Leviticus commentaries that discuss menstrual prohibition?
I've been searching through all my Leviticus commentaries, and I've found very few of them that discuss whether or not the prohibition on intercourse during menstruation applies for Christians for today (Lev. 18:19; 20:18, cf. Lev 15:19-24; Eze 18:6; 22:10). It seems like a very important and practical question for all married couples, but Leviticus commentaries seem to ignore it.
Old Testament commentaries seem to fall into one of two camps:
1) Large, technical commentaries that give you good ANE background, analysis of Hebrew words, and its meaning for Israel (i.e. blood, uncleanness), but do not address whether it applies to Christians under the New Covenant. Sometimes this is because the commentators aren't writing from a Christian perspective.
2) Shorter or application commentaries that give you the main idea of the chapters, but is not detailed enough to give a verse-by-verse exposition, and thus often ignores these passages completely.
The net result is that about 90% of the Leviticus commentaries I've checked don't even address the question.
Does anyone know of any Leviticus commentaries that gives a lot of attention to answer that question? It seems to be difficult to find an Leviticus commentary that is both in-depth and application-focused. So far, the only ones I've found are the John Kleinig (Concordia Commentary) and Roy Gane (NIVAC). (Sadly, I don't have either in Logos. I had to go to a library to find them).
Comments
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I think you'd want to look at something more general that addresses whether the purity laws of the whole Pentateuch apply to Christians today. A specific commentary on Leviticus would not necessarily be inclined to address that question, especially not only about one particular purity law. I also think that regardless of whether Christians are free from the law about it, if either partner is not comfortable with it from a cleanliness standpoint, the other one shouldn't force it, as a matter of love. That demurring partner shouldn't have to appeal to the Levitical law to make their case. Spouses should honor each other, not use each other for their own satisfaction.
I did find a helpful section in the NAC Leviticus volume:
(6) Conclusion on Purity Laws
The purity laws, which included the dietary laws and the laws of uncleanness, played an important role in the life of the people of God in the Old Testament. These laws kept Israel distinct from its neighbors and thus contributed to its preservation. They were assiduously followed by the Jews (particularly in the NT period) until the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70. With the coming of the Messiah in the fullness of time (Gal 4:4) and the subsequent commencement of the last days (1 Cor 10:11; Heb 1:2), these laws no longer have the same function. The purity laws, like other ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, have been fulfilled in Christ (Matt 5:17).
As for the dietary laws (Lev 11), the everyday occurrence of consuming a meal kept the Israelite conscientiously distinct and separate from the world. The dietary laws were taken very seriously by the Jews because this way of life had been commanded by God. Thus one can understand the resentment among many when the acclaimed Messiah seemed to ignore the current interpretation of these commands and thus had no scruples about sharing a meal with tax collectors and sinners (Matt 9:11; Mark 2:16; Luke 5:30; 7:34). As Hübner maintains that it was Jesus’ seeming disregard for the laws concerning clean and unclean food that carried over into his kind of treatment of outcast individuals. When Jesus sat at the table with tax collectors and sinners (Mark 2:15–17; Luke 15:1–2), he provokingly rejected the boundary between what they thought was clean and what was unclean.
For the Jews of Jesus’ day the authority of the Mosaic Law was at stake. But Jesus’ behavior illustrates that with the coming of the Messiah, who fulfilled the ceremonial law (Matt 5:17), these laws are now obsolete for the believer. They have fulfilled their function in enabling Israel to be unique and thus are not to be followed literally by believers of the church today. As Wenham explains:
With Christianity OT Judaism was universalized to embrace all mankind. It is of a piece with this transformation that the food laws were dropped by the Christian church. With the incorporation of the Gentiles into the church, Israel was no longer regarded as the unique covenant people (Gal 3:6–29; Eph 2:11–16). To drop the laws that symbolized the peculiar status of Israel was not merely convenient if Gentiles were to be converted, it was also a step of theological logic. If the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles was broken down, the distinction between clean and unclean food should also have been abolished.
In Peter’s vision in Acts 10, Peter was directed by the Lord to eat unclean food. Peter’s interpretation of the meaning of this vision was that he was no longer to call a Gentile unclean (Acts 10:28). Later in his ministry Peter referred to this vision as the basis for his new attitude toward the Gentiles (Acts 11:5–9; 15:7–9). In the critical meeting of Acts 15 regarding the Gentiles’ inclusion in the work of God, it was the food laws that were the particular sticking point. James concludes, based on the indisputable evidence of Gentile conversion, that the food laws, the laws that marked Israelite exclusion, were no longer in force. These accounts from Acts are graphic illustrations of Paul’s declaration that the wall of partition had been broken down (Eph 2:11–21).
Other laws of uncleanness, such as skin infection laws (Lev 13–14) and discharges (Lev 12; 15), also have served their function and are no longer to be observed by New Testament believers. Once again Jesus is our example. In the account of the touching of the leper (Matt 8:1–4; Mark 1:40–45; Luke 5:12–15) and the woman with the issue of blood (Matt 9:20–22; Mark 5:25–34; Luke 8:43–48), Jesus’ action indicates a change in the function of these laws. On the one hand Jesus reached out to touch an unclean person (Matt 8:3; Mark 1:41; Luke 5:13), whereas on the other hand he was touched by a person in an unclean state (Matt 9:20; Mark 5:25; Luke 8:43). Both of these actions caused one to be in a state of uncleanness as we have seen throughout Leviticus 11–15. The woman with an issue of blood and the leper conveyed defilement, and yet when they had contact with Jesus Christ, they were immediately cleansed. This immediate cleansing indicated that they did not transmit uncleanness since Jesus did not become defiled. These two events were further indications of Jesus’ divinity, since only God can heal and forgive sins (Lev 11–15).
Holiness had a spatial dimension in the Old Testament, and contact of the unclean with the sanctuary was the ultimate defilement (15:31). When Jesus touched the leper and the woman touched the hem of his garment, these unclean individuals were in contact with the very presence of God (tabernacle/temple in OT), which would result in the most austere defilement. And yet Jesus’ response on both occasions indicates that with his presence, with the presence of God incarnate in a human body, a change has occurred. The presence of God was no longer confined to a special hill in Jerusalem but stood in the midst of the people. Jesus did not become unclean in having contact with the unclean. The law regarding uncleanness was forever changed, for the fulfillment of the tabernacle/temple type had arrived in history. No longer do certain maladies place one outside the camp. The Messiah has fulfilled these laws and their function has changed.
Yet the principle behind the purity laws, the call to holiness, has not changed for the New Testament believer. Like the dietary laws the principle behind these laws of uncleanness is in effect. Holiness is to be practiced and demonstrated by those who are God’s people today. Just as sacrifices have been fulfilled in Christ and we are to offer spiritual sacrifices, the laws of impurity have served their purpose; but the principles behind them are still to be carried out by those God has called. In Paul’s charge for the Corinthian church to be holy (2 Cor 6:17) he admonishes them in the language of Leviticus: “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” Poythress comments on the significance of Paul’s use of the levitical law:
Paul’s use of the Old Testament here is quite in line with its real meaning. The disorders of unclean things in the Old Testament symbolically indicate the disorders of sin itself.… Israel’s separation from unclean foods also proclaims its obligation to be a uniquely holy nation, a kingdom of priests. In the Old Testament the principles of holiness and separation were temporarily expressed on a symbolic, physical level in the distinction between clean and unclean foods.
Since these laws of uncleanness were fulfilled with the coming of Christ and the inauguration of the kingdom of God, there has been a shift from the cultic to the ethical application of these laws in the New Testament (Matt 5:8; 1 Tim 1:5; 2 Tim 2:22; 1 Pet 1:22; Acts 15:9). This change has Old Testament roots (Pss 24:4; 51:12). A similar shift is seen in the important covenant law of circumcision, which has new meaning in the New Testament (Rom 2:28–29; Col 2:11). Again, however, the spiritual significance of even this shift was not unknown in the Old Testament (Lev 26:41; Deut 10:16; 30:6; Jer 4:4).
The Pharisees overlooked the spiritual intent of these purity laws and overemphasized their ritual nature (Matt 23:23). For this they were renounced by Jesus Christ (Matt 15:10–20; 23:25–28).
The idea of the church being separate from the world as Israel was from the nations has relevance for believers today. It seems to have become the practice of modern evangelicals to diminish the differences between the church and the world in an unwise attempt to make the Christian faith more attractive to those outside the household of faith. Jesus’ command to the church to be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect (Matt 5:48) is harmonious with Israel’s call to be holy as God is holy.
Another way the laws of uncleanness are fulfilled in the New Testament is in the matter of ritual cleansing through the use of water. The Old Testament cleansing agents foreshadow the cleansing of water baptism (Eph 5:25–26). Baptism now signifies not removal of physical uncleanness but a good conscience before God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 3:21). All believers are now cleansed, for God purifies the heart (Acts 15:9).
Mark F. Rooker, Leviticus, vol. 3A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 207–210.1 -
It seems to me that a theology book would be better suited for this topic. A "verse by verse" commentary can't get bogged down with every law.
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Rosie and alabama24 have given good advice regarding Logos resources on the matter. I heartily concur with Rosie's introductory comments regarding married couples.
Theologies, more general books on the purity laws would do you much better than most commentaries.
I would definitely do some personal study related to the law and the Christian.
Consider what Jesus did with the Law, consider what Paul, and Peter communicate regarding Law.
Meditate upon Galations and Leviticus. Consider the comments about the nature of Blood at Lev. 17:11 and the surrounding context.
The forum rules forbid me from going farther, and that is good I think.
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I would also recommend the NIV Application Commentary on Leviticus/Numbers by Roy Gane. It's available in Logos.
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Here's an article I found: http://www.gotquestions.org/sex-period.html
In a sense, I agree with the final statement made at the end: "Basically, this issue must be decided by a husband and wife in the spirit of “mutual consent” as 1 Corinthians 7:5 describes." But personally, I CAN DEFINITELY WAIT...LOL
Blessings!
DAL
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Rosie Perera said:
I think you'd want to look at something more general that addresses whether the purity laws of the whole Pentateuch apply to Christians today.
Hi Rosie, I agree that purity laws do not apply today, but I think it's debatable whether this is a purity law. For example, nothing else in Leviticus 18 and 20 are purity laws, and Christians generally affirm the ongoing morality of these chapters.
Chapter 18 concludes "Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants." Apparently the other nations, who did not have the law or special revelation, ought to have known everything in Leviticus 18 was wrong,
Therefore, my leaning is that it, like everything else in Leviticus 18 and 20, is a moral law, not a purity law. If it is a purity law, I think a good commentary on Leviticus ought to make a case for it being considered a purity law.
Of course, I'm here not to argue the point, but to discover more resources (Leviticus commentaries especially, but others if you know of any) that would seek to answer this question.
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What's immoral about having intercourse with your wife during her period? That usually comes within a cycle but unannounced. You could be doing it and her period may come during that moment. Are you gonna stop and ask God to forgive you because you didn't really mean to commit an "immoral act"? Personally, that particular dilemma is not a moral law but a purity law; one of many that don't apply to Christians today. Again, we're not debating, we're just sharing views to get you more information on the subject; which I believe can be a tough pill to swallow for a lot of couples out there. And again, my personal view is: I CAN wait for it to be over...lol...and if it comes unannounced, hey, it's bound to happen; I wouldn't feel unclean, guilty or disgusted by it.
Blessings!
DAL
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elnwood said:Rosie Perera said:
I think you'd want to look at something more general that addresses whether the purity laws of the whole Pentateuch apply to Christians today.
Hi Rosie, I agree that purity laws do not apply today, but I think it's debatable whether this is a purity law. For example, nothing else in Leviticus 18 and 20 are purity laws, and Christians generally affirm the ongoing morality of these chapters.
