Leviticus 18

Canaan was roughly the land today known as Israel and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories.

God begins reminding the Israelites that he’s in charge. It sounds a little like a parent telling a child, “You’ll do as I say because I’m your mother and I said so.” God invokes his authority as the Final Word.

It would also set the family up for never-ending rivalry between the two sisters and their children. Case in point: the story of Jacob, married to sisters Leah and Rachel (Genesis 29—30).

This is a bit like a sexually transmitted spiritual disease. Ritual uncleanness is highly contagious. Touch an unclean person and you’re suddenly unclean, too. That means anything you touch becomes unclean, too, and has to go through cleansing rituals. An unclean person is unfit to worship in the tent worship center. To cleanse themselves, ritually unclean people had to wash their clothes and wait until evening (Leviticus 11:28).

Scholars debate who or what Molech was and whether children were literally sacrificed or perhaps figuratively presented to Molech and dedicated to him. Many scholars say Molech was a god, because of the way Bible writers describe people prostituting themselves to Molech (Leviticus 20:5). Most scholars seem to agree that some people of Israel “ built places to worship Baal so they could burn their sons and daughters as sacrifices to Molech” (Jeremiah 32:35 New Century Version). Scholars, however, question why this note got added to a chapter about sex sins. Theories: Sex sins and killing your own children each have the power to destroy a family. Both sins are rotten to the core and despicable. Molech’s worship may have focused on family, such as communicating with the dead and worshiping the peoples’ ancestors.

The original Hebrew term is tôʽēbâ. It has many meanings. None of them good: detestable, repulsive, loathsome, abominable. Yet for many people of faith today, the very idea of shaming homosexuals is as repulsive as reading Paul telling runaway slaves to go back to their masters. Among the arguments: the ancients had no idea that homosexuality was not a matter of choice, but was the way God created some individuals. Neither did Apostle Paul, who called homosexuality “unnatural” and “shameful” (Romans 1:26-27). Christians are so divided over how to understand what the Bible says about homosexuality that church denominations have split over this very topic. Some say they believe Paul and Moses were speaking for God. Other Christians say they doubt that God would want to be blamed for what we’re reading into our Bibles today, and that the ancient writers were expressing their culture’s opinion rather than revealing something God told them. Some Christians argue that Jesus never even addressed the topic. He told us to love one another. He didn’t tell us who to fall in love with. Cultures have done that for us throughout the centuries: Don’t marry a white with a black. Don’t marry an upper crust with a crumb. Don’t marry a Baptist to anyone but a Baptist.

More literally, the person “should be removed from the community” or “cut off.” This is a consequence repeated throughout these early books of the Bible. It’s unclear how and by whom the offenders were removed. Perhaps they could no longer worship at the tent worship center, or they lost their rights as citizens of this emerging nation that Moses seemed to be organizing. Maybe they were executed. Or perhaps the community let God deal with the person. Scholars seem uncertain about what happened.