THE LORD SAID to Moses, 2“Say to the Israelites: ‘Any Israelite or any alien living in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech must be put to death. The people of the community are to stone him. 3I will set my face against that man and I will cut him off from his people; for by giving his children to Molech, he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. 4If the people of the community close their eyes when that man gives one of his children to Molech and they fail to put him to death, 5I will set my face against that man and his family and will cut off from their people both him and all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molech.
6“‘I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.
7“‘Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the LORD your God. 8Keep my decrees and follow them. I am the LORD, who makes you holy.
9“‘If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother, and his blood will be on his own head.
10“‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.
11“‘If a man sleeps with his father’s wife, he has dishonored his father. Both the man and the woman must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
12“‘If a man sleeps with his daughter-in-law, both of them must be put to death. What they have done is a perversion; their blood will be on their own heads.
13“‘If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
14“‘If a man marries both a woman and her mother, it is wicked. Both he and they must be burned in the fire, so that no wickedness will be among you.
15“‘If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he must be put to death, and you must kill the animal.
16“‘If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
17“‘If a man marries his sister, the daughter of either his father or his mother, and they have sexual relations, it is a disgrace. They must be cut off before the eyes of their people. He has dishonored his sister and will be held responsible.
18“‘If a man lies with a woman during her monthly period and has sexual relations with her, he has exposed the source of her flow, and she has also uncovered it. Both of them must be cut off from their people.
19“‘Do not have sexual relations with the sister of either your mother or your father, for that would dishonor a close relative; both of you would be held responsible.
20“‘If a man sleeps with his aunt, he has dishonored his uncle. They will be held responsible; they will die childless.
21“‘If a man marries his brother’s wife, it is an act of impurity; he has dishonored his brother. They will be childless.
22“‘Keep all my decrees and laws and follow them, so that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. 23You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them. 24But I said to you, “You will possess their land; I will give it to you as an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey.” I am the LORD your God, who has set you apart from the nations.
25“‘You must therefore make a distinction between clean and unclean animals and between unclean and clean birds. Do not defile yourselves by any animal or bird or anything that moves along the ground—those which I have set apart as unclean for you. 26You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.
27“‘A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.’”
HOLY LIVING IS not optional for those who wish to live as God’s people. So Leviticus 20 lays out terminal penalties for serious moral offenses, paralleling chapter 18 by prohibiting sexual practices and Molech worship. While this repetition contributes to the structure of Leviticus (see the introduction), chapter 20 presents a number of new features. (1) Whereas chapter 18 follows its laws with the divine penalties of being vomited out of the land and being “cut off,” which apply in general to all the aforementioned moral evils (18:28–29), chapter 20 supplies each law with a specific terminal penalty in addition to the overall threat of expulsion from the land (20:22).
(2) Chapter 20 begins its group of sexual laws (vv. 10–21) with the prohibition of adultery (v. 10) and sprinkles laws against homosexual activity (v. 13), bestiality (vv. 15–16), and intercourse during a woman’s genital flow (v. 18) among incest laws; chapter 18 groups incest laws at the beginning (18:6–18).
(3) Chapter 20 expands the injunction against Molech worship, which was introduced in 18:21, and emphasizes it by placing it at the beginning (20:2–5).
(4) Verse 6 prohibits turning to occult sources of information (cf. 19:31), and 20:27 mandates capital punishment for occult mediums. “Thus this chapter clearly distinguishes between a ‘user’ and a ‘pusher.’”1
(5) Verse 9 puts serious teeth into the earlier command to respect parents (19:3; cf. Ex. 20:12) by mandating the death penalty for dishonoring/cursing (Piel of qll) one’s father or mother. Placement of this law here immediately preceding a list of penalties for sexual violations (Lev. 20:10–21) reflects the concept “that dishonoring parents—that is, the breakdown of obligations to one’s father or mother—is able to lead to the breakdown of relationships with the other members of the familial chain, including the sexual taboos.”2
Human sacrifice by passing one’s child through/in fire was part of SyroPalestinian worship of the underworld god Molech.3 This was a particularly heinous form of idolatry because it showed cruel disrespect for precious life entrusted to parents. Whereas 18:21 simply outlaws giving any of your children (lit., “seed”) to Molech and thus profaning God’s name, 20:2–5 adds several elements. (1) The law also applies to resident aliens (v. 2).
