For this sense of the word he refers to Deu 13:7 : 2Sa 13:3. S. Augustine (Qu. 73 in Hept.) takes the same view.
[7]Lev 20:17. The LXX., Syr. and Vulg. have the plural.
[8]Lev 20:18. The same word should receive the same translation in both clauses.
[9]Lev 20:23. Statutes. See Text Note2 on Lev 18:3.
[10]Lev 20:23. The Sam. reads and so one MS. followed by all the ancient versions, as seems to be required by the following they committed. If is not unlikely that may have dropped out of the text.
[11]Lev 20:25. There is nothing to express the word living in the Heb., and it is better omitted, as the reference is wholly to the dead bodies of these animals.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
This Chapter is a continuation of the former, in a repetition of certain laws, with the addition of the threatened punishment to the breaches of them; and concluding with a more comprehensive demand of uniform holiness.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
When laws are repeated, or when the LORD at any time enforceth his precepts, by a renewed rehearsal, it always should carry with it an evidence of its importance. Psa 62:11 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Limitations of the Dwarf
Lev 20:21
Under the old Hebrew priesthood the dwarf, while permitted to partake of the holy bread, was restrained from offering it to others. He was not to blame for being a dwarf, but only men without blemish, and who had the full measure of manly power, were permitted to exercise the functions of that holy office.
I. It is the bitterest sorrow of weakness that a man cannot render aid to the helpless. And in the higher realm the sorest pang that a man can know is that he is so dwarfed in his spiritual nature that he cannot offer the bread of his God to his fellows. The physical dwarf is very often, and indeed usually, without personal blame. It is his misfortune, which may have come to him by inheritance, or by accident. But the spiritual dwarf, while the conduct of others may have contributed to his lamentable condition, is in the last analysis personally responsible, for the power to emerge from such a condition is always within his reach.
II. The Hebrew priest that was born a dwarf, or who had been dwarfed by accident or by cruel treatment in childhood, could never become anything else. No penitence, no care, no culture could ever give him the broad shoulders, the splendid presence, and the noble personality of the full-grown and mature manhood necessary for his office. But God is more gracious in spiritual things, or rather the spirit is not subject to the limitations of the flesh, and the man who has been dwarfed by poverty, or affliction, or harsh treatment, into narrowness of vision and experience, may through devotion and self-surrender to God emerge out of the dwarfed manhood he now knows into the large and splendid personality which shall give him the privilege of offering the bread of God to humanity.
III. We do not need to be weak and powerless. We need not go along the way of life spiritual dwarfs. God is no respecter of persons. He is seeking for men and women to offer the bread of life to hungry souls. All that is needed is that we should surrender ourselves to Him for the highest and holiest service. What folly that for a few paltry dollars, or for a few years of sensual pleasure, or for a few shouts of applause from unthinking crowds, we should miss the building up of soul and character into those splendid proportions that shall fit us for Divine usefulness.
L. A. Banks, Sermons which have Won Souls, p. 211.
References. XX. 26. J. Vaughan, Sermons (9th Series), p. 117. XXI.-XXII. H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, p. 358. XXII. 21. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii. No. 1897. XXIII. 42. Bishop Woodford, Sermons on Subjects from the Old Testament, p. 1. XXIII.-XXVII. J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era, p. 223. XXIV. 5-9. J. H. Holford, Memorial Sermons, p. 127. XXV. 9, 10. J. Flemming, The Gospel of Leviticus, pp. 91, 123. XXV. 10. J. A. Aston, Early Witness to Gospel Truth, pp. 23, 36.
The Message of the Book of Leviticus
Lev 20:26
The book of Leviticus is one which we all feel to be specially difficult. Yet there is no book that more amply repays study. At every point it proves itself to be the Word of God, and as such profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for inspiration in righteousness. While, by the advent of the Lord Jesus, many of the forms enjoined in Leviticus were abolished, the principles which found expression in these forms have been reasserted with greater force than ever. The book has a message for us today, and it is this message which we must now strive to discover. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is its insistence on the holiness of the body. Leviticus recognizes what is expressly asserted at a later period in revelation, that the body is meant to be a temple of the Holy Ghost, and as such must be kept holy unto God.
I. It set before the Israelite his duty to God. In its religious aspect this code is the exposition of the first and great commandment. It bade the Israelite recognize Jehovah as the one object of worship. It bade him recognize Jehovah as the ultimate ground of all morality, it bade him see in what was good and right the expression of the will of God. It bade him recognize Jehovah as the Lord of Life and the Lord of Time, the giver of every good and perfect gift. Moreover it bade the Israelite recognize that Jehovah was a God terrible in His moral government.
II. Then this law of holiness set before the Israelite his duty to his fellow-men. It endeavoured to explain also the second great commandment of the law, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. In the precepts that it lays down there is a wisdom and an enlightenment from which present-day legislators would do well to learn. To begin with, it puts social relations in their right place. But having defined the relation between our duty to God and our duty to man, it goes on to demand for our brother men justice, honesty, forbearance, kindness, purity, tenderness, and love.
III. And then this law of holiness set before the Israelite his personal duty as a member of the holy nation. This it did in an indirect manner by the regulations it enjoined for maintaining the purity of the priests. All Israelites were not priests and did not actually minister at the altar. But Israel was not allowed to forget that she was a priestly nation. With such care manifested that the priest who ministered to the law should be holy, pure, and without blemish, the law of necessity taught the Israelite how holy his God was, and at the same time taught him that he also must be holy if be would stand accepted in God’s presence. Then having dealt with the holy life in its Godward, manward, and selfward aspects, the section of Leviticus closes by announcing the rewards which God has promised to the obedient, and the punishment threatened to those who wilfully disobey. This code completes the short appendix, and the matter of vows brings the whole book to a close.
G. H. C. Macgregor, Messages of the Old Testament, p. 31.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
VII
THE LAW OF HOLINESS
Leviticus 17-22
This chapter covers Leviticus 17-22. The theme is the law of holiness. I will treat it catechetically.
1. Where must animals for food be brought and slain and why?
Ans. In such a camp as the Israelites camp, with 3,000,000 of people, the question of food was a grave question. The law required that every bullock, every sheep, every beef, every goat, that was to be eaten, be brought to one place to be slain, and that one place was the gate, or the door, of the tabernacle, the outer court of the tabernacle; and the reason for the law was that the priest had to inspect and approve of the method of slaughtering animals, for both sanitary and spiritual reasons. The first part, the sanitary reason, is employed today in the city regulations concerning slaughterhouses. The wisest precautions must be adopted with reference to cleanliness, to avoid the breeding of pests or pestilences.
The second and most important reason was that the priest should see that the law concerning blood was observed. They were expressly forbidden to eat any animal food from which the blood had not been drained, and this applied to animals where they killed them in the wilderness, as deer and those animals used for food; they must draw the blood off; as soon as the animal was killed, the blood must be drawn.
2. Give Old Testament and New Testament law prohibiting the eating of blood, and why is it now binding?
Ans. The Old Testament law commences with the law of Noah, when he represented the whole race. While they were given permission in that law to eat every moving, living
thing, immediately after (Gen 9:4 ) there is this express stipulation, viz.: that the blood must be drawn out of the body, or it could not be eaten. It was a sin to eat blood when the law applied to the whole world. Now when we come to the New Testament (Act 15 ) we have this law. In the great council that was held in Jerusalem, James in closing that council says in his speech: “Wherefore my judgment is that we trouble not them who from among the Gentiles are turned to God; but that we write unto them to abstain from what is strangled, and from blood.” Now in drawing up the decree later in the same chapter, you have this: “We lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things, that ye abstain from blood, and from things strangled.” That is addressed to the Gentiles and says, “Fornications, from blood and things strangled.”
In Rev 2 , our Lord calls attention to this law, and states that one of the things that he has against one of the seven churches in Asia is that they violate that law. So my decision is that the reason for prohibiting the use of blood for food is not a mere Jewish regulation. We find it binding on the race before there was a Jew, and we find it binding after the kingdom of God was passed to the Gentiles. Two reasons are given, one is that the blood is the life; and another reason is that because it is the life, it is the blood with which expiation for sin is made. Outside of the regulation concerning eating, just described, and which is set forth in chapter 17, we now enlarge the law of holiness with a new question.
3. What is incest?
Ans. That comes in the first part of Lev 18 , and goes down to Lev 18:18 . In this we have a number of things that are classed as incest. I am not going to discuss that on account of the delicacy of the matter. I will say, in general terms, that any offense that violates the law concerning nearness of kindred, comes under the head of incest, no matter what it is. There are many cases of incest mentioned in the Bible.
4. What is the purpose of this law prohibiting incest?
Ans. The purpose of the law is to enforce the sanctity of the family and its relation; and the common sense as well as the common interpretation of all denominations regards that law as binding now, because it does not arise from any particular condition of the Jews, but arises from the nature of the family institution, and is just as applicable to one people as another, and to one time as another. There is nothing temporary in it. We have laws regulating this also: for instance, that a man should not marry his own sister, his own aunt, or his niece, anything that violates the law of kindred. Now incest in that chapter stops with Lev 18:18 .
5. What law prevailed in England to prohibit a man’s marrying his wife’s sister, even after his wife was dead?
Ans. I don’t know that the law is abrogated now, but I know it did prevail. If a man married into a large family, and the wife died, then he could not marry the sister of his wife. Is that law properly derivable from Lev 18:18 ? I will quote it. My judgment is that they misinterpret the Levitical law in embodying any of the law into the common law of England. A great many romances have been written on this subject. Lev 18:18 simply says this: “Thou shalt not take a wife to be a rival of her sister in her lifetime.” Now you see that does not forbid the marrying of the wife’s sister after the wife dies. Yet the English law prohibited it, and not only prohibited it, but counted it as not marriage.
