Leviticus 20

Today’s Passage: Leviticus 20

Chapter 18 named the ways Israel was not to live; chapter 20 returns to that same ground and tells what such things cost inside the covenant nation. The LORD speaks against giving children to Molech, against turning to mediums, against cursing father and mother, and against the sexual sins already named, attaching to each a consequence under Israel’s own law. It reads as a solemn chapter, and it is meant to. But it is not a chapter of bare threat, for it is framed at both ends by a tender charge: consecrate yourselves, be holy, for I am the LORD your God. The refrain that holds the whole thing together is the LORD’s word that He has set this people apart from the nations to be His own.

As you read, hold this: God’s holiness is not casual. He sets His people apart from the nations to belong to Him.

Leviticus 20:2–5 (BSB)

² “Tell the Israelites, ‘Any Israelite or foreigner living in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech must be put to death. The people of the land are to stone him. ³ And I will set My face against that man and cut him off from his people, because by giving his offspring to Molech, he has defiled My sanctuary and profaned My holy name. ⁴ And if the people of the land ever hide their eyes and fail to put to death the man who gives one of his children to Molech, ⁵ then I will set My face against that man and his family and cut off from among their people both him and all who follow him in prostituting themselves with Molech.

The chapter opens with the darkest thing the nations did, the burning of children to a foreign god, and God will not have it named lightly among His people. Notice what He says it does: it defiles His sanctuary and profanes His holy name, as though a sin done out in a field reaches all the way to the tent where He dwells. And notice the mercy folded into the severity, for God refuses to let the people quietly look away from a child being destroyed. His face set against such a thing is the face of One who loves the children the nations threw into the fire.

Leviticus 20:6–8 (BSB)

⁶ Whoever turns to mediums or spiritists to prostitute himself with them, I will also set My face against that person and cut him off from his people. ⁷ Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, because I am the LORD your God. ⁸ And you shall keep My statutes and practice them. I am the LORD who sanctifies you.

To turn to mediums was to seek from the dead and the dark what belonged to the living God alone, and He names it a kind of unfaithfulness, a turning of the heart away from Him. But right here, in the middle of the warnings, the true note of the chapter sounds out plainly: consecrate yourselves and be holy (קָדוֹשׁ) qadosh, pronounced kah-DOSH. Strong's H6918, holy, set apart. It is the great word of Leviticus, spoken first of God Himself and then, astonishingly, held out to the people He has claimed. To be qadosh is not first to be flawless but to be His, marked off from everything ordinary because He has set His hand on it. When God tells Israel to be holy because He is holy, He is calling them to belong to Him as completely as the altar and the incense already do. , because I am the LORD your God. The command is not left hanging on the people’s strength either, for the same breath adds, I am the LORD who sanctifies you. He asks His people to be holy, and He is Himself the One who makes them so.

Leviticus 20:9 (BSB)

⁹ If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death. He has cursed his father or mother; his blood shall be upon him.

Between the warning about mediums and the sins of the household, God sets the honor of father and mother, and He sets it high. To curse a parent, in the language of the covenant, was not a passing hot word but a settled repudiation of the ones through whom life and the fear of God were meant to come. That God guarded the family with the weight of His law tells you how much He treasures it, for the home was the first place His holiness was to be learned and passed down.

Leviticus 20:10–16 (BSB)

¹⁰ If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must surely be put to death. ¹¹ If a man lies with his father’s wife, he has uncovered his father’s nakedness. Both must surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. ¹² If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both must surely be put to death. They have acted perversely; their blood is upon them. ¹³ If a man lies with a man as with a woman, they have both committed an abomination. They must surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. ¹⁴ If a man marries both a woman and her mother, it is depraved. Both he and they must be burned in the fire, so that there will be no depravity among you. ¹⁵ If a man lies carnally with an animal, he must be put to death. And you are also to kill the animal. ¹⁶ If a woman approaches any animal to mate with it, you must kill both the woman and the animal. They must surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

Here the ground of chapter 18 is walked again, but now with the consequences named. The passage lists many sins together, one after another, and it does not single out any one of them as worse than the rest; each is a breaking of the bond of faithfulness that God had woven through marriage and the household. Adultery, the violating of family lines, and the other unions named all belong to the same sad catalog of a covenant broken. The plainness of the text is its own kind of mercy, for it does not linger or describe; it names the categories soberly and moves on, and it leaves every reader facing not a particular neighbor but the seriousness of holiness itself. God’s people were to look nothing like the nations in the most private rooms of their lives.

Leviticus 20:22–24 (BSB)

²² You are therefore to keep all My statutes and ordinances, so that the land where I am bringing you to live will not vomit you out. ²³ You must not follow the statutes of the nations I am driving out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them. ²⁴ But I have told you that you will inherit their land, since I will give it to you as an inheritance—a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the LORD your God, who has set you apart from the peoples.

Now the chapter lifts its eyes from the single sins to the whole calling. The land itself is spoken of as though it can bear only so much, and God warns that a people who live like the nations will be spat out as the nations were. Yet even the warning turns quickly into promise, for the same God who drives out the old peoples gives His own an inheritance flowing with milk and honey. And the reason stands underneath it all: I am the LORD your God, who has set you apart (בָּדַל) bādal, pronounced bah-DAL. Strong's H914, to separate, divide, set apart, distinguish. It is the very verb used at the beginning of all things, when God divided the light from the darkness and the waters from the waters; the world was made by separating. Here that same act of dividing is done to a people: God has set Israel apart from the peoples the way He set light apart from dark. To be His is to be drawn out of the common mass and given a name and a place. The command to live differently, then, is simply the calling to become in practice what God has already made them by grace. from the peoples. They were to be different because they had been chosen, and the difference was to be the shape of the gift, not the price of it.

Leviticus 20:26 (BSB)

²⁶ 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.

Here is the sentence the whole chapter was built to reach. Every warning, every consequence, every fence around the household finds its meaning in this single line: be holy, because I am holy, and I have set you apart to be My own. The holiness God asks is not a cold standard held over the people but the natural shape of belonging to a holy God. He does not merely forbid; He claims. To be set apart from the nations is, in the end, to be gathered to Him, and everything else in the chapter is only the guarding of that nearness.