Bible Commentaries
Leviticus 17

Verses 1-33

VII

THE LAW OF HOLINESS

Leviticus 17-22

This chapter covers Leviticus 17-22. The theme is the law of holiness. I will treat it catechetically.

1. Where must animals for food be brought and slain and why?

Ans. – In such a camp as the Israelites camp, with 3,000,000 of people, the question of food was a grave question. The law required that every bullock, every sheep, every beef, every goat, that was to be eaten, be brought to one place to be slain, and that one place was the gate, or the door, of the tabernacle, the outer court of the tabernacle; and the reason for the law was that the priest had to inspect and approve of the method of slaughtering animals, for both sanitary and spiritual reasons. The first part, the sanitary reason, is employed today in the city regulations concerning slaughterhouses. The wisest precautions must be adopted with reference to cleanliness, to avoid the breeding of pests or pestilences.

The second and most important reason was that the priest should see that the law concerning blood was observed. They were expressly forbidden to eat any animal food from which the blood had not been drained, and this applied to animals where they killed them in the wilderness, as deer and those animals used for food; they must draw the blood off; as soon as the animal was killed, the blood must be drawn.

2. Give Old Testament and New Testament law prohibiting the eating of blood, and why is it now binding?

Ans. – The Old Testament law commences with the law of Noah, when he represented the whole race. While they were given permission in that law to eat every moving, living

thing, immediately after (Genesis 9:4) there is this express stipulation, viz.: that the blood must be drawn out of the body, or it could not be eaten. It was a sin to eat blood when the law applied to the whole world. Now when we come to the New Testament (Acts 15) we have this law. In the great council that was held in Jerusalem, James in closing that council says in his speech: "Wherefore my judgment is that we trouble not them who from among the Gentiles are turned to God; but that we write unto them to abstain from what is strangled, and from blood." Now in drawing up the decree later in the same chapter, you have this: "We lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things, that ye abstain from blood, and from things strangled." That is addressed to the Gentiles and says, "Fornications, from blood and things strangled."

In Revelation 2, our Lord calls attention to this law, and states that one of the things that he has against one of the seven churches in Asia is that they violate that law. So my decision is that the reason for prohibiting the use of blood for food is not a mere Jewish regulation. We find it binding on the race before there was a Jew, and we find it binding after the kingdom of God was passed to the Gentiles. Two reasons are given, one is that the blood is the life; and another reason is that because it is the life, it is the blood with which expiation for sin is made. Outside of the regulation concerning eating, just described, and which is set forth in chapter 17, we now enlarge the law of holiness with a new question.

3. What is incest?

Ans. – That comes in the first part of Leviticus 18, and goes down to Leviticus 18:18. In this we have a number of things that are classed as incest. I am not going to discuss that on account of the delicacy of the matter. I will say, in general terms, that any offense that violates the law concerning nearness of kindred, comes under the head of incest, no matter what it is. There are many cases of incest mentioned in the Bible.

4. What is the purpose of this law prohibiting incest?

Ans. – The purpose of the law is to enforce the sanctity of the family and its relation; and the common sense as well as the common interpretation of all denominations regards that law as binding now, because it does not arise from any particular condition of the Jews, but arises from the nature of the family institution, and is just as applicable to one people as another, and to one time as another. There is nothing temporary in it. We have laws regulating this also: for instance, that a man should not marry his own sister, his own aunt, or his niece, anything that violates the law of kindred. Now incest in that chapter stops with Leviticus 18:18.

5. What law prevailed in England to prohibit a man’s marrying his wife’s sister, even after his wife was dead?

Ans. – I don’t know that the law is abrogated now, but I know it did prevail. If a man married into a large family, and the wife died, then he could not marry the sister of his wife. Is that law properly derivable from Leviticus 18:18? I will quote it. My judgment is that they misinterpret the Levitical law in embodying any of the law into the common law of England. A great many romances have been written on this subject. Leviticus 18:18 simply says this: "Thou shalt not take a wife to be a rival of her sister in her lifetime." Now you see that does not forbid the marrying of the wife’s sister after the wife dies. Yet the English law prohibited it, and not only prohibited it, but counted it as not marriage.

6. What is sodomy?

Ans. – You can read that answer to yourself. That is a sin against the law of holiness, and is just as binding now as it ever was. That is, for a man to treat another man as if he were a woman, or a woman to treat another woman as if she were a man; that is sodomy. That was the sin that brought about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and it derives its name from Sodom.

7. What is bestiality?

Ans. – From beast we get bestiality, that is, a man treating a beast as if the beast were a woman, and a woman treating a beast as if it were a man.

8. Have we in our statute books any laws against bestiality?

Ans. – We certainly have, and with a very sharp penalty. I have known of some convictions under that law, and it left a lasting shame upon the one who committed the offense, besides the punishment by the state. Now that ends everything relating to sodomy, incest, and bestiality. The next question of the law of holiness is embodied in these words, upon which I ask a question: "Thou shall not cause thy seed to pass through the fire to Molech."

