Leviticus 18

God calls Israel to live differently from Egypt, where they had lived, and from Canaan, where they were going. He sets out the boundaries of sexual faithfulness and family purity, and forbids child sacrifice to Molech. These sins defile people and even the land, and Israel must not copy them. The chapter rests on one claim: the LORD is their God, and his people are to be set apart.

Leviticus 18:1-2

God speaks to Moses and tells him to pass on his words to all Israel. Everything in the chapter rests on one statement: I am the LORD your God. The commands that follow come from the God who has redeemed them and made a covenant with them.

BSA: LORD (“Yehovah, The covenant Name of God”): This is the personal name God gave his people, so the commands come from a God who has bound himself to them.

See also: Exodus 6:6-7.

Leviticus 18:3

Israel is caught between two cultures. Egypt is behind them and Canaan is ahead, and God forbids copying either one. God’s people are not to take their moral standards from the surrounding world, however normal its habits look.

BSA: practices (“customs, traditions”): These are settled habits of a whole society, the things everyone around them simply does.

See also: Romans 12:2.

Leviticus 18:4-5

God’s judgments and statutes are not to be admired from a distance. They are to be walked in, as a daily path. God promises that the person who does them will live by them. His commands are meant to lead to real life and not to burden people.

BSA: walking (“living, following”): Obedience is shown as a whole way of life, a road traveled step by step. live (“have life, thrive”): God’s law is given so that his people may flourish, not merely survive.

Hebrew: וָחַי (vachai, H2421) — “and he shall live.” The word means more than staying alive. It speaks of a full life under God’s blessing, which is the purpose behind these commands.

See also: Ezekiel 20:11; Romans 10:5.

Leviticus 18:6

This verse is the heading for the whole list. No one may approach a near relative for sexual union. The phrase for close relative is literally flesh of his flesh. The family is meant to be a place of safety and trust, not of sexual claims.

BSA: close relative (“near of kin, flesh and blood”): The relative is treated as part of your own flesh, so family closeness itself sets the boundary. sexual relations (“uncover their nakedness”): This is the plain, serious Hebrew way of speaking about sexual union, and it is the phrase used all through the chapter.

Hebrew: גַּלּוֹת עֶרְוָה (gallot ervah, H1540) — “to uncover nakedness.” Nakedness here means the private shame of a person. Uncovering it points to a violation of what ought to stay covered and protected.

Leviticus 18:7

A son must not have relations with his mother. Father and mother are one flesh, so to shame the mother is to uncover the father as well. The verse gives the plainest reason: she is your mother.

BSA: nakedness (“shame, intimate parts”): What belongs to the marriage bed of one’s parents is not to be exposed or taken.

Leviticus 18:8

A man must not have relations with his father’s wife, meaning a stepmother. Even if she is not his birth mother, she belongs to his father, and the act dishonors the father. The apostle Paul later condemned a case of this kind in the church at Corinth.

BSA: dishonor (“bring shame, degrade”): The wrong is done against the father as well, and it shows how family honor is tied together.

See also: 1 Corinthians 5:1; Genesis 35:22.

Leviticus 18:9

A man must not have relations with his sister. This covers a full sister and a half-sister, and it makes no difference whether she was raised in the same household or elsewhere. Brothers and sisters are to be a protection for one another.

BSA: sister (“by birth or close relative”): The word covers every close sibling tie, so the ban cannot be got around by a technicality.

See also: 2 Samuel 13:11-14.

Leviticus 18:10

A man must not have relations with his granddaughter, whether through his son or his daughter. Such an act would shame the whole family, because it turns the older generation’s care for the younger into abuse.

BSA: shame (“bring shame or disgrace”): The harm reaches beyond the two people to the honor of the whole household.

Leviticus 18:11

This repeats and sharpens verse 9. The daughter of your father’s wife, born to your father, is your sister. A stepsister who shares your father counts as family, and the ban stands even though her mother is a different woman.

