Leviticus 18:24-30

Warning against uncleanness and moral pollution

24 Do not make yourselves unclean in any of these ways because that is how the nations that I am throwing out before you became unclean.

25 That is also how the land became unclean, and I held it liable for punishment, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.

26 But all of you must keep my rules and my regulations. You must not do any of these detestable things, neither citizen nor immigrant who lives with you (

27 because the people who had the land before you did all of these detestable things and the land became unclean),

28 so that the land does not vomit you out because you have made it unclean, just as it vomited out the nations that were before you.

29 Anyone who does any of these detestable things will be cut off from their people.

30 You must keep my requirement of not doing any of the detestable practices that were done before you arrived so that you don't make yourselves unclean by them; I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 18:24-30 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO LEVITICUS 18

In this chapter the Israelites are directed in general not to imitate the customs and practices of the Egyptians and Canaanites, but to keep the ordinances, statutes, and judgments of the Lord, Le 18:1-5; and they are instructed particularly to avoid incestuous marriages, Le 18:6-18; carnal copulation with a menstruous woman, Le 18:19; adultery, Le 18:20; letting any of their seed pass through the fire to Molech, Le 18:21; sodomy, Le 18:22; and bestiality, Le 18:23; and they are deterred from these things by observing to them the pollution and destruction which they brought on the inhabitants of Canaan, and would bring the same on them should they commit them, Le 18:24-30.

Footnotes

• [a]. Or rules or customs