Leviticus 19:18

Leviticus 19 belongs to the part of the book often called the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26), which sets out how Israel was to live as a people set apart for the LORD. The chapter opens with the call to be holy because he is holy. It moves through worship and the peace offerings (Leviticus 19:5–8) to the harvest, where gleanings are left for the poor and the sojourner (Leviticus 19:9–10). These verses come next, and later the chapter requires honest weights and measures (Leviticus 19:35–36). So the whole of Leviticus 19 treats the field, the market, the courtroom and the private thoughts of the heart as places where God’s people show whose they are.

Israel had been called to be “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6). Among the nations it was to be marked out by the character of its God, and a holy people is one whose neighbours can trust its word, its scales and its courts.

The words “I am the LORD” close verses 12, 14, 16 and 18, and they run through the chapter some sixteen times. “LORD” in capitals stands for Yᵉhôvâh, God’s personal covenant name, which Strong’s connects with the verb “to be” and explains as “the self-Existent” or “Eternal”. It is the name often written Jehovah, the name God made known to Moses (Exodus 3:14), and he opened the Ten Commandments by naming himself as the LORD who had redeemed Israel from bondage (Exodus 20:2). The refrain grounds every command in who God is and what he has done for his people. These are his own words, he has the right to give them, and keeping them is part of Israel’s faithfulness to him.

Verse 11 names three wrongs in one breath: “Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.” To steal, gânab, is to thieve, to take what belongs to another, usually by stealth, and it repeats the eighth commandment (Exodus 20:15). To deal falsely, kâchash, is to be untrue in word or in deed: to lie, deceive, deny or fail someone. To lie, shâqar, is to cheat or to be untrue, usually in words.

The three belong together because each one breaks the trust a community lives on. Stealing takes a neighbour’s goods, false dealing misleads him by what we do, and lying misleads him by what we say, so the verse covers our hands and our mouths alike. In Israel people bought, sold and settled their disputes face to face, and a neighbour’s word had to hold. Behind all three stands the God who “cannot lie” (Titus 1:2). Proverbs calls lying lips an abomination (Proverbs 12:22) and says the same of dishonest scales (Proverbs 11:1), and through Zechariah God told his people to speak the truth to one another (Zechariah 8:16).

The command reaches every place where goods and words change hands today: embezzlement and dishonest accounts, taking another’s work as one’s own, misleading advertising, deceptive contracts, and promises the speaker means to break.

Verse 12 moves from lying to a neighbour to lying with God’s name: “And ye shall not swear by my name falsely”. To swear, shâbaʻ, is to take an oath. Strong’s links the word to the number seven and explains it as “to seven oneself”, as if a declaration were repeated seven times to make it complete and binding. An Israelite who swore by the name of the LORD called the living God as witness to his word and asked him to judge it, so a false oath tried to draw God into a lie. This is perjury, and it struck at the trust of a people whose agreements and disputes were often sealed with an oath. It stands close to the third commandment, which forbids taking the LORD’s name in vain (Exodus 20:7).

“Neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God” widens the command. The verb châlal has the literal sense of boring or wounding, and here it means to profane, to treat what is holy as common. A false oath is one way of profaning God’s name. Others are careless use of his name in exclamations or curses, and a life that contradicts the God a person claims to serve, which brings his name into dishonour before others.

The name matters so much because it stands for God himself as he has made himself known: his character, his authority and his faithfulness to his promises. The psalms praise the majesty of his name (Psalm 8:1). Jesus taught his disciples to let their yes mean yes and their no mean no, so that a plain word is enough (Matthew 5:33–37), and James repeats that teaching (James 5:12). Jesus also taught us to pray that the Father’s name be hallowed (Matthew 6:9), and God’s people are a royal priesthood, called to proclaim the excellencies of the one who called them out of darkness into his light (1 Peter 2:9).

Verse 13 turns to money and work: “Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him.” To defraud, ʻâshaq, is to oppress, defraud, extort or wrong someone, and to rob, gâzal, is to seize by force. Between them the two verbs cover quiet exploitation and open plunder, every way of taking what is a neighbour’s. The word for neighbour here, rêaʻ, usually means a fellow Israelite, and it can take in others living within the community.