(2) The people living in the land are to stone a violator to death (v. 2), implicitly purging the holy land.
(3) A Molech worshiper nominally connected with God, whether an Israelite or a resident alien in God’s holy land, not only profanes his holy name (v. 3; cf. 18:21); he also defiles his sanctuary (20:3). God’s name, representing his authority and reputation, goes with his sanctuary (see ch. 16). This explains why someone who wantonly defiles the sanctuary, where the Lord’s name resides (cf. Deut. 12:5, 11, 21; 14:23–24; 16:2, 6, 11; 26:2), will have his name blotted out (cf. 29:20) by being “cut off” (Lev. 20:3).
Divinely administered “cutting off” goes beyond capital punishment. When someone deserves more than one death penalty, human justice is stymied. It makes no difference whether an individual murders one or six million; the malefactor has but one life to give for his crime(s). But God can do plenty more: He can make the punishment fit the crime by seeing to it that the sinner’s line of descendants, from which he has contributed to another deity, becomes extinct so that he is not even history. It is terrifying to face the prospect of being forgotten and unmissed.4 God can also deny the offender a positive afterlife. Either way, he is “cut off from his people.”5
(4) Anyone who ignores the abhorrent practice of Molech worship and fails to act decisively by carrying out the death penalty is condemned to the same divine punishment of being “cut off,” along with his family (vv. 4–5).
(5) In 18:21, giving “seed” to Molech parallels the sexual offense of giving “seed” to another man’s wife (v. 20), but in 20:5 the sexual analogy is explicit: Molech worship is spiritual prostitution/promiscuity, an illicit union with another party in violation of an intimate relationship established and enforced by the covenant. As in Ezekiel 16:32–34, a spiritual prostitute gives to other gods but receives nothing in return. So not only is it disloyal to God; it is stupid because it fails to achieve the purpose for which it is intended.
In 20:25–26 the closing exhortation recapitulates 11:43–47, where the Israelites are to be holy as God is holy by abstaining from defilement through impure animals. These two passages are bound together by a chiastic relationship between being holy and making distinctions, within which there is also a chiasm between “unclean” and “clean”:
Be holy because God is holy (11:44–45)
Distinguish between the unclean and the clean (11:47)
Distinguish between the clean and the unclean (20:25)
Be holy because God is holy (20:26)
Because 20:27, condemning practitioners of occult, comes after the concluding exhortation in vv. 22–26 rather than with verse 6, which also deals with occult, some scholars regard verse 27 as an appendix to the chapter. They explain it variously as creating a framing structure for chapter 20 (cf. vv. 7, 26), serving as a transition to chapter 21, or tacked on after the rest of the legislation in chapter 20 had been completed.6 In support of the framing structure idea, we can expand the frame as follows:
Penalty of stoning (for Molech worship; v. 2)
Prohibition of occult (v. 6)
Be holy because God is holy (v. 7)
“Keep my decrees” (v. 8)
“Keep all my decrees” (v. 22)
Be holy because God is holy (v. 26)
Prohibition of occult (v. 27)
Penalty of stoning (for mediums; v. 27)
The choice of laws against occult to occupy strategic positions in this frame could be due to a correspondence between the penalty of stoning in verse 27 and the same punishment at the beginning of the chapter in verse 2, a need for transition to chapter 21, and/or an emphasis that occult is the antithesis of holiness.
Bridging Contexts
SHAME. IN MODERN WESTERN CULTURE, it has become politically incorrect to attach shame to behaviors that were previously viewed as immoral. Anything that threatens self-esteem is anathema, except stigmatization of political incorrectness, which is shameful beyond measure. The result is a society that is increasingly amoral. What else would we expect?