6. What is sodomy?
Ans. You can read that answer to yourself. That is a sin against the law of holiness, and is just as binding now as it ever was. That is, for a man to treat another man as if he were a woman, or a woman to treat another woman as if she were a man; that is sodomy. That was the sin that brought about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and it derives its name from Sodom.
7. What is bestiality?
Ans. From beast we get bestiality, that is, a man treating a beast as if the beast were a woman, and a woman treating a beast as if it were a man.
8. Have we in our statute books any laws against bestiality?
Ans. We certainly have, and with a very sharp penalty. I have known of some convictions under that law, and it left a lasting shame upon the one who committed the offense, besides the punishment by the state. Now that ends everything relating to sodomy, incest, and bestiality. The next question of the law of holiness is embodied in these words, upon which I ask a question: “Thou shall not cause thy seed to pass through the fire to Molech.”
9. What is meant by causing the seed to pass through the fire to Molech?
Ans. The answer is, the offering of one of your own children as a sacrifice to be burned with fire upon the altar of the heathen god, Molech. There is some difference of opinion yet as to whether these children were burned alive or slain before they were burned. The Carthaginians practiced this, and a great many heathen nations with which the Jews had to do practiced this. You find a number of cases of it in the Bible. Now I will give you an old-time description of it. A man would be in great trouble about something, and he felt that an ordinary sacrifice would not remove the curse from him. He would vow to offer his own offspring as a burnt offering to the god, Molech, in order to appease that deity, and remove the curse from his house. A furnace, shaped something like a man, but a most hideous and monstrous man, was built representing Molech, built of iron; it had arms held out, a huge, gigantic image of Molech, and under that furnace was a place for the fire, and that would heat that iron image red-hot, and then they would take the naked babe, and place it in the red-hot arms of the idol; and in order to drown the sounds of its screams of agony, the priests would beat their tom-toms, or huge drums, and the parents, disregarding the screams of the child, would go away believing that they were absolved from the curse that had come upon them.
10. What is the meaning and application of “Thou shalt not build a city in the blood of thy first-born”?
Ans. That originated from the curse pronounced upon the men who should attempt to rebuild Jericho after it had been destroyed. The law was: “Whoever shall rebuild that city shall lose his first-born.” Then comes the great direction “Thou shalt not build the city in the blood of thy first-born.” From that I once deduced a prohibition speech, in the case where the city demanded the retention of the liquor traffic to promote commercial interest. “Thou shalt not build a city in the blood of thy first-born,” I quoted, saying, “You seek to promote commercial prosperity through the liquor traffic. Maybe your son will be the first to perish, maybe your daughter will become the wife of a drunkard, and your grandchild inherit a drunkard’s habits, and you are building a city in the blood of your children.”
11. What is meant by enchantments, and why forbidden?
Ans. The law says, “Thou shalt not use any enchantments.” It means, thou shalt not have recourse to any forms of seeking information or avoiding trouble that bring relief from any source but God. When I was a little boy, I knew an old Negro ninety years old who used enchantments. She would go out and gather herbs on the dark of the moon; she would catch a lizard or a snake, maybe get the eye of a newt, and put them in a pot with the herbs and boil them, compounding the enchantment, and if she could mingle a few drops of that in the water people would drink, she would “hoodoo” them. Those of you who have read Shakespeare’s Macbeth remember how the witch would take the eye of a mole, the toe of a frog, the blind worm’s sting, and boil them in order to concoct the enchantment. A great many Negroes up to the present day carry a rabbit’s foot in their pockets, or hang a horseshoe over the door of a house newly built, to keep off enchantments. The simplest form of enchantment is taking a cup of coffee before it is settled, and pour off the coffee and leave the grounds in the cup; then turning the cup over, the grounds left on the inside of the cup run down, and they forecast what is going to happen from the coffee grounds.
12. The next question is similar to this: What is meant by familiar spirits, and why forbidden?
Ans. This beats the coffee grounds and the enchantments. It has retained its hold over the human mind with more persons, perhaps, than any other sin except fleshly sins. Lots of people in Texas now believe it. “Having a familiar spirit” (Lev 19:31 ) means this: a certain person is a medium; a medium has the power to call up certain spirits from the dead, and obtain from these spirits information, and this information is sometimes conveyed by rapping on the table, one rap meaning “yes,” two raps “no”; then spelling out, one rap A, two raps B, and getting information that way. It has always been a horrible sin; it is just as much a sin today as it ever was. And the main point of the sin is expressed by Isaiah the prophet. In referring to it, he says, “Why seek ye to wizards, that chirp and mutter, and why should the living seek unto the dead? Seek unto me, saith the Lord.”
The sin of it consists, then, in disregarding God’s revelation, and endeavoring to obtain from the spirits of the dead, or from demons, information that God either has not given or withholds. He gives all the information that we need in his Book of Revelation. Sometimes this spiritualism or spirit rapping, or spirit slate-writing, or whatever the form of it, sweeps the country like an epidemic, and the most cultured people, some as a mere matter of curiosity or experiment, some for graver reasons, will go to this medium and endeavor to obtain from the spirits of the dead the messages of the dead, from the husband who has departed, or the child who has departed.
Now you may put this down as settled that if ever you want to do anything for anybody, you must do it while you are living, and while that person is living, and if you wait till the person dies you cannot ameliorate his condition. If you wait until you die, the opportunity to help the other person in any way is gone forever. Our Lord in Luk 16 settles that and many other questions. A rich -man who entered hell wanted the soul of Lazarus to go back and carry the message to his brothers in the other world, and it was forbidden; the rich man wanted the soul of Lazarus to bring him, on the tip of his finger, a drop of water in hell, and it was forbidden. Between the spirits of the righteous and the wicked after death a deep and impassable chasm yawns. One cannot pass to the other. Those are fundamental doctrines.
You can count this as a settled thing that there is no clear case in the Bible where the soul of one who was dead was ever permitted to come back to this earth with a message of any kind. And there are only two cases that have ever been quoted; the most notable one is what seems to have taken place when Saul sought to get information from Samuel through the witch of Endor, and when we come to that case, I will expound it in such a way that you will see that it is no exception. The other is that of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. They appeared unto Christ, but they brought no message to any person on earth. On the contrary, the word to the apostles was: “Hear ye him.” You cannot get anything from Moses and Elijah. That belongs to Christ. The message is: “Revealed things belong to us and our children, but hidden things belong to God.”
13. This question covers Lev 20 : What are the respective penalties for these offenses?
Ans. You have Lev 20 to read, and I want you to answer it as you see it. How many punishable by death, and how many by excommunication that is, cut off from the people? Now we take them as we come to them: Incest, sodomy, bestiality, enchantments, seeking those that have familiar spirits; and from Lev 20 you must answer what the penalties are in each case, and in giving the penalties show how many of the death penalty, and how many of the penalty of being cut off from the people.
14. This covers Leviticus 21-22. These two chapters give the law of holiness as binding on the priesthood. Now these chapters are added, giving the law to the priest, and the question is, What difference in the application to priests, that is, the law of incest, sodomy, and the law of enchantments, seeking this and that from familiar spirits? In other words, what difference do you find between the application of these laws to priests, and to the common people?
Ans. The difference is that the penalty is harder on the priest and the law more stringent. The law is more stringent for a preacher, if he commit a crime; while what he does is the same to him as it is to any other man, yet by virtue of his office the sin is greater. Because of his high rank, he has brought more shame upon the cause of God than if the offense had been committed by a common person. That is the reason for it. Now there is in Leviticus 19 a great variety of special statutes, all of them important, but it is like taking each one of them as a text. It would mean as many texts as there are verses, but I will ask on Lev 19 two questions.
15. Of what are the special statutes in Lev 19 developments?
Ans. They are developments of the Ten Commandments.
16. State in your judgment the most striking of these statutes.
Ans. Read the Lev 19 , and you will see a great variety, and some of them will impress you more than others. I will leave this to you because I want to train your mind to decide some things for yourselves. For instance you will find this: “Thou shall rise up before the hoary head,” and you may just put it down that no man is a gentleman who does not respect an old man or an old woman. He simply isn’t a gentleman, in any consideration. I have seen boys in a streetcar hold a seat, with a tottering old grandmother standing up, holding to a strap. Now a Jew would be an outcast if he did such a thing, and he never does it among his own people. Sometime ago, a distinguished Japanese brought his family to America, and travelled across the continent from New York to San Francisco. He had been here before and knew the difference, but his little boy and girl did not know, and they were perfectly horrified at the irreverence shown in America to parents and old people. It was a most astounding thing to them. I knew of a Jew who lost a trade of great value rather than wake up his old father, who was taking a nap and had the key to the desk in his pocket. He said, “My father is old and his afternoon nap is precious. I will not disturb his afternoon nap in order to make a trade.” And to this day the Jews are ahead of the Americans in deference to the aged. And the Japanese are above us in that; far below us in many things, but ahead of us in that.
17. What is the formal introduction to this law of holiness that I have been discussing?
Ans. The formal introduction is found in the first five verses of Lev 18:1-5 “And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, I am Jehovah your God. After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do; and after the doings in the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do; neither shall ye walk in their statutes, ye shall do my judgments and keep my 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 Jehovah.” That is the formal introduction, that answers the question.
