Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 20:22-23

22 Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out. 

23 And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.

These verses repeat the language heard at the end of Leviticus18, about the previous owners of Canaan all participating in each of the dark and evil acts described in this chapter, and for this reason being spued out of the land. Israel would be as well if they followed the same pattern. This further supports the idea I presented earlier that these chapters are a second account of the law, giving the same message with a slightly different recollection of the scribe who wrote it down.

The addition of death penalties to the crimes in this account further explain why Israel was commanded to go to war with the Canaanite nations and drive them out of the land. God had said that the Israelites who engaged in these profane practices would face being cut off or executed on a personal level, so it would make sense that the Canaanites who engaged with these sins as a regular part of their society would face the same punishment on the national level. The wars that Israel would engage in were separate from the category of mere conquest, they were to execute God’s judgment upon the condemned.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 20:17, 19-21

17 And if a man shall take his sister, his father’s daughter, or his mother’s daughter, and see her nakedness, and she see his nakedness; it is a wicked thing; and they shall be cut off in the sight of their people: he hath uncovered his sister’s nakedness; he shall bear his iniquity. 

19 And thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother’s sister, nor of thy father’s sister: for he uncovereth his near kin: they shall bear their iniquity. 

20 And if a man shall lie with his uncle’s wife, he hath uncovered his uncle’s nakedness: they shall bear their sin; they shall die childless. 

21 And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.

Today’s verses continue with other abominable sexual relationships between near kin, but I grouped these together as the ones that were of a lesser offense, given that none of them carry a death penalty. There is being cut off, bearing one’s iniquity, and dying childless, but no execution for approaching one’s sister, aunt, stepmother, or sister-in-law. This makes sense, as none of the natural effects of these acts are as ruinous to the bloodline or the community as those mentioned earlier.

The last prohibition against taking a brother’s wife is interesting, because Ancient Israel observed Levirate marriage, in which if a man died, his widow could be married to one of his near kin, including his brother, and any children born to that union would be raised under the deceased brother’s line. It would seem that the prohibition in verse 21 is excluding that particular instance. Or…maybe not. Since any children born to this union would belong to the original husband’s clan, the brother would remain legally childless in that relationship, though the sister-in-law would not.

This brings us to the end of penalties for perverse sexual relations. It is clear that the power of giving life was sacred and closely guarded, with clear and numerous laws to preserve it for the manner that God has proscribed since the creation of Adam and Eve. It is not an evil power, but it is a power that can be used evilly. And when it is, the natural ramifications on the home, the bloodline, and the society are severe, thus the penalties associated are similarly severe.

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Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 20:11, 12, 14

11 And the man that lieth with his father’s wife hath uncovered his father’s nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 

12 And if a man lie with his daughter in law, both of them shall surely be put to death: they have wrought confusion; their blood shall be upon them. 

14 And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you.

Today’s verses cover the familial sexual relationships that warranted a death penalty, and they all have to do with parent-child relationships, including parent and child in-law. Continuing with the pattern noted in the last post, these are the sorts of relationships that would destroy a bloodline, creating confusion in the natural and orderly way God has given us to know our heritage and our ancestry.

Families are given to us in what is naturally a hierarchal chain, with grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren and so on. It tells us where we have come from and where we are going. It makes each person both the hope and succession of all that came before, and the guardian and progenitor of all that will follow. It ensures that each member is born with both great support and great responsibility, every member a part of something greater than the self, but also each self is essential to the continued existence of the whole.

It is a beautiful design, but when parents and children fold the chain back onto one another, it becomes a meaningless mass of ambiguous heritage and vague responsibility. So, it is a death of the line, and accordingly a death penalty is assigned to it.

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Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 20:10, 13, 15, 16, 18

10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. 

13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 

15 And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast. 

16 And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 

18 And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people.

We now move into the verses prohibiting various sexual relations, much like the ones we just saw in Leviticus 18. The main difference is that this chapter includes punishments for each of these crimes. Not every punishment is the same, and so we learn which sexual relations were more egregious and we can hypothesize as to why.