Leviticus 20 shows complete disregard for political correctness, employing a rich vocabulary to express the shamefulness of sexual violations: “perversion” (tebel; v. 12), “abomination” (toʿebah; v. 13 NRSV), “depravity” (zimmah; v. 14), “disgrace” (ḥesed v. 17), and “act of (repulsive, metaphorical menstrual) impurity” (niddah; v. 21). These terms carry roughly the same force and appear to be used for cumulative rhetorical effect and for variety, as in the language of modern sports commentators; for example, team A trashed team B, team C walloped team D, team E clobbered team F, and so on. This is more interesting than using the same word ad nauseum.
If shame lowers people’s self-esteem, it is for a redemptive purpose: to wake them up to their true danger so that they can seek divine restoration and be saved. This is part of “tough love” that appears intolerant but actually combats the destructive status quo of codependency that supports harmful behavior by putting up with it. In 1 Corinthians 5 Paul powerfully illustrates the salvific purpose of church discipline that involves shaming:
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife. And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? . . . hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord. . . . (1 Cor. 5:1–5)
. . . But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. (5:11)
Does Paul shock us? Compare the fate of a man who had his father’s wife (1 Cor. 5:1) with biblical law: “If a man sleeps with his father’s wife, he has dishonored his father. Both the man and the woman must be put to death . . .” (Lev. 20:11). Since the church is not a theocracy, it cannot and should not attempt to carry out capital punishment. However, Paul held that just as a rebellious Israelite subject to terminal punishment under biblical law was thereby excluded from the community of God’s covenant people, so the church must expel from its fellowship one who will not bow to the sovereign will of its “new covenant” Lord. Anything less than this damages the cause of God on earth and lulls sinners into the fatal security of thinking they have peace with God when there is no such peace, just as false prophets and apostate priests treated moral metastasis with bandaids (Jer. 6:14; 8:11) and whitewash (Ezek. 13:10).
God does bring discipline, judgment, and wrath on those who continue in sin and rebellion. Even His discipline, however, always is based on love. “For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives” (Heb. 12:6).7
Supporting Paul’s stand to the effect that God’s standard of holiness has not slipped is the New Testament story of Ananias and Sapphira, whose deliberate sacrilege against God resulted in sudden death, obviously by divine agency (Acts 5:1–11). Whether or not the Lord chooses to exercise his retributive justice as dramatically today, that is what he thinks of such sin committed by Christians.
Penalties for sexual offenses. The bulk of the legislation in chapter 20 has to do with sexual wrongs incurring terminal punishment (vv. 10–21), whether it is capital punishment administered by the Israelite judicial system (vv. 10–16) or the related punishments of being “cut off” (vv. 17–18), bearing one’s own culpability,8 or dying childless (vv. 20–21). Some penalties are especially severe, implying that they punish particularly grave sins. For example, if a man married both a woman and her mother, all three of them were to be burned with fire (v. 14).
In chapter 20 adultery heads the list of sexual offenses (v. 10). In Israel, the act of adultery was viewed in absolute terms and was punishable by death to both parties (see also Deut. 22:22). At least in the case of a betrothed woman, death for adultery was by stoning (v. 24; cf. John 8:3–7). Circumstances could determine whether adultery had occurred (Deut. 22:23–27, regarding a betrothed women); if it had, the death sentence could not be mitigated. Even the husband of an adulterous woman did not have the right to lighten her penalty or that of her paramour because their violation was a grave sin against God, not merely a wrong committed against the aggrieved man.9
Mesopotamian law, by contrast, had a more subjective approach to adultery. Adultery in which both parties premeditated was handled essentially the same as in the Bible, punishable by death. However, distinctions between other types of adultery depended on degrees of intention, with circumstances functioning as mitigating or aggravating factors in the fixing of penalties. An unpremeditating woman was under family law, subject to the jurisdiction of her husband, and her paramour was to suffer the same penalty that the husband fixed for her.10
| Penalties for Adultery in Ancient Mesopotamian Law Codes | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Key to reference abbreviations: LE = Laws of Eshnunna; LH = Laws of Hammurabi; LUN = Laws of Ur Nammu; MAL = Middle Assyrian Laws11 | |||
Offender(s) | Circumstances | Penalty | Reference |
man & married woman | premeditated and the man knows the woman is married | death | MAL 13 |
married woman | death | ||
man & married woman | in the act | death/according to husband | MAL 15 |
married woman | woman seduces | according to husband | MAL 16 |
man & married woman | according to husband | ||
married woman | woman consents to rape | according to husband | MAL 23c |
Automatic defilement of the sanctuary. Leviticus 20:3 expresses God’s reaction to anyone who gives his child to Molech: “And I myself will set my face against that man and cut him off from among his people, because he dedicated his offspring to Molek, thus defiling my sanctuary and desecrating my holy name” (emphasis supplied).12 Here a sin defiles the sanctuary from a distance at the time when it is committed.
