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Leviticus 20: What the Passage Says

110 claims across 27 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Leviticus 20 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Moses what to say to Israel about giving children to Molech, about turning to mediums and spiritists, and about cursing a father or mother, with the penalties attached to each. A long list of forbidden sexual relationships follows, each with its own punishment: death, being burned, being cut off from the people, or dying childless. The LORD then tells Israel to keep all his statutes and judgments so that the land will not vomit them out, not to follow the customs of the nation he is driving out, and to separate clean animals and birds from unclean ones. The chapter closes with the command to be holy to him, because he is holy and has set them apart, and with the penalty for a man or woman who is a medium or a spiritist.

Claim by Claim

  1. 20:1
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to say the following.
  2. 20:2
    • Moses is to say this to the Israelites.
    • This applies to any man of the Israelites.
    • This also applies to any foreigner residing in Israel.
    • Anyone who gives any of his offspring to Molech is to be put to death.
    • The people of the land are to stone him with stones.
  3. 20:3
    • The LORD will set his face against that man.
    • The LORD will cut that man off from among his people.
    • The reason is that the man gave some of his offspring to Molech.
    • Giving offspring to Molech defiles the LORD's sanctuary.
    • Giving offspring to Molech profanes the LORD's holy name.
  4. 20:4
    • The people of the land might deliberately shut their eyes to that man when he gives some of his offspring to Molech.
    • In that case they do not put him to death.
  5. 20:5
    • Then the LORD himself will set his face against that man.
    • The LORD will set his face against that man's family.
    • The LORD will cut that man off from among their people.
    • The LORD will also cut off all who prostitute themselves after him in going after Molech.
  6. 20:6
    • A person may turn to mediums who consult the dead.
    • A person may turn to spiritists.
    • Turning to them is prostituting oneself after them.
    • The LORD will set his face against that person.
    • The LORD will cut that person off from among his people.
  7. 20:7
    • The people are to consecrate themselves.
    • The people are to be holy.
    • The reason is that the LORD is their God.
  8. 20:8
    • The people are to keep the LORD's statutes.
    • The people are to do them.
    • The LORD is the one who sanctifies them.
  9. 20:9
    • Any man who curses his father or his mother is to be put to death.
    • Such a man has cursed his father and his mother.
    • His blood is upon himself.
  10. 20:10
    • A man may commit adultery with another man's wife.
    • That is, he commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor.
    • The adulterer is to be put to death.
    • The adulteress is to be put to death.
  11. 20:11
    • A man may lie with his father's wife.
    • In doing so he has uncovered his father's nakedness.
    • Both of them are to be put to death.
    • Their blood is upon them.
  12. 20:12
    • A man may lie with his daughter-in-law.
    • Both of them are to be put to death.
    • They have committed a perversion.
    • Their blood is upon them.
  13. 20:13
    • A man may lie with a male as one lies with a woman.
    • Both of them have committed an abomination.
    • They are to be put to death.
    • Their blood is upon them.
  14. 20:14
    • A man may take both a woman and her mother.
    • That is depravity.
    • He and they are to be burned with fire.
    • The purpose is that there be no depravity among the people.
  15. 20:15
    • A man may have sexual relations with an animal.
    • He is to be put to death.
    • The people are to kill the animal.
  16. 20:16
    • A woman may approach any animal to mate with it.
    • You are to kill the woman.
    • You are to kill the animal.
    • They are to be put to death.
    • Their blood is upon them.
  17. 20:17
    • A man may take his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother.
    • He sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness.
    • It is a disgrace.
    • They are to be cut off in the sight of the people's children.
    • He has uncovered his sister's nakedness.
    • He shall bear his guilt.
  18. 20:18
    • A man may lie with a menstruating woman.
    • He uncovers her nakedness.
    • He has laid bare her flow.
    • She has uncovered the source of her blood.
    • Both of them are to be cut off from among their people.
  19. 20:19
    • You must not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister.
    • You must not uncover the nakedness of your father's sister.
    • The reason is that such a person has laid bare his own blood relative.
    • They shall bear their guilt.
  20. 20:20
    • A man may lie with his uncle's wife.
    • In doing so he has uncovered his uncle's nakedness.
    • They shall bear their sin.
    • They shall die childless.
  21. 20:21
    • A man may take his brother's wife.
    • It is an impurity.
    • He has uncovered his brother's nakedness.
    • They shall be childless.
  22. 20:22
    • The people are to keep all the LORD's statutes.
    • The people are to keep all the LORD's ordinances.
    • The people are to do them.
    • The purpose is that the land not vomit them out.
    • The LORD is bringing them into that land to dwell in it.
  23. 20:23
    • The people must not walk in the statutes of the nation the LORD is driving out before them.
    • That nation did all these things.
    • Therefore the LORD abhorred them.
  24. 20:24
    • The LORD said to the people that they will possess the land of those nations.
    • The LORD will give the land to the people to possess it.
    • The land flows with milk and honey.
    • The LORD is their God.
    • The LORD has separated them from the peoples.
  25. 20:25
    • The people are to distinguish between clean animals and unclean animals.
    • The people are to distinguish between unclean birds and clean birds.
    • The people must not make themselves detestable by any animal.
    • The people must not make themselves detestable by any bird.
    • The people must not make themselves detestable by anything that creeps on the ground.
    • The LORD has set these apart as unclean for them.
  26. 20:26
    • The people are to be holy to the LORD.
    • The reason is that the LORD is holy.
    • The LORD has separated the people from the peoples.
    • The purpose of that separation is that they belong to him.
  27. 20:27
    • A man or a woman who has a spirit of the dead in them is to be put to death.
    • A man or a woman who is a spiritist is to be put to death.
    • They are to be stoned with stones.
    • Their blood is upon them.

