_A.M. 2514. B.C. 1490._ A prohibition of conformity to the heathens, Leviticus 18:1. Particular laws against incest, Leviticus 18:6. Against unnatural lusts and barbarous idolatries, Leviticus 18:19. Enforced from the destruction of the Canaanites, Leviticus 18:24.... [ Continue Reading ]
It being one special design of God to preserve his people from the lewd and idolatrous customs of other nations, Moses now receives particular orders to prohibit the Israelites from many of those unnatural practices which were common among the ancient idolaters.... [ Continue Reading ]
_Your God_ Your sovereign and lawgiver. This is often repeated, because the things here forbidden were practised and allowed by the Gentiles, to whose custom he opposes divine authority and their obligation to obey his commands.... [ Continue Reading ]
_Egypt and Canaan_ These two nations he mentions, because their habitation and conversation among them made their evil example in the following matters more dangerous. But under them he includes all other nations.... [ Continue Reading ]
_My judgments_ Though you do not see the particular reason of some of them, and though they be contrary to the laws and usages of the other nations.... [ Continue Reading ]
_He shall live in them_ Not only happily here, but eternally hereafter. This is added as a powerful argument why they should follow God's commands rather than men's examples, because their life and happiness depended upon it. And though in strictness, and according to the covenant of works, they cou... [ Continue Reading ]
The first of these prohibitions is against all improper and incestuous marriages, a thing very common among the Canaanitish nations and in Egypt, even to the last degree of unnatural mixtures. Diodorus Siculus relates, that it was permitted by law in the latter country, contrary to the custom of oth... [ Continue Reading ]
_The nakedness of thy father, or of thy mother_ This is but one fact, though expressed two ways, as appears from Leviticus 18:8, compared with Leviticus 20:11. The expression imports, that such an action is doing the greatest dishonour to one's father and mother.... [ Continue Reading ]
_Whether she be born at home, or born abroad_ Whether she be legitimately born in wedlock, or illegitimately out of wedlock. Others explain it thus: “Whether she be thy sister by the same father, or by another marriage.”... [ Continue Reading ]
_Thy father's brother_ Thou shalt not marry thy uncle's wife, as is explained in the next words.... [ Continue Reading ]
_Thy brother's wife_ Unless he died childless, for in that case God afterward commanded that a man should marry his brother's widow, Deuteronomy 25:5. For the prohibiting of marriages in the more remote degrees of consanguinity, where other moral considerations are less obvious, there is this good r... [ Continue Reading ]
_A woman and her daughter_ If a man married a widow that had a daughter, he was not allowed to marry this daughter, either while the mother was alive or after her death.... [ Continue Reading ]
_A wife to her sister_ The meaning seems to be, that no man should take to wife two sisters, which had sometimes been done, as we see in the example of Jacob. It may, however, signify that a man, who already had a wife, was not to take another out of mere incontinency, which would tend only to break... [ Continue Reading ]
_As long as she is set apart_ No, not to thy own wife. This was not only a ceremonial pollution, but an immorality also, whence it is put among gross sins, Ezekiel 18:6. And therefore it is now unlawful under the gospel.... [ Continue Reading ]
_Pass through the fire to Molech_ In the Hebrew it is only _pass through to Molech._ But though the word _fire_ be not in the original, it is reasonably supplied from other places, where it is expressed, as Deuteronomy 18:10; 2 Kings 23:10. _Molech_, called also _Milcom_, was the idol of the Ammonit... [ Continue Reading ]
_Nor any stranger_ In nation or religion, of what kind soever. For though they might not force them to submit to their religion, yet they might restrain them from the public contempt of the Jewish laws, and from the violation of natural laws, which, besides the offence against God and nature, were m... [ Continue Reading ]
_Cut off_ This phrase therefore, of _cutting off_, is to be understood variously, either of ecclesiastical or civil punishment, according to the differing natures of the offences for which it was inflicted.... [ Continue Reading ]