Month: February 2026

Moral Purity (Lev. 18-20)

This section (Lev. 18–20) begins with the declaration at the beginning of a set of legal injunctions. It’s as if God is saying, “By the authority vested in me as your sovereign, you shall or shall not.” What sets this apart is the comparison between Egypt and Canaan. How they live, you are not to live, so we can suppose that what follows is an indictment of those nations. We know that sibling marriages occurred in the royal houses of Egypt. As to the rest, it may hinge on the polytheistic nature of the areas that led to such license. God emphasizes that these are their “ordinances,” and at the end of the chapter, he enjoins them to follow his instead. The term translated “ordinances” is the same word translated as “statutes” in verse five. Statutes may be a better translation of the Hebrew term because its primary sense is “things inscribed.” Beginning in verse six, “None of you” should be translated as “no man” because that’s the verbiage, and it can be inferred that the man takes the initiative in such acts. The only exception here is in verse twenty-three, where the woman engages in bestiality.  

Noted among the various prohibited relations is the fact that many patriarchs did what the law says not to do. Jacob married two sisters; Abraham says Sarah is a sister (albeit half), and David’s daughter Tamar thinks her father can arrange a marriage with her brother, Amnon. Of course, the patriarchs can’t be held to the standard since it didn’t exist when they were alive; David lived afterwards. The Law, however, now rectifies that. 

Sandwiched between chapters eighteen and twenty, chapter nineteen seems out of place. However, the understanding is that what God asks of them is juxtaposed with the nations of Egypt and Canaan. Whereas the other two chapters appear to revolve around perverse negatives, chapter nineteen presents positives for a person to do to remain pleasing to God. Verse three begins a paraphrase of the Ten Commandments. Since they would have been an agricultural economy, the edges of their fields and what they dropped would have been like a tax for the poor. We see this vividly exercised in the book of Ruth. The same verbiage is used in verse twenty-seven. The likely prohibition there concerns pagan funerary customs. 

There are a few key words throughout these chapters worth noting. One is “abomination,” and it’s attributed to male homosexual relations (Lev. 18:22; 20:13). This term appears several times throughout Lev. 18:26–30. This causes Israel to be impure and the land nauseous. By not doing this, Israel will distinguish itself from the inhabitants of the land. This term is elsewhere attributed to idolatry (Deut. 12:31; 13:15), false weights (Deut. 25:13–16), transvestism (Deut. 22:5), and remarrying a divorced wife (Deut. 24:4). 

Another term we see is “wickedness.” It’s used in relations with a woman and her daughter or granddaughter (Lev. 18:17; 20:14). It’s also employed in one prostituting her own daughter (Lev. 19:29). What’s somewhat surprising is that a word meaning “kindness” is used as a homonym. It’s translated as “wicked thing” in Lev. 20:17, but it carries the meaning of “disgrace” or “shame” (cf. Prov. 25:9–10). A final term is “perversion” (Lev. 18:23). Its root means “to mix,” so here it’s the act of interspecies mating (Lev. 20:12). Closing the section is another reference, as it began: don’t do as the nations do (Lev. 20:23–25). This uses language similar to that in chapter 11 regarding pure and impure animals. 

Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement; Lev. 16-17)

The telling of the Day of Atonement begins with the reminder of Aaron’s sons’ deaths. Aaron is alert to the mortal danger that he and those who succeed him could face when they enter the Holy of Holies on this day. “When they come forward” (16:1) is a verb regularly used regarding appearing before the divine presence. Whenever unsanctioned, you’ll usually see a different verb that’s translated as “to encroach.” The cover of the ark in Hebrew is kaporet, and the term for atonement is closely related: kipur. There on the cover, blood is sprinkled and atonement made. In the Greek Old Testament, the word is “propitiation” in English. 

When we arrive at 16:8, there’s a term translated as “scapegoat.” In Hebrew, it’s a proper name: Azazel. The name could mean something like, “The rage of God,” or “God is fierce/strong.” In Mesopotamian and Phoenician sources, there’s a god named Azuz/Aziz. Since the gods are demons, this may refer to a demoted demon. The goat that goes to the Lord is sacrificed, while the scapegoat that goes to Azazel is sent to the wilderness, carrying the sins of Israel away from the Lord (16:21–22). The goat sent to Azazel isn’t sacrificed and is sent to the desert, a place connected with chaos and death. Therefore, Azazel receives the impurity as an elimination ritual. When the Old Testament was translated into Greek, the terms used for Azazel were rendered as “the one who eliminates” or “the one who wards off evil.” In Greek religion, these were divine agents responsible for warding off evil. Why is it translated as “scapegoat?” In Hebrew, ‘ez is how you translate “goat.” 

It’s not only the people that receive atonement, but secondarily, it’s the temple and altar (16:16, 18–20, 33). Considering the sacrifices throughout the year to atone for accumulated sins, pollution threatens the holiness of the tabernacle. This purgation scrubs the holy precinct clean, making it viable for another year’s worth of sacrifices. The people are told to afflict themselves (16:29–31). A rabbinical writing states, “On Yom Kippur one is prohibited from eating, drinking, bathing, anointing, wearing sandals, and engaging in sexual intercourse” (M. Yoma 8.1). Self-neglect is an expression of grief over sins and of repentance. 

While chapter 16 is addressed to Aaron, chapter 17 begins with an address to him, his sons, and Israel. From chapter 17 through chapter 26, a code of holiness appears for all of the people. This is seen in verse three when God instructs “every man of the house of Israel.” If a priest doesn’t sprinkle some of the blood on the altar, the man is regarded as guilty of murder (17:4). The offering of the blood to God is a manner of atonement, but not offering is murder. There’s another allusion to Azazel in 17:7. Our English versions read, “demons,” but it’s literally “goat-demons.” Some suggest that Azazel was half-man and half-goat based on this description. These may have been archaic gods of the wild that people believed in, but that God uses in his own way, because just as monogamy is a metaphor for monotheism, so playing the harlot is an act of promiscuity.