BSA: sister (“a biological sibling, a close relative, having a familial bond”): The tie of the family name and the father makes her a sister in the full sense.

Leviticus 18:12-13

Aunts on both sides are forbidden: your father’s sister and your mother’s sister. They stand in the same closeness to you as your parents do. The family line is a circle of trust, and it is not to be turned into a source of sexual choice.

BSA: close relative (“flesh, family tie”): The aunt shares the flesh of your parent, and this is the reason given for the prohibition.

Hebrew: שְׁאֵר (she’er, H7607) — “flesh, near kin.” The word means the nearest part of one’s own flesh and blood. The law speaks of family as one body, not as a set of separate persons.

Leviticus 18:14

A man must not approach the wife of his father’s brother. She is his aunt by marriage. The law protects the uncle’s marriage and honor, and teaches that the closeness created by marriage matters as much as the closeness of blood.

BSA: dishonor (“bring shame upon, disgrace”): The offense is against the uncle’s honor and the peace of the extended family.

Leviticus 18:15

A man must not have relations with his daughter-in-law. She is his son’s wife, so she belongs to the son and stands in the place of a daughter in the household. Her marriage must be guarded by the very people who live closest to it.

BSA: daughter-in-law (“bride, son’s wife”): She has become one flesh with the son, so the father owes her protection, not desire.

See also: Genesis 38:15-26.

Leviticus 18:16

A man must not have relations with his brother’s wife, because it would shame his brother. Marriage joins a wife to her husband’s whole family in a bond of trust. John the Baptist rebuked Herod for taking his brother’s wife.

BSA: shame (“disgrace, nakedness”): The wrong strikes at the brother’s own marriage bed, which is why it brings such disgrace.

See also: Mark 6:17-18; Deuteronomy 25:5-6.

Leviticus 18:17

A man must not have relations with both a woman and her daughter, or with her granddaughters. They are close relatives, and the law calls such conduct depraved. Mother and daughter are not to be treated as rivals for one man’s desire.

BSA: depraved (“wickedness, a shameful act”): The text uses a strong word for deliberate wickedness, not for a mere slip.

Hebrew: זִמָּה (zimmah, H2154) — “shameful scheme, lewdness.” The word carries the sense of planned, deliberate sexual wrong. It names the sin plainly as shameful.

See also: Leviticus 20:14.

Leviticus 18:18

A man must not marry his wife’s sister as a second wife while his first wife lives. The word rival shows what is at stake: sisters would be set against each other in the same home. Jacob’s household, with Leah and Rachel, shows the pain this causes.

BSA: rival wife (“to be an adversary, in opposition”): The second wife would become a competitor to the first, turning the family into a place of jealousy.

Hebrew: לִצְרֹר (litsror, H6887) — “to be a rival, to cause distress.” The word means to bring trouble or grief, as a rival does. The law protects the first wife from being made miserable in her own home.

Leviticus 18:19

A man must not approach a woman for sexual relations during her menstrual period. In Israel this was a time set apart as ceremonially unclean. The law taught respect for the body and for the line between ordinary life and what is holy.

BSA: menstrual period (“time of impurity, uncleanness, separation”): It describes a ritual state of separation, not a moral stain on the woman.

See also: Leviticus 15:19-24.

Leviticus 18:20

A man must not sleep with his neighbor’s wife. Adultery breaks the covenant of marriage and defiles the one who does it. The law protects the neighbor’s home, and the bond of marriage is shown to be sacred.

BSA: defile (“make unclean, pollute”): The sin stains the doer himself and leaves him unfit to stand before a holy God.

See also: Exodus 20:14; Hebrews 13:4.

Leviticus 18:21

Israel must never hand over its children to be sacrificed to Molech, the god of the surrounding peoples. This is the darkest corruption of worship, and it profanes the name of God, who gives life and loves children. The command shows how seriously God treats the lives of the young.