Contents of the rest of those chapters notwithstanding, what about these verses looks like moral law rather than purity law? They are shouting "purity". If this is not purity law, then what is?
This has more in common with ritual cleaning, not touching lepers, contamination from dead bodies, etc. than it has to not having sex with people who aren't your marital partner.
Here's some further explanation on the purity laws from Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible, and I think you'll see that these verses about menstruation are encompassed.
Cleanness and Uncleanness, Regulations Concerning.
Aspect of Hebrew religion having physical, ceremonial, moral, and spiritual significance. Though these senses of clean and unclean can be distinguished with reference to their contexts, they also merge into and illustrate each other; the physical and ceremonial contexts point to a moral state of the worshiper and to a spiritual relationship between God and his people.
The OT vision of a people’s relationship with God is along moral and personal lines, God’s personal nature being expressed in his giving of the Law to Moses. The personal and uniquely consistent character of Israel’s Lord made him morally a completely different being from the many gods of pagan cultures. Unlike the Lord, the baals of the Canaanites were capricious and vicious; nobody expected them to be ethically consistent. Israel’s Lord, on the other hand, could be trusted to keep his word (a verbal communication through his chosen prophets). Nobody, not even the high priest or the king, was above the Law, which expressed not only God’s character but also his sovereign will for the individual and the nation. His moral consistency carried over into his miraculous interventions into history to protect his people, to judge them and their enemies, and to redeem humanity itself.
Cleanness as defined in the Book of Leviticus, therefore, was always conditioned by the presence of the personal God who gave the Law. As the people sought to approach the Lord, they necessarily did so on his terms and therefore within the framework of the cultic ceremonies he had prescribed. Details of the Levitical ceremonies were designed to illustrate the moral implications of the sinner’s approach to God and God’s provision for his people to become morally clean in his sight.
The meaning of the Levitical system was stated clearly in the psalmist’s words: “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false, and does not swear deceitfully” (Ps 24:3, 4). One’s state of cleanness depends not only on external actions, but also on an internal relationship with God. As a result, the sinner’s inability to satisfy the moral demands of a holy God leads to his or her complete dependence on God and on God’s provision for satisfying his own demands. That provision was detailed in the Law.
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Levitical Prescriptions.
Ceremonial and Moral Law. The relationship between the external ceremonial details of the Mosaic Law and the internally directed moral requirements of such parts of it as the Ten Commandments is one of the fundamental issues of OT theology. It is possible to demonstrate that throughout the OT, uncleanness and sin are virtually synonymous. In many passages sin is described as uncleanness (e.g., Lv 16:16, 30; the ordeal of the bitter water in Nm 5:11–28; Zec 13:1).
The relationship between ceremonial and moral cleanness can be illustrated from passages mentioning clean hands on the one hand (2 Sm 22:21; Jb 17:9; 22:30) and a clean heart on the other (Pss 24:4; 51:10; 73:13; Prv 20:9). The prophet Isaiah felt convicted of “unclean lips” when he was in God’s presence; a purifying coal, perhaps representing forgiveness and atonement, cleansed him (Is 6:5–7). In many passages cleanness represents innocence before God (Jb 11:4; 33:9; Ps 51:7–10; Prv 20:9), and uncleanness is said to come from sin (Ps 51:2; Is 1:16; 64:6).
Causes of Uncleanness. From the Mosaic Law a number of causes of uncleanness can be derived.
1. Some foods were not to be eaten. Various laws concerning animals make a “distinction between the unclean and the clean and between the living creature that may be eaten and the living creature that may not be eaten” (Lv 11:46, 47). Permitted food was what was acceptable to God (see also Dt 14:3–21; Acts 15:28, 29).
2. Diseases, especially leprosy, produced an unclean state (Lv 13, 14). The story of Naaman refers to leprous defilement (2 Kgs 5:1–14). The Gospels refer often to lepers (e.g., Mt 8:1–4; 10:8; 11:5; Lk 4:27). Many swellings, sores, and rashes were included under that heading, including Hansen’s disease (modern leprosy). The defilement of disease included all things touched by a diseased person (Lv 14:33–57).
3. Bodily discharges were unclean, and contact with them defiled a person for various periods of time. Emission of semen produced uncleanness until the evening, whether in intercourse (Lv 15:16–18) or inadvertently during the night (Dt 23:10). An unnatural discharge, since it usually indicated disease, made a person unclean for seven days after it had ceased (Lv 15:1–15). Menstruation also produced uncleanness lasting seven days after it ceased (Lv 15:19–24; 2 Sm 11:4). Sexual intercourse during that time made both partners unclean (Lv 15:19–24; 20:18). Contact with the spittle of an unclean person produced uncleanness for a day (Lv 15:8).
4. Dead bodies, or even parts of them such as bone, caused uncleanness (Nm 19:16). Persons who touched a dead body were unclean for a month, and only after that period could they celebrate their own Passover if they had missed it (Nm 9:6–11). The high priest could not even bury his own parents because of his special ritual responsibilities (Lv 21:10, 11; cf. Nm 6:7; Hg 2:13; Mt 23:27).
5. Idolatry was the greatest source of spiritual defilement. The entire nation of Israel was defiled because of it (Ps 106:38; Is 30:22; Ez 36:25), as were the Gentiles (Jer 43:12). Consequently, contact with Gentiles was thought to produce defilement. The gospel’s universal appeal confronted that conviction (e.g., Jn 4:9; Acts 10:28; cf. Gal 2:11–14). Closely related to the defilement of idolatry was the defilement caused by unclean spirits (Zec 13:2; cf. Mt 10:1; Mk 1:23–27).
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Purification Rites.
Purification by Lapse of Time. Secondary contamination could often be canceled simply by waiting until the evening (Lv 11:24) or for 7, 14, 40, or 80 days. Dead bodies contaminated what they touched for 7 days (Nm 19:11), as did menstruation (Lv 15:19). When a child was born, the mother’s unclean state lasted 7 days for a boy and 14 days for a girl. For 33 days afterward for a male child, and 66 days for a female, the mother could not touch any sacred thing.
Purification by Water. Contact with unclean things such as bodily discharges often required washing of hands and clothing, usually accompanied by a time lapse of a day (Lv 15:5–11).
Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 478-480.
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elnwood said:Rosie Perera said:
I think you'd want to look at something more general that addresses whether the purity laws of the whole Pentateuch apply to Christians today.
Hi Rosie, I agree that purity laws do not apply today, but I think it's debatable whether this is a purity law. For example, nothing else in Leviticus 18 and 20 are purity laws, and Christians generally affirm the ongoing morality of these chapters.
One more thing...
If I might be so bold, it sounds as though you are the one with the issue (no pun intended) about this, and your wife is wanting to have sex during her period. Or maybe it's a couple in your church whom you are counselling and you're wanting to support the one who doesn't want to do it. It's OK to just tell the other partner "I feel icky about it," and never mind the Levitical laws. It's actually really unusual for a woman to want to have intercourse when she is menstruating. And I'd be kind of surprised at a man who is so insistent that he can't wait a few more days. There's no chance of pregnancy at that time, so if it's a birth control strategy that might be one thing, but there are other "safe" times during a woman's cycle. If a couple can't come to agreement together about this, I don't think the biblical law is the way to resolve it. Maybe some marital counseling, learning how to respect each other's wishes in the sexual department would be a good thing to work on.
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David Paul said:
Well, OK, I'm sure there have been very rare exceptions. But probably few enough to make it a general safe rule. There's really no guarantee of not getting pregnant except total abstinence. And even that didn't work for Mary... [:P]
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I passed on commenting on this subject earlier, and won't go into those particular comments...but I will comment on a concept that has come up.
The phrases "moral law" and "purity law" have come up in this thread...and I half expect the phrase "ceremonial law" to be next, if it hasn't already. The thing is...there really are no such animals. There is Tohraah. That's it. One law...it's all His will. Not a speck of it is "just" anything that can be done away without ripping the whole fabric, and it, like Yeishuu`a's high priestly garment, must not and cannot be torn.
The idea that any facet of the law is less important (to the point of allowable exclusion) than any other is sheer folly. The sixth commandment is not more important than the fourth, because breaking the Sabbath results in a killing...of Yeishuu`a, the One who spoke the commandment into existence. The same is true of all the so-called "ceremonial" laws. They aren't ceremony--they are prophecy...and just as Moses was not allowed to enter the land in this life because he broke the prophetic principle regarding the striking of the Rock (by striking it the second time when the Rock is only to be struck once), so is it for all of the elements revealed in Tohraah.
The idea that anything is "just a shadow" and is thus "done away" is also folly. Look around the room you are in. See any shadows? Guess what?
SHADOWS HAVEN'T BEEN DONE AWAY. That is the true testimony. Any other is not just hearsay...it is heresy.
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DAL said:
What's immoral about having intercourse with your wife during her period?
DAL
Again while not commenting on the particular point under discussion I do think that it is folly to start with what we think is moral as a way of interpreting the Law, one of the whole points of the Law is to challenge our own human logic and expose its human rather than divine origins.
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David Paul said:
The idea that anything is "just a shadow" and is thus "done away" is also folly. Look around the room you are in. See any shadows? Guess what?
SHADOWS HAVEN'T BEEN DONE AWAY. That is the true testimony. Any other is not just hearsay...it is heresy.
What about Acts 10 when the dietary laws were "done away with"?
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Mike Pettit said:David Paul said:
The idea that anything is "just a shadow" and is thus "done away" is also folly. Look around the room you are in. See any shadows? Guess what?
SHADOWS HAVEN'T BEEN DONE AWAY. That is the true testimony. Any other is not just hearsay...it is heresy.
What about Acts 10 when the dietary laws were "done away with"?
They weren't...what makes you think they were?
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David Paul said:Mike Pettit said:David Paul said:
The idea that anything is "just a shadow" and is thus "done away" is also folly. Look around the room you are in. See any shadows? Guess what?
SHADOWS HAVEN'T BEEN DONE AWAY. That is the true testimony. Any other is not just hearsay...it is heresy.
What about Acts 10 when the dietary laws were "done away with"?
They weren't...what makes you think they were?
Interesting but it is probably best not to get into a theological discussion here
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Mike Pettit said:DAL said:
What's immoral about having intercourse with your wife during her period?
DAL
Again while not commenting on the particular point under discussion I do think that it is folly to start with what we think is moral as a way of interpreting the Law, one of the whole points of the Law is to challenge our own human logic and expose its human rather than divine origins.
WOW...that comment makes you one of the only people I've ever encountered who appears to understand that. YHWH isn't moral...because morality is a human construct. Well done.
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Mike Pettit said:David Paul said:Mike Pettit said:
What about Acts 10 when the dietary laws were "done away with"?
They weren't...what makes you think they were?
Interesting but it is probably best not to get into a theological discussion here
Just read the chapter again...Peter never eats any of the stuff, and it is all taken away. Some commentaries will actually point this out, and also make the point that the revelation is about proselytes, not food.
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David Paul said:Mike Pettit said:DAL said:
What's immoral about having intercourse with your wife during her period?
DAL
Again while not commenting on the particular point under discussion I do think that it is folly to start with what we think is moral as a way of interpreting the Law, one of the whole points of the Law is to challenge our own human logic and expose its human rather than divine origins.
WOW...that comment makes you one of the only people I've ever encountered who appears to understand that. YHWH isn't moral...because morality is a human construct. Well done.
You appear not to have read much Calvin then [:D]
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David Paul said:Mike Pettit said:David Paul said:Mike Pettit said:
What about Acts 10 when the dietary laws were "done away with"?
