_THE LAW OF HOLINESS: CHASTITY._
LEV. xviii. 1-30.
Chapters xviii., xix., and xx., by a formal introduction (xviii. 1-5)
and a formal closing (xx. 22-26), are indicated as a distinct section,
very commonly known by the name, "the Law of Holiness." As this phrase
indicates, these chapters--unlike chap. xvii., which as to its
contents has a character intermediate between the ceremonial and moral
law--consist substantially of moral prohibitions and commandments
throughout. Of the three, the first two contain the prohibitions and
precepts of the law; the third (xx.), the penal sanctions by which
many of these were to be enforced.
The section opens (vv. 1, 2) with Jehovah's assertion of His absolute
supremacy, and a reminder to Israel of the fact that He had entered
into covenant relations with them: "I am the Lord your God." With
solemn emphasis the words are again repeated, ver. 4; and yet again in
ver. 5: "I am the Lord."[34] They would naturally call to mind the
scene at Sinai, with its august and appalling grandeur, attesting amid
earthquake and fire and tempest at once the being, power, and
unapproachable holiness of Him who then and there, with those
stupendous solemnities, in inexplicable condescension, took Israel
into covenant with Himself, to be to Himself "a kingdom of priests and
a holy nation." There could be no question as to the right of the God
thus revealed to impose law; no question as to the peculiar obligation
upon Israel to keep His law; no question as to His intolerance of sin,
and full power and determination, as the Holy One, to enforce whatever
He commanded. All these thoughts--thoughts of eternal moment--would be
called up in the mind of every devout Israelite, as he heard or read
this preface to the law of holiness.
[34] It deserves to be noticed that in this phrase, which recurs
with such frequency in this "Law of Holiness," the original,
with evident allusion to Exod. iii. 15; vi. 2-4, always has the
covenant name of God, commonly anglicised "Jehovah." The
retention of the term "Lord" here, as in many other places, is
much to be regretted, as seriously weakening and obscuring the
sense to the ordinary reader.
The prohibitions which we find in chap. xviii. are not given as an
exhaustive code of laws upon the subjects traversed, but rather deal
with certain gross offences against the law of chastity, which, as we
know from other sources, were horribly common at that time among the
surrounding nations. To indulgence in these crimes, Israel, as the
later history sadly shows, would be especially liable; so contagious
are evil example and corrupt associations! Hence the general scope of
the chapter is announced in this form (ver. 3): "After the doings of
the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the
doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do:
neither shall ye walk in their statutes."
Instead of this, they were (ver. 4) to do God's judgments, and keep
His statutes, to walk in them, bearing in mind whose they were. And as
a further motive it is added (ver. 5): "which if a man do, he shall
live in them;" that is, as the Chaldee paraphrast, Onkelos, rightly
interprets in the Targum, "with the life of eternity." Which
far-reaching promise is sealed by the repetition, for the third time,
of the words, "I am the Lord." That is enough; for what Jehovah
promises, that shall certainly be!
The law begins (ver. 6) with a general statement of the principle
which underlies all particular prohibitions of incest: "None of you
shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their
nakedness;" and then, for the fourth time, are iterated the words, "I
am the Lord." The prohibitions which follow require little special
explanation. As just remarked, they are directed in particular to
those breaches of the law of chastity which were most common with the
Egyptians, from the midst of whom Israel had come; and with the
Canaanites, to whose land they were going. This explains, for
instance, the fulness of detail in the prohibition of incestuous union
with a sister or half-sister (vv. 9, 11),--an iniquity very common in
Egypt, having the sanction of royal custom from the days of the
Pharaohs down to the time of the Ptolemies. The unnatural alliance of
a man with his mother, prohibited in ver. 8, of which Paul declared (1
Cor. v. 1) that in his day it did not exist among the Gentiles, was
yet the distinguishing infamy of the Medes and Persians for many
centuries. Union with an aunt, by blood or by marriage, prohibited in
vv. 12-14,--a connection less gross, and less severely to be punished
than the preceding,--seems to have been permitted even among the
Israelites themselves while in Egypt, as is plain from the case of
Amram and Jochebed (Exod. vi. 20). To the law forbidding connection
with a brother's wife (ver. 16), the later Deuteronomic law (Deut.
xxv. 5-10), made an exception, permitting that a man might marry the
widow of his deceased brother, when the latter had died without
children, and "raise up seed unto his brother." In this, however, the
law but sanctioned a custom which--as we learn from the case of Onan
(Gen. xxxviii.)--had been observed long before the days of Moses, both
by the Hebrews and other ancient nations, and, indeed, even limited
and restricted its application; with good reason providing for
exemption of the surviving brother from this duty, in cases where for
any reason it might be repugnant or impracticable.
