Leviticus 20:22-27

You Shall Be Holy

22 " 'And you shall keep all my statutes and all my regulations, and you shall do them, so that the land, to which I am bringing you to inhabit it, shall not vomit you out.
23 And you shall not follow the statutes of the nation that I am driving out {from before you}, because they did all these things, and I detested them.
24 So I said to you, "You yourselves shall take possession of their land, and I myself shall give it to you to possess it--a land flowing with milk and honey"; I [am] Yahweh your God, who {has set you apart} from the nations.
25 And you shall distinguish between the clean and the unclean animal and between the unclean and the clean bird; and you shall not defile yourselves with the animal or with the bird or with anything that moves along the ground that I have set apart for you {as unclean}.
26 And you shall be holy for me, because I, Yahweh, [am] holy, and I have singled you out from the nations to be mine.
27 " 'And a man or a woman, if a spirit of the dead or a spirit of divination is in them, they shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones--their blood [is] on them.'"

Leviticus 20:22-27 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO LEVITICUS 20

In this chapter several laws are, repeated, enforced with a penalty annexed to them, and the breach them made capital, to deter from it, as giving seed to Molech, Le 20:1-5; going after such that have familiar spirits, or are wizards, Le 20:6; by shunning which, and other sins, a regard would be shown to holiness, Le 20:7,8; such as cursing parents, Le 20:9; committing adultery, Le 20:10; incestuous copulations, and marriages, and beastly actions, Le 20:11-21; all which it became the Israelites to avoid, lest, when come into the land of Canaan, they should be cast out of it, as the old inhabitants were for the same things, Le 20:22-24; and therefore, that they might appear to be a distinct people from others, they were to put a difference between clean and unclean creatures, Le 20:25,26; and the chapter is closed with a law, making it death for any person to have a familiar spirit, or to be a wizard, Le 19:27.

Footnotes 8

Scripture quotations marked (LEB) are from the Lexham English Bible. Copyright 2012 Logos Bible Software. Lexham is a registered trademark of Logos Bible Software.