They weren't...what makes you think they were?
Interesting but it is probably best not to get into a theological discussion here
Just read the chapter again...Peter never eats any of the stuff, and it is all taken away. Some commentaries will actually point this out, and also make the point that the revelation is about proselytes, not food.
Again, this is not a discussion to have on these boards but I think that your interpretation is "strained" to say the least.
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It also appears that most Calvinists haven't read much Calvin, because they are the ones I hear talking about morality more than any others.
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David Paul said:
It also appears that most Calvinist haven't read much Calvin, because they are the ones I hear talking about morality more than any others.
There is nothing wrong with talking about morality as long as the source for that morality is the preceptive will of God as revealed through the Bible.
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Mike Pettit said:David Paul said:
It also appears that most Calvinists haven't read much Calvin, because they are the ones I hear talking about morality more than any others.
There is nothing wrong with talking about morality as long as the source for that morality is the perceptive will of God as revealed through the Bible.
My problem is that most conversations about morality by people who talk about the Bible and God don't really use that definition--they think they do, and they pay occasional lip service to that idea, but in the end they begin to speak about morality as something that exists apart from YHWH.
That is idolatry...and it is so common in Christian writings that it can easily be termed "pervasive". One of the ways this camel sneaks its nose under the tent is through the "moral law" vs. the "ceremonial law" nonsense. That false concept can only end one way--badly.
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/popcorn
Rev. Ben Hein
Shady Grove Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Reformed Theological Seminary, M.Div (2017)
www.shadygrovepca.org
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Speaking of popcorn... Isa. 17:1 [li]
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elnwood said:
Does anyone know of any Leviticus commentaries that gives a lot of attention to answer that question?
http://www.logos.com/product/26326/poor-mans-old-and-new-testament-commentary
Keep Smiling [:)]
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Rosie Perera said:
Contents of the rest of those chapters notwithstanding, what about these verses looks like moral law rather than purity law? They are shouting "purity". If this is not purity law, then what is?
I agree, Leviticus 15:19-24 is purity law. But Leviticus 15:19-24 is not a prohibition. I think it covers those times when it happens accidentally, like DAL brought up.
Leviticus 18:19 and Leviticus 20:18 are prohibitions. Leviticus 20:18 says "Both of them are to be cut off from their people." This makes it look like a moral law, not a purity law. Are there any purity laws that talk about being cut off from their people? Are there any purity laws for which other nations were judged for violating them?
In any case, I don't want to start a long argument. At the very least, I don't think it's clear-cut that it's a purity law. (Calvin, for example, considered it moral). I am simply looking for other commentaries on Leviticus that addresses the topic within its context, i.e. Leviticus 18 and 20, and addresses whether its a purity/ceremonial law that's done away with or a moral law. Rosie, I know your library is much more extensive than mine, and I'd appreciate it if you were able to track down some more resources for me. Thank you!
Rosie Perera said:One more thing... if I might be so bold, it sounds as though ...
Rosie, you're welcome to be so bold! But just so you know, that's not the case at all. My wife and I don't have any disagreement on this issue. We both feel like there's enough ambiguity that we simply would rather not. I'm loathe to bring it up with others, though, because I think people feel like they're being judged by me for bringing it up. Again, I simply want to study more resources that address it.
alabama24 said:It seems to me that a theology book would be better suited for this topic. A "verse by verse" commentary can't get bogged down with every law.
TCBlack said:Theologies, more general books on the purity laws would do you much better than most commentaries.
Alabama24 and TCBlack, care to make some suggestions for theology books? I've had about as much success finding this topic in theology books as I've had in Leviticus commentaries.
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elnwood, first I would like to commend you for the respectable way you're carrying on this discussion which could easily be a very sensitive one. You clearly want to delve into what is the truth, and you are not afraid of whatever the outcome might be. I will attempt to provide further resources to help you in your quest.
elnwood said:Leviticus 18:19 and Leviticus 20:18 are prohibitions. Leviticus 20:18 says "Both of them are to be cut off from their people." This makes it look like a moral law, not a purity law. Are there any purity laws that talk about being cut off from their people? Are there any purity laws for which other nations were judged for violating them?
Well, if your definition of a moral law is that it has consequences such as "being cut off from their people" then you've walked yourself into circular logic. Of course, then, there won't be any purity laws that talk about being cut off from their people, because they will by your definition be moral laws, not purity laws. So let us not presume the definition of moral law in advance that way. Let us first look for definitions that distinguish them, hopefully drawing from the Scriptures themselves as much as possible.
Thomas Ridgley gives a good definition of "moral law" in his A Body of Divinity, Volume 2:
QUESTION XCIII. What is the moral law?
ANSWER. The moral law is the declaration of the will of God to mankind, directing and binding every one to personal, perfect, and perpetual conformity and obedience thereunto, in the frame and disposition of the whole man soul and body, and in performance of all those duties of holiness and righteousness which he oweth to God and man; promising life upon the fulfilling, and threatening death upon the breach, of it.QUESTION. XCVIII. Where is the moral law summarily comprehended?
ANSWER. The moral law is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments, which were delivered by the voice of God upon mount Sinai, and written by him in two tables of stone, and are recorded in the twentieth chapter of Exodus; the four first commandments containing our duty to God, and the other six our duty to man.Thomas Ridgley, A Body of Divinity, Volume 2 (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1855), 300, 307.
Compare that to his definitions of the judicial law and the ceremonial law:
"We shall speak first concerning the judicial law. It cannot be supposed that so great a people, so much interested in the care of God, to whom he condescended to be their king, should be without a body of laws for their government. Accordingly, there were some given them by him, which were founded in and agreeable to the law of nature and nations; which all well-governed states observe to this day, such as that murder should be punished with death, and that theft should be punished with restitution or some other punishments which may best tend to deter men from it. Moreover, there were other judicial laws given to Israel, which had a more immediate tendency to promote their civil welfare, as a nation distinguished from all others in the world; which laws expired when their civil polity was extinct. These were the following:—
1. Such as tended to prevent the alienation of inheritances from the respective families to which they were at first given....
5. They were prohibited from taking usury of an Israelite, though they might of a stranger....
6. All the males were to come up to Jerusalem, to appear before God, and perform public worship in the temple three times a-year, namely, at the solemn festivals,—the passover, pentecost, and the feast of tabernacles....
7. Six cities of refuge were appointed for those to flee to for protection, who killed any one by accident...
We now proceed to consider the ceremonial laws which were given them, the design of which was to lead them into the knowledge of Christ, and the way of salvation by him, then to come. These may be considered under six heads, which we shall briefly notice.
1. It was ordained that all their males should be circumcised....
2. There were various ways, whereby persons were reckoned unclean, and ordinances appointed for their cleansing....
3. There were holy places, such as the tabernacle and temple, with their vessels and ornaments....
4. There were laws which respected those whom God had appointed to be ministers in holy things....
5. There were laws respecting the temple-service, or the gifts and sacrifices which were to be offered there.....
6. There were laws which respected the holy times or festivals appointed for solemn worship.....
Now, as to whether there are any purity or judicial or ceremonial laws (i.e., non moral laws, that do not apply anymore to Christians) that caused one to be cut off from their people if they violated them?
Gen 7:14: "Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."
Exod 12:15: "Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel." (and v. 19, from the NIV: "For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And anyone, whether foreigner or native-born, who eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel.")
Exod 30:31-33: "This is to be my sacred anointing oil for the generations to come. Do not pour it on anyone else’s body and do not make any other oil using the same formula. It is sacred, and you are to consider it sacred. Whoever makes perfume like it and puts it on anyone other than a priest must be cut off from their people."
Lev 7:20-21,25-27: "But if anyone who is unclean eats any meat of the fellowship offering belonging to the LORD, they must be cut off from their people. Anyone who touches something unclean—whether human uncleanness or an unclean animal or any unclean creature that moves along the ground—and then eats any of the meat of the fellowship offering belonging to the LORD must be cut off from their people....Anyone who eats the fat of an animal from which a food offering may be presented to the LORD must be cut off from their people. And wherever you live, you must not eat the blood of any bird or animal. Anyone who eats blood must be cut off from their people."
Num 9:13: "But if anyone who is clean and is not on a journey fails to keep the Passover, that person shall be cut off from his people..."
Num 19:20: "If the man who is unclean does not cleanse himself, that person shall be cut off from the midst of the assembly, since he has defiled the sanctuary of the LORD. Because the water for impurity has not been thrown on him, he is unclean."
Deut 23:1: “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD." [do you think this is a play on the phrase "cut off"??? if his thingy is cut off, he should be cut off from the assembly [:)] ]
So, you see, there's an awful lot of cutting off from one's people. I don't think we can use that as the criterion for what is perpetual moral law and what is ceremonial/ritual or purity law.
Here's an even more remarkable thing, showing the relation between OT law and the holiness of God, and his mercy in overriding that law which might have appeared to be moral law given its context (remember the "forbidden unions" are listed in Lev 18 and 20 which you said were predominantly moral law):
Deut 23:203 "No one born of a forbidden union may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD. No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever."
And yet in the book of Ruth, we get Ruth, a Moabite, being not only welcomed/accepted into the Israelite assembly by virtue of her loyalty to Naomi, but becoming the great grandmother of David and ultimately the progenitor of our Lord Jesus.
Also, as to whether Lev 18 and 20 were laws that should have been obvious to the nations outside of Israel, I don't think that's evident from the text: Lev 18:3 says "You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you." Lev 18:29 says "do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came" and Lev 20:22 says "You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them."
In other words, these illicit sexual relations were practiced by the other nations. Israel was to be different.
And yet...the mercy of God trumps even those laws: Remember the rape of Tamar by her father-in-law Judah (Gen 38)? It anachronistically violates Lev 18:15 explicitly: "Do not have sexual relations with your daughter-in-law. She is your son’s wife; do not have relations with her." But so too, Tamar became another of the four women mentioned in the lineage of Jesus (Matt 1:3). This does not mean the laws in Lev 18 & 20 were abolished, but God does not choose to always hold to the the punishment of "cut off from his people."
Anyway, I think some wise advice in all of these matters comes from the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary on Rom 14:
"The Principle of Freedom. Still, Paul’s own position on these particular questions is clear. 'I know and am convinced on the authority of the Lord Jesus,' he writes, 'that no food, in and of itself, is wrong to eat' (14:14). He speaks of those who hold the more conservative point of view on such issues, those more rigidly bound by their traditions—Christians fearful of eating meat, for example—as 'weak in faith' (14:1). Why? Because theirs is a more legalistic perspective on the Christian life. They still think in terms of rules and regulations, laws and observances; they fail to appreciate the real freedom inherent in the Good News. Though the moral demands of the Old Testament law retain their validity for Paul as an expression of the will of God (cf. 13:8–10), ritual observances such as circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, and food restrictions do not. Here Paul’s perspective is similar to that of Jesus, who seems to place little importance on the ritual laws. (Jesus says little about circumcision, downplays the importance of the Sabbath, and emphasizes that food does not defile a person—see Mark 2:23–27; 7:1–8, 14–23.) People with oversensitive consciences, then, fail to appreciate the implicit distinction made between the moral law and the ritual law by Jesus, as well as by Paul. Even more serious, those with such legalistic tendencies may think that what they do or do not do in matters of ritual observance has some bearing on their achieving a right relationship with God. They run the subtle risk of failing to appreciate the full significance of grace in their understanding of the Good News.
