Chapter Eighteen

Forbidden marriages in close kinship degrees, regarding adultery, sexual immorality, and other types of sexual crimes

Leviticus 18:1. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Leviticus 18:2. Declare to the people of Israel and say to them: I am the Lord, your God. Leviticus 18:3. You shall not follow the practices of the land of Egypt, in which you have lived, and you shall not follow the practices of the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you, and you shall not walk according to their statutes: Leviticus 18:4. You shall keep My statutes and you shall observe My ordinances by following them. I am the Lord, your God. Leviticus 18:5. You shall keep My ordinances and My statutes, which if a person does, he shall live by them. I am the Lord [your God]. Given the well-known lust of the peoples of the East and the historical fact that entire states and individual nations of the East perished due to the collapse of moral foundations, unlimited sexual excess, and the disruption of all existing family and social relationships—Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, speaks with particular solemnity the ordinances that regulate family life. The doubt that arises due to the extreme abomination of certain sexual crimes forbidden here, the blessed Theodoret (questions 24 on Leviticus) resolves in this way: “God would not have forbidden what no one dared to do. And that this is indeed the case is testified by the very text: ‘You shall not follow the practices of Egypt and the land of Canaan.’ Having said this, he explains what they dared to do there and forbids such deeds. That people dared to do many similar things is testified by the Persians, who even to the present day marry not only sisters, but mothers and daughters. And many dare to attempt other unlawful deeds.”

Leviticus 18:6. No one shall approach any relative by blood to uncover their nakedness. I am the Lord. General rule: marriages and sexual relations in close blood relationship (Vulg.: proxima sanguinis sui) shall not take place among Israel.

Leviticus 18:7. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father and the nakedness of your mother: she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. Leviticus 18:8. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife: this is the nakedness of your father. Leviticus 18:9. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, the daughter of your father or the daughter of your mother, born in the house or born outside, you shall not uncover her nakedness. Leviticus 18:10. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son’s daughter or your daughter’s daughter, you shall not uncover their nakedness, for they are your nakedness. Leviticus 18:11. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife’s daughter, born of your father; she is your sister [by your father], you shall not uncover her nakedness. Leviticus 18:12. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s sister; she is your father’s relation by blood. Leviticus 18:13. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister, for she is your mother’s relation by blood. Leviticus 18:14. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s brother, and you shall not approach his wife: she is your aunt. Leviticus 18:15. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law: she is your son’s wife, you shall not uncover her nakedness. Leviticus 18:16. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife: this is the nakedness of your brother. Leviticus 18:17. You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter; you shall not take her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter to uncover her nakedness; they are your father’s relations by blood; this is wickedness. Leviticus 18:18. You shall not take a wife to rival her sister, to uncover her nakedness while her sister is still alive. Individual cases of forbidden and criminal sexual relations: 1) of a son with his mother (Lev 18:7); 2) with a stepmother and generally with another wife of the father (Lev 18:8; in patriarchal times the sexual transgression of Reuben with Bilhah, Gen 35:22, was a crime against this statute, see 1 Cor 5:1); 3) of a brother with a full sister (Lev 18:9) or a half-sister (Lev 18:11; in ancient times marriages between half-siblings were not considered impermissible among the Hebrews, as is evident from the example of Abraham and Sarah, Gen 20:12; see the conversation between Tamar and Amnon, 2 Sam 13:12 and following); 4) with a granddaughter (Lev 18:10); 5) marriages with an aunt (the marriage of Moses’s parents Amram and Jochebed falls under this category, Exod 6:20): a) the sister of the father (Lev 18:12), b) the sister of the mother (Lev 18:13), c) the wife of an uncle on the father’s side (Lev 18:14); 6) with a daughter-in-law, the wife of the son (Lev 18:15; such was the crime of Judah with Tamar, Gen 38); 7) with the wife of a brother (except in the case of her being childless after her husband’s death: then according to the law of levirate marriage, Deut 25 chapter, marriage was even obligatory, see, in contrast, the crime of Herod Antipas, Matt 14:3-4); 8) successive or simultaneous cohabitation: a) with a mother and daughter, b) with a grandmother and granddaughter (Lev 18:17); 9) simultaneous cohabitation with two sisters—marriage with a wife’s sister while the wife is still living (Lev 18:18), “that you may not make her a rival” (the marriage of Jacob with Leah and Rachel). Thus, the lawgiver forbids marriages and sexual relations in the closest kinship—the first three degrees, thereby protecting the moral relations of respect and love among blood relatives from the pull and bonds of carnal sexual love and cultivating mutual respect, modesty, and chastity among the members of the house and family. In a legal sense, not all forbidden relations were recognized as equally severely punishable. Thus for cohabitation with a father’s wife and a daughter-in-law, capital punishment was prescribed (Lev 20:11-12); for simultaneous cohabitation with a mother and daughter, punishment was not simply death (usually by stoning), but also the burning of the bodies of the guilty (Lev 20:14); on the other hand, for marriage with an aunt or the wife of one’s brother, only childlessness was threatened (Lev 20:20-21).

