Leviticus 19:31

Leviticus 19 opens with the command that governs the whole chapter: “Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). God had said the same in Leviticus 11:44–45, and Peter repeats it to the church (1 Peter 1:15–16). From there the chapter moves through all of daily life: reverence for mother and father and the keeping of the sabbath (19:3), idols (19:4), gleanings left for the poor (19:9–10), slander, grudges and love of neighbour (19:16–18), mixed kinds (19:19), sexual sin (19:20–22) and the fruit of young trees (19:23–25). Right after this passage come honour for the aged and kindness to the stranger (19:32–34). Holiness reaches the table, the graveside, the home and the calendar as surely as it reaches the altar.

To be holy is to be set apart for God, and much of this passage sets Israel apart from the customs of Egypt and Canaan. The chapter before warns Israel against following the doings of those lands (Leviticus 18:3–5), and the chapter after repeats the warning (Leviticus 20:23). Moses later gives a fuller list of the same kinds of practices, from child sacrifice to diviners, enchanters, charmers, mediums and those who inquire of the dead, and calls them an abomination to the LORD (Deuteronomy 18:9–14). Israel was called to be “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (Exodus 19:6), and these commands show what that looked like in ordinary life.

“Ye shall not eat any thing with the blood” guards something God claims as his own. The word dâm is the ordinary word for blood, of man or beast, the blood that brings death when it is shed. God gives the reason in an earlier chapter: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls” (Leviticus 17:11). Blood stood for life itself, so it was set aside for God and for atonement and kept off the common table.

The Hebrew reads literally “upon the blood”, al ha-dam, and it covers two things. The plain sense is eating meat that has been left undrained of its blood. The phrase also fits the rites of the nations, where meat was eaten over the blood or blood itself was taken, in the hope of communing with their gods or drawing on the life in it. The command sits right beside the ban on enchantment, so that kind of meal is likely in view as well. Behind it stands a reverence for life that we owe at every stage, from conception to natural death, because all of it is God’s.

The blood God kept for the altar points to the blood of his Son. At the Last Supper Jesus said of the cup, “this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28), and “This cup is the new testament in my blood” (Luke 22:20). Hebrews says that “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). The life Israel was to leave untouched at the table is the life Christ poured out for us.

The second half of verse 26 forbids two ways of reaching for hidden knowledge. “Enchantment” translates nâchash, which properly means to whisper a magic spell, and so to divine or foretell. “Observe times” translates ʻânan, from a root meaning to cover or cloud over, and it is used of practising magic in secret, of soothsaying and of fortune-telling. Among the nations such arts looked for omens in the entrails of animals, in the sky and in lucky and unlucky days, all to learn the future or bend it.

God forbids them because he alone knows the future, and he speaks to his people himself. He spoke to them through his prophets, and with Moses most directly of all (Numbers 12:6–8). Isaiah answers anyone who would send God’s people to the diviners: “should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony” (Isaiah 8:19–20). Looking for guidance in omens is a quiet kind of idolatry, because it asks another source for what God has promised to give, and Deuteronomy calls such practices an abomination (Deuteronomy 18:10–12).

In Christ God has now spoken his fullest word, for he “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2). In Christ “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and his Spirit guides his people “into all truth” (John 16:13).

Verse 27 says, “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.” “Round” translates nâqaph, a verb that properly means to strike, and also to go round or encircle, which here describes cutting the hair round about. “Corners” is pêʼâh, a word that figuratively means a mouth and so an edge, side or extremity. On the head it is the hair at the temples running down beside the ear, and on the face it is the edge of the beard along the cheeks and jaw. “Mar” is shâchath, to decay, and in its active sense to ruin, spoil or disfigure.

Among Israel’s neighbours, the way a man cut his hair and beard could mark him as the devotee of a particular god or as a mourner in the rites of the dead. Some shaved or shaped the hair at the temples in a circle, and in grief some shaved off or tore the beard. A beard was a sign of maturity and dignity among Israel and the nations alike. By leaving the corners alone, an Israelite showed whose he was every time he was seen, and he kept himself apart from the practices the LORD condemns (Deuteronomy 18:9–12).