This category of sin covers verses 10 through 21, and I have decided to rearrange the verses to group them by categories that stood out to me during my study. Today includes all the examples of sex with someone or something who is not a close relation. Most prohibitions have to do with those familial relationships, but there were other aberrant relationships also called out, almost all of them with a death penalty attached.

Specifically, adultery with an unrelated person, male homosexuality, and bestiality were all relationships that would result in the death of both parties. As I consider these, I see a pattern emerge. Each of these sexual acts is tended towards a sort of end or extinction. Homosexual males and people who have sex with animals cannot reproduce, their desires lead to the end of a line, not the continuation of it. Adultery can produce children, but it confuses bloodlines and dissolves the family identity. Each of these aberrant behaviors are already naturally dead acts, and assigning the penalty of death emphasizes that fact.

And then, of course, there is the example of having sex with a woman during her period. This, too, is a non-reproductive act, given that the woman’s body is incapable of fertilization at this time. Even so, the penalty for this act is not death, and that makes sense, given that the sexual union of man and woman is still of the type to reproduce, it’s just the timing that is wrong, whereas all the other acts are not even of the type to reproduce, no matter the timing.

With these laws God seems to be acknowledging a fundamental principle of the universe. It is good and life-giving to be of the type that can reproduce. Those that choose to live after the manner of extinction or act only in impotence are in transgression of their very nature. They live according to death.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 20:9

9 For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.

There has already been some discussion among other commentators as to what sort of “cursing” could warrant a death penalty for an ungrateful child. Tradition maintains that this death penalty only applied to the most severe of oaths against one’s parents, one that employed the name of God, Himself, but so far as I can tell, there is only a matter of tradition, not definitively proven to be true. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter. It still remains a death penalty for words spoken, which ostensibly our laws and culture are against, though recent examples like the murder of Charlie Kirk suggest that many today privately endorse the notion of killing others for their speech.

The fact is, being put death for one’s words has a long history in humanity, and it seems likely that we have only had a brief departure from it. Interestingly, that departure came about by the prevalence of Christian ideals, and now if it is waning, it appears to be due to the abandonment of those same ideals.

Even so, while many forms of death for evil words might be unjust, today’s verse should cause even the Christian to wonder if there are some that are just. The sharing of words is the sharing of ideas, and the sharing of perverse and twisted ideas has killed innocents, as can be seen in just our recent history. Abortion, Canada’s MAID program, and the sterilization of children with gender dysphoria are a few examples of how words, ideas, and movements are vehicles of self-destruction for entire cultures.

And when it comes to self-destructive and suicidal expressions, it is hard to think of one more direct than the abhorrence of one’s own progenitors. While no one has perfect parents, and some have truly awful parents, our very existence in this world is still dependent upon them. Cursing one’s own mortal beginning is an act of ouroboros. It is the tree cutting off its own roots, the fetus severing its umbilical cord, the breaking of one’s own tether to life. And so, there is something symbolic in the death penalty being assigned to such an act.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 20:6-8, 27

6 And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people. 

7 Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God. 

8 And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the Lord which sanctify you.

27 A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.

Verse 6 condemns those who seek the services of wizards, witches, or other occult practitioners. It mentions a penalty of being cut off but does not specify what that entails. The fact that God is the one doing the cutting off suggests this is a spiritual separation, not a legal action. But that is only for the one who goes to the witches and the wizards. As for those occult practitioners themselves, the witches and the wizards, the death penalty applies. They have made it their work to lead people away from the true Lord, let alone how their services are exceedingly dark and immoral acts. Some accounts suggest that they would provide poisons for assassination and abortifacients, as well as serve in sexual rituals intended to create copulation between humans and demons.

