Leviticus 20

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:32:04utc

Purity from Gross Immorality 20:1-27

Several of the commandments in this chapter have been given in the preceding chapters 18 and 19. The theme of vs. 2 - 5 is the worship of Molech. Vs. 6 - 8 deal with contacts with evil spirits. Vs. 9 is the other side of the coin of 19:3 which deals with honoring father and mother. Vs. 10 - 24 cover a whole gamut of sexual sins, along the same line as ch. 18. Vs. 25 and 26 give a brief summery of ch. 11. Vs. 27 goes with vs. 6 - 8, with the difference that here the warning is given to the medium. The chapter hinges on the vs. 7 and 26: "Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the LORD your God," and "You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own." These verses give the reason for the prohibitions in this chapter in two declarations of God's holiness and its effect upon our lives.

Vs. 2 - 5 Molech

It is not clear whether Molech is a name or a concept of a certain kind of sacrifice, according to the Dutch Biblical Encyclopedia. Smith's Bible Dictionary calls Molech the God of the Ammonites. He is the god of fire, represented as a brass image with outstretched arms, hollow on the inside. Fire was kindled in its cavity and in some cases children were sacrificed to him as a burnt offering. In these verses God reacts against this kind of gruesome murder.

It is hard for us to understand how man can be so utterly blinded and debased that he would commit such horrible things. God calls it a defiling of His sanctuary and a profaning of His holy Name. It is obvious that man could never come to this point without direct demonic influence.

While I was in Bible school in Brussels, one of my teachers spoke about the enormous weight of consciousness of sin people must have felt in order to come to the place that they were actually willing to sacrifice their own children to expiate their guilt. I do not believe this. I rather think that these people had an animistic sense of wanting to defend themselves at all cost against evil powers, even if the price were the life of their own children. It is this summit of egoism, demonstrated by a willingness to give their own children against which God protests so vehemently. Conversely, parents should be willing to sacrifice their own lives for their children. When parents sacrifice their children for their own safety, the image of God in them is totally destroyed.

In spite of commandment, Israel gave herself completely to this terrible sin, especially during the reign of King Manasseh. We read about him, "[Manasseh] did evil in the eyes of the LORD, following the detestable practices of the nations the LORD had driven out before the Israelites. He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had demolished; he also erected altars to the Baals and made Asherah poles. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshipped them.... He sacrificed his sons in the fire in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, practiced sorcery, divination and witchcraft, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the LORD, provoking him to anger"[ 1 ] During his reign Israel outdid the Canaanites in practicing this sin. We read, "Manasseh led them astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the LORD had destroyed before the Israelites. The LORD said through his servants the prophets: 'Manasseh king of Judah has committed these detestable sins. He has done more evil than the Amorites who preceded him and has led Judah into sin with his idols.' "[ 2 ]

Several years ago Readers' Digest carried an article that, supposedly, illustrated the "Generation Gap." A young man became estranged from his parents. He came back home and turned against them. According to the father who wrote the article the boy came in with a weapon. The father shot and killed him before the boy attacked. He was cleared in court, because it was considered an act of self defense. The whole problem could, probably, traced back to the father's self defense throughout the years. Instead of sacrificing himself for his child, this father maintained himself at the price of his child. This is the attitude that makes Molech fat, then and now.

Vs. 6 is another warning against demonism which takes the form of the occult in this passage. Consulting the spirit of a departed loved one is an illusion. God has shut that door, and no contact is allowed. The devil speculates in the cruelest way with the feelings of man in the face of death of which he is the author. We can easily understand the feeling of bereavement and loss man feels at the death of a loved one. The desire to restore the broken contact is natural. But the Evil One manipulates these feelings and gives the grieving and naive person stone for bread. Other than the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there will be no restoration of relationships with departed ones. The only relationship we will establish if we try to contact the spirit of the dead is a relationship with evil spirits. This may, initially, be experienced as a soothing comfort, but the person who gets involved in this kind of contact gets more than he bargains for. Ultimately, he will be deceived.

What is true of spiritism goes for divination also. The devil himself does not know the future. What he says via a medium or soothsayer is hog wash. Man's desire to know the future betrays a lack of confidence in God. In cases in which God reveals to man what will take place, man's responsibility becomes the heavier. Jesus' foreknowledge of His suffering, death, and resurrection is a good example. Knowing our future is no blessing in itself. It is part of our living within the confinements of time and space that we only know the past and the present. It is a mystery to me that, at some instances, God breaks through this confinement and reveals His plans to man, in order to gain a strategic advantage over the enemy. Such knowledge, however, would be life endangering without fellowship with God. Man's desire to know the future is, of course, a desire for autonomy. In practice, however, it becomes a being dominated by evil spirits. Knowledge cannot be separated from fellowship. Divination means having contact with evil spirits. The fact that the Evil One who is not omniscient himself makes the prediction nonsense, and the man, who allows himself to be the channel becomes the victim. This goes against the holiness to which we have been called.

