Leviticus 20: Verse 4 Is About the People Who Looked Away

So the chapter after the one about leaving the corner of your field is the one with the stonings. I read Leviticus 19 on Sunday and enjoyed it, which is a sentence I don't get to write about Leviticus very often, and then this morning I turned the page and the verse right after "the Lord spake unto Moses" had a man being put to death.

Most people who've read this chapter at all remember the list in the middle. I understand why. It's long, it's blunt and it's hard to know where to look while you read it. But the verses I'd hand to a friend first are 4 and 5, which come before the list and get skipped because they're sitting right next to Molech.

A chapter built like a sandwich

The chapter is twenty-seven verses long. It opens with idolatry (a man who gives "any of his seed unto Molech," verse 2) and closes with spirits and wizards (verse 27). In between there's a call to be holy at verses 7 and 8, then the long run of penalties from verse 9 to verse 21, then a second call to be holy at verses 22 through 26 that sounds a lot like the first one but has a land in it.

The penalties aren't all the same, which I hadn't registered until I counted. Some verses say death, one says burning (verse 14), a few say "cut off from among their people," and the last ones in the list say "they shall bear their iniquity" or "they shall be childless." The chapter treats them as different sizes of trouble, even if it never explains how anybody was supposed to tell the sizes apart.

I'm not going to go through the list a verse at a time. You can read it yourself in about four minutes, and it doesn't get easier with commentary.

Why does verse 4 mention the neighbors?

Here's verses 3 through 5 together, because they only work together.

And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not: Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people. (Leviticus 20:3-5)

Verse 2 had already given the community a job. The people of the land stone him. Verse 4 is the case where they don't, and what it says is that they "hide their eyes." Nobody there is said to approve or to take part. They see it and they look somewhere else.

The verse doesn't say what happens to the people who looked away. What it says is that the Lord will set his face against the man and his family and everyone who follows him into it, and whether the bystanders answered for it isn't in this text. What is in the text is that the verse bothers to describe them at all. The chapter could have gone straight from the crime to the penalty, and it stops to picture a group of neighbors who know and decide it isn't their business.

On the last Saturday of September I was coaching first base for Caleb's team against a team from the next league town over. Their first baseman was ten or eleven, in a red helmet a size too big, and a man at the far end of the bleachers (his father, it turned out) had started in on him in the second inning. It began as "come on, bud" and by the fourth it had gotten to a tone I won't reproduce, after every ball that got past him. The boy never looked up at the stands. I was standing about eight feet from him with my hands in my back pockets, and I'd say there were thirty adults within earshot, me included. The umpire was a high school kid who stared at the pitcher. Their own parents kept watching the field the way you watch a field when you'd like to be watching a field.

In the fifth, their coach turned around in the dugout, said the man's first name once, flatly, and turned back. The man stopped. I drove home with Caleb working out loud whether he'd tag up on a fly ball to short right, and I didn't say much.

Familiar spirits and wizards, at both ends

They bookend the chapter, with verse 6 having the Lord setting his face against the soul that turns after them and verse 27 giving the penalty as death by stoning. The Church's own study glossary defines a familiar spirit as one who claims to communicate with the spirits of the dead, and a wizard as a man who calls those spirits up. Deuteronomy 18 gives a longer list, and it ends the list with "a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer" (Deuteronomy 18:11).

Verse 6 says "cut him off" and verse 27 says "put to death" about what looks like the same people, and the text doesn't reconcile them. I've seen a few explanations, and none of them come from the chapter.

What do you do with the long middle list?

I read it as a law code given to a particular people at a particular time, and I think the chapter reads that way too. The words "his blood shall be upon him" or "their blood shall be upon them" show up in six of the verses (9, 11, 12, 13, 16 and 27), and each time it's the person who did the act who carries the consequence. That's the chapter's own wording and it's worth noticing before you start asking what any single verse means.

Verse 13 sits in that list, and it's the one people reach for in arguments today. In the chapter it's one line in a legal code for Israel, and I'll treat it as no more than that. The Church's standard of chastity is a separate subject with its own sources, and it's taught from those sources and not from a penalty list in Leviticus.

As for whether any of these penalties apply now, the Book of Mormon answers that one directly. The Savior says in 3 Nephi 15:8, "But the law which was given unto Moses hath an end in me." He says in verse 5 that the law in him is fulfilled, so Latter-day Saints don't carry out these penalties. That the penalties ended doesn't mean the Lord stopped caring about what they were guarding. Chastity and the rest are still commandments. What ended is the legal machinery, and the chapter doesn't give me grounds to say more than that.

If you want to see how the same community treats the same sort of rule elsewhere in the book, the hunter in Leviticus 17 is a good place to go. Verse 2 of this chapter names "the strangers that sojourn in Israel" next to the children of Israel, and chapter 17 does the same thing with blood. The rule lands on the person living down the road, whatever his parentage.

Holy twice, with a land in between

This is the part I'd read slowly.

And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine. (Leviticus 20:26)

In verses 24 through 26 the Lord uses three different words for what he's done. He has "separated" them in verse 24, he tells them to "put difference" between clean and unclean in verse 25, and in verse 26 he has "severed" them. All three describe a line drawn around a group of people.

The Church's study guide gives the Hebrew behind "holy" as qadash, which it says means "to be sanctified, consecrated, and dedicated." The last clause of the verse tells you what the line is for. It doesn't say "that ye should be better" or "that ye should be safe." It says "that ye should be mine." Holiness in this chapter is a matter of who owns you.

The first call to be holy, back in verses 7 and 8, has a turn in it. Verse 7 says "Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God." Verse 8 says "ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the Lord which sanctify you." One verse tells Israel to sanctify themselves and the next says the Lord is the one who does it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Molech?

A foreign god named in the Bible, and verse 2 ties the worship to giving children over to him. The chapter doesn't describe how it was done, and I'd skip any blog that claims to know. What it does say is that it defiles the sanctuary and profanes the Lord's holy name (verse 3).

Do the death penalties in Leviticus 20 apply to Latter-day Saints?

No, and 3 Nephi 15:8 is why: the law given to Moses has an end in Christ, and nobody in the Church carries out these penalties. Sexual sin today is handled through repentance and, where it applies, Church discipline with your bishop.

What does "be ye holy" mean in verse 26?

Set apart and belonging to the Lord, going by the chapter's own words in verses 24 through 26. The study guide's gloss of the Hebrew is "sanctified, consecrated, and dedicated." It doesn't mean keeping to yourself, though some people read it that way.

What's the difference between "cut off" and "put to death"?

The chapter never says. "Cut off from among his people" sounds like removal from the community of the covenant and "put to death" is exactly what it says, but how they were applied isn't in the text, and nothing tells you which came first.

The land is the other thing in these verses I can't leave alone. Verse 22 warns that "the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out," and verse 24 promises the same land, "a land that floweth with milk and honey." The warning and the promise are about the same piece of ground, and nobody in the chapter seems to find that odd.

— D.