Moses joins this kind of law to Israel’s sonship and holiness: “Ye are the children of the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 14:1–2), and he goes on to forbid cutting the body and shaving for the dead. A holy people looked different because they belonged to a holy God.

Verse 28 moves from hair to skin. “Cuttings” is sereṭ, an incision or gash in the flesh, and the verse names the occasion: “for the dead”. Mourners among the nations gashed themselves to show the depth of their grief, to appease the powers they believed ruled over the dead, or to prove their devotion. On Mount Carmel the prophets of Baal cut themselves until their blood ran, trying to rouse their god (1 Kings 18:28). “Marks” is qaʻăqaʻ, also an incision, and to “print” such marks is to set them permanently in the skin, which we call tattooing. Such marks could carry a god’s name or sign, act as a charm, or show a tribe, and so they declared who owned the person who wore them.

God ends the verse with his name, “I am the LORD”, because the body of an Israelite was his. To carry another god’s sign broke the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). To slash oneself for the dead was to grieve in the despair of those who were strangers to the God who gives life and takes it. Job grieved as a man of faith: “the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21).

The gospel gives our grief its fullest hope. Paul writes so that believers will “sorrow not, even as others which have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13–14), and Peter blesses God, who “hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). Our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost, bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19–20), and we present them to God as “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God” (Romans 12:1). Our high priest is “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Hebrews 7:26), and the holiness these laws pictured is complete in him.

“Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore” is spoken to a father. “Prostitute” translates châlal, to profane, the ordinary word for treating what is holy as common, so a father who gave his daughter into harlotry profaned her. “Whore” and “whoredom” both come from zânâh, to commit harlotry. The verse forbids selling a daughter for money, and it also forbids giving her to the ritual harlotry of the Canaanite fertility cults of Baal and Asherah, where sex in the god’s service was believed to make fields and families fruitful. Moses forbids such temple harlotry in Israel outright (Deuteronomy 23:17–18), and Proverbs calls the whore “a deep ditch” (Proverbs 23:27–28).

The second half of the verse widens the view from one home to the whole land: “lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.” “Wickedness” is zimmâh, a plan, especially a wicked one, and so lewdness and shameful crime. Sin in one family spreads to the people around it. Leviticus teaches that the land itself is defiled by such sins and will vomit out those who live in it (Leviticus 18:25–28), and Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 set out the sexual sins that bring this about. God’s covenant tied the people’s faithfulness to the life of the land he gave them.

zânâh is also the word the prophets use for Israel’s unfaithfulness to God when the people went after other gods. Hosea says that “the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err” (Hosea 4:10–12), and his marriage to an unfaithful wife pictures the LORD’s love for an unfaithful people (Hosea 1–3). In Leviticus 19:29 the word is meant literally, of a real daughter wronged by her own father.

So God guards the most vulnerable member of the household and holds the strongest to account. The verse speaks against every form of sexual exploitation, the trafficking of children today included, and it lays on parents the duty of protecting their children’s dignity and purity. Paul tells believers to “Flee fornication” and reminds them that the body belongs to the Lord (1 Corinthians 6:18–20). Christ was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). His blood “cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7), and he gave himself for the church to present it to himself holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:25–27).

After a run of things to avoid, verse 30 tells Israel where to turn: “Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD.” “Keep” is shâmar, to guard or observe. “Sabbaths” is the plural of shabbâth, a rest or ceasing, and the plural takes in the weekly seventh day along with the yearly holy days such as Passover and the Day of Atonement, when work stopped. The weekly Sabbath was one of the ten commandments, grounded in God’s rest after creation (Exodus 20:8–11), and God called it a sign between himself and Israel (Exodus 31:13). Isaiah promises joy to those who call the sabbath a delight (Isaiah 58:13–14). The nations around Israel kept no regular day of rest for their gods, so the sabbath itself set Israel apart.