"The Principle of Love. Nonetheless, in minor areas of difference such as these, the important thing is not to insist on the principle of Christian freedom or to seek to convert others to our point of view but to be considerate of others’ sensitivities (14:15–22). The love commandment—the 'law of Christ' that takes precedence over all else—requires that we be charitable to everyone. So Christian liberty must always be tempered by Christian love; our sense of being liberated must always be subordinated to the more important concern of what is most helpful to others. And at all costs, we must avoid doing anything that would prove destructive to a Christian brother or sister (14:15, 20–21—an admonition clearly addressed to those who feel free to eat meat). For if we sin against the people of Christ, we sin against Christ himself (1 Cor 8:12). Our primary responsibility, then, is not to 'shake up' those who are bound by their traditions and their conservatism but to show them love. As a result, Gentile Christians living alongside Jewish Christians should sympathetically refrain from eating meat when they sit down and eat together—if the latter find it offensive. In this way they will avoid leading their Jewish brothers and sisters into sin and encourage genuine fellowship between the two groups—and those are the important concerns. True Christian love is always sacrificial love, which implies a willingness to give up our own desires and rights for the good of others, just as Christ did for us (cf. 15:1–3). It is important to realize the truth of Christian freedom but even more important to be guided by the principle of love in all we do, as Christ was."
Roger Mohrlang, Gerald L. Borchert, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol 14: Romans and Galatians (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2007), 213–214.
I'm glad you and your wife are of one spirit on this issue you asked about. And if you do find yourself in conversation with others about it, I pray that you may not have to fear their judgment but that they will know and live out the "principle of love" such that even if they feel free to do in their own bedroom this thing which you and your wife find detestable, they will not try to force their freedom on you. It really does seem to me to be a matter of private conscience, and I really doubt anyone would try to tell you otherwise.
Here's an analogy: I personally would find it gross to bees, wasps or termites, and not because of Deut 14:19 (cf. Lev 21:11-22). I just think the sound of it is disgusting. There are plenty of cultures in the world today, though, which eat those flying insects. They are apparently very protein-rich and nutritious, and if you're not brought up to think they're icky, then they aren't. I can't and have no desire to get beyond my cultural bias. I might if I were starving, but as long as I have access to chicken and fish and vegetables, I don't think I'll have to eat bugs. And if someone came to me and told me we are no longer bound by Deut 14:19 so we can eat flying swarming insects, I would tell them, "That's great -- you go ahead and eat them, and I won't stop you. But don't save any for me, thank you very much!" [:)]
Now substitute in the concept of sexual intercourse during menstruation and you get pretty much the same idea.
I will get back to you shortly once I've done some Passage Guide searching in my Leviticus commentaries to find out why Lev 18:19 and 20:18 are in the middle of such contexts that make those two verses stand out (to me, anyhow) as somehow different in nature from the surrounding prohibitions. They are about uncleanness whereas the other verses are about relationships.
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As promised, here are some excerpts:
Expositor's Bible Commentary, note on Lev 18:19:
As argued at 15:24, the restriction of this verse is a general protection for a woman against an inconsiderate husband’s approach. The penalty in 15:24 is a seven-day period of uncleanness. In view of that regulation, it seems that here to “be cut off from their people” (v.29) does not involve death but perhaps excommunication, perhaps divine displeasure.
There may be, however, a question whether the situation at 15:24 is actually the same as here and at 20:18. The terms are slightly different, and the context and the penalties are considerably different. At 20:18 (not 15:24) the phrase גִּלָּה אֶת־עֶרְוָתָהּ (gillāh ʾeṯ -ʿerwāṯāh, KJV, “uncover her nakedness”) is used. This is obviously a euphemism for sexual intercourse in some degree and is translated by the NIV as “have sexual relations.” It is also used in Ezek 16 and 23 in regard to the spiritual prostitution of Judah. It is used in Lev 18 and 20 of various incestuous connections but never of normal marital relations. It is possible that 18:19 and 20:18 refer to some kind of prostitution complicated by menstrual impurity. The penalty, as previously mentioned, is probably excommunication.
The Beauty of Holiness (Welwyn Commentary Series) on Lev 18:19:
Two cases of moral pollution are considered. First, sexual relationships are prohibited during a woman’s menstrual period (18:19). No reason is given here, but it presumes earlier legislation where it is stated that a man becomes unclean through contact with a woman during her normal discharge of blood (15:19–24). While that ruling is in the context of ritual uncleanness that could arise accidentally, this decree makes deliberate violation a moral offence. This law benefited a woman at a point when she was psychologically and physically low and it still needs to be remembered by husbands today.
Holiness to the Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus by Allen P. Ross:
[from pp. 345-46] The rest of the speech lists other acts to be avoided. The first is sexual intercourse during menstruation (18:19), which at first glance seems not to be of the same magnitude as the other sins in this passage, especially since it was listed earlier with the minor consequence of being unclean until evening. Leviticus 15:24 was concerned with things that rendered a person ceremonially unclean; here the concern is deliberate violations of God’s laws that eventually lead to divine judgment (see 20:18). If people willfully chose to act in complete disregard of the holiness of God and ceremonial rites, it was no longer simply a matter of contamination but of rebellion against God.
[from p. 376] Sexual Relations with a Menstruant Woman (20:18). Having sexual intercourse with a woman during her period is also included here as a serious violation of God’s order for marital relations. Sexual intercourse during menses was ruled on in Lev. 15:19, 24 (cf. 12:2, 7; 18:19), where the legislated punishment was only a period of uncleanness for the couple followed by the ritual washing. Here the punishment was much more severe: they would be cut off. God dealt with these people because it was impossible to take them to court. Leviticus 15 dealt with all kinds of incidental contact with things unclean, but Lev. 20 deals with deliberate violations of the law. If it was due to an accident of timing that the violation took place, then uncleanness and ritual purity were in order (Lev. 15). But if it was done intentionally, that meant those involved knew the holiness laws of God and chose to have sexual relations rather than sanctify their lives in accordance with the holiness of God.
Divine Presence and Community: A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus (International Theological Commentary) by Frank H. Gorman, Jr.
[p. 108] Verse 19 prohibits sexual relations with a woman while she is in her menstrual impurity (cf. 20:18 and 15:19–24). Such impurity is communicated through sexual intercourse. The activity is prohibited not just because of the risk of impurity but because it cannot be expected to produce children (Eilberg-Schwartz 1990, 182–86). For the priestly traditionists, acceptable sexual activity should lead to conception.
New American Commentary:
SEXUAL RELATIONS PROHIBITED DURING MENSTRUATION (18:19)
18:19 The first illicit sexual relation is sexual intercourse during menstruation. Prohibition of sexual intercourse during menstruation is repeated from 15:24 (see also 20:18). The sacredness of blood (Lev 17) may be the reason sexual contact was forbidden during menstruation and thus was regarded as taboo. This law benefited the woman who has her lowest estrogen level during menstruation. If the husband was insensitive to his wife’s emotional state during menstruation difficulties may develop.
Tyndale OT Commentary on Lev 18:19:
Carnal relations with a woman during her menses had been prohibited earlier on the basis of ceremonial uncleanness (Lev. 15:24), but here are regarded as a moral offence, and would be punished accordingly (Lev. 20:18).
And I found this one to be the most interesting, so I'm going to quote it at length:
Leviticus. by Samuel Balentine (Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching) .
Leviticus 18:1–20:27
“You Shall Be Holy, for I the Lord Your God Am Holy”
The signature of the book of Leviticus, as often noted, is the summons to holiness, which occurs most succinctly and memorably in 19:2: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” With this summons as its anchor, Leviticus 19 has become an enormously important and influential resource, not only for Jewish communities of faith that regularly recite its mandate in the readings assigned for the high holy days of Yom Kippur but also for Christians who are directed to remember and embrace its imperative by the author of 1 Peter: “As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy” ’ (1:15–16). With good reason, therefore, faith communities have affirmed that holiness is central to the biblical understanding of who God is (“I am”) and who God’s people must be (“You shall be”). “What we have learned from Jewish history,” the esteemed rabbi Joshua Heschel reminds all who would seek to respond with Israel to the summons to be a “holy people,” is that
if a man is not more than human then he is less than human. Judaism is an attempt to prove that in order to be a man, you have to be more than a man, that in order to be a people we have to be more than a people. Israel was made to be a holy people. (I Asked for Wonder, p. 104)
Despite the popular embrace of Lev. 19:2, the all-important context for its singular imperative to holiness, chapters 18–20, has seldom received the attention it requires. Perhaps this is understandable in one sense, for on first encounter this larger context addresses concerns, especially sexual transgressions, that may seem quite distant from those typically associated with holiness. There are, however, important structural and theological connections between these chapters that invite and require closer inspection.
In terms of literary structure, chapters 18 and 20 provide a frame for issues that lead to and derive from the centerpiece text in chapter 19 (see Figure 2). Chapter 18 begins (vv. 1–5) and ends (vv. 24–30) with exhortations to observe and keep God’s statutes and ordinances. In between these exhortations, the chapter treats sexual transgressions (vv. 6–20, 22–23) and child sacrifices to Molech (v. 21) that constitute disobedience to the summons. Chapter 20 uses similar exhortations (vv. 7–8, 22–26) to envelop and expand on virtually the same concerns, presented now in reverse order: sacrifices to Molech (vv. 2–5) and sexual transgressions (vv. 9–21). Chapter 18 presents the prohibitions in apodictic form (categorical imperatives, “You shall not do X”), followed by a general statement of penalty (the violator will be “cut off”; v. 29). Both the prohibitions and the penalty focus on the negative consequences of behavior that is to be avoided, especially the exile from Canaan: “Do not defile yourself in any of these ways … otherwise the land will vomit you out for defiling it” (18:24, 28). Chapter 20 presents the prohibitions in casuistic form (“If/When X occurs, then Y will result”), typically including more specific and in some cases more severe sanctions (e.g., death, vv. 10–16; childlessness, vv. 20–21). These prohibitions and the penalties that accompany them also warn of negative consequences for disobedience, but their primary focus is rather on the positive result of engaged obedience that enables people to attain holiness, especially as this is manifest in faithful possession of the promised land: “You shall keep all my statutes and all my ordinances.… You shall not follow the practices of the nation that I am driving out before you.… But I have said to you: You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey” (20:22–24).
As structural bookends, chapters 18 and 20 resolutely insist on an acutely theological valuation: The holiness enjoined by Leviticus 19 encompasses much more than religious devotion to God. It has also to do with the way human beings treat one another. Indeed, given the preoccupation of chapters 18 and 20 with the most intimate form of human conduct—sexual relationships—these texts invite us to understand that the requirement of holy love for others is equal to, if not greater than, the requirement of holy love offered to God. In sum, this frame insists that theology is ethics, and ethics, when directed and evaluated by the abiding summons to be holy, is the highest expression of the most fundamental of all theological assertions: God is holy.
Framing Exhortations (18:1–5, 24–30; 20:7–8, 22–26)
Two sets of opening and closing exhortations provide the literary and theological context for understanding the summons to holiness. Taken together, these exhortations invite reflection on four primary issues.
1. The God of Sinai. The formulaic phrase “I am the Lord your God,” which occurs for the first time in 18:2, is the semantic equivalent of God’s self-introduction at the beginning of the Decalogue (Exod. 20:2; Deut. 5:6). The repetition of this phrase, in slightly varying form, twenty-six times in chapters 18–20 punctuates all these instructions with the constant reminder that they are an integral part of what the God of Sinai requires if Israel is to realize its covenantal commission to become not only a “priestly kingdom” but also a “holy nation” (Exod. 19:6; see Figure 4, below). Two additional statements underscore the importance of this phrase. First, v. 4, which implicitly recognizes that instructions from other presumed authorities will compete for Israel’s allegiance (see below), emphasizes that Israel must obey God and God alone. The njps nicely captures the point with its translation: “My rules alone shall you observe.” Second, v. 5 links obedience to God’s instructions to the gift of life itself: “by doing so one shall live.” The syntax of the phrase in Hebrew (wāḥay bāhem) is unusual and open to multiple interpretations. The most attractive is that proposed by Milgrom, who understands bāhem, “in them,” to mean “life is built into them.” These instructions have an “inherent power to grant life,” a power that is equaled only by God (Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, pp. 1522–23).