The case of a connection with both a woman and her daughter or
granddaughter is next mentioned (ver. 17); and, with special emphasis,
is declared to be "wickedness," or "enormity."
The prohibition (ver. 18) of marriage with a sister-in-law, as is well
known, has been, and still is, the occasion of much controversy, into
which it is not necessary here to enter at length. But, whatever may
be thought for other reasons as to the lawfulness of such a union, it
truly seems quite singular that this verse should ever have been cited
as prohibiting such an alliance. No words could well be more explicit
than those which we have here, in limiting the application of the
prohibition to the life-time of the wife: "Thou shalt not take a woman
to her sister, _to be a rival to her_, to uncover her nakedness,
beside the other _in her life time_" (R.V.). The law therefore does
not touch the question for which it is so often cited, but was
evidently only intended as a restriction on prevalent polygamy.
Polygamy is ever likely to produce jealousies and heart-burnings; but
it is plain that this phase of the evil would reach its most extreme
and odious expression when the new and rival wife was a sister to the
one already married; when it would practically annul sisterly love,
and give rise to such painful and peculiarly humiliating dissensions
as we read of between the sisters Leah and Rachel. The sense of the
passage is so plain, that we are told that this interpretation "stood
its ground unchallenged from the third century B.C. to the middle of
the sixteenth century _A.D._" Whatever opinion any may hold therefore
as to the expediency, upon other grounds, of this much debated
alliance, this passage, certainly, cannot be fairly cited as
forbidding it; but is far more naturally understood as by natural
implication permitting the union, after the decease of the first wife.
The laws concerning incest therefore terminate with ver. 17; and ver.
18, according to this interpretation, must be regarded as a
restriction upon polygamous connections, as ver. 19 is upon the rights
of marriage.
It seems somewhat surprising that the question should have been
raised, even theoretically, whether the Mosaic law, as regards the
degrees of affinity prohibited in marriage, is of permanent authority.
The reasons for these prohibitions, wherever given, are as valid now
as then; for the simple reason that they are grounded fundamentally in
a matter of fact,--namely, the nature of the relation between husband
and wife, whereby they become "one flesh," implied in such phraseology
as we find in ver. 16; and also the relation of blood between members
of the same family, as in vv. 10, etc. Happily, however, whatever
theory any may have held, the Church in all ages has practically
recognised every one of these prohibitions, as binding on all persons;
and has rather been inclined to err, if at all, by extending, through
inference and analogy, the prohibited degrees even beyond the Mosaic
code. So much, however, by way of guarding against excess in such
inferential extensions of the law, we must certainly say: according to
the law itself, as further applied in chap. xxi. 1-4, and limited in
Deut. xxv. 5-10, relationship by marriage is not to be regarded as
precisely equivalent in degree of affinity to relationship by blood.
We cannot, for instance, conceive that, under any circumstances, the
prohibition of the marriage of brothers and sisters should have had
any exception; and yet, as we have seen, the marriage between brother
and sister-in-law is explicitly authorised, in the case of the
levirate marriage, and by implication allowed in other cases, by the
language of ver. 18 of this chapter.
But in these days, when there is such a manifest inclination in
Christendom, as especially in the United States and in France, to
ignore the law of God in regard to marriage and divorce, and regulate
these instead by a majority vote, it assuredly becomes peculiarly
imperative that, as Christians, we exercise a holy jealousy for the
honour of God and the sanctity of the family, and ever refuse to allow
a majority vote any authority in these matters, where it contravenes
the law of God. While we must observe caution that in these things we
lay no burden on the conscience of any, which God has not first placed
there, we must insist--all the more strenuously because of the
universal tendency to license--upon the strict observance of all that
is either explicitly taught or by necessary implication involved in
the teachings of God's Word upon this question. Nothing more
fundamentally concerns the well-being of society than the relation of
the man and the woman in the constitution of the family; and while,
unfortunately, in our modern democratic communities, the Church may
not be able always to control and determine the civil law in these
matters, she can at least utterly refuse any compromise where the
civil law ignores what God has spoken; and with unwavering firmness
deny her sanction, in any way, to any connection between a man and a
woman which is not according to the revealed will of God, as set
before us in this most holy, good, and beneficent law.