Moving on to verses 7 and 8, these two verses speak of being sanctified. Obviously, we heard a great deal about the sanctification of the tabernacle, its instruments, and the priests who operated therein, but there was also a sanctification for the common Israelite as well. To be sanctified means to take that which is basic and earthy, and setting it apart to be dedicated to higher and holier purposes. Thus, anyone who chooses to live a life defined first by their commitment to God is living a sanctified life. You might work in the world, but if in your work you seek to be honest and industrious, keeping your commitment to God to do fairly by your fellow man, then your worldly work is an act of sanctification to God.

Obviously dealing with the occult would be a form of unsanctification, but so would having any other idol as the chief interest in our daily affairs. Be it greed or pleasure or praise. Whatever we do towards those pursuits is unsanctified, even if it is religious in nature, and we run afoul of the injunctions in these verses.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 20:1-5

1 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 

2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. 

3 And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. 

4 And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not: 

5 Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people.

The chapter that we begin today covers sins that were punishable by death. A controversial category from the Old Testament to be sure, especially since Jesus himself would later defer the penalty of death to those who normally would be executed under these laws, specifically the woman taken in adultery. I think I will discuss the reasons for that in a separate between-chapters side post.

For those that criticize the Old Testament God for proscribing the death penalty at all, I would suggest that any genuine acknowledgement of God as the creator of us all, and of Him as a higher being than the rest of us, must also lead to an admission that He has that right to enact His will whatever it is upon us. One may not want Him to be a God that proscribes death for certain acts, but to suggest that He cannot or should not is to not actually believe that God’s morals are higher than our own.

But that argument is only for the sincere pacifists. We do also have hypocrites today that decry the death penalties in the Bible but then celebrate assassination attempts on their political rivals. For many it is not actually a question of whether some people deserve to be executed, it is merely a desire for their people not to be killed while other people are fair game. To these there is no further argument to be made than to point out their hypocrisy. They already worship an ideology that sanctions death, so let them deal with that before casting stones at any other.

Moving past all that, at least the first death penalty in this chapter is probably the least controversial: execution for one who sacrifices his own children to an idol. Most people even today can appreciate that the murder of innocent children is one of the absolute darkest acts that any person can do. But while I say “least controversial” and “most people,” I cannot say “entirely uncontroversial” and “all people,” for even in recent cases we do see those who would excuse the slaughter of one’s own children, such as with Lindsay Clancy. These are very troubling times indeed. This leads us directly to the further condemnation in verse 4-5, which is against those that would turn their eyes from this sin and spare the murder. God declares that they will be cut off, and so will we if we continue in this same path.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Bringing Out Their Best

Treat someone as unreasonable and beyond persuasion, and that is just how they will be.

But had you treated them as reasonable and capable of considering new information, they likely would have been.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 19:26-28

26 Ye shall not eat any thing with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantment, nor observe times. 

27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. 

28 Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord.

Today’s first verse is clearly referring to pagan rituals and magic. It follows that the next two verses are also related to those practices. It seems unlikely “rounding the corners of your head,” (cutting the hair in a particular pattern) is inherently evil, but that at the time was associated with an idolatrous practice that the Israelites must not align themselves with.

Verse 28 is also clearly referring to pagan practices, cutting one’s flesh for the dead is some sort of perverse ritual, and “print any marks” (tattoos) was presumably putting pagan symbols or words on oneself. However, these two are a distinctive subcategory, having to do with harming one’s body, in some cases permanently. We do not receive commandments prohibiting these practices generally, but we also have no positive examples of them elsewhere in the Bible. Other negative examples do exist, such as the priests of Baal cutting themselves during their competition with Elijah in 1 Kings 18:28. Many, myself included, take the idea of our bodies as a temple (1 Corinthians 6:19) as an imperative to treat our flesh with dignity and respect, precluding deliberate harm to it. in any case, what we are left with from today’s verses is a guiding principle, and the requirement to use our own conscience, good reasoning, and prayer to determine how we wish to honor the bodies God created for us.