2. “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt … and … in the land of Canaan” (18:3; cf. 18:24; 20:22). Obedience requires saying yes to God and no to other powers that vie for Israel’s allegiance. The challenge is identified with Egypt and Canaan. The former is the power that enslaved Israel in the past, the latter the power that will tempt Israel in the future. Both are reputed to have built their powerful hegemonies in conjunction with sexual practices that chapters 18 and 20 prohibit, especially incestuous marriages (e.g., father-daughter, brother-sister). Israel’s history contains the memory of how influential such practices could be on its own ancestors. The cases of Abraham and Sarah (Gen. 20:2, 12), Judah and Tamar (Gen. 38:12–19), Reuben and Bilhah (Gen. 35:22), Amram and Jocebed (from whose union came Aaron and Moses; Exod. 6:20), and Amnon and Tamar (2 Sam. 13:7–14) are cases in point. Whether and to what extent the Egyptians and Canaanites actually practiced such behavior and whether or not the cases just mentioned are true examples of Israel’s conformity with these practices, there is no reason to doubt that the strictures in Leviticus are grounded in realistic concerns. Toward that end, Leviticus 18 warns Israel, no fewer than seven times, not to behave like those who serve other gods (vv. 3 [two times], 24, 26, 27, 29, 30).
3. Moral impurity defiles the land. Leviticus 1–16 is deeply concerned with ritual impurities that defile the cult, violate the sanctuary, and threaten a holy God’s abandonment of an unholy people. The priestly solution to ritual impurity is purification and atonement, ritual enactments that promise God will forgive the transgressions and repair the breach in the divine-human relationship. The closing exhortations in 18:24–30 and 20:22–26 warn that moral impurities, principally the sexual abominations listed in these chapters, pollute the land with consequences that are even more serious than ritual transgressions. If Israel succumbs to the temptation to embrace the practices of its neighbors, it will be guilty of sin that so defiles the land that it will vomit them out (18:25, 28; 20:22). If the transgressions are committed by individuals, they will be “cut off” (18:29) by God from their communities. But if the transgressions are community-wide, if moral impurity becomes so rampant that it is the norm, not the exception, for society, there can be no ritual remedy. Like a sensate human being, the land will become so sickened by what it has ingested from its inhabitants that it will automatically regurgitate them in order to cleanse itself (on the personification of the land, see Joosten, pp. 152–54).
In tracking this issue, Milgrom has perceptively discerned two important theological implications (Leviticus 17–22, pp. 1572–80). First, there is a creational motif at the root of the idea about sin’s capacity to defile the land. The first human sin against God’s primordial design for a “very good” world was a violation that resulted in ecological upheaval: “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Gen. 3:17). In the aftermath of this act, Genesis records the escalation of violence that humans inflict on one another. As a result, the earth itself cries out for justice (Gen. 4:10–12), and a grieving God concedes there is no other option short of destroying the very earth on which divine hopes had rested (Gen. 6:5–8, 13). From these tragic beginnings, the biblical record proceeds with a sad litany of testimony bearing witness to sin’s potential to wound the land (e.g., Num. 33:33–34; Deut. 24:1–4; Isa. 24:5–6; Jer. 3:1–10; Ezek. 33:16–18; Ezra 9:10–11). Given this witness, the exhortations in Leviticus 18 and 20 are freighted with urgent concerns; if they are not heeded, creation itself is jeopardized.
Second, Milgrom has argued that the Priestly tradents of the Holiness Code offer a radical internal critique of the priestly understanding of impurity. The priestly authors responsible for Leviticus 1–16 use the word ṭāmē˒, “impure, unclean,” to refer to ritual impurities that defile the holy, most palpably the sanctuary, thereby rendering it unsuitable for God’s presence. In this view, it is religious or spiritual obedience that provides the measure for Israel’s fidelity to God. Leviticus 18 and 20 expand on this understanding by extending both the cause and the effect of impurity. Unethical and immoral human conduct outside the sanctuary defiles the world with consequences no less catastrophic than religious infidelity. The measure of Israel’s obedience to God is not only the purity of its rituals; it is also the morality of its everyday conduct. In point of fact, unethical behavior is more serious than religious transgression, because it wounds the land in ways that no ritual can repair. Unethical behavior can and will be punished, but it cannot be expiated. It can only be expelled, in the hope that the victim (the land) might recover the capacity to be whole and healthy.
This trenchant critique of moral impurity cautions those who may too quickly assume Israel’s priestly tradition is preoccupied with arcane ritual matters that are largely unrelated to urgent issues of social justice. This assumption, often widespread among Christians and especially among Protestants who are more likely to set their spiritual compass by the prophets instead of the priests, is turned on its head by a close reading of Leviticus 18–20. For all the concern about sacrifices, dietary laws, and rites of expiation, the authors of the Holiness Code invite us to understand that Israel’s priestly tradition refuses the easy disconnect between ritual and ethics.
4. “Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy” (20:7). The imperative in 20:7 is a repetition of 11:44. Both texts likely derive from the authors responsible for the Holiness Code. In both texts the summons is directed to priests and laity alike. The significance of the appeal is the affirmation that both priests and laypersons can refract holiness, which God alone inherently possesses, in reciprocal ways. The Priestly source behind Leviticus 8–10 understands Aaron’s ordination as a founding ritual through which his descendants acquire holiness as a permanent priestly virtue. Leviticus 20:7 expands on this understanding in two ways. First, the priests’ bequeathed holiness is unique, entitling them, and them alone, to officiate at the altar; but they are enjoined to sustain their holiness by obedience to all God’s commandments. It is not enough for priests to be ritually holy; they must prove themselves worthy of their special privileges by ethical behavior away from the altar that does not diminish their stewardship of the gift they have been given (on the priestly responsibilities, see further 21:1–22:16). Second, the gift of holiness is not limited to priests. Laypersons consecrate themselves, as do priests, by keeping all God’s statutes and ordinances. As Milgrom notes, the Holiness Code “democratizes” the understanding of holiness. In his words, “Holiness is no longer a priestly prerogative. It is available to and attainable by everyone” (Leviticus 17–22, p. 1741).
The closing exhortation in 20:22–26 provides further definition for how priests and laity are to consecrate themselves in holiness. They must exemplify holiness not only by tuning their devotion to God’s nature—“You shall be … because I am”—but also by conforming their lives to the way God acts. Leviticus 20:24–26 links the latter task to God’s primordial decision to create the optimum conditions for life by dividing between order and chaos. Four times in Genesis 1, God performs acts of “separation” or “division” that summon forth and sustain the basic elements of the created order (vv. 4, 7, 14, 18). Encoded in God’s acts is a complementary mandate for creation itself to engage in reciprocal acts of division. As God divides the light from the darkness (Gen. 1:4), God also commissions the lights in the sky to divide between day and night (vv. 14, 18). As God divides the waters above the firmament from those below (v. 7), the firmament mirrors God’s act with its endowed capacity to sustain what God has accomplished (v. 6). Leviticus 20 returns to this creational design with a fourfold repetition of the word divide (vv. 24, 25 [two times], 26). The first and fourth occurrences define God’s holiness as the act of separating Israel from other nations (vv. 24, 26). The third occurrence ties Israel’s separation from the nations to God’s decision to divide between clean and unclean foods (v. 25b). Framed by these three, the second occurrence enjoins Israel to honor God’s decision by observing the dietary laws (v. 25a). In sum, when Israel consecrates itself to God, by devotion and by deed, it does so not only for its own sake but also for the sake of the world. For the wholeness that God intends, creation itself requires a people who aspire to be holy as God is holy.
Framing Prohibitions (18:6–23; 20:2–21, 27)
The framing prohibitions in chapters 18 and 20 contain a number of linguistic and stylistic connections that suggest the two lists, while perhaps composed independently, are intended to complement one another. The following connections may be singled out (for a full discussion, see Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, pp. 1765–68).
• Both lists deal with the same two general issues, sexual transgressions and sacrifices to Molech, although the order of presentation is reversed. Chapter 18 begins with sexual offenses (vv. 6–20, 22–23), in the midst of which it devotes one verse to Molech (v. 21). Chapter 20 begins with a longer unit on Molech (vv. 2–5), which is followed by sexual transgressions (vv. 9–21).
• The sexual prohibitions in chapter 18 build on the phrase “to uncover nakedness” (v. 6), a euphemism for sexual intercourse, and proceed to list forbidden relationships, arranged in descending order from the closest family relationships to more distant nonfamily relationships: family—with a mother (v. 7), with a father’s wife (v. 8), with a sister (v. 9), with a granddaughter (v. 10), with a stepsister (v. 11), with a paternal aunt (v. 12), with a maternal aunt (v. 13), with an aunt who is wife of a father’s brother (v. 14), with a daughter-in-law (v. 15), with a brother’s wife (v. 16), with a mother and a daughter (v. 17a); nonfamily—with a woman and her granddaughter (vv. 17b–18), with a wife’s sister (v. 18), with a menstruating woman (v. 19), with a neighbor’s wife (v. 20), male with male (v. 22), with animals (v. 23). Chapter 19 also uses the key phrase “uncover nakedness” (vv. 11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21), along with other terms—marry (vv. 14, 17, 21), lie (vv. 11, 12, 13, 15)—to proscribe sexual behaviors. The forbidden relationships are not identical to those in chapter 18, but the list addresses essentially the same concerns: adultery with a neighbor’s wife (v. 10), sex with a father’s wife (v. 11), sex with a daughter-in-law (v. 12), male homosexuality (v. 13), marriage to a woman and her mother (v. 14), bestiality (vv. 15–16), marriage to a sister (v. 17), sex with a menstruating woman (v. 18), sex with a paternal or maternal aunt (v. 19), sex with an uncle’s wife (v. 20), marriage to a sister-in-law (v. 21).
• The language condemning proscribed behaviors is similar in the two lists, but the consequent penalties are different. Molech worship “profanes the name” of God (18:21; 20:3). Forbidden sexual practices are a “perversion” (18:23; 20:12), a “depravity” (18:17; 20:14), and an “abomination” (18:22; 20:13). All of the proscribed behaviors are violations of God’s “statutes” and “ordinances” (18:4, 26; 20:22). Both lists stipulate that the penalty for transgression is exile—the land will “vomit out” the offenders (18:25, 28; 20:22)—but the correlating penalties differ. Both lists use the general phrase “cut off” (18:29; 20:17, 18) to describe the complete banishment of offenders from the community and the extermination of their lineage, but chapter 20 goes further by providing a sliding scale of penalties pegged to the seriousness of the violation: death (vv. 10–16); being “cut off” (vv. 17, 18), and childlessness (vv. 20–21). The variation in sanctions suggests the two lists address different audiences. Chapter 18 addresses family relations from the perspective of the father, who, as the head of the “house” (the “father’s house”), has primary responsibility for the nuclear family (father, mother, children) and their extended blood relations (e.g., aunts, uncles, daughters- and sons-in-law, grandparents, grandchildren). Within this family structure, the father executes the punishment (excision from the family), which, significantly, provides no license for putting offenders to death. Chapter 20 addresses family relations from the perspective of the authorized judicial leaders, who are charged with the responsibility for fairly adjudicating offenses that impact on the welfare of the entire community, especially those that may justify the death penalty.
