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Leviticus 24: What the Passage Says

64 claims across 23 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Leviticus 24 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD gives Moses instructions about the lamps that Aaron is to keep burning before the LORD from evening to morning, and about twelve loaves of fine flour set in two rows on the pure table each Sabbath, with frankincense on each row, the bread belonging to Aaron and his sons to eat in a holy place. Then a man whose mother was an Israelite and whose father was an Egyptian fights with an Israelite in the camp and blasphemes the Name with a curse; he is held in custody until the LORD's decision is known. The LORD orders him stoned outside the camp and gives laws about cursing God, killing a person, killing an animal, and injuring a neighbor, with the same law for the foreigner and the native. Moses tells the Israelites, and they do as the LORD commanded.

Claim by Claim

  1. 24:1
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to say what follows.
  2. 24:2
    • The LORD commanded that the children of Israel be ordered to bring pure oil of beaten olives for the light.
    • The oil is for keeping a lamp burning continually.
  3. 24:3
    • Aaron shall tend the lamp outside the veil of the testimony, in the tent of meeting.
    • Aaron shall tend it from evening until morning.
    • The tending is before the LORD continually.
    • This is a perpetual statute throughout the generations of the Israelites.
  4. 24:4
    • Aaron shall arrange the lamps on the pure lampstand.
    • The lamps are arranged before the LORD continually.
  5. 24:5
    • Moses is to take fine flour.
    • Moses is to bake twelve cakes from the flour.
    • Each cake shall be made of two tenths of an ephah.
  6. 24:6
    • The cakes are to be set in two rows, six in each row.
    • The rows are set on the pure table before the LORD.
  7. 24:7
    • Pure frankincense is to be placed on each row.
    • The frankincense serves as a memorial portion for the bread.
    • The frankincense is an offering made by fire to the LORD.
  8. 24:8
    • Every sabbath day the bread shall be set in order before the LORD continually.
    • The bread is provided from the children of Israel.
    • This is an everlasting covenant.
  9. 24:9
    • The bread shall belong to Aaron and his sons.
    • They shall eat it in a holy place.
    • The bread is most holy to him among the offerings of the LORD made by fire.
    • This is a perpetual statutory portion.
  10. 24:10
    • The son of an Israelite woman went out among the children of Israel.
    • That son's father was an Egyptian.
    • The son of the Israelite woman and a man of Israel fought each other in the camp.
  11. 24:11
    • The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the divine Name.
    • He cursed.
    • They brought him to Moses.
    • His mother's name was Shelomith.
    • Shelomith was the daughter of Dibri.
    • Dibri was of the tribe of Dan.
  12. 24:12
    • They put the man in custody.
    • They held him until the decision of the LORD should be declared to them.
  13. 24:13
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to say what follows.
  14. 24:14
    • The LORD commanded that the one who cursed be brought outside the camp.
    • All who heard him are to lay their hands on his head.
    • The whole congregation is to stone him.
  15. 24:15
    • Moses is to speak to the children of Israel.
    • Anyone who curses his God shall bear his sin.
  16. 24:16
    • Whoever blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death.
    • The whole congregation shall certainly stone him.
    • The same applies to the resident foreigner as to the native-born.
    • When he blasphemes the Name he shall be put to death.
  17. 24:17
    • Whoever strikes down any human life shall surely be put to death.
  18. 24:18
    • Whoever strikes down an animal's life shall make restitution for it.
    • The restitution is life for life.
  19. 24:19
    • If a man inflicts an injury on his neighbor, what he did shall be done to him.
  20. 24:20
    • Fracture shall be repaid for fracture.
    • Eye shall be repaid for eye.
    • Tooth shall be repaid for tooth.
    • As he inflicted an injury on a man, so it shall be inflicted on him.
  21. 24:21
    • Whoever kills an animal shall make restitution for it.
    • Whoever kills a man shall be put to death.
  22. 24:22
    • The Israelites shall have one law.
    • The law shall be the same for the resident foreigner as for the native-born.
    • The LORD is their God.
  23. 24:23
    • Moses spoke to the children of Israel.
    • They brought the one who had cursed outside the camp.
    • They stoned him with stones.
    • The children of Israel did as the LORD had commanded Moses.