9. What is meant by causing the seed to pass through the fire to Molech?

Ans. – The answer is, the offering of one of your own children as a sacrifice to be burned with fire upon the altar of the heathen god, Molech. There is some difference of opinion yet as to whether these children were burned alive or slain before they were burned. The Carthaginians practiced this, and a great many heathen nations with which the Jews had to do practiced this. You find a number of cases of it in the Bible. Now I will give you an old-time description of it. A man would be in great trouble about something, and he felt that an ordinary sacrifice would not remove the curse from him. He would vow to offer his own offspring as a burnt offering to the god, Molech, in order to appease that deity, and remove the curse from his house. A furnace, shaped something like a man, but a most hideous and monstrous man, was built representing Molech, built of iron; it had arms held out, a huge, gigantic image of Molech, and under that furnace was a place for the fire, and that would heat that iron image red-hot, and then they would take the naked babe, and place it in the red-hot arms of the idol; and in order to drown the sounds of its screams of agony, the priests would beat their tom-toms, or huge drums, and the parents, disregarding the screams of the child, would go away believing that they were absolved from the curse that had come upon them.

10. What is the meaning and application of "Thou shalt not build a city in the blood of thy first-born"?

Ans. – That originated from the curse pronounced upon the men who should attempt to rebuild Jericho after it had been destroyed. The law was: "Whoever shall rebuild that city shall lose his first-born." Then comes the great direction "Thou shalt not build the city in the blood of thy first-born." From that I once deduced a prohibition speech, in the case where the city demanded the retention of the liquor traffic to promote commercial interest. "Thou shalt not build a city in the blood of thy first-born," I quoted, saying, "You seek to promote commercial prosperity through the liquor traffic. Maybe your son will be the first to perish, maybe your daughter will become the wife of a drunkard, and your grandchild inherit a drunkard’s habits, and you are building a city in the blood of your children."

11. What is meant by enchantments, and why forbidden?

Ans. – The law says, "Thou shalt not use any enchantments." It means, thou shalt not have recourse to any forms of seeking information or avoiding trouble that bring relief from any source but God. When I was a little boy, I knew an old Negro ninety years old who used enchantments. She would go out and gather herbs on the dark of the moon; she would catch a lizard or a snake, maybe get the eye of a newt, and put them in a pot with the herbs and boil them, compounding the enchantment, and if she could mingle a few drops of that in the water people would drink, she would "hoodoo" them. Those of you who have read Shakespeare’s Macbeth remember how the witch would take the eye of a mole, the toe of a frog, the blind worm’s sting, and boil them in order to concoct the enchantment. A great many Negroes up to the present day carry a rabbit’s foot in their pockets, or hang a horseshoe over the door of a house newly built, to keep off enchantments. The simplest form of enchantment is taking a cup of coffee before it is settled, and pour off the coffee and leave the grounds in the cup; then turning the cup over, the grounds left on the inside of the cup run down, and they forecast what is going to happen from the coffee grounds.

12. The next question is similar to this: What is meant by familiar spirits, and why forbidden?

Ans. – This beats the coffee grounds and the enchantments. It has retained its hold over the human mind with more persons, perhaps, than any other sin except fleshly sins. Lots of people in Texas now believe it. "Having a familiar spirit" (Leviticus 19:31) means this: a certain person is a medium; a medium has the power to call up certain spirits from the dead, and obtain from these spirits information, and this information is sometimes conveyed by rapping on the table, one rap meaning "yes," two raps "no"; then spelling out, one rap A, two raps B, and getting information that way. It has always been a horrible sin; it is just as much a sin today as it ever was. And the main point of the sin is expressed by Isaiah the prophet. In referring to it, he says, "Why seek ye to wizards, that chirp and mutter, and why should the living seek unto the dead? Seek unto me, saith the Lord."

The sin of it consists, then, in disregarding God’s revelation, and endeavoring to obtain from the spirits of the dead, or from demons, information that God either has not given or withholds. He gives all the information that we need in his Book of Revelation. Sometimes this spiritualism or spirit rapping, or spirit slate-writing, or whatever the form of it, sweeps the country like an epidemic, and the most cultured people, some as a mere matter of curiosity or experiment, some for graver reasons, will go to this medium and endeavor to obtain from the spirits of the dead the messages of the dead, from the husband who has departed, or the child who has departed.

Now you may put this down as settled that if ever you want to do anything for anybody, you must do it while you are living, and while that person is living, and if you wait till the person dies you cannot ameliorate his condition. If you wait until you die, the opportunity to help the other person in any way is gone forever. Our Lord in Luke 16 settles that and many other questions. A rich -man who entered hell wanted the soul of Lazarus to go back and carry the message to his brothers in the other world, and it was forbidden; the rich man wanted the soul of Lazarus to bring him, on the tip of his finger, a drop of water in hell, and it was forbidden. Between the spirits of the righteous and the wicked after death a deep and impassable chasm yawns. One cannot pass to the other. Those are fundamental doctrines.

