Leviticus 20:3

Verse 1 opens a new block of law with words that recur all through the books of Moses: “And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying” (Exodus 6:10, Numbers 1:1). “The LORD” stands for Yᵉhôvâh, the personal covenant name of the God who redeemed Israel from slavery and bound himself to them. The verb dâbar is the ordinary word for speaking and telling. What follows comes from God himself, through the man he chose to carry his word to the people, just as the Ten Commandments came from God’s own speaking (Exodus 20:1). Moses later called Israel to obey the statutes God had given (Deuteronomy 4:1–2).

These laws were given at Mount Sinai, where God made Israel his covenant people and called them “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). Leviticus 19, just before this chapter, applies that holiness to daily life. Its heart is the command “Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).

Leviticus 20 belongs to the laws of holiness that run through Leviticus 17–26. Much of what it punishes was already forbidden in Leviticus 18, including the gift of a child to Molech (Leviticus 18:21), and chapter 20 now sets the penalties. After Molech and the mediums it turns to sexual sins (Leviticus 20:10–21), and it closes with a renewed call to be holy and separate from the nations, whose customs defiled the land and brought their expulsion (Leviticus 20:22–27). Leviticus says that the land itself vomits out those who defile it (Leviticus 18:24–28). The next chapter carries the same call to the priests (Leviticus 21).

“Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel” sends this word through Moses to the whole people, continuing the laws already given. It covers everyone in the land: “Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel”. The stranger who lived among Israel was held to the same standard as the native-born, because the holiness of the whole community and its land was at stake.

The crime is to give “any of his seed unto Molech”. The word zeraʻ means seed, from sowing, and is used for offspring, so to give one’s seed is to hand over one’s own child as an offering to this god. Children are the seed that carries a family on, and here a father gives that life up to be destroyed.

The penalty is death: “he shall surely be put to death”. The verb mûwth means to die, and in its causative sense to kill. The Hebrew doubles the verb, a common way of making a statement emphatic, so the sentence is certain. The method is stoning, and the executioners are “the people of the land”. The whole community takes part, and by doing so they purge the evil from among them, show together that they reject it, and keep its defilement from spreading. Deuteronomy lays the same communal duty on Israel toward a prophet who leads the people after other gods (Deuteronomy 13:5).

In verse 3 God speaks for himself: “And I will set my face against that man”. The picture is of God turning toward the man with fixed resolve to oppose him, and it tells Israel that the LORD himself stands behind the sentence of verse 2. “And will cut him off from among his people” uses kârath, which means to cut off, cut down or cut apart. It is a weighty phrase that recurs through these laws of holiness for removing someone from the covenant people.

The reason follows: “because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.” The verb ṭâmêʼ means to be or become unclean, or to make something unclean, and here the man’s act makes unclean the place where God dwells among his people. The verb châlal means to profane, to treat as common what is holy, and Strong’s traces its root to boring or wounding. God’s name stands for who he is and for his reputation, and an Israelite who gave a child to Molech brought that name into contempt before Israel and the nations. So the sin of one man reached all the way to the presence of God among the whole people.

The New Testament carries this truth into the church. Paul calls believers the temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16–17), and he calls the body of a believer the temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).

Verse 4 turns from the offender to everyone around him. “And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man” uses ʻâlam, to veil from sight or to conceal. With the eyes it means shutting one’s eyes to a thing and choosing to ignore it, and “do any ways” means in any way at all. The people see a child given to Molech and act as if they had seen nothing, whether from apathy, from fear, or from want of courage.

“And kill him not” joins the particle biltîy, meaning “not”, to mûwth, the same verb as “surely be put to death” in verse 2. The sentence God gave the people of the land to carry out is the very thing they leave undone.

The responsibility rested on every member of the community, beyond the priests and leaders. A people who looked away shared in the guilt, let the abomination go on in their midst, and blurred the line between Israel and the nations. God holds his people accountable for the evil they tolerate as well as the evil they commit. Deuteronomy gives the same duty when anyone in the community entices others to serve other gods (Deuteronomy 13:6–11). God later makes Ezekiel a watchman who answers for the warning he gives or withholds (Ezekiel 3:18–19), and Paul tells Timothy to keep himself pure from other men’s sins (1 Timothy 5:22).

“Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family”. Where the people will not act, God acts. The word for face, pânîym, is plural in form and used as a singular, and from the face itself it reaches to the front and the presence of a person. For God to set his face against a man is his personal, determined opposition. The words stand in verse 3 and come back in verse 6.

“And will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people.” The verb is kârath, as in verse 3, and the judgment now reaches everyone who follows the man into this worship. The verb zânâh means to commit fornication or to play the harlot, and figuratively to worship other gods. The covenant between the LORD and Israel was like a marriage, so turning to another god was unfaithfulness to her husband. This is why the LORD calls himself jealous (Exodus 34:14). The cutting off removes the sin from among the people so that it does not spread through the nation.

Verse 6 carries the same judgment from Molech to another way of leaving the LORD. “And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards” uses pânâh, to turn or to face. The verse itself shows what this turning amounts to, because it goes on, “to go a whoring after them”, with the zânâh of verse 5. Seeking out a medium is the same unfaithfulness as following Molech.

The “familiar spirits” translate ʼôwb, a medium or necromancer, someone who claimed to speak with the dead or with other spirits. The word can also mean the spirit itself, or a water-skin, which Strong’s connects with the hollow sound of a medium’s muttering. The “wizards” translate yiddᵉʻônîy, from the root “to know”, a diviner or conjurer who claimed secret knowledge. The nations around Israel, Egypt and Canaan among them, used necromancy, astrology, omens and sorcery to learn hidden things, shape events and see the future, and they often bound these up with the worship of their gods.

To consult them was to seek knowledge and help from somewhere other than the LORD, who alone reveals what is hidden, and it opened the door to the deception of evil spirits. Moses lists the medium and the wizard beside the one who makes a child pass through the fire (Deuteronomy 18:10–12). Samuel told Saul that “rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft” (1 Samuel 15:23), and Isaiah told a people urged toward mediums to seek their God and his word (Isaiah 8:19–20).

“I will even set my face against that soul” uses nâthan for “set”, the common verb for giving, which is used very widely for putting and setting, together with pânîym. God himself will oppose this person and cut him off from among his people, as he does the worshipper of Molech. The same holds for psychics, astrologers and mediums today, and for any source of guidance or power trusted in God’s place.

The God who spoke to Moses has now spoken by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–3), the Word who was God (John 1:1). Christ fulfilled the law (Matthew 5:17), and through his sacrifice he provided the true holiness that the law could only point toward (Romans 8:3–4). He is the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6).

Molech demanded the lives of children and gave no life in return. The LORD gave his only begotten Son (John 3:16), the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and that one offering sanctifies his people once for all (Hebrews 10:10). His sacrifice ends every other, and it shows the offering of a human life to any god to be the abomination it always was.

The penalty of being cut off fell on Christ. Isaiah says the Servant was cut off from the land of the living (Isaiah 53:8), Jesus cried out on the cross as one forsaken by God (Matthew 27:46), and God made him to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). Those who believe are grafted into God’s people (Romans 11:17–24) and reconciled to God for ever. For those who reject Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), the cutting off of this law points ahead to eternal separation from God.

Christ is the faithful Bridegroom who gave himself for his church (Ephesians 5:25–27), and in him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3), so his people have in him all that others go to mediums to find. His people are called to be holy as he is holy (1 Peter 1:15–16) and to give their bodies as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1). The church puts away evil by proclaiming the gospel, making disciples and living as a holy people, and it meets sin with truth and love and has no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness (Ephesians 5:11). God has called his people out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9), he forgives and cleanses those who confess their sins (1 John 1:9), and in the end he will dwell with them (Revelation 21:3–4), his face set toward them for good.

These verses show how much God cares for the weakest. Children who could say nothing for themselves had the law of God standing guard over them, and the LORD set his own face against anyone who would harm them in the name of a god. The same trade is made in quieter ways wherever a child’s good is given up for success, wealth or comfort, and this law shows how God weighs it.

They also show that God sees what a community chooses to overlook. In verse 4 the people’s closed eyes are themselves a choice, and he holds them to account for it. And they show that worship and trust belong to him alone, whether the rival is Molech’s fire or a medium’s voice, because he has bound himself to his people as a husband to a wife.

Over all of it stands the gospel. The God who forbade Israel to give its children to Molech gave his own Son, so that people who had turned away from him could be brought home and made holy.