• Both lists condemn Molech worship because it profanes God’s name (18:21; 20:2–5), but the contexts for the condemnation appear to be different. Chapter 18 devotes but one verse to Molech, and it is rather awkwardly inserted within a long list of sexual violations. One possible explanation is that sacrificing children to Molech threatens family relationships in a manner comparable to incest or other illicit sexual behaviors (cf. Hartley, p. 336). Chapter 20, which provides a more extensive discussion, condemns Molech worship as profaning not only God’s name but also God’s sanctuary (v. 3). Within the same pericope, God condemns those who “prostitute” (v. 5) themselves to Molech, which is metaphorical language typically used to describe chasing after other gods (Exod. 34:15–16; Num. 15:39; Deut. 31:16; and frequently in the prophets, e.g., Jer. 3:1–2, 6–9; Ezek. 16:16–17; Hos. 1:2; 4:10, 12, 15). Leviticus 20:6 uses the same metaphor to condemn the practice of consulting “mediums and wizards” (cf. 20:27 and 17:7), which suggests that in this chapter the prohibitions concerning Molech have more to do with idolatry than with sexual practices that destroy family relationships.
The structural and rhetorical connections between chapters 18 and 20 indicate that these chapters should be read as an intentional frame for Leviticus 19. That this is so, however, raises two related theological questions. What do sexual practices have to do with the summons to holiness? How do the condemnations of Molech sacrifice, which clearly have to do with Israel’s relationship to God, contribute to the sexual prohibitions that dominate these two lists?
It is apparent that prohibitions of certain sexual practices promote healthy family units, which are essential for the covenant community that bears witness to God’s presence in the world (Hartley, pp. 298–302; Kaiser, p. 1128; Gerstenberger, pp. 257–58). One clue concerning the threat of sexual misconduct to the stability of the family occurs in 18:18. In the context of the injunction against marrying two sisters, the text warns against relationships that produce “rivalry.” The Hebrew root, which means “show hostility toward, vex,” may be paradigmatic for the dissension in the family that is implicit in all these prohibitions: Whenever the bonds of love are conflicted by illicit sexual practices, the family is threatened by strife and hostility.
Milgrom acknowledges the importance of this clue but pushes beyond it to posit a still more basic rationale (Leviticus 17–22, pp. 1530–31). The fundamental issue behind all these prohibitions, he suggests, is the concern to honor God’s procreational commission to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28). In the Priestly account of creation, this command, which constitutes God’s first words to human beings who are created in God’s image, concerns their sexual relationship. By God’s directive, men and women are given the responsibility to produce seed that fills the earth with progeny and sustains God’s hopes and expectations for a human embodiment of the divine image. The commission to exercise creaturely “dominion” (Gen. 1:26, 28) over the world’s resources further defines the divine image God entrusts to the human community. The language of dominion conveys the idea of royal power, specifically the king’s power to create and secure the conditions necessary for the safety and welfare of every citizen in his charge. By analogy, God commissions humans to be fruitful and multiply in ways that advance and secure the welfare of the human community. Sexual behavior that produces seed destructive of family relationships—adultery, incestuous marriages—and sexual behavior that produces no seed—intercourse with a menstruating woman, male homosexuality, sodomy—violates God’s procreational commission and diminishes the human community’s capacity to reproduce and sustain itself in God’s image.
It is prudent to add a word about the prohibitions in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13, for these texts are regularly championed as a biblical mandate for the condemnation of homosexuality. The issue of homosexuality has long vexed the religious conscience and moral scruples of the human community. The prohibitions in Leviticus 18 and 20 must certainly be a part of our struggle with this issue, but it is wise to remember that they are only a part; a wide range of other considerations—social, biological, and political—must also be factored into the positions we take. Even so, it is incumbent upon all who strive to tune their decisions to the witness of Scripture that these particular texts be interpreted within the context of their setting in Israel’s priestly tradition.
The following points deserve careful reflection: (1) The ban on homosexuality is but one of more than a dozen behaviors proscribed in Leviticus 18 and 20. It is accorded no more importance than other prohibitions, many of which seem not to have made much impact on the community of faith. Except perhaps among the most fundamentalist religious communities, we do not measure obedience to God by killing children who curse their parents (20:9) or men who commit adultery with another’s wife (20:10). (2) All the prohibitions in chapters 18 and 20 assume a patriarchal structure for society. As such, they are addressed primarily to males, not females. It may be noted in this regard that the homosexual ban addresses only sexual acts between men; there is no proscription against lesbianism. (3) The latter part of the phrase “lie with a male as with a woman,” which occurs in both 18:22 and 20:13, is an idiom used only for homosexual acts performed by heterosexuals (Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, p. 1786; Douglas, Leviticus as Literature, p. 238; Levine, p. 123). The text does not address homosexuality in terms of permanent sexual orientation. Moreover, the text does not proscribe all acts of male homosexuality. It focuses instead on heterosexual males performing homosexual acts with other males in the family unit, for example, nephew with uncle, grandson with grandfather (Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, p. 1786). (4) Finally, however we may decide to appropriate these prohibitions, we should remember that the rationale behind all of them, including those dealing with male homosexuality, is the overriding concern to honor God’s procreational commission. Their intent is to promote relationships that image the compassion of God; they do not endorse discrimination and abuse that destroys people by labeling them as enemies of God.
To return to the second of the two theological questions posed above, what does sacrifice to Molech have to do with the sexual prohibitions that dominate Leviticus 18 and 20? The name Molech occurs fewer than a dozen times in Hebrew Scriptures, five of which are in these chapters (Lev. 18:21; 20:2, 3, 4, 5; 2 Kgs. 11:7; 23:10; Jer. 32:35; three additional references are less certain: Isa. 30:33; 57:9; Zeph. 1:5). The evidence is open to multiple interpretations, but it appears that Molech is a figure of the underworld, perhaps identified with Canaanite gods known variously as Melqart and Malik (Day, pp. 46–55; for a full discussion of the issues, see Hartley, pp. 334–37). The worship offered Molech is equally elusive, but it seems clear that Leviticus presumes it to have involved the sacrifice of children. Given such an understanding, the inclusion of a warning concerning Molech is not as unrelated to the sexual prohibitions as it may appear. The sacrifice of a child would certainly have threatened a family’s stability in ways comparable to the sexual practices forbidden in these chapters.
There may be another clue, however, in the metaphor that is used to describe Molech worship in 20:5. To “prostitute” oneself to Molech, as noted above, is a sexual term appropriated to refer to chasing or “whoring after” other gods. The imagery suggests forming an illicit union with another god. From this perspective, the warning concerns idolatry, worshiping a god other than YHWH. That sexual language and imagery are used in all the prohibitions of Leviticus 18 and 20, including those concerning Molech, may justify a further discernment. Yielding to selfish and destructive passions is idolatrous. It exemplifies the worship of one’s own desires, which subverts the family, diminishes the community, and violates God’s creational designs in ways that are just as condemnable as bowing down before another god.
The Central Summons to Holiness (19:1–36)
Framed by these intensely pragmatic concerns about human conduct, Leviticus 19 begins with the theological rationale they assume—“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (v. 2)—and then explicates this rationale in terms of both religious (vv. 3–8) and ethical responsibilities (vv. 9–18). A third collection of miscellaneous instructions addresses a mixture of religious and ethical responsibilities (vv. 19–37). There is some slippage in judging whether individual responsibilities are religious, ethical, or both at the same time, but the list as a whole makes it clear that here, as in the framing chapters, the summons to holiness can be fulfilled only when fidelity to God is embodied with equal passion by both ethical and religious commitments. While most of the prohibitions are couched negatively, as behavior that must be avoided, a significant number are stated positively, thereby reiterating the assertion in chapters 18 and 20 that holiness must be manifest in lives that say both yes to what God requires and no to what God forbids. One without the other will never be sufficient to obey God’s commandments. The strategic placement of two positive exhortations to keep all God’s statutes and ordinances (vv. 19, 37), both echoing the framing exhortations in chapters 18 and 20, underscores the assertion that holiness must always be exemplified by active engagement with the world, never only by passive withdrawal.
Two important structural features of Leviticus 19 merit careful attention: First, two rhetorical markers—an inclusio in vv. 2b and 36b and the chiasm in vv. 3–4 and 30—emphasize that all the instructions in this chapter function as commentary on the Decalogue given at Sinai (see the comments above on “The God of Sinai”). The inclusio in vv. 2b and 36b repeats the preamble to the Decalogue (Exod. 20:2). Verse 2b, the trailer for the summons to holiness, ends with the first words of the first sentence in Exod. 20:2: “I am the Lord your God.” Verse 36b picks up the last words of the first sentence in the Exodus verse: “who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” The rhetorical effect is to suggest that all the instructions in between these two framing phrases have the same claim on Israel’s obedience as the Ten Commandments.
Commentators often suggest, in fact, that each of the Commandments is referenced in these instructions. The parallels suggested by Kaiser are representative (Kaiser, p. 1131):
Ten Commandments
Leviticus 19
1 and 2
v. 4
3
v. 12
4 and 5
v. 3
6
v. 16
7
v. 29
8 and 9
vv. 11, 16
10
v. 18
On close inspection, however, more than half these parallels are inexact at best. The only Commandments clearly echoed are numbers one, two, four, and five, and these are referenced in the theologically instructive chiasm of Leviticus 19:3–4 and 19:30 (see Figure 3). This chiasm reverses the order of the Commandments in the Decalogue, elevating Commandment Five, reverence for father and mother, to the position of first importance. It then places Commandments Four, One, and Two, each of which deals with reverence for God, in the second position. This inversion of the Commandments conveys the radical perspective of the Holiness Code: The importance of how one lives in relationships with others in the human community is equal to, if not even greater than, the requirement of fidelity to God. In the Priestly perspective, ethical behavior is not merely the necessary consequence of love for God; it is the fundamental prerequisite that establishes the authenticity of that love.
This chiasm, in turn, provides the hermeneutical clue for reading the remainder of the instructions in Leviticus 19. The lead commandment to revere father and mother (v. 3a), who represent the most intimate union in the family structure, is amplified with further commandments (vv. 9–35) that extend the requirement for ethical relationships to the broader “community” of all God’s creation. The land must be harvested with a compassion that does not ignore the needs of the poor (vv. 9–10; see also vv. 23–25), and plants and animals must be protected against mixed breeding that weakens the species God has created (v. 19). The welfare of the human community must not be jeopardized by dishonesty (vv. 11–12), oppression (vv. 13–14), economic injustice (vv. 15–16, 35–36), hate and vengeance (vv. 17–18), abusive sexual practices (vv. 20–22, 29), or disrespect for elders or aliens (vv. 32–33). The integrity of the human body must not be violated by anything one consumes internally (v. 26) or “wears” externally (the cutting of hair, lacerations, or other marks; vv. 27–28). The closing words of the chiasm in v. 30, which rhetorically link each of the above commandments with reverence for God’s sanctuary, provide a further clue to the distinctiveness of this presentation. The sanctuary in which holiness must be exemplified is not defined only by the physical space of a tent or a temple; the sanctuary that would mirror God’s holiness must extend to all aspects of everyday life (cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, p. 1598).
In a similar manner, the commandment in 19:3b to keep the Sabbath is followed in vv. 4–8 (see also v. 31) with commandments that continue its focus on honoring the things of God. To keep the Sabbath means to abstain from all forms of idolatry, whether worshiping gods manufactured by hand (v. 4) or seeking revelation from gods associated with the spirits of the dead (v. 31). It also means to pay heed to the sacrificial regulations concerning the well-being offering (vv. 5–8). Of all the sacrifices to God, this one is perhaps most vulnerable to abuse, because its ritual procedure permits offerings designated as holy to God to be shared by laypersons. To underscore the instructions already provided (see 3:1–17; 7:11–21), the Holiness Code reiterates the stipulation that donors must eat their portion of the sacrifice within two days; after that, the portion becomes unclean. In Exodus, the Fourth Commandment, to keep the Sabbath holy, is the bridge between the commandments to love God exclusively (Commandments One through Three; Exod. 20:3–7) and the commandments to live with one another in ways that concretize that commitment in ethical behavior (Commandments Five through Ten; Exod. 20:12–17; see further Balentine, pp. 121–36). In Leviticus 19, loving God absolutely is the end product of the catalytic requirement to love each other with the same devotion that joins a mother and father.
