Leviticus 20 explained: Penalties to Keep Israel Holy

Children given to Molek (vv. 1-5)

Molek (also spelled Molech) was most likely a god whose worship involved offering children, and anyone living in Israel who did this was to be stoned. If the community looked away, the LORD says he himself will act against that man, his family and his followers by 'cutting them off', which scholars read variously as death, exclusion from the people or the end of a family line.

Mediums and a call to holiness (vv. 6-8)

People who turned to mediums and spiritists, who claimed to contact the dead, are described as unfaithful to God like a spouse who cheats, and God says he will cut them off. 'Holy' here means set apart for God, and verse 8 says it is the LORD who makes the people holy.

Parents, adultery, close in-laws (vv. 9-12)

Cursing a parent carried death; many think it meant calling down harm on them, not a passing burst of anger. Adultery, and sex with a father's wife or a son's wife, carried death for both people, and a repeated phrase puts the blame for each death on the guilty, not on those who carried out the sentence.

Further offenses punished by death (vv. 13-16)

Verse 13 sets death for two men who have sex, and how it relates to life today is one of the sharpest disagreements among Christians. A man who married a woman and her mother was to be burned with them, which some think meant burning after death, and in cases of sex with an animal both the person and the animal were killed.

Other forbidden unions (vv. 17-21)

A man and his sister were to be cut off publicly, which some take as execution, and so were a couple who had sex during her period, while unions with an aunt, an uncle's wife or a brother's wife bring guilt and childlessness. Some read 'childless' as God withholding children, and others as any children not counting legally as theirs.

The land and a distinct people (vv. 22-27)

The land is pictured as vomiting out people who live this way, as the text says happened to the nations before Israel, and rules about clean and unclean animals also marked Israel as set apart. The chapter closes with stoning for mediums and spiritists themselves, going beyond verse 6, which dealt with the people who consulted them.

Key verse: Leviticus 20:26

Where Christians differ

Christians differ over what in this chapter still applies today: most agree its death penalties belonged to ancient Israel's legal system, but traditional readers hold that its sexual boundaries, including verse 13, still stand, while others argue those rules addressed that time and do not speak to committed same-sex relationships now.

Something to think about

When a community draws hard lines to stay distinct from its neighbors, what do you think it protects, and what might it cost?