Leviticus 24: One Law for the Egyptian's Son and Everyone Else

There's a parenthesis in verse 11 that most people step over. The man who curses is "the son of an Israelitish woman, whose father was an Egyptian" (v. 10), and then, right in the middle of the sentence about the curse, the text stops to give his mother's name: "Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan." Her name, her father's name, her tribe. His father gets one word.

Nothing in the chapter says why the record needed her pedigree at that moment, and I won't guess.

The lamp and the bread come first

The chapter opens with oil. The people are to bring "pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamps to burn continually" (v. 2), and Aaron is to see to it "from the evening unto the morning before the Lord continually" (v. 3). That word, "continually," appears in verses 2, 3 and 4 and once more in verse 8 about the bread, so four times in nine verses. I have done my share of on-call weeks, and I know the feeling of a job with no end date and no audience. This one is "a statute for ever," and it is done at night.

The bread is the weekly half. Twelve cakes, two rows of six, pure frankincense on each row, set in order "every sabbath," and "taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant" (v. 8). It comes from the people, and the priests eat it in the holy place, "for it is most holy" (v. 9), which is the same eating I wrote about in the Leviticus 21 post on the blemished priest. The chapter doesn't say what the loaves stand for. What it does is put the upkeep first, the oil and the bread that get seen to whether or not anything is happening, and only then turn to a quarrel in the camp.

They put him in ward and waited

The text gives no cause for the quarrel, only that the Israelite and the Egyptian's son "strove together in the camp" (v. 10) and the son "blasphemed the name of the Lord, and cursed," and they brought him to Moses. Then verse 12, which I'd read slowly: "And they put him in ward, that the mind of the Lord might be shewed them." Nobody in the camp supplies a sentence of their own. They wait, and verse 13 opens with the Lord speaking to Moses.

Numbers 15 has the same pause with the man found gathering sticks on the sabbath: "And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him" (Numbers 15:34), and the sentence follows at verse 35. I find it easier to take the waiting in Numbers 9, where some men defiled by a dead body ask why they are kept from the Passover and Moses says, "Stand still, and I will hear what the Lord will command concerning you" (Numbers 9:8). The answer there is a second chance at the feast, in the second month (vv. 10-11). Ours gives no such turn. Those who heard the curse lay their hands on his head (v. 14), so the people who were there are the first ones named, and verse 23 says the children of Israel "did as the Lord commanded Moses." The chapter stops there, and it doesn't make it any gentler than that.

Verse 22 is the hinge

Verse 16 gives the penalty for blasphemy and then adds that it falls on the stranger and on the native alike: "as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death." Then come the rules about killing and injury, and then verse 22:

Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country: for I am the Lord your God.

Here is my own guess, and the verses don't say it. The man in verse 10 has an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father, which puts him somewhere between the two words in verse 22, and I suspect that is part of why the two sit in the same chapter. The text never says anyone weighed which he was, or that he argued either way. It gives the same words for both.

The same phrase turns up elsewhere in the law, on the side of welcome. Exodus 12:48 lets a stranger keep the Passover, but on a condition: "let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land: for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof." Verse 49 gives the line, "One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you." Numbers 9:14 comes after the second-month Passover and says it separately, for a stranger who "will keep the passover unto the Lord," that "ye shall have one ordinance, both for the stranger, and for him that was born in the land." So the stranger gets the feast by terms, and the terms are the same ones the native keeps, and in Leviticus 24:16 and 22 those terms include the sentence. I like it better as a thought that came from reading the verses side by side than as something any of them says.

The eye for an eye verses

They sit in the middle, and the passage is built with some care. It opens with the man who kills a man (v. 17) and then the one who kills a beast (v. 18). Then comes the injury, "Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again" (v. 20). Verse 21 closes with the beast and the man again, in the opposite order.

The whole thing is wrapped between the stranger in verse 16 and the stranger in verse 22. I wrote about the measure itself in the Exodus 21 post and won't go through all that again, partly because it's Saturday and half the crabapple's leaves are still on the lawn.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was the blasphemer's father?

The text says he was an Egyptian and stops there. We get no name and nothing about how he and Shelomith came to be married, and anything past that is invention. The mother's name, her father and her tribe are all given.

Does Leviticus 24:20 let you take revenge?

The chapter doesn't say who carries out the measure in verse 19, "as he hath done, so shall it be done to him." Verses 15 and 16 are spoken to the children of Israel, and the stoning in verses 14 and 23 is the congregation's, but the verses on injury name no one. What a person does with a grudge on their own is a different question, and I'd send you to Exodus 21 and to the Sermon on the Mount for that.

Does Matthew 5 cancel this?

Jesus quotes the wording, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," and then says, "But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matthew 5:38-39). The Savior says nearly the same thing in 3 Nephi 12:38-39. My reading is that he is talking about how a disciple answers a personal injury and not about what a court does.

Why does the chapter start with oil and bread?

It doesn't say. Verses 1 to 9 are about the lamps and the loaves, and verse 10 begins with "And," so the quarrel arrives in the same chapter right after the upkeep. I notice the order.

One question for you

In Numbers 9 the men who couldn't keep the Passover got a second month. In Leviticus 24 the man who cursed got a stay in ward while they waited on the Lord, and then the sentence. If you were reading both next to each other with a group, what would you say is different about the two cases, and what would you want to ask Moses?

— D.