You can count this as a settled thing that there is no clear case in the Bible where the soul of one who was dead was ever permitted to come back to this earth with a message of any kind. And there are only two cases that have ever been quoted; the most notable one is what seems to have taken place when Saul sought to get information from Samuel through the witch of Endor, and when we come to that case, I will expound it in such a way that you will see that it is no exception. The other is that of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. They appeared unto Christ, but they brought no message to any person on earth. On the contrary, the word to the apostles was: "Hear ye him." You cannot get anything from Moses and Elijah. That belongs to Christ. The message is: "Revealed things belong to us and our children, but hidden things belong to God."

13. This question covers Leviticus 20: What are the respective penalties for these offenses?

Ans. – You have Leviticus 20 to read, and I want you to answer it as you see it. How many punishable by death, and how many by excommunication – that is, cut off from the people? Now we take them as we come to them: Incest, sodomy, bestiality, enchantments, seeking those that have familiar spirits; and from Leviticus 20 you must answer what the penalties are in each case, and in giving the penalties show how many of the death penalty, and how many of the penalty of being cut off from the people.

14. This covers Leviticus 21-22. These two chapters give the law of holiness as binding on the priesthood. Now these chapters are added, giving the law to the priest, and the question is, What difference in the application to priests, that is, the law of incest, sodomy, and the law of enchantments, seeking this and that from familiar spirits? In other words, what difference do you find between the application of these laws to priests, and to the common people?

Ans. – The difference is that the penalty is harder on the priest and the law more stringent. The law is more stringent for a preacher, if he commit a crime; while what he does is the same to him as it is to any other man, yet by virtue of his office the sin is greater. Because of his high rank, he has brought more shame upon the cause of God than if the offense had been committed by a common person. That is the reason for it. Now there is in Leviticus 19 a great variety of special statutes, all of them important, but it is like taking each one of them as a text. It would mean as many texts as there are verses, but I will ask on Leviticus 19 two questions.

15. Of what are the special statutes in Leviticus 19 developments?

Ans. – They are developments of the Ten Commandments.

16. State in your judgment the most striking of these statutes.

Ans. – Read the Leviticus 19, and you will see a great variety, and some of them will impress you more than others. I will leave this to you because I want to train your mind to decide some things for yourselves. For instance you will find this: "Thou shall rise up before the hoary head," and you may just put it down that no man is a gentleman who does not respect an old man or an old woman. He simply isn’t a gentleman, in any consideration. I have seen boys in a streetcar hold a seat, with a tottering old grandmother standing up, holding to a strap. Now a Jew would be an outcast if he did such a thing, and he never does it among his own people. Sometime ago, a distinguished Japanese brought his family to America, and travelled across the continent from New York to San Francisco. He had been here before and knew the difference, but his little boy and girl did not know, and they were perfectly horrified at the irreverence shown in America to parents and old people. It was a most astounding thing to them. I knew of a Jew who lost a trade of great value rather than wake up his old father, who was taking a nap and had the key to the desk in his pocket. He said, "My father is old and his afternoon nap is precious. I will not disturb his afternoon nap in order to make a trade." And to this day the Jews are ahead of the Americans in deference to the aged. And the Japanese are above us in that; far below us in many things, but ahead of us in that.

17. What is the formal introduction to this law of holiness that I have been discussing?

Ans. – The formal introduction is found in the first five verses of Leviticus 18:1-5 "And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, I am Jehovah your God. After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do; and after the doings in the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do; neither shall ye walk in their statutes, ye shall do my judgments and keep my ordinances, to walk therein; I am the Lord your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments; which if a man do, he shall live in them; I am Jehovah." That is the formal introduction, that answers the question.

18. What is the application to Israel at this time?

Ans. – They had just come out of Egypt. They were just going into Canaan, and they were in covenant with Jehovah. The land they lived in was full of idolatry. The land they were just about to enter reeked with infamy, and the cry of its crimes went up to heaven. God said, "Their cup of iniquity is almost full," and when it was full he said that he would spew them out of his mouth. Now he wanted his people not to be like them, and he said, "if you do as the Canaanites do, I will blot you out of the land." And he did.

19. What deductions from these laws?

Ans. – While there are many deductions, I call your attention to two:

(1) God holds the nation responsible just as he holds the individual, no matter what the form of government in that nation, an absolute or limited monarchy, aristocracy, or theocracy, or democracy. The government that violates the laws of God, that nation shall not go down to perdition as a whole, but its duration is limited, for Jehovah he is King of kings, and Lord of lords, and the government of the whole world is upon his shoulder, and no nation can long violate the laws of morality, truth and honesty, and survive. Upon the high walls of the city of ancient times was written: "Therefore, saith the Lord, their days are numbered," and that city, no matter how regal, no matter how high its walls, how great its brazen gates, how strong its fortifications, the "Thus saith the Lord" came upon it on account of the iniquities, crumbled its walls to dust and made the site of that city the habitation of beasts, animals, and birds. As it was said of Babylon, "the lion shall whelp in thy palace." God governs the nations. It is a great theme, one of the greatest of all. Beecher one time preached a great sermon on the government of God, and a young man asked him how long he was preparing that sermon. He said. "Forty years."

(2) Now the second deduction: "As righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." It may be an English-speaking nation, it may be an Oriental nation, it may be an Arctic nation, no matter where the people are congregated into nations, righteousness exalteth that nation, and sin is a reproach to that people.