BSA: sacrificed (“burned, passed through the fire”): The word shows the terrible form of the rite: children were given over to the fire. profane (“desecrate, defile”): To use his name beside such acts treats his holy character as common.

See also: Jeremiah 32:35; 2 Kings 23:10.

Leviticus 18:22

God forbids a man to lie with a man as with a woman and calls it an abomination. Throughout Scripture, sexual union is set within the marriage of a man and a woman. Christians hold this teaching with seriousness and also with compassion for all people.

BSA: abomination (“a disgusting thing, detestable”): The word marks something that stands in sharp opposition to what God has made and desires.

Hebrew: תּוֹעֵבָה (to’evah, H8441) — “abomination, detestable thing.” The word is used for things God utterly rejects, often tied to idol worship. It states the strength of God’s moral judgment.

See also: Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

Leviticus 18:23

Neither man nor woman may have sexual relations with an animal. The verse says this blurs the line God drew between human beings and animals. The text calls it a perversion, a confusion of what ought to be kept distinct.

BSA: perversion (“confusion, abomination, contrary to nature”): The act mixes together what God made separate, which is the meaning of the Hebrew word.

Hebrew: תֶּבֶל (tevel, H8397) — “mixing, confusion.” The word comes from a root meaning to mix or blend wrongly. It names the act as a disorder against the way God made things.

See also: Exodus 22:19.

Leviticus 18:24

The list ends with a warning: do not defile yourselves in any of these ways. The nations God is driving out were defiled by exactly these things. Their removal is a judgment on their sin, and Israel is warned not to follow them into it.

BSA: driving out (“expelling, casting out”): The nations are removed by God’s own action because of their moral corruption.

See also: Genesis 15:16; Deuteronomy 9:4-5.

Leviticus 18:25

The land itself has become defiled, as if the ground felt the weight of the sin. God will punish it, and the land will vomit out its inhabitants. Moral evil is not only a private matter. It poisons a whole place and a whole people.

BSA: vomit (“spue out”): The picture is of a body that cannot keep down what is poisoning it.

Hebrew: וַתָּקָא (vattaqa, H6958) — “and it vomited, spewed out.” The Hebrew uses the plain, strong picture of vomiting. The land is treated as a living thing that rejects what is unclean.

Leviticus 18:26

Israel is told to keep God’s statutes and ordinances, and to avoid all these abominations. This applies to the native-born and to the foreigner living among them. God’s standard is the same for everyone in the community.

BSA: foreigner (“sojourner, temporary resident”): Even a visitor living in Israel’s midst is held to the same moral boundaries.

Leviticus 18:27-28

The men who lived in the land before Israel did all these things, and the land was defiled. The warning is plain: if Israel does the same, the land will vomit them out just as it did the nations before. Having God’s promise does not excuse sin.

BSA: defile (“to be foul or contaminated, in a moral or ceremonial sense”): The sin brings both a moral and a ceremonial stain upon the whole land.

See also: Leviticus 20:22; 2 Kings 17:7-8.

Leviticus 18:29

Anyone who does these abominations is to be cut off from his people. Such acts are not small private faults. They threaten the holiness and well-being of the whole community, so the offender loses his place among God’s people.

BSA: cut off (“expelled, removed”): The offender is separated from the community and from the covenant blessings.

Leviticus 18:30

The chapter closes with a charge to keep: do not practice the abominable customs of those who lived there before, and do not defile yourselves. God ends as he began, with I am the LORD your God. He gives these boundaries as the Lord who has claimed his people.

BSA: charge (“ordinance, command”): It is a duty entrusted to them, like a guard post they are asked to keep.

Hebrew: מִשְׁמֶרֶת (mishmeret, H4931) — “charge, guard duty.” The word is used for a watch that must be kept. Israel is posted as a guard over its own holiness.

See also: 1 Peter 1:15-16.