Leviticus 18:7

Every verse in this passage speaks of uncovering nakedness, and the phrase is the key to the whole list. The verb gâlâh means to lay bare, to uncover or to reveal. Strong’s notes that it is often used in a disgraceful sense, and by implication of exile, since captives were usually stripped. The noun ʻervâh means nakedness, especially the private parts, and figuratively disgrace or blemish. Joined together, gâlâh ʻervâh is Scripture’s modest way of speaking of sexual intercourse, and in Leviticus 18 and 20 it always describes a union God forbids. The words keep the subject decent while leaving the meaning plain, and they carry the shame that belongs to the act, because what God keeps covered within marriage is laid bare outside it.

In verse 6 the word “approach” is qârab, the ordinary verb for coming near or bringing something near. The words that follow, “to uncover their nakedness”, name the purpose of the approach, so the command forbids drawing near to a relative for sex. Verse 14 speaks the same way of an uncle’s wife: “thou shalt not approach to his wife” (tikrav, “draw near”).

“Near of kin” is shᵉʼêr bâsâr, literally “flesh of his flesh”. shᵉʼêr means flesh, and figuratively kindred by blood, and bâsâr is also a word for flesh. A man’s near kin are his own flesh, and that is the reason the law gives again and again. The father’s sister and the mother’s sister in verses 12 and 13 are each called a “near kinswoman”, shᵉʼêr again, and verse 17 calls a woman’s daughter and granddaughters “her near kinswomen”.

Verse 6 ends with the name that stands behind every command in the chapter. Yᵉhôvâh is God’s covenant name, which Strong’s explains as “the self-Existent or Eternal”, and the chapter repeats “I am the LORD” as the seal on its laws. These rules come from the God who brought Israel out of Egypt and bound himself to them, and his own holy character is their measure. Keeping them was part of Israel’s worship, an answer to who he is.

The chapter opens by setting God’s statutes against “the doings of the land of Egypt” and “the doings of the land of Canaan”, and by calling Israel to “do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the LORD your God” (Leviticus 18:1–5). Israel had just come out of Egypt and was on the way into Canaan, and both lands practised what God forbids here. Egypt’s royal houses at times married brother to sister to keep the royal line. Canaanite worship included cultic prostitution and the offering of children, which the chapter forbids in Leviticus 18:21. The chapter closes by warning that these things defile both the people and the land, which vomited out the nations before Israel and would do the same to Israel if it followed them (Leviticus 18:24–30).

So this list belongs to God’s call for a holy people. Leviticus 18 belongs to the chapters often called the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26), and the next chapter puts the call in one line: “Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2, and earlier in Leviticus 11:44). That holiness reaches into the home and the marriage bed as surely as into the tabernacle.

The list moves outward from the nearest relatives, through parents, sisters and grandchildren, to aunts and in-laws. It names relatives by blood (a mother, a sister, a granddaughter, an aunt) and relatives by marriage (a father’s wife, an uncle’s wife, a son’s wife, a brother’s wife, a wife’s daughter and a wife’s sister). Leviticus 20 sets penalties for several of these unions, and the curses of Deuteronomy 27:20–23 name several of them as well.

Marriage makes a husband and wife one flesh (Genesis 2:24), and so the law speaks of a wife’s nakedness as her husband’s. That is how verse 8 can say of the father’s wife, “it is thy father’s nakedness”, and verse 16 of the brother’s wife, “it is thy brother’s nakedness.” The sin wrongs the woman, it wrongs her husband in the closest part of his life, and it breaks the covenant God made between them.

The same thinking stands behind verse 7, where the father’s nakedness is the mother, and behind verse 10, where a man’s granddaughters are “thine own nakedness”. Marriage and birth both make people one flesh in God’s sight, and the law guards both. Hebrews holds the same line for the church: “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4).

Verse 18 forbids a man to “take a wife to her sister”. lâqach means to take, in a wide range of uses, and here it means taking a woman as a wife. The verse gives its own reason, “to vex her”. tsârar comes from a root meaning to cramp, and it is used of distress, affliction and acting as an adversary. Two sisters married to one husband would be pressed into rivalry, and God’s law shields the first wife from that grief.

The house of Jacob shows what the law guards against. Jacob married the sisters Leah and Rachel, and their life together was full of jealousy, until Rachel cried to Jacob, “Give me children, or else I die” (Genesis 30:1).

The command lasts “in her life time”. chay means alive or life, so the verse binds a man while his wife lives. After her death this verse leaves him free to marry her sister, which sets it apart from the unions earlier in the list.

The reason given most often in the passage is the bond itself: she is thy mother, thy sister, thine aunt, thy son’s wife, thine own nakedness. God made the family, and these commands keep each relationship what he made it. A mother stays a mother and a daughter-in-law stays a daughter, so the roles in a family stay clear and its trust holds.

The laws also protect the weak. Those most open to exploitation and abuse are often inside the home, and God’s law puts a wall around them where the danger is nearest. They guard health as well, since unions between close relatives raise the risk of birth defects in children. Above all they set Israel apart from Egypt and Canaan as a people who belong to the LORD and live in his land by his ways (Leviticus 18:24–30). God’s law here is his care for his people, and his boundaries are for their good.

The command against incest belongs with the commands against murder and theft. It is moral law, which flows from God’s unchanging character and binds people in every age. The laws of sacrifice and food, and the civil penalties set for Israel as a nation, served Israel’s worship and government and find their fulfilment in Christ, while the moral law stands.

The New Testament holds this line plainly. Paul rebuked the church at Corinth for tolerating a man who had his father’s wife (1 Corinthians 5:1), and he tells believers, “Flee fornication”, because our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:18–20). “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication” (1 Thessalonians 4:3–8). Paul says that fornication and all uncleanness should not even be named among the saints (Ephesians 5:3–5), and Peter repeats the call of Leviticus: be holy, for God is holy (1 Peter 1:15–16). Jesus carries the command into the heart, teaching that a man who looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5:27–28).

Laws like these show us God’s holiness, and they show us our sin (Romans 3:20). Paul says that the law was given to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). Jesus came to fulfil the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17), and he kept it in perfect purity. By his death he bore the penalty for our sins, sexual sin included, and his blood cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7–9). By his one offering we are made holy (Hebrews 10:10).

He also gives the power to live what the law requires. God promised to write his law on his people’s hearts (Jeremiah 31:33), and through Christ the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us, “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:3–4). As we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfil the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). God receives us as his adopted children (Romans 8:15) and makes us one family in Christ (Galatians 3:28). And the marriage this chapter guards points to Christ himself, who loved the church and gave himself for it, to present it to himself holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:25–33).

These verses show a God who cares about the details of family life. He names the mother, the sister born in another house, the granddaughter, the aunt, the son’s wife, and the sister who would be vexed by a rival, and he puts his own name over each of them. The homes of his people are meant to be places where every one of these can live safe and honoured.

The passage also shows that God’s holiness and his kindness belong together. The same LORD who calls incest wickedness is the God who cleanses sinners in Christ and writes his law on their hearts. In him we have both the clear line of his word and the grace to walk inside it.