Similarly, Numbers 19:13 states the consequences of disobeying the Lord’s requirement to be purified from corpse contamination: “Whoever touches a corpse, the body of a person who has died, and does not cleanse himself, defiles the LORD’s Tabernacle; that person shall be cut off from Israel” (NJPS; cf. 19:20; emphasis supplied). Here pollution of the sanctuary is a delayed reaction: It does not occur unless/until a corpse contaminated person commits the serious moral fault of wanton neglect to undergo purification.13 But there is no delayed reaction in Leviticus 20:3, because Molech worship is a sin of commission rather than omission.
In the cases just described, defilement of the sanctuary occurs simply through violation of God’s ritual commandments, either by neglect of the regulation that protects the holy sphere from corpse contamination (Num. 19:13, 20) or by participation in a cruel, alternate ritual worship system that honors another deity (Lev. 20:3). The fact that the Pentateuch does not specify the mode of transportation by which such evils invade the sanctuary (gas, miasma, radiation, electricity, laser, etc.?) need not trouble us because the world of ritual is not limited by constraints that operate in our mundane material world. Because the contamination is conceptual in nature, an evil can cause a change of state at a distance through open space.
This stretches our imagination, even in our modern technological age. Although we have telephones, radios, television, and now the Internet, human physical contamination cannot be instantly transmitted in this way. Your computer may contract a devastating digital “virus” spawned halfway around the world, but your body cannot even catch a minor cold when you talk to a sick person on the telephone.
If we entertain the possibility that the real point of ritual is not physical movement but changes in relationships between parties and other entities belonging to the mundane and supramundane realms, we can find analogies for instantaneous transfers. For example, when members of President Reagan’s government engaged in illegal Iran-Contra activities, they simultaneously created a problem for Reagan’s reputation. Similarly, a Molek worshiper in Israel automatically, by his very actions, cast the divine Ruler of his land into disrepute.14
Generalizing from the special cases in Leviticus 20:3 and Numbers 19:13, 20, Milgrom maintains that other kinds of evil, including all sins and ritual impurities that are expiable by purification offerings, always pollute the sanctuary when they occur. Then he argues that the more serious the sin, the deeper the aerial miasma of evil penetrates the sanctuary, where its defilement must be subsequently remedied by purification offering blood applied to the same locations, that is, the outer altar, outer sanctum, or inner sanctum.15
It is true that moral faults defile the sanctuary,16 reflecting the fact that they affect God’s reputation for holiness (see comments on Lev. 16). However, the automatic/aerial dynamic of defilement is attested only for certain grave ritual wrongs, penalties for which are terminal: being “cut off” (Lev. 20:3; Num. 19:13, 20) or death (Lev. 15:31).17 Following condemnation to such punishment, the sinner is ineligible to receive the benefit of sacrificial expiation prerequisite to forgiveness, even though his or her rebellious sin (pešaʿ; see comments on Lev. 16) affects the sanctuary and camp so that it must be removed by the special purification offerings and Azazel’s goat ritual on the Day of Atonement (16:16, 21).
