For Teaching

Leviticus 19: What the Passage Says

122 claims across 37 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Leviticus 19 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Moses to speak to the whole community of Israel and give them a long list of commands, all tied to the statement that the LORD their God is holy. The commands cover worship, sacrifices, harvest left for the poor and the foreigner, honesty in speech and trade, treatment of parents and workers, cursing the deaf and tripping the blind, the elderly and foreigners, court judgments, mixing of kinds, sexual conduct, fruit trees, mourning customs, eating anything with the blood, and dealings with mediums. The section includes the command to love your neighbor as yourself and the command to love the foreigner living among you as yourself, and it closes with the order to keep and do all the LORD's statutes and judgments.

Claim by Claim

19:1
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
- The LORD told Moses to say the following.
19:2
- The LORD commanded Moses to speak to the whole assembly of the children of Israel.
- Moses was to say to them: you shall be holy.
- The reason given is that the LORD their God is holy.
- The speaker identifies himself as the LORD their God.
19:3
- Each person shall revere his mother and his father.
- They shall keep the LORD's sabbaths.
- The speaker is the LORD their God.
19:4
- Do not turn to idols.
- Do not make molten gods for yourselves.
- The speaker is the LORD their God.
19:5
- This concerns the case of sacrificing a peace offering to the LORD.
- The offering is to be sacrificed so as to be accepted, or of your own free will; the wording carries both senses.
19:6
- The peace offering shall be eaten on the day it is sacrificed and on the next day.
- Whatever remains until the third day shall be burned in fire.
19:7
- If any of it is eaten on the third day, it is foul and rejected meat.
- It shall not be accepted.
19:8
- Whoever eats it shall bear his iniquity.
- The reason is that he has profaned what is holy to the LORD.
- That person shall be cut off from his people.
19:9
- This concerns reaping the harvest of your land.
- You shall not reap your field all the way to its edge.
- You shall not gather the gleanings of your harvest.
19:10
- You shall not strip your vineyard bare of its remaining fruit.
- You shall not gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard.
- You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner.
- The speaker is the LORD their God.
19:11
- You shall not steal.
- You shall not deny or deal falsely.
- You shall not lie to one another.
19:12
- You shall not swear falsely by the LORD's name.
- Doing so profanes the name of your God.
- The speaker is the LORD.
19:13
- You shall not oppress or defraud your neighbor.
- You shall not rob him.
- The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you overnight until morning.
19:14
- You shall not curse the deaf.
- You shall not put a stumbling block before the blind.
- You shall fear your God.
- The speaker is the LORD.
19:15
- You shall not do injustice in judgment.
- You shall not show partiality to the poor.
- You shall not favor the great or mighty.
- You shall judge your neighbor in righteousness.
19:16
- You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people.
- You shall not stand against the blood of your neighbor; the phrase means either standing idle while his life is in danger or acting against his life.
- The speaker is the LORD.
19:17
- You shall not hate your brother in your heart.
- You shall surely rebuke your neighbor.
- You shall not bear sin on account of him; the phrase means either not incurring guilt because of him or not leaving sin upon him.
19:18
- You shall not take vengeance.
- You shall not bear a grudge against the children of your people.
- You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
- The speaker is the LORD.
19:19
- You shall keep the LORD's statutes.
- You shall not let your livestock breed with a different kind.
- You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed.
- A garment made of two kinds of material mixed together shall not come upon you.
- The King James identifies the mixed garment as one of linen and wool.
19:20
- This concerns a man who lies carnally with a woman.
- The woman is a slave woman designated or betrothed to a man.
- The woman has not been redeemed.
- Freedom has not been given to her.
- There shall be a penalty or inquiry in the case; the King James specifies that she shall be scourged.
- They shall not be put to death.
- The reason they are not put to death is that she was not free.
19:21
- The man shall bring his guilt offering to the LORD.
- He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting.
- The guilt offering is a ram.
19:22
- The priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering.
- The atonement is made before the LORD.
- The atonement is for the sin he has committed.
- The sin he has committed shall be forgiven him.
19:23
- This concerns when you come into the land and plant any kind of tree for food.
- You shall treat its fruit as forbidden, as though uncircumcised.
- For three years the fruit shall be forbidden to you.
- It shall not be eaten.
19:24
- In the fourth year all the tree's fruit shall be holy.
- The fourth year's fruit is an offering of praise to the LORD.
19:25
- In the fifth year you may eat the tree's fruit.
- The purpose is that its yield may be increased for you.
- The speaker is the LORD their God.
19:26
- You shall not eat anything with the blood.
- You shall not practice divination.
- You shall not practice soothsaying.
19:27
- You shall not round off the hair at the sides of your head.
- You shall not mar the edges of your beard.
19:28
- You shall not make cuts in your flesh for the dead.
- You shall not put tattoo marks on yourselves.
- The speaker is the LORD.
19:29
- Do not profane your daughter by making her a prostitute.
- Otherwise the land will fall into prostitution.
- Otherwise the land will become full of depravity.
19:30
- You shall keep the LORD's sabbaths.
- You shall revere the LORD's sanctuary.
- The speaker is the LORD.
19:31
- Do not turn to mediums who consult the spirits of the dead.
- Do not seek out spiritists or those with familiar spirits.
- Doing so makes you unclean.
- The speaker is the LORD their God.
19:32
- You shall rise before the gray-headed.
- You shall honor the presence of the aged.
- You shall fear your God.
- The speaker is the LORD.
19:33
- This concerns a sojourner who dwells with you in your land.
- You shall not wrong or oppress him.
19:34
- The sojourner who dwells with you shall be to you as a native-born among you.
- You shall love him as yourself.
- The reason given is that you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.
- The speaker is the LORD their God.
19:35
- You shall not do injustice in judgment.
- You shall not do injustice in measures of length, in weight, or in measures of volume.
19:36
- You shall have honest balances.
- You shall have honest weights.
- You shall have an honest ephah.
- You shall have an honest hin.
- The speaker is the LORD their God.
- The LORD brought them out of the land of Egypt.
19:37
- You shall keep all the LORD's statutes and all his ordinances.
- You shall do them.
- The speaker is the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