Then comes one very particular case: “the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.” The word for wages, pᵉʻullâh, means work and also the pay earned by it, and the hired man, sâkîyr, was a day labourer. Such men often had only their labour to live on, and the day’s pay bought that evening’s food for the family. An employer who kept it overnight could leave a household hungry. Deuteronomy gives the same law with its reason: the labourer is to be paid on his day, before the sun goes down, because he is poor and has set his heart on it (Deuteronomy 24:14–15).

God watches over the poor man’s pay. His law forbids denying justice to the poor (Exodus 23:6), Malachi warns that God will come near in judgment against oppressors (Malachi 3:5), and James says that wages kept back by fraud cry out to the Lord (James 5:4).

“Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD.” The word for the deaf man, chêrêsh, comes from a root meaning to be silent or deaf, and the curse spoken over him never reaches his ears. The stumblingblock, mikshôwl, from the verb kashal, “to stumble”, is an obstacle that makes someone fall, and the blind man is unable to see who set it in his path. Both wrongs are done to someone unable to detect them or answer them, by a person who counts on going unseen.

That is why the verse adds “but shalt fear thy God”. To fear, yârêʼ, here means reverence and awe toward God, who is present everywhere and judges all. Where human eyes and courts would miss the wrong, God himself is the witness, and the fear of him keeps his people honest when they are alone with the helpless. Deuteronomy lays a curse on whoever misleads the blind (Deuteronomy 27:18), and the law provides again and again for the poor, the sojourner and the orphan (Deuteronomy 24:19–22). James speaks of the religion that is pure and undefiled before God (James 1:27), and it shows itself in this kind of care.

The deaf and the blind stand at the head of everyone who is easily exploited, people who lack power, information or the means to defend themselves. A stumbling block today can be misleading advice given to someone naive, or a barrier that keeps a whole group at a disadvantage. Jesus opened the ears of the deaf (Mark 7:31–37) and gave sight to the blind (John 9:1–7), and he counts what is done for the least of his brethren as done for him (Matthew 25:31–46). He gave a severe warning to anyone who causes one of his little ones to stumble (Matthew 18:6), and Paul tells believers to keep stumbling blocks out of a brother’s way (Romans 14:13).

“Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment”. The word ʻevel means wrong, injustice or iniquity, and Strong’s traces it to a root meaning to distort. A twisted verdict is the wrong in view. The verse then names the two ways a judge is pulled off course: “thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty”.

Respecting the person renders the Hebrew idiom nâsâʼ pânîym, literally to lift up the face, from nâsâʼ, to lift or accept, and pânîym, face. Honouring the person is hâdar pânîm, to honour the face, from hâdar, to honour or favour. Both mean partiality: judging by who someone is, by his standing, wealth or influence, in place of the facts of his case. The poor man, dal, is the weak, thin or low man, and Strong’s explains the word as properly “dangling”. The mighty, gâdôwl, is the great man, great in status. Misplaced pity can tempt a judge toward the one, and fear or self-interest toward the other, and God forbids both.

The verse ends with what a judge is to do: “in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.” Tsedeq is rightness, righteousness and justice, in conduct, judgment, speech and just weights, and here it is the straight verdict set against the crooked one. The word for neighbour, ʻâmîyth, means a fellow or companion. The command stands first of all for judges and those in authority. The same fairness belongs in every decision one person makes about another, in the home, at work, in the church, in hiring, and in hearing out a quarrel.

God himself is the pattern, for he “regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward” (Deuteronomy 10:17). Moses told Israel’s judges, “Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God’s” (Deuteronomy 1:17), and he commanded them to appoint judges and to pursue justice (Deuteronomy 16:18–20). Proverbs says, “It is not good to have respect of persons in judgment” (Proverbs 24:23), and Amos calls out, “let judgment run down as waters” (Amos 5:24). James applies the same rule to the church, where a man with a gold ring is given a good place and a poor man in vile raiment is told to stand: “Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?” (James 2:1–4).

“Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people”. The talebearer, râkîyl, is a scandal-monger, and Strong’s links the word to going about as a trader does. “Go up and down” renders the ordinary verb to walk, yâlak. The picture is of someone who carries reports from house to house and deals in them like goods. In Israel news travelled by word of mouth and a person’s good name counted for a great deal, so a rumour could ruin a name and a livelihood or stir up violence. Proverbs says that a talebearer reveals secrets (Proverbs 11:13) and that “death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21), and James describes the destructive power of the tongue (James 3:5–6). Today the same sin travels faster, through messages and social media.

“Neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour”. To stand, ʻâmad, is the ordinary verb, and dâm is blood, especially blood shed in death, and so a person’s life. To stand against a neighbour’s blood is to take a stand that puts his life at risk. In courts that relied on witnesses, the phrase covers false testimony that could bring an innocent man to death (Exodus 23:7). It also covers standing idly by while a neighbour’s life is in danger, and holding back what could save him. Set beside talebearing, it shows where malicious talk can end, and it reaches as well to slander and false accusation that destroy a person’s standing, family or livelihood.

“Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart”. To hate, śānēʼ, is to hold enmity and ill-will toward someone, and “in thine heart” places the command in the inner life, where only God sees. The brother here is a fellow Israelite. The LORD looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and hatred kept inside becomes a root of bitterness that sooner or later comes out in word or deed. Jesus taught that anger and hatred in the heart are akin to murder in God’s eyes (Matthew 5:21–22), and John joins love for God with love for one’s brother (1 John 4:20–21).

“Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour”. “In any wise” means surely, so the rebuke is a duty. To rebuke, yâkach, is to decide, rebuke, correct, convince or convict, or to reason together, and its aim is to bring a neighbour back to what is right. The two commands belong together. Because the duty to rebuke stands beside the ban on hatred, the rebuke is to come from love, given with humility and gentleness for the other person’s restoration. Paul tells those who are spiritual to restore a fallen brother gently (Galatians 6:1), and Jesus gives the order to follow: a private word first, then others if needed, all to win the brother back (Matthew 18:15–17).

“Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people”. To avenge, nâqam, is to take vengeance, harming someone in return for a wrong done. To bear a grudge, nâṭar, comes from a word meaning to guard or keep, and here it is anger kept and cherished. The first is the outward act and the second is the inner resentment that feeds it, and God forbids both. Vengeance belongs to God, and a people who settle their own scores fall into cycles of retaliation that tear a community apart.

Then comes the heart of the passage: “but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.” The verb ʼâhab is the ordinary word for love, to have affection for a person, an object or a practice. Here that affection is set against vengeance and grudges, and the verses around it fill it with deeds: wages paid on time, an honest verdict, a protecting word, a rebuke given for a neighbour’s good. “As thyself” makes the care each of us naturally gives himself the measure of the care we owe a neighbour, with the same consideration, patience and desire for his good.

Jesus named this the second great commandment, on which with the first hang all the law and the prophets (Matthew 22:39). Paul writes that love is the fulfilling of the law (Romans 13:8–10) and that the whole law is fulfilled in this one word (Galatians 5:14).

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and he kept every line of these verses. People wondered at the gracious words that came from his mouth (Luke 4:22). At his trial false witnesses rose against him, and he stayed true in every word (Matthew 26:59–63). He always did the things that pleased his Father (John 8:29). He is the Word made flesh (John 1:14), and God has given him the name above every name, at which every knee shall bow (Philippians 2:9–11).

He loved his neighbours as himself and more, laying down his life for those who were still God’s enemies (Romans 5:8–10) as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Then he gave his disciples a new commandment, to love one another as he had loved them (John 13:34–35). Under the new covenant God writes his law on the hearts of his people (Hebrews 8:10). By his Spirit they put away lying and speak truth with their neighbours (Ephesians 4:25, Colossians 3:9), speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), and bear the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23).

These verses show us a God who cares about a day labourer’s supper, a deaf man’s dignity and a blind man’s path. He hears every curse muttered out of a victim’s hearing, he weighs every verdict and every rumour carried from door to door, and he sees the grudge kept in the heart. His holiness reaches the field, the market, the court and the home, and each command ends in him: “I am the LORD.” So honesty with a neighbour is part of our worship of the God who “cannot lie”.

The passage gives God’s people a pattern for life together: words that can be trusted, pay that comes on time, protection for the weak, one standard of justice for all, an honest rebuke in place of hidden hatred, and love in place of revenge. It shows us how far we fall short of that pattern, and it points us to Christ, who kept it all and bore the sin of those who broke it. Where his people love their neighbours as themselves, the world sees something of who the LORD is.