Leviticus 19-20 Miscellaneous Rules and Punishments

 Leviticus 19 Miscellaneous Rules for Life 

This chapter recaps six of the Ten Commandments with implications of them for specific situations. 

• Leviticus 19:3 Honor your father and mother. (Exodus 20:12) Stand up in the presence of the elderly. (19:32)
• Leviticus 19:3 Observe the Lord’s Sabbaths. (Exodus 20:8-11) When you take possession of the land, allow it to lie fallow for three years, offer the harvest of the fourth year to the Lord. Then in the fifth year you can eat its fruit. (19:23-25)
• Leviticus 19:4 Do not worship idols or metal gods. (Exodus 20:4-5) Do not practice divination or put cuts or tattoos on your body or cut your hair. Do not practice ritual religious prostitution. Do not consult mediums. (19:26-29, 31)
• Leviticus 19:11 Do not steal. (Exodus 20:15) Do not defraud your neighbor. Do not withhold pay for a laborer overnight. (19:11) Do not rob your neighbor. (19:13) Do not use dishonest measures of weight, volume, or size. (19:35-36)
• Leviticus 19:11 Do not lie. (Exodus 20:16) Do not deceive. Do not swear falsely. (19:12) Do not spread slander. (19:16)
• Leviticus 19:16 Do not endanger your neighbor’s life. (Exodus 20:13)

Beyond the Ten Commandments, there are other rules for society that are loosely related to the idea of a society that observes the overarching value articulated in Leviticus 19:18:  Love your neighbor as yourself.

Leviticus 19:1-2 We are to be holy, like YHWH. This is not just about rituals, it is about how we behave in the context of community. The assembly of Israel, the church we are involved in.

Leviticus 19:5-8 While not eating food that has spoiled has clear health implications, when Lazarus had been in the grave for three or four days before Jesus arrived, his sisters knew his body would have started to decay, and would stink. (John 11:39) Nevertheless Jesus restored him to life. When Jesus died, He rose after three days (Luke 24:46). God created decay as a normal mechanism for recycling dead bodies as compost, but this is not the way eternity works. Even in hell, people do not cease to exist. (Mark 9:43-48)

Leviticus 19:9-10 As provision for the destitute, Israelites were required to leave the edges of grain fields unharvested and to not glean every last grape from the vineyard. This provision was not intended to encourage laziness or dependence, because the poor would still have to go and hand-pick these gleanings, likely still a small amount of food, but at least they wouldn’t starve if they put out that effort. Ruth was both poor and a foreigner. (Ruth 2:3) 

Leviticus 19:14-18 A number of specific and general precepts for a just society. These include dealing with aliens, the poor, the disabled, and even our enemies.

• Don’t mock the disabled. I think we try to follow this principle, although every generation needs to be taught it anew. 
• Don’t pervert justice to favor either the powerful or the poor. This is hard because we all have bias based on experience. Regardless of individuals’ behavior, don’t base judgments on class distinctions. 
• Don’t spread slander (implicitly gossip). 
• Don’t do something, or leave some set of conditions that endanger our neighbor’s life. There are some drivers in today’s traffic who brazenly defy this command. Sometimes they reap accordingly. Don’t take that risk. 
• Don’t hate your neighbor by failing to warn them. If they do something wrong, either practically or morally, we should honestly point it out to them, so that we don’t share in their guilt. But on the highway, be very cautious about this. They might be armed with a car.
• Don’t seek revenge. (Matthew 5:38-42)
• Love your neighbor. Jesus quoted this as the second great commandment. (Mark 12:31). But He went further to command us to love our enemies, whether neighbors or not was not. (Matthew 5:43-47) This principle is the foundation for a just society, indeed for the Kingdom of God, who loves His enemies. Is it impractical? In earthly terms, it makes no sense, because it seems to contravene other commands such as justice and holiness. But here we are getting just a hint of how eternity operates, to the extent we can follow all of God’s commands at the same time. Eternal reality is transcendent. We won’t fully get it until we are there. But we can try to observe the golden rule. (Matthew 7:12)

Leviticus 19:19 This is a bit of a mystery. I know of no practical reason to avoid these kinds of mixing. I do not know of any spiritual application. Perhaps the creation story in which God said that each species should multiply after its kind gives a hint, but it is hard to see how this principle extends to clothing. (Genesis 1:24-25)

Leviticus 19:20-22 Dealing with this situation seems like a compromise. It seems tantamount to giving an out for several heinous behaviors. Having sexual relations with a female slave (likely involuntary even if not forced) who is engaged to another man, is not treated as adultery because she has not yet been freed. The punishment is the normal guilt offering. 

Leviticus 19:33-34 The command to treat immigrants as native-born echoes 19:18 with an additional caveat. If your neighbor is foreign-born, they are still God’s children, even gentiles. This seems to fly in the face of the command to exterminate certain tribes when they entered the promised land. But the difference is that when the Jews settled in Canaan, the natives already there weren’t foreign born. They, the Israelites, were the ones born elsewhere (in Egypt, in the desert). The tribes identified for extinction were specifically called out elsewhere, along with the reason for showing no mercy. (Deuteronomy 7:1-5)

In today’s world, we have laws seeking to control and limit immigration, regardless of how ineffective they may be. This passage does not speak to the issue of legal vs. undocumented immigrants. In that day, no such framework existed. The decision on how to treat aliens leads to behaviors, and is born of the essence of agape, or its absence.

Leviticus 19:37 The admonition to keep all of these commands is based on the overarching reality that His name means “I am that I am”. He is the non-contingent creator of all that we know in this universe. Take Him seriously.

Leviticus 20 Appropriate punishments

Leviticus 20 designates punishments for violating the rules given previously. The rules haven’t changed, this just gives the consequences of breaking them. A combination of repetition with motivation for observing them.

• Leviticus 20:1-5 Sacrificing children to Moloch. (18:21) Stone him to death. Cut off his family.
• Leviticus 20:6 Following mediums and spiritists. (19:31) Excommunication.
• Leviticus 20:7-8 Exhortation to follow His decrees.
• Leviticus 20:9 Cursing father or mother. (19:3; Exodus 20:12) Death.
• Leviticus 20:10 Committing adultery. (18:20; Exodus 20:14) Death.
• Leviticus 20:11 Having sex with father’s wife. (18:8) Death.
• Leviticus 20:12 Having sex with daughter-in-law. (18:15) Death.
• Leviticus 20:13 Homosexuality. (18:22) Death.
• Leviticus 20:14 Marrying both a woman and her mother. (18:17) Death.
• Leviticus 20:15-16 Bestiality. (18:23) Death. Kill the animal also. 
• Leviticus 20:17 Marrying sister or half-sister. (18:9) Excommunication.
• Leviticus 20:18 Having sex during a woman’s period. (18:19) Excommunication.
• Leviticus 20:19-20 Having sex with an aunt. (18:12-13) Childlessness.
• Leviticus 20:21 Marrying his sister-in-law. (18:16) Childlessness.

Leviticus 20:22-24 The Lord says to follow all these decrees and laws in order to inherit the land, and do not do what the previous occupants did. Their punishment is exile. If you do what they did, that will be your punishment as well. (18:28)

Leviticus 20:25-26 Harking back to Leviticus 17, the Lord commands a distinction between clean and unclean animals, birds, and creeping things, because He is holy and He has chosen Israel as His.

Leviticus 20:27 Any medium or spiritist is to be put to death. Previously He had prescribed excommunication for anyone turning to them. (20:6) He now commands the death penalty to those who practice it.