The chapter before us casts a light upon the moral condition of the
most cultivated heathen peoples in those days, among whom many of the
grossest of these incestuous connections, as already remarked, were
quite common, even among those of the highest station. There are many
in our day more or less affected with the present fashion of
admiration for the ancient (and modern) heathenisms, who would do well
to heed this light, that their blind enthusiasm might thereby be
somewhat tempered.
On the other hand, these laws show us, in a very striking contrast,
the estimate which God puts upon the maintenance of holiness, purity,
and chastity between man and woman; and His very jealous regard for
the sanctity of the family in all its various relations. Even in the
Old Testament we have hints of a reason for this, deeper than mere
expediency,--hints which receive a definite form in the clearer
teaching of the New Testament, which tells us that in the Divine plan
it is ordained that in these earthly relations man shall be the shadow
and image of God. If, as the Apostle tells us (Eph. iii. 15, R.V.),
"every family in heaven and on earth" is named from the Father; and
if, as he again teaches (Eph. v. 29-32), the relation of husband and
wife is intended to be an earthly type and symbol of the relation
between the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church, which is His
Bride,--then we cannot wonder at the exceedingly strong emphasis which
marks these prohibitions. Everything must be excluded which would be
incompatible with this holy ideal of God for man; that not only in the
constitution of his person, but in these sacred relations which belong
to his very nature, as created male and female, he should be the image
of the invisible God.
Thus, he who is a father is ever to bear in mind that in his
fatherhood he is appointed to shadow forth the ineffable mystery of
the eternal relation of the only-begotten and most holy Son to this
everlasting Father. As husband, the man is to remember that since he
who is joined to his wife becomes with her "one flesh," therefore this
union becomes, in the Divine ordination, a type and pattern of the yet
more mysterious union of life between the Son of God and the Church,
which is His Bride. As brothers and sisters, again, the children of
God are to remember that brotherly love, in its purity and unselfish
devotion, is intended of God to be a living illustration of the love
of Him who has been made of God to be "the firstborn among many
brethren" (Rom. viii. 29). And thus, with the family life pervaded
through and through by these ideas, will license and impurity be made
impossible, and, as happily now in many a Christian home, it will
appear that the family, no less truly than the Church, is appointed of
God to be a sanctuary of purity in a world impure and corrupt by
wicked works, and, no less really than the Church, to be an effective
means of Divine grace, and of preparation for the eternal life of the
heavenly kingdom, when all of God's "many sons" shall have been
brought to glory, the "many brethren" of the First-Begotten, to abide
with Him in the Father's house for ever and ever.
After the prohibition of adultery in ver. 20, we have what at first
seems like a very abrupt introduction of a totally different subject;
for ver. 21 refers, not to the seventh, but to the second, and,
therewith also, to the sixth commandment. It reads: "Thou shalt not
give any of thy seed to make them pass through the fire to Molech,
neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God."
But the connection of thought is found in the historical relation of
the licentious practices prohibited in the preceding verses to
idolatry, of which this Molech-worship is named as one of the most
hideous manifestations. Some, indeed, have supposed that this
frequently recurring phrase does not designate an actual sacrifice of
the children, but only their consecration to Molech by some kind of
fire-baptism. But certainly such passages as 2 Kings xvii. 31, Jer.
vii. 31, xix. 5, distinctly require us to understand an actual
offering of the children as "burnt-offerings." They were not indeed
burnt alive, as a late and untrustworthy tradition has it, but were
first slain, as in the case of all burnt-sacrifices, and then burnt.
The unnatural cruelty of the sacrifice, even as thus made, was such,
that both here and in xx. 3 it is described as in a special sense a
"profaning" of God's holy name,--a profanation, in that it represented
Him, the Lord of love and fatherly mercy, as requiring such a cruel
and unnatural sacrifice of parental love, in the immolation of
innocent children.
