25 So then, make division between the clean beast and the unclean, and between the clean bird and the unclean: do not make yourselves disgusting by any beast or bird or anything which goes flat on the earth, which has been marked by me as unclean for you.
And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Say to the children of Israel: These are the living things which you may have for food among all the beasts on the earth. You may have as food any beast which has a division in the horn of its foot, and whose food comes back into its mouth to be crushed again. But, at the same time, of those beasts, you may not take for food the camel, because its food comes back but the horn of its foot is not parted in two; it is unclean to you. And the rock-badger, for the same reason, is unclean to you. And the hare, because the horn of its foot is not parted in two, is unclean to you. And the pig is unclean to you, because though the horn of its foot is parted, its food does not come back. Their flesh may not be used for food, and their dead bodies may not even be touched; they are unclean to you. These you may have for food of all things living in the water: anything living in the water, in the seas or rivers, which has special parts for swimming and skin formed of thin plates, may be used for food. All other things living and moving in the water, in the sea or in the rivers, are a disgusting thing to you; They may not be used for food, and their dead bodies are disgusting to you. Anything in the water which has no special parts for swimming and no thin plates on its skin is disgusting to you. And among birds these are to be disgusting to you, and not to be used for food: the eagle and the gier-eagle and the ospray; And the kite and the falcon, and birds of that sort; Every raven, and birds of that sort; And the ostrich and the night-hawk and the sea-hawk, and birds of that sort; And the little owl and the cormorant and the great owl; And the water-hen and the pelican and the vulture; The stork and the heron, and birds of that sort, and the hoopoe and the bat. Every winged four-footed thing which goes on the earth is disgusting to you; But of the winged four-footed things, those which have long legs for jumping on the earth you may have for food; Such as all the different sorts of locust. But all other winged four-footed things which go on the earth are disgusting to you. By these you will be made unclean; anyone touching their dead bodies will be unclean till evening: Whoever takes away the dead body of one of them is to have his clothing washed, and will be unclean till evening. Every beast, in the horn of whose foot there is not a complete division, and whose food does not come back, is unclean to you: anyone touching one of these will be unclean. Any four-footed beast which goes on the ball of its foot, is unclean to you: anyone touching the dead body of one of these will be unclean till evening. Anyone who takes away the dead body of one of these is to have his clothing washed and be unclean till evening. And these are unclean to you among things which go low down on the earth; the weasel and the mouse and the great lizard, and animals of that sort; And the ferret and the land crocodile and the lizard and the sand-lizard and the chameleon. All these are unclean to you: anyone touching them when they are dead will be unclean till evening. The dead body of any of these, falling on anything, will make that thing unclean; if it is any vessel of wood, or clothing, or skin, or bag, whatever it is, if it is used for any purpose, it will have to be put into water, and will be unclean till evening; after that it will be clean. And if one of them gets into any vessel of earth, whatever is in the vessel will be unclean and the vessel will have to be broken. Any food in it, and anything on which water from it comes, will be unclean: any drink taken from such a vessel will be unclean. Any part of the dead body of one of these, falling on anything, will make it unclean; if it is an oven or a cooking-pot it will have to be broken: they are unclean and will be unclean to you. But at the same time a fountain or a place where water is stored for use will be clean; but anyone touching their dead bodies will be unclean. If any part of the dead body of one of these gets on to any seed for planting, it is clean; But if water is put on the seed, and any part of the dead body gets on to it, it will be unclean to you. And if any beast which may be used for food comes to a natural death, anyone touching its dead body will be unclean till evening. And he who makes use of any part of its body for food is to have his clothing washed and be unclean till evening; and anyone taking away its body is to have his clothing washed and be unclean till evening. Everything which goes flat on its body on the earth is disgusting, and is not to be used for food. Whatever goes on its stomach or on four feet or has a great number of feet, even all those going flat on the earth, may not be used for food, for they are disgusting. You are not to make yourselves disgusting with anything which goes about flat on the earth; you may not make yourselves unclean with them, in such a way that you are not holy to me. For I am the Lord your God: for this reason, make and keep yourselves holy, for I am holy; you are not to make yourselves unclean with any sort of thing which goes about flat on the earth. For I am the Lord, who took you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God; so be you holy, for I am holy. This is the law about beasts and birds and every living thing moving in the waters, and every living thing which goes flat on the earth: Marking out the unclean from the clean, and the living thing which may be used for food from that which may not.
