Law of Moses — Leviticus 18

This will not be a typical Bible lesson. On the one hand, the chapter itself is pretty easy to summarize, but one issue is raised that requires a lot of background.

The chapter begins with the Lord giving the context of what follows: Don’t act like the pagan nations. In particular, this refers to the influences of Egypt where they lived for several centuries, nor the Canaanites whose land they were invading. Keep in mind that the Lord has said over and over that the issue with the Canaanites was not the people, but their hideous religious practices. The cities Joshua attacked were a select group of major cult centers; they were never commissioned to destroy every town. Thus, they should have expected some of the local population to continue as conquered subject nations while Israel took over the ownership of the land promised to Abraham.

So the point here in this chapter is to avoid acting like the pagan peoples to whom Israel was routinely exposed. The Egyptians had no problem with incestuous marriages, so the rules here are pretty clear about all the different ways one could violate this taboo, with polygamy, etc. It has to do with what constitutes kinship too close for sexual contact, and presumably marriage. This is where we get our Western notion of “kissing cousin” — anyone who is at least three times removed (third cousin). They are considered safe from this regulation.

Notice that under normal circumstances, a man cannot touch a brother’s wife, but the exception not mentioned here is when his brother dies without heirs. Then a man must marry his brother’s widow and raise up heirs in that brother’s name. Keep it in focus here: This is not simply a matter of marriage and kinship, but each of these negative examples arises from pagan practices either in Egypt or Canaan.

Thus, we come to verse 19 which is often misunderstood and taken out of that context. In order to explain this, we have to bring in a lot of context. My primary source is here. You can probably find this elsewhere. Our biggest problem is that Orthodox Judaism has made a huge confusing mess out of the issue of women’s menstruation. Consequently, Christians who pay no attention to Jesus’ and His condemnation of Jewish folly and legalism have this crazy notion that Judaism is an accurate reflection of the Covenant. It is not. The reference here is to a pagan ritual act.

That link makes note of Leviticus 15 and 20, where the wider issue of menstruation is raised as a matter of ritual purity. It also mentions vaginal hemorrhage, which is handled differently, a much stricter matter. Rabbinical tradition, in yet another attempt to hedge about the Law, as if it needs some kind of extreme protection, refuses to distinguish the two and treats them both as hemorrhage, which is totally unfair to the woman and hard on marriages.

Under routine menstruation, a woman is ritually impure for seven days. All that means is that she cannot enter the Temple grounds. As long as she is nowhere near the Temple, it’s no big deal. If her husband lies in the same bed or sits on the same chair during that seven days, he must bathe and wait until sundown to enter the Temple. Archaeologists have found a ring of pools around the Temple Mount. A man entering Jerusalem and headed for the Temple could stop off and bathe at one of these pools and wait until sundown, then enter the Temple. A lot of men would play it safe and stop to bathe on the principle of some unwitting ritual impurity. This is where we get baptism, by the way.

If he actually had sex with her during her seven days, he had to wait out the week with her. Now as long as he had no intention of entering the Temple, none of that ritual purity business mattered. That is, unless that sex act during her period was a pagan ritual act, something that was practiced in both Egypt and among the Canaanites. Then the both of them were liable to execution, or exile if they happened to escape. That’s the point of the reference in this chapter here.

For those of us who follow the Messiah and King of the New Israel, the ritual purity issue means nothing. And it’s hard to imagine even a Western Christian desiring to engage in any long forgotten pagan rituals. However, Paul made it clear that the issue of sex with near relatives, both by blood and by marriage, is more than a matter of ancient heathen rituals (1 Corinthians 5). It violates Creation itself and threatens shalom.