Leviticus 18:19. And you shall not approach a woman during her menstrual impurity, to uncover her nakedness. Leviticus 18:20. And you shall not lie with your neighbor’s wife, to emit seed and defile yourself with her. Prohibition of marital relations during menstruation (see Lev 15:24), adultery with a married woman (see Exod 20:14)—in both cases without explicit proof of the crime, because otherwise in the first case punishment of cutting off from the people was prescribed (Lev 20:18: if the woman was ill), and in the second case—death (Lev 20:10).

Leviticus 18:21. Do not give any of your children to be offered to Molech and do not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. The cruel cult of Molech, which consisted in passing children through fire (and not in dedicating them to the service of the idol’s temple—blessed Theodoret, question 25), in honor of the idol (in the form of a hollow bronze bull) of Molech, the god of the Ammonites (1 Sam 11:7) and other Near Eastern peoples, but which had adherents even among Israel since the very exodus from Egypt (Deut 12:31; Amos 5:26; see Acts 7:43) almost throughout the entire time before the Babylonian exile (1 Sam 11:7; Jer 32:35; 2 Sam 23:10). See the terrible condemnation of the cult of Molech below Lev 20:2-5.

Leviticus 18:22. You shall not lie with a man as with a woman: this is an abomination. Leviticus 18:23. And you shall not lie with any animal to emit seed and defile yourself by it; and a woman shall not stand before an animal to copulate with it: this is perversion. Leviticus 18:24. Do not defile yourselves by any of these things, for by all these the nations that I am about to dispossess of you have defiled themselves: Leviticus 18:25. And the land became defiled, and I brought retribution upon it for its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. The prohibition of the most abominable types of carnal sin—sodomy (Lev 18:22, see Gen 19:5; Rom 1:27) and bestiality (Lev 18:23)—is accompanied by an indication of the existence of these practices among those tribes (the Canaanites) who, having filled the measure of their wickedness by the forbearance (Gen 15:16) of God, will be expelled from the land defiled by them.

Leviticus 18:26. But you shall keep My statutes and My ordinances and shall not commit any of these abominations, neither the native nor the foreigner who lives among you, Leviticus 18:27. (for all these abominations the people of the land did, who were before you, and the land became defiled; Leviticus 18:28. that the land not vomit you out too, when you defile it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you; Leviticus 18:29. For if anyone commits any of these abominations, the souls who commit them shall be cut off from among their people. Leviticus 18:30. Therefore keep My commandments, so that you do not practice any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you, and do not defile yourselves by them. I am the Lord, your God. Learning from this terrible visitation upon the Canaanites, Israel must faithfully keep the divine laws and not defile either itself or the land given to it by God, remembering that Jehovah, as Master of nations and history, in case of wickedness among its members, will also expel it from the promised land: “Just as I delivered the Canaanites to final destruction for their many transgressions, and gave their land to you, so I will also punish you if you do likewise” (blessed Theodoret, question 26). * * * On the ancient Hebrew marriage, see the master’s dissertation of Fr. N. Stelletsky “Marriage Among the Ancient Hebrews,” Kyiv, 1891.