The call to holiness in vs. 7 and 8 gives the impression that the previous verses form a rounded off unit. The renewal of the call "Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the LORD your God. Keep my decrees and follow them. I am the LORD, who makes you holy," is more important than all the previous prohibitions. "Consecrate yourselves and be holy" or as the KJV puts it "Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy," points to an act of man. It is the essence of obedience to all these commandments. It implies the recognition that man soils himself if he meddles in things that are forbidden to him. This goes deeper than it seems. The difference between good and bad lies in the relationship between things and the character of God. That which is in accordance with God's character, is good; that which deviates from the character of God is bad. Since holiness is the essence of God's being, good is congruent with holy. We become holy by distancing ourselves from that which is incongruent with the nature of God's being and by doing things that are in accordance with His character. The commandment "be holy!" accentuates not only that there are some things we should do and others from which we should abstain, but also that the habit of doing good should become our second nature.

The key to the secret is found in vs. 8. "I am the LORD, who makes you holy." It is God Himself, who starts the process in us and brings it to completion. The preceding verses prove that holiness will not come about without our active participation; but we cannot produce it. If we live in fellowship with God, His characteristics will be transferred to us. We have no reason to pride ourselves on our holiness. If we run ahead to vs. 26, we see a fine difference in shading. "You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own." The words "You are to be holy to Me" indicate that holiness is a slow process that is stimulated by fellowship with God. There is a difference between "you are to be holy to Me" and the more impersonal demand "be holy." God involves Himself personally in our sanctification because He loves us. The phrase "to be my own" speaks about total possession on the basis of a surrender in love. Possession of a wife by her husband in a marriage is basically a correct picture of this, in spite of the fact that, in practice the image is flawed. In our relationship with God, we are the female element. But no man possesses his wife as God possesses us. Holiness is impossible without love. If we look at the commandments against this background, they all take on a new significance.

According to vs. 9, our relationship with our parents is an important factor in the process of our sanctification. It is also important for our emotional balance and our inner health. In God's perfect plan of creation the relationship of a child to his father and mother is the natural channel through which he learns of the love of God. It is also through our parents that we can trace our existence back to God Himself. According to the Gospel of Luke, Adam was the son of God.[ 3 ] Sin distorted and ruined much of this relationship. If we do not recognize the reality of our relationship and we if curse our parents, if we hate them instead of loving them, if we do not receive forgiveness and forgive, we forfeit our lives. God puts this kind of curse on the same level as murder.

This is not the place to elaborate on the psychological effects upon our lives if things go wrong in our relationship with our parents. It is enough to say that fellowship with God will result in essential holiness and that this will bring about love for our father and mother. This is, probably, the most important lesson to be drawn from this verse.

Father and mother are an image of God to a child. This fundamental truth is often the reason that children who have been adopted tend to search for their natural parents. If we come to the point at which we understand the difference between that relationship which is an image of reality and the one that is reality, much frustration can be avoided. Here it makes a difference as to whether we know the Lord or not.

The verses 10 - 21 are, partially, a repetition and an elaboration of chapter 18. The greatest difference is the background against which the warnings are placed. In ch. 18 the things described were the accepted norm in Egypt, from where Israel came, and in Canaan, where they were going. In ch. 20 the background is fellowship with God and the forbidden acts are shown to be incongruent with His holiness. It is clear that the Canaanites committed gross sexual immorality, among which were incest, homosexuality and bestiality. This life style is repugnant to God. He compares the beauty of the country with the filth of its inhabitants, and He demands the return of the land back to give it to another nation, that is to Israel.

If we look at this from a human viewpoint, we could ask ourselves if God was not too idealistic in His choice of Israel. The question is, of course, a superficial one. Paul, in his epistle to the Romans, emphasizes the depth of God's wisdom and the unsearchableness of His judgments. "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! 'Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?' For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen."[ 4 ]

Vs. 27 belongs with vs. 6. In this case, however, the medium is addressed. Evidently, the spirit of a departed one or of a spirit cannot speak through a person without his permission. God holds the medium responsible for his contact with evil spirits. According to the law this kind of contact was punishable by death. For twentieth century man, who remembers the burning of witches in previous centuries, there does not seem to be much difference between the two. We should, however, not compare the Biblical revelation according to the excesses of a superstitious century and Israel's theocracy in which there was to be no place for contact with demons or for sexual perversion. The expression "their blood will be on their own heads" is found six times in this chapter. This exonerates the ones who carry out the execution. The Jews who condemned Jesus to death turned this around. They cried out: "Let his blood be on us and on our children!"[ 5 ]

[ 1 ] II Chr. 33:1-3,6

[ 2 ] II King 21:9-11

[ 3 ] Luke 3:38

[ 4 ] Rom. 11:33-36

[ 5 ] Matt. 27:25