18. What is the application to Israel at this time?
Ans. They had just come out of Egypt. They were just going into Canaan, and they were in covenant with Jehovah. The land they lived in was full of idolatry. The land they were just about to enter reeked with infamy, and the cry of its crimes went up to heaven. God said, “Their cup of iniquity is almost full,” and when it was full he said that he would spew them out of his mouth. Now he wanted his people not to be like them, and he said, “if you do as the Canaanites do, I will blot you out of the land.” And he did.
19. What deductions from these laws?
Ans. While there are many deductions, I call your attention to two:
(1) God holds the nation responsible just as he holds the individual, no matter what the form of government in that nation, an absolute or limited monarchy, aristocracy, or theocracy, or democracy. The government that violates the laws of God, that nation shall not go down to perdition as a whole, but its duration is limited, for Jehovah he is King of kings, and Lord of lords, and the government of the whole world is upon his shoulder, and no nation can long violate the laws of morality, truth and honesty, and survive. Upon the high walls of the city of ancient times was written: “Therefore, saith the Lord, their days are numbered,” and that city, no matter how regal, no matter how high its walls, how great its brazen gates, how strong its fortifications, the “Thus saith the Lord” came upon it on account of the iniquities, crumbled its walls to dust and made the site of that city the habitation of beasts, animals, and birds. As it was said of Babylon, “the lion shall whelp in thy palace.” God governs the nations. It is a great theme, one of the greatest of all. Beecher one time preached a great sermon on the government of God, and a young man asked him how long he was preparing that sermon. He said. “Forty years.”
(2) Now the second deduction: “As righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” It may be an English-speaking nation, it may be an Oriental nation, it may be an Arctic nation, no matter where the people are congregated into nations, righteousness exalteth that nation, and sin is a reproach to that people.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Leviticus Chapter 20
CHAPTER 9.
ISRAEL’S PRACTICAL SANCTIFICATION.
Lev 20:1-8 .
As the preceding chapter insisted on what was good and comely as became the people of Jehovah and in His name, the solemn and sufficient authority for every requirement, so in our chapter it is chiefly a guard against the evils, often enormous and unnatural, to which Israel was exposed through contact with their idolatrous neighbours. The cruel rites of infanticide is the first to be denounced; it was practised by the Ammonites on this side and by the Phoenicians on that, and so by the Carthaginians and others too, who boasted loudly of their civilization.
” 1 And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, 2 thou shalt say also to the children of Israel, Every one of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth of his seed to Molech shall certainly be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. 3 And I will set my face against that man, sad will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed to Molech, so as to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. 4 And if the people of the land in any way hide their eyes from that man, when he giveth of his seed to Molech, that they kill him not, 5 Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people. 6 And the soul that turneth to necromancers and to soothsayers, to go a whoring after them, I will set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people. 7 Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I [am] Jehovah, your God. 8 And ye shall observe my statutes and do them: I [am] Jehovah who sanctify you” (vers. 1-8).
Nothing more profoundly marks the difference between God’s word and men’s thoughts in all ages than their levity as to idols and strange gods, and His abhorrence of it, especially in His own people. It may not be any deliberate intention to abandon His worship; it may only be, what they count a venial thing, occasional conformity to idolatry while still professing His name. But God rejects absolutely any such unhallowed compromise, quite apart from the danger, for those who allow it, of utter revolt from Him. It strikes at His majesty, at holiness and truth, and is intolerable in His eyes.
The Israelite ought to have known that it was from out of this abomination that Abraham was chosen and called as a separate witness, he and his seed, to the one true and living God (Jos 24:3 ). Every child of his was bound at all cost to be faithful on pain of forfeiting, not only all his privileges, but his life. Not Israel only was bound: the strangers that sojourned in their midst were under the same obligation. Whoever devoted his offspring to Molech must die by the ignominious death of stoning; and this to make the people of the land take their active part in personally executing the sentence. In this and no other way was the idolater to be put to death, that all around might share His horror and clear themselves of the evil.
Still more impressive is the repeated intimation in vers. 3 and 5 that Jehovah sets His face against that man and will cut him off, because such wickedness defiles His sanctuary and profanes His holy Name. It is not the cruel barbarity toward their own children, or the children of others, into which Satan loved to draw those who worshipped false gods that were no God. But God must abdicate His own glory and being if such a sin could be passed over without His avenging the insult by the hands of Israel. Even such as shut their eyes to spare the guilty exposed themselves to the like doom (4, 5).
No doubt the Christian is entirely apart from the legal system and is called to the relationship of a son with the Father in total separation from the world. He belongs to the Lord Jesus who laid the foundation of Christianity in the cross whereon He bore our sins and suffered, Just for unjust. He is united to Him, rejected. by Jew and Gentile, and glorified above on the Father’s throne, and has thus the characteristic stamp of heavenly grace, as he waits for His coming to take him there. But when the Lord returns (and all His saints with Him in power and glory) to be King over all the earth, He will execute judgment on every evil, and destroy the wicked from before Him; while man universally consigns every idol to the moles and to the bats. They shall be utterly abolished, and false gods (real demons) lead astray no more for ever, even though Satan may still remain (restrained for a thousand years from mischief) to be finally punished at the end. But Jesus shall reign in righteousness and peace; and we shall reign with Him over the earth where we suffered with Him.
Nor is it only such an enormity as that of Molech. Turning after necromancers or such as had familiar spirits, and soothsayers or wizards, came under the same unsparing judgment of Jehovah (ver. 6): “I will set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from his people.” How awful for professing Christians to tamper with such profanity! If Israel as an earthly people had thus to sanctify themselves and be holy, as under law, how much more have Christians under grace, who have Christ and all the written word their standard, with the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, to obey and please their God and Father!
CHAPTER 10.
ISRAEL’S PRACTICAL SANCTIFICATION.
Lev 20:9-21 .
The first place is given, as is meet, to heinous rebellion against Jehovah in an Israelite or a sojourner in their midst. This is followed up by an awfully dark list of enormous wickedness, which opens with reviling one’s father and mother. Setting up one’s own will against a parent’s authority is akin in a lower way to renouncing the true God for a false one. Hence it is that not a few connect ver. 9 with the preceding paragraph rather than with the subsequent one. Indeed the “For” with which it begins, if so rendered, goes to support it. On the other hand, revolt from Jehovah makes a good division.
” 9 For everyone that curseth (or, revileth) his father and his mother shall surely be put to death; he hath cursed his father and his mother; his blood is upon him. 10 And a man that committeth adultery with a man’s wife, that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. 11 And a man that lieth with his father’s wife hath uncovered his father’s nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood [is] upon them. 12 And if a man lie with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have wrought confusion; their blood [is] upon them. 13 And if a man lie with a male, as he with a woman, both of them have committed abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood [is] upon them. 14 And if a man take a wife and her mother, it [is] enormity (or, incest) with fire shall they burn him and them, that there be no enormity among you. 15 And if a man lie with a beast for copulation, he shall surely be put to death; and ye shall kill the beast. 16 And if a woman approach unto any beast to gender with it, thou shalt kill the woman and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [is] upon them. 17 And if a man take his sister, his father’s daughter, or his mother’s daughter, and see her nakedness and she see his nakedness, it [is] a disgrace: and they shall be cut off before the eyes of the sons of their people. He hath uncovered his sister’s nakedness; he shall bear his iniquity. 18 And if a man shall lie with a woman in her infirmity, and uncover her nakedness, he hath laid naked her flux, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood; and both of them shall be cut off from among their people. 19 And the nakedness of thy mother’s sister and of thy father’s sister thou shalt not uncover; for he hath laid naked his own flesh (or, near of kin): they shall bear their iniquity. 20 And if a man lie with his aunt, he hath uncovered his uncle’s nakedness: they shall bear their sin; they shall die childless. 21 And if a man take his brother’s wife, it is uncleanness; he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness: they shall be childless” (vers. 9-21).
Here then we commence with open and base dishonour to one’s parents, which was to be punished with death. And the same sentence is pronounced upon the nearest and deepest wound one man can inflict on another, a sin not foully wrong only, but in despite of Jehovah who instituted married union from the beginning. His law was as extreme against these sins, as against what denied Himself.
But greater impurity prevailed among the heathen, and especially those who occupied the promised land. The sons of Israel too were soon to be exposed to their shameless example. He who gave them Canaan knew their hearts far better than they themselves did. Hence these solemn and painful denunciations of incest, etc. Flesh is the same root of vileness in a Jew as in a Gentile. Restraint may hinder its outbreak; but evil lusts are there, ready to carry away the impulsive and headstrong beyond all bounds.
The Lord Jesus is in every way the Saviour, not from divine punishment only but from sins In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offences according to the riches of God’s grace. But in Him we have life also, life eternal, for He is the Son, and gives nothing less than this life to everyone that believes on Him. And life in Christ is the indispensable basis of the new nature, and of our new relationships and duties, affections and privileges, crowned since redemption with the indwelling Spirit for the Christian and for the church, that both might have an immediate link with God and power from Him.
Is the flesh then gone in fact? By no means; but it is gone for faith, as condemned by God in Christ’s cross, where our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin. We are entitled therefore to say henceforth, that we died with Him, not only to and from sin, but from the religious elements of the world and its philosophy; and our life is hid with Him in God. We are not of the world as He is not; and we await His coming, not to be unclothed, as we are at death, but to be clothed upon (2Co 5 ) with our eternal house from heaven, when the mortal shall be swallowed up of life. Meanwhile we are exhorted and bound to mortify our members which are upon the earth, instead of gratifying unclean lust or passion; also to put off those of violence, and not to lie one to another. We have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man that is being renewed unto full knowledge according to the image of Him that created him. Thus Christ is the all, and in all.