No disgusting thing may be your food. These are the beasts which you may have for food: the ox, the sheep, and the goat; The hart, the gazelle, and the roe, the mountain goat and the pygarg and the antelope and the mountain sheep. Any beast which has a division in the horn of its foot and whose food comes back into its mouth to be crushed again, may be used for food. But even among these, there are some which may not be used for food: such as the camel, the hare, and the coney, which are unclean to you, because, though their food comes back, the horn of their feet is not parted in two. And the pig is unclean to you, because though it has a division in the horn of its foot, its food does not come back; their flesh may not be used for food or their dead bodies touched by you. And of the things living in the waters, you may take all those who have wings for swimming with and skins formed of thin plates. But any which have no skin-plates or wings for swimming, you may not take; they are unclean for you. All clean birds may be used for food. But these birds you may not take: the eagle and the gier-eagle and the ospray; The falcon and the kite, and birds of that sort; Every raven, and all birds of that sort; And the ostrich and the night-hawk and the sea-hawk and birds of that sort; The little owl and the great owl and the water-hen; And the pelican and the vulture and the cormorant; The stork and the heron and birds of that sort, and the hoopoe and the bat. Every winged thing which goes flat on the earth is unclean to you and may not be used as food. But all clean birds you may take. You may not have as food anything which has come to a natural death; the man from another country who is living with you may take it for food, or you may get a price for it from one of another nation; for you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The young goat is not to be cooked in its mother's milk.
And he saw the heavens opening, and a vessel coming down, like a great cloth let down on the earth, In which were all sorts of beasts and birds. And a voice came to him, saying, Come, Peter; take them for food. But Peter said, No, Lord; for I have never taken food which is common or unclean. And the voice came to him a second time, What God has made clean, do not you make common.
And he said to them, You yourselves have knowledge that it is against the law for a man who is a Jew to be in the company of one who is of another nation; but God has made it clear to me that no man may be named common or unclean:
Have no part with such men; For you at one time were dark, but now are light in the Lord: let your behaviour be that of children of light (Because the fruit of the light is in all righteousness and in everything which is good and true), Testing by experience what is well-pleasing to the Lord; And have no company with the works of the dark, which give no fruit, but make their true quality clear;
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Leviticus 20
Commentary on Leviticus 20 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Punishments for the Vices and crimes Prohibited in Ch. 18 and 19. - The list commences with idolatry and soothsaying, which were to be followed by extermination, as a practical apostasy from Jehovah, and a manifest breach of the covenant.
Whoever, whether an Israelite or a foreigner in Israel, dedicated of his seed (children) to Moloch (see Leviticus 18:21), was to be put to death. The people of the land were to stone him. בּאבן רגם , lapide obruere , is synonymous with סקל , lit., lapidem jacere: this was the usual punishment appointed in the law for cases in which death was inflicted, either as the result of a judicial sentence, or by the national community.
By this punishment the nation only carried out the will of Jehovah; for He would cut off such a man (see at Leviticus 17:10 and Leviticus 18:21) for having defiled the sanctuary of Jehovah and desecrated the name of Jehovah, not because he had brought the sacrifice to Moloch into the sanctuary of Jehovah, as Movers supposes, but in the same sense in which all the sins of Israel defiled the sanctuary in their midst (Leviticus 15:31; Leviticus 16:16).
If the people, however (the people of the land), should hide their eyes from him (on the dagesh in חעלּם and יעלּימוּ see the note on Leviticus 4:13-21), from an unscrupulous indifference or a secret approval of his sin, the Lord would direct His face against him and his family, and cut him off with all that went a whoring after him.
He would also do the same to every soul that turned to familiar spirits and necromantists (Leviticus 19:31, cf. Exodus 22:17), “to go a whoring after them,” i.e., to make himself guilty of idolatry by so doing, such practices being always closely connected with idolatry.