A second structural marker in Leviticus 19 is the repetition of the formulaic phrase “I am YHWH (the Lord)/I am YHWH (the Lord) your God” (see Figure 4). With its clear parallels to the preamble to the Decalogue (Exod. 20:2; Deut. 5:6), this phrase suggests that, from the Priestly perspective, the summons to holiness originates in the moral authority of the God who covenanted with Israel at Sinai. The sixteen occurrences of this phrase in Leviticus 19, coupled with additional occurrences in chapters 18 and 20, emphasize that obedience to God’s commands must include more than religious devotion; it requires that affirmation be matched by action, that words of commitment to God in heaven be bodied forth on earth in deeds of justice and righteousness.
It is all the more instructive, therefore, to note that embedded in these commands to be holy is the clarion charge to model obedience to God through love for others: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord” (19:18). Although this verse is typically isolated from its context, its full force can be discerned only when it is read in conjunction with v. 17. Together, these verses comprise a single unit with parallel prohibitions, instructions, and rationales. Milgrom clearly lays out the parallels as follows (Leviticus 17–22, p. 1646; cf. Levine, pp. 129–30):
Lev. 19:17
Lev. 19:18
Prohibition
You shall not hate in your
You shall not take vengeance
heart anyone of your
or bear a grudge against
kin;
any of your people,
Instruction
you shall reprove your
but you shall love your
neighbor,
neighbor as yourself:
Rationale
or you will incur guilt
I am YHWH
yourself
Hating someone in one’s heart, where emotions may fester into strategized deeds of angry retribution, is forbidden by God. According to the biblical witness, the responsibility for vengeance resides with God alone (Jer. 15:15; Nah. 1:2; Ps. 94:1), unless God explicitly delegates the task to human beings (Num. 31:2–3; Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, p. 1652). Nursing a grudge against someone permits anger to seethe until it explodes in uncontrollable rage. Vengeance and rage wound the human spirit and fray the fabric of society. The sin (19:17; nrsv: “guilt”) that results when people yield to these temptations infects not only those who are attacked; it extends with equally negative results to those who execute their destruction in the name of punishment.
The solution proposed is twofold. First, one should reprove openly those who have erred, which in this context implies seeking legal relief from the court, where justice is shaped by clear statutes and reasoned arguments. Second, one should love one’s neighbor as oneself. The meaning of this latter charge, enshrined in public consciousness since the eighteenth century as the motivation behind the Golden Rule, rests on three discernments: (1) The word love implies both attitude and act; one must not only feel love but also act in ways that translate love into concrete deeds. Just as one expresses love for God through active obedience to God’s commandments, so one must demonstrate love for others by reaching out to them with tangible deeds of compassion and concern. It is not without reason, therefore, that when instructing the disciples on the matter of judging others, Jesus frames his admonition positively: “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matt. 7:12; Luke 6:31). (2) The word neighbor refers to a wide range of persons with whom Israel would have had relationships. The list of ethical admonitions in Lev. 19:9–18 uses no fewer than eight words to describe the persons Israel is obligated to care for: “poor” (v. 10), “alien” (v. 10), “neighbor” (v. 13), “laborer” (v. 13), the “deaf” (v. 14), the “blind” (v. 14), “poor” (v. 15), “fellow citizen” (vv. 15, 17; nrsv: “neighbor/people”). The inclusiveness of this list indicates that the “neighbor” is not limited to the peer with whom one shares a certain social status. It is also the disadvantaged person shunted to the edges of society, especially those persons the community may be tempted to ignore, perhaps even abuse, for economic, political, or physical reasons (see further Balentine, pp. 169–71). (3) The phrase “as yourself” is open to different interpretations, perhaps the most illuminating of which can be found in a rabbinic discourse cited by Milgrom. In response to Rabbi Akiba’s claim that Lev. 19:18 constitutes the fundamental law in the Torah, Ben Azzai says, “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God (Gen. 5:1), so that you should not say: ‘Since I despise myself, let my fellow be despised with me; since I am cursed, let my fellow be cursed with me” ’ (Sipra Qedoshim 4:12; cited in Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, p. 1656). Ben Azzai’s comment turns on the recognition of a creational foundation for loving one’s neighbor as oneself. Because every human being bears “the likeness of God,” the failure to love others is equivalent to saying that neither they nor we have value in the eyes of God. It may be likened to saying that in the decision to invest human beings with the divine image, God has made a terrible mistake.
If the summons to holiness in 19:2 constitutes the keynote message of Leviticus, the command to love and not hate each other in 19:17–18 brings us to the epicenter of the book. The abiding claim of this charge, which Jesus elevates as the second of the two greatest commandments (Matt. 22:39–40; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27), serves notice that when God says, “I am,” what necessarily follows in the divine vocabulary are the words “You shall be.” As the author of James puts it, after having appealed to the command in Lev. 19:18 (James 2:8): “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?” (2:14; cf. 1 John 3:11–18).
Even so, the summons to aspire to God’s holiness, and especially the summons to love as God loves, is fraught with difficulties. Holiness is constantly under assault by defilement that assumes seemingly endless disguises; the command to love one’s neighbor, not to mention one’s enemies, seems increasingly banal and vacant. As I write these words, the events of September 11, 2001, hang heavy in the air. Although it is always risky to link theological interpretation to any single contemporary event, it is a reasonable assumption that the bombings of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., have fundamentally changed the perspective of virtually every human being on the globe. As far as the eye can see, the impulse that will drive our politics, and perhaps our religion, for the foreseeable future is the yearning for revenge, coded as “justice,” against those who perpetrated such unconscionable acts of mass murder. In such a climate, the community of faith is hard pressed to know what to make of an ancient biblical admonition not to “take vengeance or bear a grudge.” In the wake of the deaths of thousands of innocent people, how can any community that yearns for and deserves justice be obedient to the command to love, not hate, its enemies? Easy answers will not suffice for vexed and complicated issues. What is required is a full immersion in the texts that shape our faith commitments and in the world that defines the arena in which we must enact them. As the community of faith ponders the stirrings for retribution, whatever the catalyst may be, the words of W. H. Auden provide an important touchstone for reflection on the command to “love your neighbor as yourself”: “Violence is never just, though Justice may sometimes require it: tyrants are persons to whom requisite evil is fun” (Auden, p. 859).
To summarize, Leviticus 18–20 is a literary and theological unit composed of a frame and a center. The frame, chapters 18 and 20, insists that the journey toward holiness goes through the ethics of human relationships. The center, Leviticus 19, insists that how humans relate to one another is the measure of their fidelity to God. Neither the frame nor the center can stand alone without the meaning of the whole being diminished. Without the frame, the summons to holiness too easily slides into theological abstraction, “faith without works” as James puts it. Without the center, the summons to ethical relationships in the human community is cut loose from the anchor that provides its moral authority. “Let us love one another,” the author of 1 John says, “because love is from God” (4:7). This tensive connection between the frame and the center recalls the elegiac concern of William Butler Yeats: if “the centre cannot hold,” then “things fall apart” (“The Second Coming,” Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats, ed. R. J. Finneran, pp. 184–87).
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Hi Rosie,
Thanks for the references. I'm still not very satisfied with the scant treatment (at best) of the topic from these commentaries. Maybe someday I shall have to write my own.
Thanks also for your study regarding "cut off."
Rosie Perera said:Also, as to whether Lev 18 and 20 were laws that should have been obvious to the nations outside of Israel, I don't think that's evident from the text: Lev 18:3 says "You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you." Lev 18:29 says "do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came" and Lev 20:22 says "You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them."
In other words, these illicit sexual relations were practiced by the other nations. Israel was to be different.
I think that was my point. The nations practiced things like child sacrifice, homosexual relations, and sex during menstruation, and God says he abhorred those nations and is driving them out of the land because of that. It seems to me that these laws are "purity laws" in that the land became defiled (Lev 18:25), but they are not part of the "purity laws" given to Israel.
You quoted Ross saying "Leviticus 15:24 was concerned with things that rendered a person ceremonially unclean; here the concern is deliberate violations of God’s laws that eventually lead to divine judgment (see 20:18). If people willfully chose to act in complete disregard of the holiness of God and ceremonial rites, it was no longer simply a matter of contamination but of rebellion against God."
But for Ross to ground the foundation of Lev 20:18 in terms of the holiness laws in Leviticus 15 seems off-base, since the other nations weren't given God's laws, and yet they were held guilty before them. (As far as I know, there are no other "holiness laws" that other nations are charged with violating, including the Sabbath.) It seems to me that Lev 18 and 20 fall under general revelation (Rom 1:18ff). Yes, God can and does show mercy to those who violate his laws, but that doesn't make those violations no longer violations.
I guess this is my major "issue," and one that I haven't found any theology book or Leviticus commentary that addresses. If the nations without God's law were held guilty for violating Lev 18 and 20, why would they not be moral laws that apply today?
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You make some good points, and even some of the quotes I found in my library leaned towards treating these entire chapters as moral laws.
elnwood said:If the nations without God's law were held guilty for violating Lev 18 and 20, why would they not be moral laws that apply today?
Sex with a relative who is not your spouse has moral implications: it disrupts relationships and hurts someone emotionally.
Sex with a woman who is menstruating can also have moral implications -- she doesn't feel like it, so the man shouldn't force himself on her.
I still think we get into more problems than its worth noawadays if we try to run our lives by following the Old Testament law. That doesn't mean we should lead lives of intentional licentiousness, but we should be guided by the Holy Spirit in our hearts to do what is right, not by avoiding the defilement that the nations around Israel were involved with. The whole point Jesus made about the law is that it said one thing, but he is requiring a higher standard. And also Paul said the law was given that we might see our need for Christ. It's no longer about following it to be holy.
So I think having hang-ups about whether menstruating women can/should/must have sex or whether their husbands can take liberties with them during those days or not is missing the boat entirely. It just doesn't matter to Christian piety. What matters is honoring one's spouse and loving him or her as you love yourself. Those are New Testament principles that trump laws about purity or holiness or whatever you think Lev 18 and 20 are about. It may so happen that obeying the New Testament principles will end up being synonymous with obeying Lev 18 and 20. In fact in every one of these instances (including about sex during menstruation) it will probably line up exactly. But if a woman and man both feel "in the mood" when she is obviously bleeding, so what. God is not going to cast them out of his Kingdom for it.
Here's another commentary excerpt: Anchor Yale Bible Commentary (by Jacob Milgrom). It's pretty scholarly and follows the source critical understanding of the Pentateuch. Wherever it mentions P it's talking about the Priestly source, and H means the Holiness code.