But for practice everything turns on our dependence by faith on Christ every day and all through it. Nor is anything more dangerous or ruinous than the highest truth without such dependence. Apart from Him we can do nothing, On the other hand, If ye abide in Me, and I in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall come to pass to you. So even the Ephesian saints, addressed in the most elevated of the Pauline Epistles, were told, Let the stealer steal no more. Let no corrupt word go out of your mouth. Be not drunk with wine wherein is riot and debauchery. What dishonour to the Lord, what pleasure to Satan, that they should be entrapped into these evils or even worse! What need to be kept of God! For these words of the apostle were addressed to saints already led on to the highest privileges, blessed as it is said with every spiritual blessing in Christ, and this in the heavenlies.
Such blessing is the fruit of sovereign grace in its fullest exercise. So it is that the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ put honour on the Son and His work of redemption, just after His earthly people sought His shame even to the death of the cross. After this it was in divine wisdom that, as the Jews thus cut themselves off from, by adding to their old idolatry their still more guilty rejection of, their own Messiah, God brought out the mystery hidden from ages and from generations. If Satan united unbelieving Jew and Gentile in crucifying the Lord of glory, God united as the new wonder believing Jew and Gentile in one body by the Spirit, the body here below of Christ the heavenly Head at His own right hand.
But the flesh in each member remains incurably bad. Grace does not ameliorate, but makes us a new creation in Christ, as God condemned sin in the flesh when Jesus who knew no sin was made sin for us on the tree. Thus we can say that we died to sin with Him, as we are now in Him who is risen and glorified. Therefore are we called to our new life by the faith of Him, and to treat every movement of sin in our members as vile, and inconsistent with our new relationship as Christians.
CHAPTER 11.
ISRAEL’S PRACTICAL SANCTIFICATION.
Lev 20:22-27 .
The closing paragraph of the chapter is of a more general character, and opens with that obedience to which Israel was called. The law given through Moses defined it. If Jehovah called a people to be His, they must be conformed to His word. They had to learn that, being sinners, they had no power to please Him, but continually failed. If they kept not His covenant and refused to walk in His law; if they forgot His doings, and His wondrous works that He had shown them in Egypt, in the desert, and in the land of Canaan, still less did they judge themselves and remember His promises or look on to the Messiah in faith. And thus their unbelief has brought on them the sad fate, to be driven out of the goodly land as the Amorite should have been before them. Can they deny its righteousness? It was not only Israel greedily lapsing into idolatry as keenly as the Gentiles, but even Judah’s favoured remnant sent back to their land by Cyrus according to the prophets guilty of rejecting their own Messiah, and the chief priests professing the apostasy of the people in the renegade sentence, “We have no king but Caesar.” What could God do to them in adequate retribution, but send the Romans to take away both their place and their nation?
Nevertheless scripture is no less clear that, if God tells us the sad tale of their ruin through trusting themselves and unbelief of His grace, He will surely and soon work for His own glory in the Messiah risen and exalted to prove Himself their merciful and faithful Saviour God. For He will restore health to His people, in spite of the multitude of their iniquity, and will heal them of their wounds however deserved. Do men call them an outcast, and say that none cares for Zion? Thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will turn again the captivity of Jacob’s tents, and will have compassion on his dwelling-places, and city and palace and temple shall rise never more to fall as long as earth endures. And everlasting joy shall be theirs under the reign of Jehovah-Jesus. Nor shall they be small but exalted beyond all nations, and their oppressors punished by Jehovah. Not the Jews only, but all the families of Israel shall be His people as they never were, and He their God in sovereign mercy rejoicing over judgment.
But here we have the humbling story of their responsibility before they are brought to say, Blessed is He that cometh in Jehovah’s name. No believer should wonder that “this generation” came to nought – that such a fig-tree bore no fruit, nothing but leaves. Grace will create a generation to come. No doubt that sovereign grace has called in us of the Gentiles who believe, while the Jew holds out in his incredulity; but the same grace will bless them, beginning with a remnant when we are caught up, and issuing, after awful judgments which cut off the wicked, in His people being righteous and mighty, the days of their mourning ended for ever.
” 22 And ye shall observe all my statutes, and all my judgments and do them, that the land whither I bring you to dwell therein vomit you not out. 23 And ye shall not walk in the customs of the nation which I cast out before you; for all these things they did, and therefore I abhorred them. 24 And I said to you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you for a possession, a land flowing with milk and honey: I [am] Jehovah your God who separated you from the peoples. 25 And ye shall make a separation between the clean beast and the unclean, and between the unclean bird and the clean; and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast or by bird, or by anything which creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean. 26 And ye shall be holy to me; for I Jehovah am holy, and have separated you from the peoples that ye should be mine. 27And if there be a man or a woman in whom is necromancy or soothsaying, they shall certainly be put to death: they shall stone them with stones; their blood [is] upon them” (vers. 22-27).
Yet there stands written not less indelibly the history of Israel in flagrant derelictions, notwithstanding a patience on Jehovah’s part as admirable as it is affecting. They fell in their way like Adam in his. And Christendom has followed not less but more than man or Israel. Happy they who find in the Second man the only refuge, salvation, and rest for the guilty and lost. “This is the victory which hath gained the victory over the world – our faith. And who is he that gaineth the victory over the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?”
Those who looked for His coming alone sought to please God in heeding His statutes and doing them. They abhorred the unnatural horrors of Canaan. They felt God’s goodness in giving them the land flowing with milk and honey. They bowed to each mark in daily life whereby He had severed them from their heathen neighbours, and recognised that they were bound to be holy to Him, because He was holy who separated them from all peoples to be His people. And their hearts would go with His burning anger against such as in the face of all lent themselves to the old enemy in necromancy and soothsaying as unworthy to live in His land.
The great error of foes, and even friends sometimes, lies in making this to be a question for Christians. It was really so for Israel. Christians are a heavenly people, with a calling on high, which the New Testament defines and expounds. Their responsibility is wholly distinct, being under grace, not law, as Israel was, if we defer to the authority of the apostle of the Gentiles, as we surely ought. Yet it is our privilege to profit by the teaching of the older scriptures, and to draw out the divine principles which underlie even the least shadow of the Levitical economy.
But we stand on a ground different from that of Israel. The coming of the Son of God and accomplishment of redemption made the way for this. The rent veil has for the present closed the Mosaic system, and opened the door for the better hope by which we draw nigh to God, as no Jew could. We are now free and exhorted to enter boldly into the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus. He is become surety of a better covenant. There are moral truths which ever abide as faith in God and obedience of His will; but as Israel had marked peculiarities, so has the church what rises immeasurably higher, and distinct even from what Israel will have in the day of the millennial glory. However blessed, and they will be so richly, they do not cease to be an earthly people in that day. We are even now heavenly, according to 1Co 15:48 ; and then we shall bear the image of the Heavenly One, instead of suffering with Him here till He come again.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is very express on this change, owing to the slowness of the saints who had been Jews to appreciate the “new” wine. Nor is this indisposition at all confined to Israelites; it is to man’s heart natural, which grace is not. For as the Lord Himself said, No one having drunk old wine wishes for new, for he saith, The old is better (or, good). But those accustomed to a religion from God, like the Jews, found especial difficulty in receiving higher truth. Hence the assiduous care in that Epistle to show from first to last the superiority of that which is presented to our faith in Christ, the Son at the right hand of the majesty on high, after having made purification of sins. God provided (or, foresaw) some better thing for us.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
spake. See note on Lev 5:14.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 20
Chapter twenty, now God begins to get a little heavier. In chapter twenty God goes over some of the things He dealt with in chapter eighteen, only in chapter twenty telling that the violators of these things should be put to death. I know a lot of these sob sisters are crying out against capital punishment. But if we practice capital punishment as the Bible says, we wouldn’t have near the crime problem that we have today.
I don’t know what’s gone wrong with our judicial system, but we are far more interested in protecting the rights of the criminal than we are of the innocent victims. There’s something awfully stupid about our whole system that releases the rapists, and the murderers and all back, and the kidnappers, back on the streets to repeat their crimes over and over again. Something stupid when you can’t bring up the past patterns of a man’s life for a present crime that he’s committed. The man is showing himself to be a habitual child molester, or a habitual rapist and all, then he should be dealt with as a habitual child molester.
As far as I’m concerned better to-I’ll pull the switch if they need someone. He can ask God to forgive him, and God will forgive him, and he’ll go to heaven; he’ll be a lot better off. But we’ll be a lot better off too, and a lot safer, and our children will be a lot safer walking in the streets. I wouldn’t have to worry nearly so much in sending them off to the store. We are living in a crazy, corrupt world that’s gone wild. It’s because we’ve forsaken the law of God. We’ve got a bunch of sob sisters, pantywaists. Romaine could tell you about them better than I could.