For the Israelites were to sanctify themselves, i.e., to keep themselves pure from all idolatrous abominations, to be holy because Jehovah was holy (Leviticus 11:44; Leviticus 19:2), and to keep the statutes of their God who sanctified them (Exodus 31:13).
Whoever cursed father or mother was to be punished with death (Leviticus 19:3); “ His blood would be upon him .” The cursing of parents was a capital crime (see at Leviticus 17:4, and for the plural דּמיו Exodus 22:1 and Genesis 4:10), which was to return upon the doer of it, according to Genesis 9:6. The same punishment was to be inflicted upon adultery (Leviticus 20:10, cf. Leviticus 18:20), carnal intercourse with a father's wife (Leviticus 20:11, cf. Leviticus 18:7-8) or with a daughter-in-law (Leviticus 20:12, cf. Leviticus 18:17), sodomy (Leviticus 20:13, cf. Leviticus 18:22), sexual intercourse with a mother and her daughter, in which case the punishment was to be heightened by the burning of the criminals when put to death (Leviticus 20:14, cf. Leviticus 18:17), lying with a beast (Leviticus 20:15, Leviticus 20:16, cf. Leviticus 18:23), sexual intercourse with a half-sister (Leviticus 20:17, cf. Leviticus 18:9 and Leviticus 18:11), and lying with a menstruous woman (Leviticus 20:18, cf. Leviticus 18:19). The punishment of death, which was to be inflicted in all these cases upon both the criminals, and also upon the beast that had been abused (Leviticus 20:15, Leviticus 20:16), was to be by stoning, according to Leviticus 20:2, Leviticus 20:27, and Deuteronomy 22:21.; and by the burning (Leviticus 20:14) we are not to understand death by fire, or burning alive, but, as we may clearly see from Joshua 7:15 and Joshua 7:25, burning the corpse after death. This was also the case in Leviticus 21:9 and Genesis 38:24.
No civil punishment, on the other hand, to be inflicted by the magistrate or by the community generally, was ordered to follow marriage with an aunt, the sister of father or mother (Leviticus 20:19, cf. Leviticus 18:12-13), with an uncle's wife (Leviticus 20:20, cf. Leviticus 18:4), or with a sister-in-law, a brother's wife (Leviticus 20:21, cf. Leviticus 18:16). In all these cases the threat is simply held out, “they shall bear their iniquity,” and (according to Leviticus 20:20, Leviticus 20:21) “die childless;” that is to say, God would reserve the punishment to Himself (see at Leviticus 18:14). In the list of punishments no reference is made to intercourse with a mother (Leviticus 18:7) or a granddaughter (Leviticus 18:10), as it was taken for granted that the punishment of death would be inflicted in such cases as these; just as marriage with a daughter or a full sister is passed over in the prohibitions in ch. 18.
The list of punishments concludes, like the prohibitions in Leviticus 18:24., with exhortations to observe the commandments and judgments of the Lord, and to avoid such abominations (on Leviticus 18:22 cf. Leviticus 18:3-5, Leviticus 18:26, Leviticus 18:28, Leviticus 18:30; and on Leviticus 18:23 cf. Leviticus 18:3 and Leviticus 18:24). The reason assigned for the exhortations is, that Jehovah was about to give them for a possession the fruitful land, whose inhabitants He had driven out because of their abominations, and that Jehovah was their God, who had separated Israel from the nations. For this reason (Leviticus 18:25) they were also to sever (make distinctions) between clean and unclean cattle and birds, and not make their souls (i.e., their persons) abominable through unclean animals, with which the earth swarmed, and which God had “ separated to make unclean, ” i.e., had prohibited them from eating or touching when dead, because they defiled (see ch. 11). For (Leviticus 18:26) they were to be holy, because Jehovah their God was holy, who had severed them from the nations, to belong to Him, i.e., to be the nation of His possession (see Exodus 19:4-6).
But because Israel was called to be the holy nation of Jehovah, every one, ether man or woman, in whom there was a heathenish spirit of soothsaying, was to be put to death, viz., stoned (cf. Leviticus 19:31), to prevent defilement by idolatrous abominations.