The inconceivably unnatural crimes prohibited in vv. 22, 23 were in
like manner essentially connected with idolatrous worship: the former
with the worship of Astarte or Ashtoreth; the latter with the worship
of the he-goat at Mendes in Egypt, as the symbol of the generative
power in nature. What a hideous perversion of the moral sense was
involved in these crimes, as thus connected with idolatrous worship,
is illustrated strikingly by the fact that men and women, thus
prostituted to the service of false gods, were designated by the terms
_qádesh_ and _qádesháh_, "sacred," "holy"![35] No wonder that the
sacred writer brands these horrible crimes as, in a peculiar and
almost solitary sense, "abomination," "confusion."
[35] See, for example, in the Hebrew text, 1 Kings xiv. 24; Gen.
xxxviii. 21; Hosea iv. 14, _et passim_.
In these days of ours, when it has become the fashion among a certain
class of cultured writers--who would still, in many instances,
apparently desire to be called Christian--to act as the apologists of
idolatrous, and, according to Holy Scripture, false religions, the
mention of these crimes in this connection may well remind the reader
of what such seem to forget, as they certainly ignore; namely, that in
all ages, in the modern heathenism no less than in the ancient,
idolatry and gross licentiousness ever go hand in hand. Still, to-day,
even in Her Majesty's Indian Empire, is the most horrible
licentiousness practised as an office of religious worship. Nor are
such revolting perversions of the moral sense confined to the
"Maharájás" of the temples in Western India, who figured in certain
trials in Bombay a few years ago; for even the modern "reformed"
Hindooism, from which some hope so much, has not always been able to
shake itself free from the pollution of these things, as witness the
argument conducted in recent numbers of the _Árya Patriká_ of Lahore,
to justify the infamous custom known as _Niyoga_, practised to this
day in India, _e.g._, by the Panday Brahmans of Allahabad;--a practice
which is sufficiently described as being adultery arranged for, under
certain conditions, by a wife or husband, the one for the other. One
would fain charitably hope, if possible, that our modern apologists
for Oriental idolatries are unaccountably ignorant of what all history
should have taught them as to the inseparable connection between
idolatry and licentiousness. Both Egypt and Canaan, in the olden
time,--as this chapter with all contemporaneous history teaches,--and
also India in modern times, read us a very awful lesson on this
subject. Not only have these idolatries led too often to gross
licentiousness of life, but in their full development they have, again
and again, in audacious and blasphemous profanation of the most holy
God, and defiance even of the natural conscience, given to the most
horrible excesses of unbridled lust the supreme sanction of declaring
them to be religious obligations. Assuredly, in God's sight, it cannot
be a trifling thing for any man, even through ignorance, to extol, or
even apologise for, religions with which such enormities are both
logically and historically connected. And so, in these stern
prohibitions, and their heavy penal sanctions, we may find a
profitable lesson for even the cultivated intellect of the nineteenth
century!
The chapter closes with reiterated charges against indulgence in any
of these abominations. Israel is told (vv. 25, 28) that it was because
the Canaanites practised these enormities that God was about to
scourge them out of their land;--a judicial reason which, one would
think, should have some weight with those whose sympathies are so
drawn out with commiseration for the Canaanites, that they find it
impossible to believe that it can be true, as we are told in the
Pentateuch, that God ordered their extermination. Rather, in the light
of the facts, would we raise the opposite question: whether, if God
indeed be a holy and righteous Governor among the nations, He could do
anything else either in justice toward the Canaanites, or in mercy
toward those whom their horrible example would certainly in like
manner corrupt, than, in one way or another, effect the extermination
of such a people?
Israel is then solemnly warned (ver. 28) that if they,
notwithstanding, shall practise these crimes, God will not spare them
any more than He spared the Canaanites. No covenant of His with them
shall hinder the land from spueing them out in like manner. And though
the nation, as a whole, give not itself to these things, each
individual is warned (ver. 29), "Whosoever shall commit any of these
abominations, even the souls that do them shall be cut off from among
their people;" that is, shall be outlawed and shut out from all
participation in covenant mercies. And therewith this part of the law
of holiness closes, with those pregnant words, repeated now in this
chapter for the fifth time: "I am the Lord (Heb. Jehovah) your God!"