If a father sacrificed his child to Molech, he was to be put to death. [Don’t mess with him.] If he is worshiping the god Molech and in so doing offers his child as a living sacrifice to Molech, kill him, put him to death. Stone him with stones, for I will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among the people. And if you in any wise hide your eyes from him who has sacrificed his children to Molech, and you don’t kill him, then God will set his face against you, and against your family, to cut you off, for those that go a-whoring after Molech, from among the people. And if a person seeks after those that have the familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a-whoring after them, I will set my face against them. Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God. And ye shall keep my statutes: I am the Lord which has set you apart. Every one that curses his father or mother shall surely be put to death: [That’s heavy.] A man that commits adultery with another man’s wife, both of them shall be put to death. A man that lies with his father’s wife, those of the incestuous relationships were to be put to death. Homosexuals [verse thirteen] were to be put to death, bestiality a person was to be put to death; both for men and women ( Lev 20:2-15 ).
So God ordered stringent dealing with sin. It gives you an idea of what God’s idea of sin is. You think that God is very soft and easy, not so. God ordered them to deal severely in order that they might remain clean, in order that they might be pure, in order that they might not be polluted. As long as they remained obedient to the law of God, God blessed them. When they started to mollify and to ease off on things, then the land ultimately spewed them out even as God said.
Verse twenty-two…
Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell in shall not spew you out. [In their failure the land ultimately spewed them out.] Ye shall not walk in the manner of the nations, in which I cast out before you for they committed all these things, therefore I abhorred them ( Lev 20:22-23 ).
That’s why God ordered them eradicated. So God dealt very severely with these violators. But I’ll tell you; it kept the violators down to a minimum. It was safe to walk around the land. A woman could walk around the camp at night and never worry, never fear. It was a holy place. Heaven’s gonna be a holy place. The kingdom age is gonna be a holy place. Man, you find it tough looking at this? Then you’re gonna find it tough living in the kingdom age, cause you’re gonna be one of the enforcers of righteousness. You’re gonna be having the rod of iron which you’re gonna be going around popping skulls like, like clay pots. That’s what it said, “He’s gonna rule with a rod of iron as a potter blasts a vessel in shivers”. ( Rev 2:27 ).
So those that are disobedient to God. Listen, He’s gonna keep it pure, He’s gonna keep it holy, and it’s gonna be a fabulous place to live. For a thousand years it’s gonna be absolutely glorious as He rules with that rod of iron, and righteousness covers the earth. It’ll be a much better place to live than it is today, let me tell you that.
Well next week we finish Leviticus, so fasten your seat belts. Shall we stand? I want to tell you something, God is very gracious, God is very merciful, or none of you would be around. If it were not for the Lord, let all Israel now say, “if it were not for the Lord, then we would be utterly destroyed”. If it wasn’t for the Lord’s graciousness, and His mercy, and His tenderness, and His lovingkindness, none of us would have a chance. But thank God for the grace and truth that is ours through Jesus Christ. “But should I sin freely so that grace may abound? God forbid. How can we who are dead to sin live any longer therein?”
So one of the scriptures, and we passed over it, God said that, “And ye shall, and if ye do these things, ye shall live by them.” Now that’s what the covenant was based upon doing. The new covenant that God has established with us is based upon being, what I am in Christ Jesus. It’s no longer on what I am doing; it’s on what God has done, and my believing and trusting in that work of Jesus Christ, my great High Priest.
As you go through Leviticus, Hebrews is going to, you ought to really just having, when we go through Leviticus, when we finish it, you really ought to pop over to the New Testament and read Hebrews. You’ll have a better understanding of Hebrews than you’ve ever had before if you’ll pop over and read it now just being so fresh out of Leviticus. Hebrews will really talk to you in a very special way. So just as a special assignment this week, you that are looking for an “A” grade, read the book of Hebrews.
May the Lord bless you, and keep His hand upon your life, and may He help you to walk in all righteousness and holiness, for He is Jehovah our God, and He is a holy God. He wants His people to be a holy people, that the name of the Lord would not be blasphemed by my actions, but that people in seeing my good works will glorify our Father who is in heaven. God bless you. May the face of the Lord shine upon you, and His love burn in your heart all through the week. In Jesus’ name. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Once more we have a repetition of laws already enunciated with the same persistent thought of responsibility. In this section we find the death sentence associated with certain forms of disobedience, and thus the fact of responsibility is lifted into a yet more clearly defined importance and lays a new and startling emphasis on the absolute authority of God. All the words which had thus been uttered for conditioning life were definite and positive laws. They were infinitely more than general messages of advice and direction. To disregard them was not merely unwise, it was positively penal a and must be visited with actual punishment, and in certain cases with the death penalty.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Lev 20:26
I. The holiness of saints depends upon no outward condition, requires no special gift of nature or of Providence, of understanding or wisdom, nay, I may say, of grace. It need not be shown in any one form; it does not require the largeness of any one grace; still less does it consist in austere sadness, or stern constraint, or rigid severity as to ourselves or others, except as to our sins. The blessed company of the redeemed saints have and have not found one road to heaven. One road they found, in that they were saved through one Redeemer, looking on to Him and believing in Him before He came or looking to Him when He had come. But all eke in their outward let was different. They were “redeemed to God out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.”
II. Holiness was made for all. It is the end for which we were made, for which we were redeemed, for which God the Holy Ghost is sent down and shed abroad in the hearts that will receive Him. God did not will to create us as perfect. He willed that we, through His grace, should become perfect. But what He willed that we should be, that, if our will fail not, we must become. His almighty will vouchsafes to depend on ours. What God commands; what God wills; what God so willed that He made us for this alone, that we should be holy, and being holy, should share His holiness and bliss-that must be within our reach if we will.
III. The mistake of mistakes is to think that holiness consists in great or extraordinary things, beyond the reach of ordinary men. It has been well said, “Holiness does not consist in doing uncommon things, but in doing common things uncommonly well.” Few can ever do great things, and the few who can do them can each do but few. But every one can study the will of God, and can give great diligence to know it and to do what he knows. Your daily round of duty is your daily path to come nearer unto God.
E. B. Pusey, Parochial and Cathedral Sermons, p. 161.
References: Lev 20:26.-Parker, vol. iii.,p. 136. Lev 22:20.-J. Vaughan, Sermons, 9th series, p. 117. Lev 22:21.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii., No. 1879. Lev 22:32.-Parker, vol. iii., p. 137. Lev 23:5, Lev 23:9-11, Lev 23:15-16, Lev 23:34, Lev 23:36.-J. Fleming, The Gospel in Leviticus, pp. 55, 65, 82, 134. Lev 23:33-44.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 376.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
3. Warnings Against Special Sins and their Penalties
CHAPTER 20
1. Warning against Molech–worship and familiar spirits (Lev 20:1-8)
2. Warning against cursing parents (Lev 20:9)
3. Criminal and vile connections (Lev 20:10-21)
4. Exhortations to obedience and separation (Lev 20:22-27)
This chapter reveals the justice of God in dealing with criminals. The death penalty is most prominent. It is pronounced upon the following crimes: Molech worship; dealing with familiar spirits (spiritualism); different forms of incest and sodomy. Men advocate now the abolishment of death penalty without considering the outraged justice of a holy God. The object of these severe penalties imposed by Jehovah were the satisfaction of justice and the vindication of a broken law. A closer examination of these warnings and the penalties attached will reveal the seriousness of the offences against the theocratic government set up in the midst of Israel, and the perfect justice of every penalty. It is a serious matter if critics find fault with these solemn statements, denying their authority and judging the holy and infallible judge.
The chapter gives a testimony against the awful drift of our times in the lax laws concerning marriage, divorces and its attending evils so very much in evidence among the so-called Christian nations.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Reciprocal: 1Sa 12:14 – If ye will Ezr 7:26 – whether it be Jer 7:31 – which I Eze 16:21 – to pass
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
PENALTIES FOR PEOPLE AND PRIESTS
The twentieth chapter is of deep interest as showing what infinite wisdom and love has considered a just punishment for certain crimes. These crimes are still committed in civilized communities but a different view of their treatment seems to exist. Are human governments in modern times wiser and better than this theocracy where Jehovah ruled?
Why does not this code obtain in Christian nations, since God has revealed it and such nations are supposed to serve God?
The answer is, that no nation on earth is a God-governed nation, as Israel was, and shall again be in the millennial age. The laws of so-called Christian nations are man-made, not God-made. They may bear a likeness or relationship to these laws of God, but only as they grow out of a necessity of human experience. No nation has ever set itself the task of finding out Gods mind with reference to this or that penalty, and squaring its legislation accordingly. Hence the lawlessness we see on every hand, and the injustice; hence the teaching of the prophets that the present order of things shall end in a grand catastrophe, and God shall set up His own kingdom on the earth over which His Son shall reign.
OUTLINE OF THE CHAPTER
The first section (Lev 20:1-6) relates to the giving of seed to Molech, and consulting with familiar spirits (what we call Spiritualism). With Spiritualism might be included other occultisms, such as fortunetelling, clairvoyance, palmistry and the like.
A second section (Lev 20:7-8) consists of a command to sanctification of life and obedience to God.
A third (Lev 20:9-16) enumerates other cases for which death was ordered, some of them very unnatural crimes.
A fourth (Lev 20:17-21) names offenses for which a lesser penalty is prescribed. A fifth (v. 22-26) consists of a concluding exhortation against disobedience enforced by the impending punishment of the Canaanites, and the goodness of God to them (Israel).
For what crimes is death ordained as a penalty (Lev 20:2-5; Lev 20:10; Lev 20:12-16; Lev 20:27)? What manner of death is ordained (Lev 20:2)? In the case of certain crimes is any difference made between the sexes (Lev 20:10-12; Lev 20:14-16)? In what instance were the bodies of the criminals to be burnt after death (Lev 20:14)?