God was pleased when a repentant person brought his/her sin to Him so that He could forgive and cleanse that individual through sacrifice. But when a person “threw” a sin at God so that its defilement invaded His sanctuary in an illegitimate way, God was not pleased. The difference in the attitude of God is understandable. Do you mind if your child brings some dirt into the house on the way to the bath? But what if he/she flings dirt through the window?18
Contemporary Significance
CHILD SACRIFICE. Human sacrifice, including child sacrifice, was well known in the ancient world.19 There was powerful logic to it: An offering of supreme cost was thought to have the greatest potential for motivating divine beings to act favorably (see 2 Kings 3:27; cf. Judg. 11).
Partly analogous to human sacrifice is the function of a “peace child” in the Sawi culture of Irian Jaya. To end hostilities, a father entrusts his precious son to an enemy father to raise as his own.20 Unlike child sacrifice to a deity, although a “peace child” is given up, he suffers no harm.
The Lord used the dynamic leading up to human sacrifice to test Abraham without the death of Isaac (Gen. 22), and his own slain Son serves as his ultimate “Peace Child” to us (John 3:16). However, despite all the compelling “logic,” the Lord did not require his people to emulate his sacrifice of his Son by sacrificing their children (Mic. 6:7b–8). In fact, he prohibited child sacrifice (Deut. 18:10).
We shudder at those horrible ancient days when children were sacrificed at temples of doom. But is the situation really much better for kids these days, when pictures of thousands of missing children are posted on milk cartons, public bulletin boards, the Internet, and television? Many are found, dead or alive, molested or not, but hundreds each year are never recovered. It appears that some are exploited for pornography, pedophilia, and/or prostitution, then disposed of. What happens to others—occult sacrifices? Unlike Molech worship, these are crimes against families, with parents as secondary victims rather than perpetrators. However, in Asia many poor parents are selling their children into sex slavery, thereby condemning them to moral degradation and in many cases death by HIV (see Contemporary Significance section of Lev. 19). This is not far from Molech worship: sacrifice of one’s child for personal gain.
Sacrifice for personal gain? This sounds more familiar. What about passively sacrificing children on the altar of greed by neglecting them in order to climb the ladder of the god we call “Success”? Are we giving them the physical, mental, social, and spiritual care they need and deserve as gifts of God entrusted to us? Or do we let them fend for themselves year after year with junk food, TV, and whatever friends they can find to keep them company?
Cursing parents. Leviticus 20:9 addresses dishonoring (Piel of qll) parents, which usually refers to cursing. To a modern reader, this verse is horrifying. Just for saying “Curse (or d——) you, Dad/Mom,” a person would be put to death! Notice, however, that the law is formulated for adults (ʾiš ʾiš, lit., “a man, a man,” i.e., any man, but generic for male or female), who would be old enough to know the implications of what they say. Furthermore, in ancient times a curse was a weapon believed to have serious and inescapable results (cf. Num. 22–24). To curse someone was not merely a malevolent wish; it was regarded as a way to carry it out.
The prohibition of dishonoring/cursing parents parallels Exodus 22:28: “Do not blaspheme God or curse the ruler of your people.” A person who does not respect his or her parents will have difficulty recognizing accountability to human and divine authority. Anyone who doubts this should read a newspaper or watch the news on TV. We are bombarded with gruesome stories of dysfunctional parent-child relationships spilling out to harm society.
Along with Leviticus 20, Deuteronomy 21:18–21 sought to nip damage in the bud:
If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.
Although the modern church community is not the kind of theocracy that can or should carry out death penalties today, the principle of accountability for respect to parents remains applicable.
There is another side to the relationship between parents and their children. The high and sacred place occupied by parents in the lives of their children is an awesome responsibility. If a parent abuses that trust by leading or thrusting a child into lifetime social dysfunction, Jesus said it much more forcefully than I would dare: “It would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matt. 18:6; see also Mark 9:42; Luke 17:2).