19:1: Moses was the leader of Israel. God gave him messages for the people. When you see LORD in big letters, it stands for God's own name.
19:2: "Holy" in Hebrew (qadosh) means set apart, belonging to God and kept distinct from ordinary use. It carries the idea of separateness first, and moral purity as a consequence of that; the same word is used of objects, days and places, not only of people.
19:3: The Sabbath was the seventh day of the week, on which all work stopped. The plural "my Sabbaths" covers the weekly day and the other appointed rest days of the year.
19:4: The Hebrew word translated "idols" here (elilim) sounds like the word for "god" (el) but means something worthless or good for nothing, a deliberate play on words. "Molten" gods were images cast from metal melted and poured into a mold.
19:5: A peace offering (Hebrew shelamim) was a sacrifice mostly eaten by the worshiper, his family and guests, with only certain fat portions burned on the altar and a share given to the priest. It was a shared meal, usually brought voluntarily to mark a vow, a thanksgiving or a celebration.
19:6: In a hot climate with no way to preserve meat, a carcass on its third day was spoiling. The law treats that as a matter of holiness as well as of food safety.
19:7: "Abominable" translates piggul, a technical term for sacrificial meat that has become unfit because it was kept too long. It is a ritual classification, not a comment on taste or hygiene.
19:8: "Cut off from among his people" is a set legal formula in these laws. Ancient and modern interpreters disagree over exactly what it meant: expulsion from the community, loss of descendants, death at God's hand, or execution by the community.
19:9: Leaving the field edges unharvested and not going back over the ground was a standing provision for people with no land of their own, who were entitled to come in and take what was left. The practice is called gleaning; the book of Ruth shows it in operation.
19:10: The word translated "stranger" (Hebrew ger) means a foreigner settled among the Israelites for the long term, a resident outsider without inherited land, not a passing traveler. Landless, such a person depended on gleaning rights like these.
19:12: In a society with few written records, a sworn oath in God's name was the ordinary way of settling a dispute when there was no evidence: the oath itself decided the case. Swearing falsely by that name was therefore both perjury and an abuse of the name invoked.
19:13: Hired laborers were paid at the end of each day and had no savings to fall back on; holding the wage overnight meant the worker's household went without food that evening.
19:14: Both examples name a victim who cannot detect the wrong or defend against it: the deaf person does not hear the curse, the blind person does not see the obstacle. Hence the closing line, no human witness will catch the offender, so the restraint has to come from fear of God.
19:15: "Respect the person" is a 1611 legal idiom, not a compliment. It translates a Hebrew phrase meaning to lift up someone's face, to show partiality. The verse forbids tilting a verdict either way: toward the poor out of sympathy, or toward the powerful out of deference.
19:16: "Talebearer" means someone who circulates damaging reports about others. The second phrase, literally "do not stand against the blood of your neighbour," is genuinely obscure in Hebrew and has been read both as standing by while a neighbor's life is threatened and as testifying against a neighbor in a case that carries the death penalty.
19:17: "Suffer" in 1611 English means allow. The Hebrew of the last clause is ambiguous: it can mean rebuke your neighbor so that you do not share in his guilt by silence, or rebuke him so that you do not incur guilt on his account by hating him privately instead of speaking.
19:18: "The children of thy people" means fellow Israelites, so "neighbour" here is a member of the same community. Verse 34 extends the same command to foreigners settled in the land.
19:19: "Gender" in 1611 English means to breed. The three bans all concern mixing categories that were kept separate; notably, the blend of linen and wool that is forbidden here for ordinary clothing was exactly the fabric used for the priests' garments and the sanctuary hangings.