In the case of the lesser penalties, which offense demanded the most public excommunication (Lev 20:17)?
The Principles Involved
Certain reformers claim that the primary, if not the sole, object of the punishment of crime is the reformation of the individual. How does such a theory square with this divine precedent? Had reformation been the chief thought in Gods mind, would He have ordained the death penalty with such unqualified severity?
How does Lev 20:3 show that the intention of the punishment is to satisfy the outraged holiness of God? How does Lev 20:12 show that it is to preserve the natural order of the human family? How does Lev 20:14 show that it is for the moral benefit of the race?
The multiplication of murders and crimes against the family in these days may be explained by the laxity of the laws, or the indisposition of the people to enforce them. Where God pronounces the death penalty, man apologizes for the crime, then lightens the penalty, then abolishes it, and at last legalizes the offense. This modern drift bodes no good, and in the end can only bring disaster to the family and the state.
HOLINESS OF THE PRIESTS (CHAPS. 21-22)
We pass over chapters 21 and 22 with a remark or two, as they treat the same subject as the preceding chapter except as it applies to the priests. While all Israel was called to be a priestly nation, holy to Jehovah in life and service, this sanctity was represented in degrees successively higher in each of its three divisions, the people, the priest, and the high priests, like the threefold division of the tabernacle, the outer court, the holy place, and the Holy of Holies.
The principle still holds good in that special privileges place him who enjoys them under special obligations to holiness of life. Christians, in other words, should not merely be equally correct in life with the best men of the world, but more they should be holy. And within the Church, those who occupy official positions or who are otherwise elevated above their fellows, are under the more stringent obligations of life and work.
QUESTIONS
1. What kind of government did Israel have?
2. How would you account for much of the disorder and lawlessness in so-called Christian nations?
3. What will bring this to an end?
4. Have you tried to answer the questions asked under Principles Involved?
5. What peculiar obligation of conduct lies upon Christians, and why?
Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary
Lev 20:2. Molech. See on Lev 18:21.
Lev 20:3. I will cut him off. Ahaz gave his son to Molech, and the Lord afflicted his reign with miseries.
Lev 20:7. Sanctify yourselvesbe ye holy; in the disposition of your minds, says Maimonides, and from heretical notions in doctrine. Secondly, from all corporeal pollutions, as it is said their filthiness is in their skirts. Thirdly, from exterior defilement by contact, for the words of the law suffer no pollution. See that excellent work, the late Dr. James Townleys More Nevochim.
REFLECTIONS.
We are here struck with the equity of Gods laws. Having before prohibited the sacrificing of children to Molech, he here in the most peremptory language sentences the offender to death; for when it is said his blood shall be upon him, lapidation is mostly understood. The equity of the punishment is founded on the profaneness and cruelty it attached to the name of God, by giving all persons of humanity a horror of the Lords worship.
In like manner, he who should arrive at such a degree of depravity as to curse his parents, incurred the same penalty. The blessings of the covenant were entailed from the parents to the children; and the base man who recoiled on his parents a most ungrateful curse, forfeited all those blessings, and justly subjected himself to die, that no malediction might rest upon the country.
The adulterer next hears his sentence from the Judge of all the earth. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. All nations have agreed to punish robbers with death: and where is the robbery to be compared with adultery? Other robbers boldly act in a professional way; but the wretch guilty of this crime is mostly introduced into the family as the husbands friend; and then basely robs him of his honour, and for ever deprives him of domestic happiness. It is true the rulers of Israel, after a time, relaxed in the execution of those laws: but God, who is longsuffering, to give men time for repentance, did not, by permitting the accumulation of crimes, at all remit the rigours of his law. It appears from the small number of the Jews who returned from Babylon, that nine tenths had perished for their sins. Hence it would have been infinitely better to have eradicated the weeds in their earliest growth, than suffered them to overrun the heritage of God. Against the infliction of capital punishment for atrocious crimes, some are very ready to plead for mercy, and to urge the divine example in the case of David; and it must be admitted, where repentance is genuine, that the Lord is very merciful and gracious: but where men are strangers to repentance, and where the morals of a whole nation are in danger, it is safer to preserve the innocent than to protect the guilty. Hence the divine law respecting adultery, incest, and all the crimes which cover human nature with horror and shame, are wise and salutary in their operation. They secure the honour of God, they bridle the lawless passions of men, they extend the arm of protection to the weaker branches of society, and in every view are worthy of christian nations to adopt.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
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.
“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.}
Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch
Lev 20:1-9. Worship of Molech, etc.Offering children to Molech (see Lev 18:21*) is to be punished by stoning; such a death emphasizes the repudiation by the whole community and involves everyone in the act, always serious, of killing a fellow-tribesman (cf. Jos 7:25). Yahweh Himself will see that the sinner does not survive his crime even if he is not publicly punished; his whole family will be destroyed. Cursing parents is also a capital crime; in such a case, the dead mans blood does not cry from the earth; it is on his own head, i.e. its power to hurt comes to an end with his life (cf. 1Ki 2:31-33; 1Ki 2:44, and contrast Mat 27:25).
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
PENALTIES FOR SIN GODWARD (vv. 1-8)
Chapter 19 has given many laws forbidding sin; now chapter 20 shows that law, when it is broken, demands certain penalties. These penalties were to be executed as soon as the offender’s guilt was established. There were no long drawn out court cases and no appeals after one was proven guilty. Even in the days of Solomon Israel had failed to carry out these penalties promptly, so that Ecc 8:11 tells us, Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. In western culture today, such long delays have caused people to make a mock of the judicial system. We are told that in Singapore crime is kept to a minimum, because penalties are promptly imposed and promptly executed.
Verses 1-8 speak of sin against God. Offering of children to Molech was punishable by death. In fact, the people were responsible to stone the offender to death (v. 1). If the people were lax in this, then God would carry out His judgment on the person and his family and on all who identified themselves with the person in the evil he had done (v. 5).
Similarly in the case of any person who contacted spirit mediums or those who possessed a familiar spirit. This was satanic opposition to God, who would punish the offender with death (v. 6). Later in Israel’s history King Saul banished mediums and spiritists from the land of Israel (1Sa 27:3), yet he himself went to inquire of a medium (1Sa 27:7-12), with no pleasant results. He died the next day.
Therefore, for Israel the only safe course was the positive action of consecrating themselves to the Lord in holy separation from evil, keeping and performing His statutes (vv. 7-8).
PENALTIES FOR SIN AGAINST OTHERS (vv. 9-21)
Verse 9 deals with sin against parents, who should be recognized with at least serious respect, apart from the question of their reliability. Even if they were unfair, this gave no right to the children to curse them. The ten commandments had said to honor father and mother. Therefore, cursing (speaking evil of) parents was to be punished with death.
Adultery too (a guilty infraction of the marriage bond) called for the death penalty for both the man and the woman involved in this. God does not require Gentile governments to enforce Israel’s laws, but these evils are no less wicked wherever they are found. Meanwhile, God is delaying punishment, and today is commanding all people everywhere to repent (Act 17:30). If so, they will be saved from the punishment they deserve: if not, their punishment will be not only death, but eternal torment in the lake of fire.
The penalty for incest was death for both parties (vv. 11-12). Those guilty of homosexual relations incurred the same penalty (v. 13). If a man married both a woman and her mother, all three of them were to be burned to death.
A human and an animal having sexual relations were both to be killed (vv. 15-16). Incest with a half sister was just the same as with a full sister: it demanded death. The same was true as regards aunts, whether on the father’s or the mothers’s side (vv. 19-20). It is evident that such evil between an uncle and niece would be the same.
Verse 21 evidently refers to one taking his brother’s wife while his brother was still living, for if one had died, then his brother was told to take his widow and raise up seed that would be counted as that of his deceased brother (Deu 25:5).
DISCERNING AND OBEYING THE TRUTH (vv. 22-27)
This last section of the chapter presses home upon the consciences of the people the vital importance of keeping all God’s statutes and judgments. These were laws that Israel had three times promised to keep (Exo 19:8; Exo 24:3; Exo 24:7). If they did not keep these, then the land would vomit you out. For God had separated the land as His own holy land. That land would expel the nations that were occupying it, because of the worship of idols and evil spirits. It could also do the same to Israel if thy descended to a similar level. In fact, history has proven this true in the scattering of Israel from their land for centuries following their rejection of Christ, their promised Messiah.
They could not say they were not warned. Many scriptures beside this admonished and warned them. They had been separated by God from all other peoples (v. 24). Therefore they were to clearly discern between clean and unclean (v. 25). These verses plainly infer that unclean animals and birds were symbols of unclean people, from whom God had separated Israel.
Thus they were to be holy, separate from evil, because God is holy, and He had set them apart from the Gentiles, to be His (v. 26). The chapter ends with the death sentence by stoning pronounced on any medium or spiritist (v. 27). For the object of such people was to get rid of God’s authority by means of satanic activity.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
4. Punishments for serious crimes ch. 20
The preceding two chapters specify correct behavior. This one sets forth the punishments for disobedience. Chapters 18-19 already discussed most of the subjects dealt with in this chapter.
"The difference between the laws in this chapter and previous ones lies in their form. Those in chs. 18-19 are apodictic in form; that is, they forbid or command certain types of behavior but they rarely indicate what the consequences of disregarding these rules would be. In contrast, the laws in this chapter are casuistic; that is, they state what must be done should one of the apodictic rules be broken. They set out what will befall a law-breaker in such a case. In this way they supplement and reinforce what is found in earlier chapters." [Note: Wenham, The Book . . ., p. 277.]