“Reverence” is yârêʼ, to fear, the awe a person rightly feels before God. “Sanctuary” is miqdâsh, a consecrated place. The same word is used of the shrines of idols, so “my” matters here: this is the LORD’s sanctuary, the tabernacle he described to Moses from Exodus 25 onward, and later the temple. These laws were given at Sinai, and the tabernacle stood among Israel’s tents as the place of God’s presence. Reverencing it meant keeping its laws of access and purity and coming to it in awe, for “strength and beauty are in his sanctuary” (Psalm 96:6). Set among laws against the practices of the nations, this verse gives Israel the true worship that answers all of them: God’s own times and God’s own house.

Jesus calls himself “Lord also of the sabbath” (Mark 2:28) and invites all who labour and are heavy laden to come to him for rest (Matthew 11:28–30), and Hebrews says, “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9–10). He spoke of his own body as the temple: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19, 2:21). As our high priest he entered the true holy place by his own blood (Hebrews 9:11–12). His people are now God’s temple. The church grows into “an holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:19–22), and believers are “lively stones” built up “a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5).

Verse 31 says, “Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.” “Regard” is pânâh, to turn or to face, so Israel is to keep from turning toward such people at all. “Seek after” is bâqash, to search out or seek.

A “familiar spirit” is ʼôwb. The word properly means a mumble, and it also names a water skin, from its hollow sound. From there it came to mean a necromancer, one who claimed to speak with the dead or with spirits, often in a muttering voice like a voice from a jar or from the ground. A “wizard” is yiddᵉʻônîy, from yādaʿ, to know. He is “a knowing one”, a conjurer who claimed secret knowledge, and the word can also mean the ghost such a person claimed to consult. Isaiah names both together, “them that have familiar spirits, and... wizards that peep, and that mutter” (Isaiah 8:19), and calls the people back to their God. Deuteronomy puts the consulter with familiar spirits, the wizard and the necromancer among the abominations of the nations (Deuteronomy 18:10–12). The best-known account of such seeking in Israel is King Saul’s visit to the woman at Endor who had a familiar spirit (1 Samuel 28:7–19).

“To be defiled by them” gives the result. ṭâmêʼ means to be or become unclean, and the same word is used of uncleanness through contact, through disease and through unlawful acts, so the law draws no neat line here between ritual and moral defilement. Turning to a medium made a person unclean before the holy God and unfit to come before him with his people. It broke the first commandment (Exodus 20:3), it showed distrust of the law, priests and prophets God had given to guide Israel, and it opened the door to deception.

Christ meets every need that drove people to mediums. His blood purges the conscience “from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:13–14), and on the cross he “spoiled principalities and powers” and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15). His Spirit leads us into the truth, and we are told to “try the spirits whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1) and to stand against the wiles of the devil in the whole armour of God (Ephesians 6:11–12). God’s word is “a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105).

Verses 28 and 30 end with “I am the LORD”, and verse 31 closes the passage with “I am the LORD your God.” “The LORD” is Yᵉhôvâh, God’s covenant name, the self-existent and eternal One, and in Hebrew the phrase is simply Ani Yᵉhôvâh. “God” is ʼĕlôhîym, plural in form and read as a plural of majesty, usually taking a singular verb. The phrase runs all through the holiness laws of Leviticus, more than forty times in the book, and it grounds each law in who God is. It is the name by which he made himself known to Moses (Exodus 6:2–3), and it opens the laws of the chapter before (Leviticus 18:2).

The God who brought Israel out of Egypt and bound himself to them by covenant has every right to command them, and his commands flow from his holy character. So each of these laws carries a promise inside it. The One who forbids the mediums and the omens is himself the God who guides, comforts and keeps his people.

Every law in this passage turns on one question: to whom do you look? When you want to know what tomorrow holds, horoscopes, tarot cards, palm readings and psychics all offer an answer, and God calls you to bring that need to him in prayer, in his word and through the counsel of godly people. When grief comes, you may weep freely, and you weep as one who knows that Christ has conquered death. When you see children and the vulnerable used by others, this passage puts you on their side, as God is.

Jesus lived the holiness these laws asked of Israel. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and he “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). His Spirit now forms in us “the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). Our distinctiveness rests in a transformed heart that shows itself in what we do with our time, our bodies, our families and our worship, as we offer ourselves to him as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1–2). Rest in him, come before him with awe, and let him be the one voice you seek. He is the LORD your God.