Imamat 20:9

Family Life and Sexual Prohibitions ¹ 

20:9 “‘If anyone ²  curses his father and mother ³  he must be put to death. He has cursed his father and mother; his blood guilt is on himself. ⁴ 

Imamat 20:11-13

20:11 If a man has sexual intercourse with his father’s wife, he has exposed his father’s nakedness. ⁵  Both of them must be put to death; their blood guilt is on themselves. ⁶  20:12 If a man has sexual intercourse with his daughter-in-law, both of them must be put to death. They have committed perversion; ⁷  their blood guilt is on themselves. 20:13 If a man has sexual intercourse with a male as one has sexual intercourse with a woman, ⁸  the two of them have committed an abomination. They must be put to death; their blood guilt is on themselves.

Imamat 20:16

20:16 If a woman approaches any animal to have sexual intercourse with it, ⁹  you must kill the woman, and the animal must be put to death; their blood guilt is on themselves.

Imamat 20:27

Prohibition against Spiritists and Mediums

20:27 “‘A man or woman who ¹⁰  has in them a spirit of the dead or a familiar spirit ¹¹  must be put to death. They must pelt them with stones; ¹²  their blood guilt is on themselves.’”

[20:9]  ¹ sn Compare the regulations in Lev 18:6-23.

[20:9]  ² tn Heb “If a man a man who.”

[20:9]  ³ tn Heb “makes light of his father and his mother.” Almost all English versions render this as some variation of “curses his father or mother.”

[20:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “his blood [plural] is in him.” Cf. NAB “he has forfeited his life”; TEV “is responsible for his own death.”

[20:9]  sn The rendering “blood guilt” refers to the fact that the shedding of blood brings guilt on those who shed it illegitimately (even the blood of animals shed illegitimately, Lev 17:4; cf. the background of Gen 4:10-11). If the community performs a legitimate execution, however, the blood guilt rests on the person who has been legitimately executed (see the remarks and literature cited in J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 328).

[20:11]  ⁵ sn See the note on Lev 18:7 above.

[20:11]  ⁶ tn See the note on v. 9 above.

[20:12]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew term תֶּבֶל (tevel, “perversion”) derives from the verb “to mix; to confuse” (cf. KJV, ASV “they have wrought confusion”).

[20:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “[as the] lyings of a woman.” The specific reference here is to homosexual intercourse between males.

[20:16]  ⁹ tn Heb “to copulate with it” (cf. Lev 20:16).

[20:27]  ¹⁰ tc Smr, LXX, Syriac, and some Targum mss have the relative pronoun אֲשֶׁר (’asher, “who, which”), rather than the MT’s כִּי (ki, “for, because, that”).

[20:27]  ¹¹ tn See the note on the phrase “familiar spirit” in Lev 19:31 above.

[20:27]  ¹² tn This is not the most frequently-used Hebrew verb for stoning, but a word that refers to the action of throwing, slinging, or pelting someone with stones (see the note on v. 2 above). Smr and LXX have “you [plural] shall pelt them with stones.”

[20:27]  sn At first glance Lev 20:27 appears to be out of place but, on closer examination, one could argue that it constitutes the back side of an envelope around the case laws in 20:9-21, with Lev 20:6 forming the front of the envelope (note also that execution of mediums and spiritists by stoning in v. 27 is not explicitly stated in v. 6). This creates a chiastic structure: prohibition against mediums and spiritists (vv. 6 and 27), variations of the holiness formula (vv. 7 and 25-26), and exhortations to obey the Lord’s statutes (and judgments; vv. 8 and 22-24). Again, in the middle are the case laws (vv. 9-21).