"Although the content of Leviticus 18, 20 is virtually identical, it is possible to make a distinction between the intended audiences of the chapters. Whereas Leviticus 18 addresses the would-be offender of a God-given decree, Leviticus 20 addresses the Israelite community, which was responsible for seeing that violations of Law receive their just reward." [Note: Rooker, p. 265.]
"This selection of laws consists of fourteen (7×2) laws, concluded by an extended appeal for holiness on the part of the nation when they take possession of the land of Canaan (Lev 20:22-26). After the conclusion, one of the laws, the prohibition of mediums and spiritists (Lev 20:6), is restated (Lev 20:27)." [Note: Sailhamer, p. 353.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Idolatry and spiritism are the focus of this section. The people were to execute a Molech worshiper by stoning. If they failed to put him or her to death, God Himself would judge the guilty person with death. He would do this to the person who resorted to mediums or spiritists too since this practice sought information about the future from evil spirits rather than from God (cf. King Saul’s fate).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
PENAL SANCTIONS
Lev 20:1-27
In no age or community has it been found sufficient, to secure obedience, that one should appeal to the conscience of men, or depend, as a sufficient motive, upon the natural painful consequences of violated law. Wherever there is civil and criminal law, there, in all cases, human government, whether in its lowest or in its most highly developed forms, has found it necessary to declare penalties for various crimes. It is the peculiar interest of this chapter that it gives us certain important sections of the penal code of a people whose government was theocratic, whose only King was the Most Holy and Righteous God. In view of the manifold difficulties which are inseparable from the enactment and enforcement of a just and equitable penal code, it must be to every man who believes that Israel, in that period of its history, was, in the most literal sense, a theocracy, a matter of the highest civil and governmental interest to observe what penalties for crime were ordained by infinite wisdom, goodness, and righteousness as the law of that nation.
This penal code (Lev 20:1-21) is given in two sections. Of these, the first (Lev 20:1-6) relates to those who give of their seed to Molech, or who are accessory to such crime by their concealment of the fact; and also to those who consult wizards or familiar spirits. Under this last head also comes Lev 20:27, which appears to have become misplaced, as it follows the formal conclusion of the chapter, and by its subject-the penalty for the wizard, or him who claims to have a familiar spirit-evidently belongs immediately after Lev 20:6.
The second section (Lev 20:9-21) enumerates, first (Lev 20:9-16), other cases for which capital punishment was ordered: and then (Lev 20:17-21) certain offences for which a lesser penalty is prescribed. These two sections are separated (Lev 20:7-8) by a command, in view of these penalties, to sanctification of life, and obedience to the Lord, as the God who has redeemed and consecrated Israel to be a nation to Himself.
These penal sections are followed (Lev 20:22-26) by a general conclusion to the whole law of holiness, as contained in these three chapters, as also to the law concerning clean and unclean meats (chapter 11); which would thus appear to have been originally connected more closely than now with these chapters. This closing part of the section consists of an exhortation and argument against disobedience, in walking after the wicked customs of the Canaanitish nations; enforced by the declaration that their impending expulsion was brought about by God in punishment for their practice of these crimes; and, also, by the reminder that God in His special grace had separated them to be a holy nation to Himself, and that He was about to give them the good land of Canaan as their possession.
It is perhaps hardly necessary to observe that the law of this chapter does not profess to give the penal code of Israel with completeness. Murder, for example, is not mentioned here, though death is expressly denounced against it elsewhere. {Num 35:31} So, again, in the Book of Exodus {Exo 21:15} death is declared as the penalty for smiting father or mother. Indeed, the chapter itself contains evidence that it is essentially a selection of certain parts of a more extended code, which has been nowhere preserved in its entirety.
In this chapter death is ordained as the penalty for the following crimes: viz., giving of ones seed to Molech (Lev 20:2-5); professing to be a wizard, or to have dealings with the spirits of the dead (Lev 20:27); adultery, incest with a mother or step-mother, a daughter-in-law or mother-in-law (Lev 20:10-12, Lev 20:14); and sodomy and bestiality (Lev 20:13). In a single case-that of incest with a wifes mother-it is added (Lev 20:14) that both the guilty parties shall be burnt with fire; i.e., after the usual infliction of death by stoning. Of him who becomes accessory by concealment to the crime of sacrifice to Molech, it is said (Lev 20:5) that God Himself will set His face against that man, and will cut off both the man himself and his family. The same phraseology is used (Lev 20:6) of those who consult familiar spirits: and the cutting off is also threatened, Lev 20:18. The law concerning incest with a full- or half-sister requires (ver. 17) that this excision shall be “in the sight of the children of their people”; i.e., that the sentence shall be executed in the most public way, thus to affix the more certainly, to the crime the stigma of an indelible ignominy and disgrace. A lesser grade of penalty is attached to an alliance with the wife of an uncle or of a brother; in the latter case (Lev 20:21) that they shall be childless, in the former (Lev 20:20), that they shall die childless; that is, though they have children, they shall all be prematurely cut off; none shall outlive their parents. To incest with an aunt by blood no specific penalty is affixed; it is only said that “they shall bear their iniquity,” i.e., God will hold them guilty.
The chapter, directly or indirectly, casts no little light on some most fundamental and practical questions regarding the administration of justice in dealing with criminals.
We may learn here what, in the mind of the King of kings, is the primary object of the punishment of criminals against society. Certainly there is no hint in this code of law that these penalties were specially intended for the reformation of the offender. Were this so, we should not find the death penalty applied with such unsparing severity. This does not indeed mean that the reformation of the criminal was a matter of no concern to the Lord; we know to the contrary. But one cannot resist the conviction in reading this chapter, as also other similar portions of the law, that in a governmental point of view this was not the chief object of punishment. Even where the penalty was not death, the reformation of the guilty persons is in no way brought before us as an object of the penal sentence. In the governmental aspect of the case, this is, at least, so far in the background that it does not once come into view.
In our day, however, an increasing number maintain that the death penalty ought never to be inflicted, because, in the nature of the case, it precludes the possibility of the criminal being reclaimed and made a useful member of society; and so, out of regard to this and other like humanitarian considerations, in not a few instances, the death penalty, even for wilful murder, has been abrogated. It is thus, to a Christian citizen, of very practical concern to observe that in this theocratic penal code there is not so much as an allusion to the reformation of the criminal, as one object which by means of punishment it was intended to secure. Penalty was to be inflicted, according to this code, without any apparent reference to its bearing on this matter. The wisdom of the Omniscient King of Israel, therefore, must certainly have contemplated in the punishment of crime some object or objects of more weighty moment than this.
What those objects were, it does not seem hard to discern. First and supreme in the intention of this law is the satisfaction of outraged justice and of the regal majesty of the supreme and holy God, defiled; the vindication of the holiness of the Most High against that wickedness of men which would set at nought the Holy One and overturn that moral order which He has established. Again and again the crime itself is given as the reason for the penalty, inasmuch as by such iniquity in the midst of Israel the holy sanctuary of God among them was profaned. We read, for example, “I will cut him off because he hath defiled My sanctuary, and hath profaned My holy name; they have wrought confusion,” i.e., in the moral and physical order of the family; “their blood shall be upon them”; “they have committed abomination; they shall surely be put to death”; “it is a shameful thing; they shall be cut off.” Such are the expressions which again and again ring through this chapter; and they teach with unmistakable clearness that the prime object of the Divine King of Israel in the punishment was, not the reformation of the individual sinner, but the satisfaction of justice and the vindication of the majesty of broken law. And if we have no more explicit statement of the matter here, we yet have it elsewhere; as in Num 35:33, where we are expressly told that the death penalty to be visited with unrelenting severity on the murderer is of the nature of an expiation. Very clear and solemn are the words, “Blood, it polluteth the land: and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.” But if this is set forth as the fundamental reason for the infliction of the punishment, it is not represented as the only object. If, as regards the criminal himself, the punishment is a satisfaction and expiation to justice for his crime, on the other hand, as regards the people, the punishment is intended for their moral good and purification. This is expressly stated, as in Lev 20:14 : “They shall be burnt with fire, that there be no wickedness among you.” Both of these principles are of such a nature that they must be of perpetual validity. The government or legislative power that loses sight of either of them is certain to go wrong, and the people will be sure, sooner or later, to suffer in morals by the error.
In the light we have now, it is easy to see what are the principles according to which, in various cases, the punishments were measured out. Evidently, in the first place, the penalty was determined, even as equity demands, by the intrinsic heinousness of the crime. With the possible exception of a single case, it is easy to see this. No one will question the horrible iniquity of the sacrifice of innocent children to Molech; or of incest with a mother, or of sodomy, or bestiality. A second consideration which evidently had place, was the danger involved in each crime to the moral and spiritual well being of the community; and, we may add, in the third place, also the degree to which the people were likely to be exposed to the contagion of certain crimes prevalent in the nations immediately about them.