Words Worth Explaining

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

24:1
LORD in capital letters stands for God's own special name. The people of Israel treated that name as very precious.
24:2
"Beaten" or crushed olive oil is the first oil taken from olives pounded by hand rather than squeezed under a heavy press. It is the clearest grade and burns with the least smoke and sediment, which is why it is specified for the sanctuary lamps.
24:3
The tent of meeting was the portable sanctuary the Israelites carried with them through the wilderness. Inside it a heavy curtain screened off the innermost room, which held the chest called the ark. "The testimony" (King James "the vail of the testimony") is the pair of inscribed stone tablets kept in that chest. Aaron was Moses' brother and the chief priest; the instruction covers the priests who came after him as well.
24:4
The King James "candlestick" held oil lamps, not candles: it is the seven-branched lampstand described in Exodus 25. "Pure" describes the gold it was hammered from.
24:5
An ephah was a dry measure of roughly twenty to twenty-two liters, about half a bushel. Two-tenths of an ephah is therefore something over four liters of flour, three or four pounds, a very large loaf.
24:6
This bread, laid out on the gold table inside the sanctuary, is what the King James elsewhere calls "shewbread" and other translations call "the bread of the Presence." The twelve loaves match the twelve tribes of Israel.
24:7
Frankincense is a fragrant resin bled from trees grown in southern Arabia and east Africa, imported at considerable cost and burned for its scent. A "memorial" or reminder portion is the part of an offering burned on the altar to stand in for the whole of it; here the incense is what burns, while the bread itself is eaten by the priests.
24:8
A covenant is a binding agreement with fixed obligations on each side, closer to a treaty or a contract than to a promise.
24:9
"Most holy" is a technical grade in these laws, not just emphasis. Offerings in that class could be eaten only by priests, and only within the sanctuary area; they could not be taken home or shared with a priest's household.
24:10
Tribe, descent and inheritance in Israel were normally reckoned through the father, so a man with an Egyptian father belonged to no tribe of his own; that is why his mother's father and tribe are recorded instead. A mixed group had left Egypt with the Israelites (Exodus 12:38). What the two men were fighting about is not stated.
24:11
The Hebrew says only that he "pierced" (or "pronounced") the Name and cursed. It is left unclear whether the offense was cursing God or uttering the divine name itself. Jews later avoided speaking that name aloud, saying "the Name" or "the Lord" instead, the practice the King James follows by printing LORD in capitals wherever the name stands in the Hebrew.
24:12
Israel had no prisons as a form of punishment; being put "in ward" meant only being held under guard until a case was decided. No existing rule covered this offense, so the question was referred for a ruling rather than judged on the spot.
24:14
Executions, like anything counted unclean, were carried out beyond the boundary of the camp. The witnesses laying their hands on the man's head is a formal gesture identifying him as the one whose words they heard, and placing responsibility for the death on him rather than on themselves. Stoning by the whole assembly meant that no single person struck the fatal blow.
24:15
"Bear his sin" is a legal idiom: he himself, and no one else, answers for what he did and takes the consequence of it.
24:16
The word translated "stranger" or "foreigner" means a non-Israelite settled permanently among the people, a resident outsider living under Israel's law without land or tribe of his own, not a passing traveler.
24:18
The Hebrew reads "life for life," the same phrase used of human beings, but applied to an animal it means replacement: whoever kills another man's beast owes a beast of like value.
24:19
"Blemish" in the King James does not mean a mark or a stain here. It translates a word for a physical injury, especially one that leaves permanent damage.
24:20
"Breach for breach" means fracture for fracture. Formulas of this kind appear in other law codes of the ancient Near East; their legal function is to set a ceiling, the penalty must match the injury and may go no further, rather than escalating into feud. Later Jewish legal tradition read the rule as a scale of monetary compensation for the injury.
24:22
Most ancient law codes graded punishments by the social rank of the people involved and treated outsiders differently from citizens. This line states the reverse: one single standard, applied to resident foreigners and native Israelites alike.

Read Leviticus 24