Leviticus 18

Le 18:1-30.

UNLAWFUL

MARRIAGES.

2-4. I am the Lord your God--This renewed mention of the divine

sovereignty over the Israelites was intended to bear particularly on

some laws that were widely different from the social customs that

obtained both in Egypt and Canaan; for the enormities, which the laws

enumerated in this chapter were intended to put down, were freely

practised or publicly sanctioned in both of those countries; and,

indeed, the extermination of the ancient Canaanites is described as

owing to the abominations with which they had polluted the land.

5. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a

man do, he shall live in them--A special blessing was promised to

the Israelites on condition of their obedience to the divine law; and

this promise was remarkably verified at particular eras of their

history, when pure and undefiled religion prevailed among them, in the

public prosperity and domestic happiness enjoyed by them as a people.

Obedience to the divine law always, indeed, ensures temporal

advantages; and this, doubtless, was the primary meaning of the words,

"which if a man do, he shall live in them." But that they had a higher

reference to spiritual life is evident from the application made of

them by our Lord

(Lu 10:28)

and the apostle

(Ro 10:2).

6. None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to

him--Very great laxity prevailed amongst the Egyptians in their

sentiments and practice about the conjugal relation, as they not only

openly sanctioned marriages between brothers and sisters, but even

between parents and children. Such incestuous alliances Moses wisely

prohibited, and his laws form the basis upon which the marriage

regulations of this and other Christian nations are chiefly founded.

This verse contains a general summary of all the particular

prohibitions; and the forbidden intercourse is pointed out by the

phrase, "to approach to." In the specified prohibitions that follow,

all of which are included in this general summary, the prohibited

familiarity is indicated by the phrases, to "uncover the nakedness"

[Le 18:12-17],

to "take"

[Le 18:17, 18],

and to "lie with"

[Le 18:22, 23].

The phrase in this sixth verse, therefore, has the same identical

meaning with each of the other three, and the marriages in reference to

which it is used are those of consanguinity or too close affinity,

amounting to incestuous connections.

18. Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex

her--The original is rendered in the Margin, "neither shalt

thou take one wife to another to vex her," and two different and

opposite interpretations have been put upon this passage. The marginal

construction involves an express prohibition of polygamy; and, indeed,

there can be no doubt that the practice of having more wives than one

is directly contrary to the divine will. It was prohibited by the

original law of marriage, and no evidence of its lawfulness under the

Levitical code can be discovered, although Moses--from "the hardness of

their hearts"

[Mt 19:8;

Mr 10:5]

--tolerated it in the people of a rude and early age. The second

interpretation forms the ground upon which the "vexed question" has

been raised in our times respecting the lawfulness of marriage with a

deceased wife's sister. Whatever arguments may be used to prove the

unlawfulness or inexpediency of such a matrimonial relation, the

passage under consideration cannot, on a sound basis of criticism, be

enlisted in the service; for the crimes with which it is here

associated warrant the conclusion that it points not to marriage with a

deceased wife's sister, but with a sister in the wife's lifetime, a

practice common among the ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, and others.

21. thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to

Molech, &c.--Molech, or Moloch, which signifies "king," was the

idol of the Ammonites. His statue was of brass, and rested on a

pedestal or throne of the same metal. His head, resembling that of a

calf, was adorned with a crown, and his arms were extended in the

attitude of embracing those who approached him. His devotees dedicated

their children to him; and when this was to be done, they heated the

statue to a high pitch of intensity by a fire within, and then the

infants were either shaken over the flames, or passed through the

ignited arms, by way of lustration to ensure the favor of the pretended

deity. The fire-worshippers asserted that all children who did not

undergo this purifying process would die in infancy; and the influence

of this Zabian superstition was still so extensively prevalent in the

days of Moses, that the divine lawgiver judged it necessary to prohibit

it by an express statute.

neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God--by giving it to

false or pretended divinities; or, perhaps, from this precept standing

in close connection with the worship of Molech, the meaning rather is,

Do not, by devoting your children to him, give foreigners occasion to

blaspheme the name of your God as a cruel and sanguinary deity, who

demands the sacrifice of human victims, and who encourages cruelty in

his votaries.

24. Defile not yourselves in any of these things--In the

preceding verses seventeen express cases of incest are enumerated;

comprehending eleven of affinity

[Le 18:7-16],

and six of consanguinity

[Le 18:17-20],

together with some criminal enormities of an aggravated and unnatural

character. In such prohibitions it was necessary for the instruction of

a people low in the scale of moral perception, that the enumeration

should be very specific as well as minute; and then, on completing it,

the divine lawgiver announces his own views of these crimes, without

any exception or modification, in the remarkable terms employed in this

verse.

in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before

you, &c.--Ancient history gives many appalling proofs that the

enormous vices described in this chapter were very prevalent, nay, were

regularly practised from religious motives in the temples of Egypt and

the groves of Canaan; and it was these gigantic social disorders that

occasioned the expulsion, of which the Israelites were, in the hands of

a righteous and retributive Providence, the appointed instruments

(Ge 15:16).

The strongly figurative language of "the land itself vomiting out her

inhabitants"

[Le 18:25],

shows the hopeless depth of their moral corruption.

25. therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it; and the land

itself vomiteth out her inhabitants--The Canaanites, as enormous

and incorrigible sinners, were to be exterminated; and this

extermination was manifestly a judicial punishment inflicted by a ruler

whose laws had been grossly and perseveringly outraged. But before a

law can be disobeyed, it must have been previously in existence; and

hence a law, prohibiting all the horrid crimes enumerated above--a law

obligatory upon the Canaanites as well as other nations--was already

known and in force before the Levitical law of incest was promulgated.

Some general Iaw, then, prohibiting these crimes must have been

published to mankind at a very early period of the world's history; and

that law must either have been the moral law, originally written on the

human heart, or a law on the institution of marriage revealed to Adam

and known to the Canaanites and others by tradition or otherwise.

29. the souls that commit them shall be cut off--This strong

denunciatory language is applied to all the crimes specified in the

chapter without distinction: to incest as truly as to bestiality, and

to the eleven cases of affinity

[Le 18:7-16],

as fully as to the six of consanguinity

[Le 18:17-20].

Death is the punishment sternly denounced against all of them. No

language could be more explicit or universal; none could more strongly

indicate intense loathing and abhorrence.

30. Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not any

one of these abominable customs--In giving the Israelites these

particular institutions, God was only re-delivering the law imprinted

on the natural heart of man; for there is every reason to believe that

the incestuous alliances and unnatural crimes prohibited in this

chapter were forbidden to all men by a law expressed or understood from

the beginning of the world, or at least from the era of the flood,

since God threatens to condemn and punish, in a manner so sternly

severe, these atrocities in the practice of the Canaanites and their

neighbors, who were not subject to the laws of the Hebrew nation.