But although these principles are manifestly so equitable and benevolent as to be valid for all ages, Christendom seems to be forgetting the fact. The modern penal codes vary as widely from the Mosaic in respect of their great leniency, as those of a few centuries ago in respect of their undiscriminating severity. In particular, the past few generations have seen a great change with regard to the infliction of capital punishment. Formerly, in England, for example, death was inflicted, with intolerable injustice, for a large number of comparatively trivial offences; the death penalty is now restricted to high treason and killing with malice aforethought; while in some parts of Christendom it is already wholly abolished. In the Mosaic law, according to this chapter and other parts of the law, it was much more extensively inflicted, though, it may be noted in passing, always without torture. In this chapter it is made the penalty for actual or constructive idolatry, for sorcery, etc., for cursing father or mother, for adultery, for the grosser degrees of incest, and for sodomy and bestiality. To this list of capital offences the law elsewhere adds, not only murder, but blasphemy, sabbath breaking, unchastity in a betrothed woman when discovered after marriage, rape, rebellion against a priest or judge, and man stealing,
As regards the crimes specified in this particular chapter, the criminal law of modern Christendom does not inflict the penalty of death in a single possible case here mentioned; and, to the mind of many, the contrasted severity of the Mosaic code presents a grave difficulty. And yet, if one believes, on the authority of the teaching of Christ, that the theocratic government of Israel is not a fable, but a historic fact, although he may still have much difficulty in recognising the righteousness of this code, he will be slow on this account either to renounce his faith in the Divine authority of this chapter, or to impugn the justice of the holy King of Israel in charging Him with undue severity; and will rather patiently await some other solution of the problem, than the denial of the essential equity of these laws. But there are several considerations which, for many, will greatly lessen, if they do not wholly remove, the difficulty which the case presents.
In the first place, as regards the punishment of idolatry with death, we have to remember that, from a theocratic point of view, idolatry was essentially high treason, the most formal repudiation possible of the supreme authority of Israels King. If even in our modern states, the gravity of the issues involved in high treason has led men to believe that death is not too severe a penalty for an offence aimed directly at the subversion of governmental order, how much more must this be admitted when the government is not of fallible man, but of the most holy and infallible God? And when, besides this, we recall the atrocious cruelties and revolting impurities which were inseparably associated with that idolatry, we shall have still less difficulty in seeing that it was just that the worshipper of Molech should die. And as decreeing the penalty of death for sorcery and similar practices, it is probable that the reason for this is to be found in the close connection of these with the prevailing idolatry.
But it is in regard to crimes against the integrity and purity of the family that we find the most impressive contrast between this penal code and those of modern times. Although, unhappily, adultery and, less commonly, incest, and even, rarely, the unnatural crimes mentioned in this chapter, are not unknown in modern Christendom, yet, while the law of Moses punished all these with death, modern law treats them with comparative leniency, or even refuses to regard some forms of these offences as crimes. What then? Shall we hasten to the conclusion that we have advanced on Moses? that this law was certainly unjust in its severity? or is it possible that modern law is at fault, in that it has fallen below those standards of righteousness which rule in the kingdom of God?
One would think that by any man who believes in the Divine origin of the theocracy only one answer could be given. Assuredly, one cannot suppose that God judged of a crime with undue severity; and if not, is not then Christendom, as it were, summoned by this penal code of the theocracy-after making all due allowance for different conditions of society-to revise its estimate of the moral gravity of these and other offences? In these days of continually progressive relaxation of the laws regulating the relations of the sexes, this seems indeed to be one of the chief lessons from this chapter of Leviticus; namely, that in Gods sight sins against the seventh commandment are not the comparative trifles which much over charitable and easygoing morality imagines, but crimes of the first order of heinousness. We do well to heed this fact, that not merely unnatural crimes, such as sodomy, bestiality, and the grosser forms of incest, but adultery, is by God ranked in the same category as murder. Is it strange? For what are crimes of this kind but assaults on the very being of the family? Where there is incest or adultery, we may truly say the family is murdered; what murder is to the individual, that, precisely, are crimes of this class to the family. In the theocratic code these were, therefore, made punishable with death; and, we venture to believe, with abundant reason. Is it likely that God was too severe? or must we not rather fear that man, ever lenient to prevailing sins, in our day has become falsely and unmercifully merciful, kind with a most perilous and unholy kindness?
Still harder will it be for most of us to understand why the death penalty should have been also affixed to cursing or smiting a father or a mother, an extreme form of rebellion against parental authority. We must, no doubt, bear in mind, as in all these cases, that a rough people like those just emancipated slaves, required a severity of dealing which with finer natures would not be needed; and, also, that the fact of Israels call to be a priestly nation bearing salvation to mankind, made every disobedience among them the graver crime, as tending to so disastrous issues, not for Israel alone, but for the whole race of man which Israel was appointed to bless. On an analogous principle we justify military authority in shooting the sentry found asleep at his post. Still, while allowing for all this, one can hardly escape the inference that, in the sight of God, rebellion against parents must be a more serious offence than many in our time have been wont to imagine. And the more that we consider how truly basal to the order of government and of society is both sexual purity and the maintenance of a spirit of reverence and subordination to parents, the easier we shall find it to recognise the fact that if in this penal code there is doubtless great severity, it is yet the severity of governmental wisdom and true paternal kindness on the part of the high King of Israel: who governed that nation with intent, above all, that they might become in the highest sense “a holy nation” in the midst of an ungodly world, and so become the vehicle of blessing to others. And God thus judged that was better that sinning individuals should die without mercy, than that family government and family purity should perish, and Israel, instead of being a blessing to the nations, should sink with them into the mire of universal moral corruption.
And it is well to observe that this law, if severe, was most equitable and impartial in its application. We have here, in no instance, torture; the scourging which in one case is enjoined, is limited elsewhere to the forty stripes save one. Neither have we discrimination against any class, or either sex; nothing like that detestable injustice of modern society which turns the fallen woman into the street with pious scorn, while; it often receives the betrayer and even the adulterer-in most cases the more guilty of the two-into “the best society.” Nothing have we here, again, which could justify by example the insistence of many, through a perverted humanity, when a murderess is sentenced for her crime to the scaffold, her sex should purchase a partial immunity from the penalty of crime. The Levitical law is as impartial as its Author; even if death be the penalty, the guilty one must die whether man or woman.
Quite apart, then, from any question of detail, as to how far this penal code ought to be applied under the different conditions of modern society, this chapter of Leviticus assuredly stands as a most impressive testimony from God against the humanitarianism of our age. It is more and. more the fashion, in some parts of Christendom, to pet criminals; to lionize murderers and adulterers, especially if in high social station. We have even heard of bouquets and such like sentimental attentions bestowed by ladies on blood-red criminals in their cells awaiting the halter; and a maudlin pity quite too often usurps among us the place of moral horror at crime and intense sympathy with the holy justice and righteousness of God. But this Divine government of old did not deal in flowers and perfumes; it never indulged criminals, but punished them with an inexorable righteousness. And yet this was not because Israels King was hard and cruel. For it was this same law which with equal kindness and equity kept a constant eye of fatherly care upon the poor and the stranger, and commanded the Israelite that he love even the stranger as himself. But, none the less, the Lord God who declared Himself as merciful and gracious and of great kindness, also herein revealed Himself, according to his word, as one who would “by no means clear the guilty.” This fact is luminously witnessed by this penal code; and, let us note, it is witnessed by that penal law of God which is revealed in nature also. For this too punishes without mercy the drunkard, for example, or the licentious man, and never diminishes one stroke because by the full execution of penalty the sinner must suffer often so terribly. Which is just what we should expect to find, if indeed the God of nature is the One who spake in Leviticus.
Finally, as already suggested, this chapter gives a most weighty testimony against the modern tendency to a relaxation of the laws which regulate the relations of the sexes. That such a tendency is a fact is admitted by all; by some with gratulation, by others with regret and grave concern. French law, for instance, has explicitly legalized various alliances which in this law God explicitly forbids, under heavy penal sanctions, as incestuous; German legislation has moved about as far in the same direction; and the same tendency is to be observed, more or less, in all the English-speaking world. In some of the United States, especially, the utmost laxity has been reached, in laws which, under the name of divorce, legalise gross adultery, – laws which had been a disgrace to pagan Rome. So it goes. Where God announces the death penalty, man first apologises for the crime, then lightens the penalty, then abolishes it, and at last formally legalises the crime. This modern drift bodes no good; in the end it can only bring disaster alike to the well being of the family and of the State. The maintenance of the family in its integrity and purity is nothing less than essential to the conservation of society and the stability of good government.
To meet this growing evil, the Church needs to come back to the full recognition of the principles which underlie this Levitical code; especially of the fact that marriage and the family are not merely civil arrangements, but Divine institutions; so that God has not left it to the caprice of a majority to settle what shall be lawful in these matters. Where God has declared certain alliances and connections to be criminal, we shall permit or condone them at our peril. God rules, whether modern majorities will it or not; and we must adopt the moral standards of the kingdom of God in our legislation. or we shall suffer. God has declared that not merely the material well being of man, but holiness, is the moral end of government and of life; and He will find ways to enforce His will in this respect. “The nation that will not serve Him shall perish.” All this is not theology, merely, or ethics, but history. All history witnesses that moral corruption and relaxed legislation, especially in matters affecting the relations of the sexes, bring in their train sure retribution, not in Hades, but here on earth. Let us not miss of taking the lesson by imagining that this law was for Israel, but not for other peoples. The contrary is affirmed in this very chapter (Lev 20:23-24), where we are reminded that God visited His heavy judgments upon the Canaanitish nations precisely for this very thing, their doing of these things which are in this law of holiness forbidden. Hence “the land spued them out.” Our modern democracies, English, American, French, German, or whatever they be, would do well to pause in their progressive repudiation of the law of God in many social questions, and heed. this solemn warning. For, despite the unbelief of multitudes, the Holy One still governs the world, and it is certain that He will never abdicate his throne of righteousness to submit any of his laws to the sanction of a popular vote.