"In the NOTE on 15:24, I suggested that the reason P declares the man impure for seven days if he engages in sex with a menstruant, but impure for only one day in all other sexual liaisons (15:18), is that loss of life is symbolically oozing out of both partners. Or, sex during this period cannot lead to conception (Eilberg-Schwartz 1990: 182–85; Biale 1992:28:31). It does not, however, explain why H regards the copulative act as a capital crime (by the divine court) warranting kārēt. The answer may lie in the designation of the menstruant as dāwâ ‘infirm’ (20:18; cf. Lam 1:13; 5:17) and her condition as niddat dĕwōtāh ‘her menstrual infirmity’ (12:2). That is, by imposing such a drastic penalty, H is creating a deterrent that will protect the woman from unwanted advances by her husband during her period of weakness (R. Gane). This explanation would therefore coincide with the overall rationale behind the entire list of forbidden sexual unions—to prevent the family head (the addressee) and other dominant males from taking advantage of the woman. Thus sex during her physical infirmity (menstruation) is a symbol of sex during her figurative infirmity, if widowed or divorced and a vulnerable prey to the males in her household (see NOTE on 18:7 [Ziskind 1988]).
"It might be thought that the reason that P (15:24) prescribes seven days of impurity, whereas H (20:18) prescribes kārēt, is that P deals with inadvertences and H deals with advertences (R. Gane). It is more likely, however, following Abravanel (see NOTE on 15:24), that P is concerned with the nature of the generated impurity, not with its penalties. Indeed, certain acts described in chap. 15 are clearly deliberate (e.g., sex! v. 18). Indeed, intention plays no part whatsoever in chap. 15; whether advertent or inadvertent, they generate impurity. Chap. 20, however, focusing solely on sexual intercourse, is limited to advertences."
It does suggest, as you do, that there might be reason to distinguish between what acts are inadvertent and what are intentional.
Here's another excerpt you might find interesting, from the JPS Guide to Jewish Traditions:
Niddah (Menstruating Woman; נִדָּה)
Judaism prohibits contact with a menstruating woman. In Hebrew, she is termed a “niddah,” a word meaning “separated” or “excluded.” The complex laws that define the status of a niddah are based on the two different contexts in which the menstruating woman appears in biblical law: the sexual prohibitions (Lev. 18:19) and the laws of purity and impurity (Lev. 15:19–33), which also include other causes of ritual contamination such as contact with a corpse, tzara’at (a skin disease), and seminal discharge. Initially designed to exclude ritually impure persons from the Temple, laws pertaining to ritual purity were no longer necessary after its destruction; only the sexual prohibitions related to the niddah remained relevant.
According to the Bible, both men and women have two kinds of discharges that cause ritual impurity: a normal discharge, and an abnormal one that results in a longer period of impurity. For a man, the normal discharge is the emission of semen, which renders him ritually impure “until evening” (Lev. 15:16–18). For a woman, the normal discharge is the monthly flow of blood. Because the normal menstrual period was regarded as lasting seven days, a woman was deemed ritually impure for one week from the time blood first appeared (Lev. 15:19). After this time, she bathed herself, washed her clothes, and regained her ritual purity. Prolonged bleeding resulted in a woman becoming a zavah (one who has a discharge), who was unclean until her discharge of blood ceased. Unlike the menstruating woman, the zavah had to wait a further seven “clean” days from the day her bleeding stopped to regain her state of ritual purity, after offering “two turtledoves or two pigeons” as a sacrifice (Lev. 15:25–30).
Although the distinction between niddah and zavah was eliminated as a practical issue during the talmudic period, the niddah was subjected to more stringent regulations. Her period of impurity was extended from the biblical maximum of seven days to up to 14 days—as many as seven days of menstrual flow followed by a mandatory period of seven “white days” (free of bleeding). Therefore, during the time of her menstrual bleeding and for a full week thereafter, a woman was prohibited from having sexual relations with her husband.
In ancient Israel, a menstruating woman was excluded from her home and forced to stay in a special residence known as “a house for uncleanness” (Nid. 7:4). Men did not eat with a menstruating woman, and she did not attend to her household duties. This custom continued even after the destruction of the Second Temple, because of the rabbinic decision to prepare and eat ordinary meals according to the levitical rules originally required for sacred food. The situation was substantially different in Babylonia, where the menstruating woman attended to almost all the needs of her household except for “filling his [her husband’s] cup [of wine]; making ready his bed; and washing his face, hands, and feet” (Ket. 61a), acts that were deemed to be so provocative that they could lead to forbidden intimacy between them. Even these restrictions were eliminated by some creative reasoning. For example, one sage allowed a menstruating wife to prepare her husband’s bed as long as he was not there at the time. To indicate that things were not “normal,” the wives of other Rabbis developed ways of filling their husbands’ cups in an unusual way (“with her left hand”), or by placing them in an unusual spot (on the edge of a wine cask, at the head-side of his couch, or on his footstool) (Ket. 61a).
A major talmudic issue was whether a menstruating woman could use makeup and wear jewelry and colorful clothes (Shab. 64b). This reflects an inherent conflict between eliminating anything that might result in sexual arousal during the niddah period and the need to prevent any long-term harm to the marital relationship due to the enforced period of separation. The strict approach of the early sages was overturned by the more permissive statement of Rabbi Akiva: “If so, you make her repulsive to her husband, with the result that he will divorce her.” Maimonides went even further, claiming that it is a halakhic obligation for a woman to make an effort to dress attractively and adorn herself during her period of separation from her husband.
Rashi noted that some of the biblical requirements of separation were still observed in his day, not because of any concern for impurity but simply to prevent any contact between husband and wife. This motivation was evident from the fact that a stranger was permitted to transfer objects between them. If the underlying issue were ritual purity, the stranger would be just as at risk as the husband by contact with the niddah. The halakhah does not forbid the niddah from participation in public life and ritual. Nevertheless, custom dictated that her activities be substantially restricted, especially those related to public worship and the synagogue (because of its symbolic identity with the Temple).
The consequences of a man who has intercourse with a niddah are strikingly different in the two biblical passages dealing with the issue. In one, he merely contracts the same ritual impurity that affects the menstruating woman and is unclean for seven days (Lev. 15:24). This state of impurity in and of itself was no transgression, as long as the man did not try to approach the Temple in such a condition. However, in the other biblical section, intercourse with a niddah is an unequivocal taboo that is listed among the sexual transgressions and is punishable by karet (premature death) (Lev. 20:18). The traditional reason for this difference is that the former refers to accidental intercourse, whereas the latter applies to intentional relations. Some scholars suggest a historical explanation for the discrepancy, based on one text preceding the other. According to this view, including intercourse with a niddah among the sexual transgressions may have been a reaction to the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. This catastrophic event effectively eliminated the need for preserving ritual impurity, and thus the laws of niddah were transformed into a mechanism for ensuring the continuity of the Jewish family.
Current StatusThe laws of sexual separation are known as taharat ha-mishpachah (purity of the family). Although, as noted above, the Bible forbids only intercourse during a woman’s menstrual period, subsequent rabbinic rulings have also precluded any physical contact that could conceivably be sexually stimulating. This includes kissing, hugging, or otherwise touching one’s spouse during the forbidden days, during which husband and wife sleep in separate beds. Rather than handing something directly to their wife, some Orthodox men place the object on a table for her to pick up. The rule forbidding touching a niddah has led many Orthodox men to protect the privacy and modesty of their wives by never touching them in public (so no one knows whether or not they are in a state of niddah at the time). Similarly, they do not shake hands with any woman (not knowing whether or not she is a niddah). For the same reason, Orthodox men and women generally do not dance together in public; when doing so, they grasp a handkerchief between them rather than holding hands.
On the evening of the completion of the 12th day—assuming there has been no bleeding during any of the seven days following the five days of menstrual flow, which would require the count of seven days to begin again from that time—the woman immerses herself in the mikveh (see p. 555) as an act of symbolic ritual purification. Only then can marital relations be resumed.
Rabbi Meir considered the period of separation to be of great benefit to the conjugal relations between man and wife. “Being in constant contact with his wife, [a husband might] develop a loathing towards her. The Torah, therefore, ordained that she be unclean for seven days in order that she shall be beloved by her husband as at the time of her first entry into the bridal chamber” (Nid. 31b). Indeed, many couples renew their sexual relationship each month with an eagerness and passion that is reminiscent of their honeymoon. In addition, the resumption of sexual relations between husband and wife generally occurs near the time when she is most fertile, thus increasing the chance of her becoming pregnant and ensuring the continuity of the Jewish people.
Ronald L. Eisenberg, The JPS Guide to Jewish Traditions, 1st ed. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2004), 557–561.
You might want to get hold of Sex for Christians: The Limits and Liberties of Sexual Living by Lewis Smedes. (Not available in Logos.) I'm not going to quote from it here, because it gets a bit too explicit for a public forum. But it does address this question.
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*echoing*
"...there's no such thing as moral law..."
"...there's no such thing as ceremonial law..."
"...there's just law..."
Today: Ezek. 22:23, 24, 25, 26; Millennial Temple: Ezek. 44:23, 24
ASUS ProArt x570s Creator, AMD R9 5950x, HyperX 64gb 3600 RAM, ASUS Strix RTX 2080 ti
"The Unbelievable Work...believe it or not." Little children...Biblical prophecy is not Christianity's friend.
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Rosie, thanks for the quotes. You may be in technical breach of overquoting copyrighted works though. Perhaps the citations would be enough to make a point.
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Lee said:
Rosie, thanks for the quotes. You may be in technical breach of overquoting copyrighted works though. Perhaps the citations would be enough to make a point.
I think as long as you give a citation you're allowed to quote a certain amount for educational or review purposes, though it's much more limited if it's in a work sold for profit. I don't know what the percentage of the work is when it's for educational use (it is up to the courts really), but I don't think I'm in danger of getting taken to court so it's probably a moot point. I won't do any more, though. I think this discussion has gone far enough, and I'm tired of it anyway, and I don't think I'm helping elnwood anymore anyway, who seems to have already drawn (his or her?) own conclusions. I would want to encourage people who are interested to buy these works instead of just reading a few excerpts from them.
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[H]
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Rosie Perera said:
I would want to encourage people who are interested to buy these works instead of just reading a few excerpts from them.
Could you buy them for me for my bday - it's the end of this month...that'd be awesome, thanks! (Just kidding)
Blessings!
DAL
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elnwood said:
Alabama24 and TCBlack, care to make some suggestions for theology books? I've had about as much success finding this topic in theology books as I've had in Leviticus commentaries
My suggestion was not to look for the topic at hand, but the principle of law and the Christian. This was the core of my suggestion to look into Systematics and other theologies. This was also the core of my exhortation to look at Galatians as a holistic approach to law and the Christian.
I am currently at a conference, and will attempt to locate some good sources for you, but in the meantime - may I humbly encourage us to stay on topic of RESOURCE SUGGESTIONS. We have once again waded into theological debate.
We all love it, but there are other forums for it.
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 0 -
TCBlack said:
may I humbly encourage us to stay on topic of RESOURCE SUGGESTIONS.
Searching a Theology collection for Leviticus chapters 18 or 20 finds a number of resources:
Similar search in a collection of Counseling and Psychology resources:
finds more to consider, including => logosres:divremarr;ref=Page.p_201 and a resource to read => logosres:wbsabeaman;ref=Page.p_8
Keep Smiling [:)]
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What theory is that ? ))) Just curious!
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DAL said:Hented40 said:
What theory is that ? ))) Just curious!
I hope you realize this is a 4 year old thread.
DAL
It is four years old but actually is still a good example of how to think through an issue like this one. The actual topic of this thread may not be relevant to everyone, but just substitute it with another issue from Leviticus.and look at the frameworks various contributors suggested for dealing with the question.
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It might be a spammer for all we know. Only one post seems very suspicious like the other guy asking fir a workbook.
DAL
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I just read this book. Fantastic.
https://www.logos.com/product/80732/paul-and-the-law-keeping-the-commandments-of-god
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I know what you mean, there have been a few 'interesting' posts recently.
DAL said:It might be a spammer for all we know. Only one post seems very suspicious like the other guy asking fir a workbook.
DAL
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thanks for this exposition
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