19:20: The woman is a slave who has been designated for another man but whose transfer is not complete: she has not been bought out of slavery ("redeemed") or released. Because she is not legally free, the case is not treated as adultery, which carried the death penalty. The Hebrew word behind "she shall be scourged" (biqqoret) occurs only here and is disputed; it may mean an official inquiry, compensation, or a beating, and it is unclear whether the punishment falls on her, on him, or on both.
19:21: A trespass or guilt offering (Hebrew asham) was the sacrifice required when someone had wronged another party or misused something holy; it usually went together with compensation. The tabernacle, or tent of meeting, was the portable sanctuary carried through the wilderness, a tent housing the ark, with a courtyard and altar, where Israel assembled before God.
19:22: "Make an atonement" translates a verb (kipper) whose root sense is to wipe clean or to cover over. It describes a ritual act performed by the priest that removes the effect of the offense, after which the offender is declared forgiven.
19:23: "Uncircumcised" is used here as a figure of speech for something not yet available for use, off limits, as an uncircumcised male was outside the covenant community. The rule keeps the first three harvests of any newly planted fruit tree from being eaten at all.
19:24: Fourth-year fruit was handed over as a praise offering: brought to the sanctuary and eaten there or given to the priests, rather than kept by the grower. Only in the fifth year does the crop become ordinary food.
19:25: The closing clause can be read as a promise that the tree will then yield abundantly, or simply as a statement that from this point the owner takes the increase for himself; the Hebrew allows both.
19:26: Blood was to be drained from an animal before eating, on the principle stated elsewhere in Leviticus that the life is in the blood and belongs to God. "Use enchantment" and "observe times" translate two Hebrew terms for divination, reading omens, and identifying which days were favorable or unfavourable for action.
19:27: This forbids a particular haircut and beard trim, shaving the hairline round the head and clipping the beard's edges. Both were mourning customs and grooming styles associated with neighboring peoples; later Jewish practice derives sidelocks (peyot) from this verse.
19:28: Gashing the skin and shaving were standard mourning rites in the ancient Near East, performed at a death. The word rendered "print any marks" (Hebrew qa'aqa) occurs only here; it is generally taken to mean a permanent mark pricked into the skin, hence "tattoo."
19:29: The concern is a father selling or hiring out his daughter for sex, in that society a real economic option for a household in debt. "The land fall to whoredom" uses prostitution figuratively, as the prophets often do, for a whole community's corruption.
19:30: "Sanctuary" is the tabernacle, the tent sanctuary described in Exodus, and its precincts.
19:31: "Them that have familiar spirits" and "wizards" translate two Hebrew terms (ov and yidde'oni) for practitioners who consulted the dead on a client's behalf. "Wizard" in 1611 English means one who has arcane knowledge, not a magician of the storybook kind. The consultation of the dead is what is in view; 1 Samuel 28 describes such a session.
19:32: "Hoary" means white or gray with age. Standing up as an elderly person approached was the recognized physical gesture of respect, the ancient equivalent of rising when someone enters a room.
19:33: "Vex" in 1611 English is much stronger than the modern word: it means to oppress or mistreat, not to annoy.
19:34: "One born among you" means a native-born Israelite with full standing in the community. The verse gives the resident foreigner that same standing, and argues for it from memory: Israel had itself been a foreign underclass in Egypt.
19:35: "Meteyard" is an old word for a measuring rod or yardstick, a measure of length. The three terms cover the three kinds of cheating available to a trader: short length, light weight, and small volume.
19:36: An ephah was a dry measure of roughly twenty-two liters, about two-thirds of a bushel; a hin was a liquid measure of roughly four liters, about a gallon. Since standard weights and measures were the merchant's own physical stones and jars, keeping honest ones was a deliberate choice.
19:37: "Statutes" and "judgments" render two different Hebrew words: fixed decrees on the one hand, and on the other the rulings handed down in particular cases, which then served as precedent.

Read Leviticus 19