Words Worth Explaining

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

20:1
In the King James Version, LORD printed in capital letters stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH. Jewish readers avoided saying the name aloud, substituting a word meaning "my Lord," and English translations have followed that practice ever since. Where you see "Lord" in ordinary type, the underlying word is the plain title.
20:2
"Molech" is the name attached to a rite in which children were burned; ancient and modern readers differ over whether it names a god, a title of one, or the offering itself. The "foreigner living in Israel" translates a word for a settled resident outsider rather than a passing traveler; such a person was bound by many of the same laws as Israelites. "The people of the land" is the ordinary local population, acting here as the body that carries out the sentence.
20:3
"Set my face against" is a Hebrew idiom for turning on someone in open hostility. "Cut him off from his people" is a fixed legal formula whose exact force was already disputed in antiquity: it may mean execution, expulsion from the community, or the ending of a person's family line. The "sanctuary" is the tent-shrine at the center of the camp.
20:4
"Hide their eyes" means deliberately look the other way. Verses 4 and 5 are unusual in these laws because they address what happens when the community itself refuses to act: the failure to enforce is treated as taking the offender's side.
20:5
The King James "go a whoring after" reflects a Hebrew idiom: the worship of other gods is regularly described with the vocabulary of sexual unfaithfulness, because the bond between God and Israel is pictured as a marriage.
20:6
The King James words are "familiar spirits" and "wizards." The first refers to consulting the spirits of the dead; the second is literally "a knowing one," someone credited with knowledge got from spirits. In 1611 "wizard" meant a wise or knowing man, not a magician of the fairy-tale kind.
20:7
"Set apart" and "holy" render a single Hebrew root whose base sense is separation, removed from ordinary use and reserved for God. It is not in the first place a word about moral character.
20:9
The Hebrew verb behind "curses" covers a range from calling down harm on someone to treating them with contempt and publicly repudiating them; it is not limited to bad language. "His blood is on his own head" is a legal formula: the death is the offender's own doing, and no blood-guilt attaches to those who carry out the sentence.
20:10
In this legal system adultery is defined by the woman's marital status, sexual relations with a woman married to another man. Both parties are held liable.
20:11
"His father's wife" means a stepmother, not the man's own mother, who is covered by a separate rule. "Uncover someone's nakedness" is the standard Hebrew idiom for sexual relations; the phrasing here treats the act as an offense against the father as well as against the woman.
20:12
"A perverse thing" (King James "confusion") translates a rare Hebrew word whose sense is mixing together things that belong in separate categories.
20:13
"A detestable thing" translates the Hebrew word rendered "abomination" in the King James, a general term for what is regarded as offensive or taboo, used in the law both of ritual violations and of moral ones.
20:14
The Hebrew does not make clear whether burning is the means of execution or the disposal of the bodies after death by another means; both readings are old. "Marries both a woman and her mother" describes taking both as wives, which was possible in a society where a man could have more than one wife.
20:15
"Beast" in the King James simply means an animal, usually a domestic one, with none of the modern suggestion of a monster.
20:17
"Takes" here means marries. "Sees her nakedness," like "uncovers her nakedness," is an idiom for sexual relations. "In the sight of their people" means publicly, before the community.
20:18
Elsewhere the law treats a woman's monthly bleeding as a state of ritual uncleanness lasting seven days, which passed to anyone and anything she touched; the offense here is knowingly entering that state. "Source" translates a word for a spring or well, applied to the flow of blood.
20:19
"Close relative" translates a Hebrew word meaning literally "flesh," used of blood relatives within the near family. An aunt on either side is the man's own blood; an uncle's wife, in the next verse, is related only by marriage, hence the different penalties.
20:20
"Die childless" translates a Hebrew word meaning stripped or bereft of offspring. It may mean the couple would have no children, or that children of such a union would not be reckoned to them. Note that no court penalty is named here, unlike in the earlier verses.
20:21
"An unclean thing" translates the same Hebrew word used for the impurity of a woman's monthly bleeding, here as a strong term for defilement. This rule sits alongside a separate custom, set out elsewhere in the law, requiring a man to marry his dead brother's widow if the brother had left no son.
20:22
"Vomit you out" pictures the land itself as a body that grows sick and expels what it cannot hold, the same image used earlier of the peoples who lived there before.
20:23
"The nation that I am driving out" refers to the peoples already living in Canaan, the land Israel is being brought into.
20:24
"A land flowing with milk and honey" is a stock phrase for rich country: milk from flocks and herds grazing good pasture, and honey either from wild bees or the thick sweet syrup boiled down from dates and grapes.
20:25
"Clean" and "unclean" are classifications of which creatures may be eaten and which may not, set out in detail earlier in the book. They concern ritual fitness, not dirt, health, or morality.
20:26
"Severed" in 1611 English means separated or set apart, without the modern suggestion of cutting something violently.
20:27
Verse 6 addressed people who consult mediums and spiritists; this verse addresses the practitioners themselves. The King James "wizard" means a knowing one, someone claiming knowledge obtained from spirits.

Read Leviticus 20