---
title: "Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible -  Leviticus 18"
description: "CHAPTER 18   :-. UNLAWFUL
MARRIAGES. 2-4. I am the Lord your God—This
renewed mention of the divine sovereignty over the Israelites was
intended to bear p"
image: "/images/missing.jpg"
url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/commentaries/commentary-critical-and-explanatory-on-the-whole-bible/leviticus/18"
---

CHAPTER 18

. UNLAWFUL
MARRIAGES.

**2-4. I am the Lord your God**—This
renewed mention of the divine sovereignty over the Israelites was
intended to bear particularly on some laws that were widely different
from the social customs that obtained both in Egypt and Canaan; for
the enormities, which the laws enumerated in this chapter were
intended to put down, were freely practised or publicly sanctioned in
both of those countries; and, indeed, the extermination of the
ancient Canaanites is described as owing to the abominations with
which they had polluted the land.

**5. Ye shall therefore keep my
statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in
them**—A special blessing was promised to the Israelites on
condition of their obedience to the divine law; and this promise was
remarkably verified at particular eras of their history, when pure
and undefiled religion prevailed among them, in the public prosperity
and domestic happiness enjoyed by them as a people. Obedience to the
divine law always, indeed, ensures temporal advantages; and this,
doubtless, was the primary meaning of the words, "which if a man
do, he shall live in them." But that they had a higher reference
to spiritual life is evident from the application made of them by our
Lord ([Luke 10:28](../../../kjv/luke/10/28)) and the
apostle ([Romans 10:2](../../../kjv/romans/10/2)).

**6. None of you shall approach to any
that is near of kin to him**—Very great laxity prevailed amongst
the Egyptians in their sentiments and practice about the conjugal
relation, as they not only openly sanctioned marriages between
brothers and sisters, but even between parents and children. Such
incestuous alliances Moses wisely prohibited, and his laws form the
basis upon which the marriage regulations of this and other Christian
nations are chiefly founded. This verse contains a general summary of
all the particular prohibitions; and the forbidden intercourse is
pointed out by the phrase, "to approach to." In the
specified prohibitions that follow, all of which are included in this
general summary, the prohibited familiarity is indicated by the
phrases, to "uncover the nakedness" [], to "take" [[Leviticus 18:17](../../../kjv/leviticus/18/17);
[Leviticus 18:18](../../../kjv/leviticus/18/18)], and to "lie with"
[[Leviticus 18:22](../../../kjv/leviticus/18/22); [Leviticus 18:23](../../../kjv/leviticus/18/23)].
The phrase in this sixth verse, therefore, has the same identical
meaning with each of the other three, and the marriages in reference
to which it is used are those of consanguinity or too close affinity,
amounting to incestuous connections.

**18. Neither shalt thou take a wife
to her sister, to vex her**—The original is rendered in the
*Margin,* "neither shalt thou take one wife to another to
vex her," and two different and opposite interpretations have
been put upon this passage. The marginal construction involves an
express prohibition of polygamy; and, indeed, there can be no doubt
that the practice of having more wives than one is directly contrary
to the divine will. It was prohibited by the original law of
marriage, and no evidence of its lawfulness under the Levitical code
can be discovered, although Moses—from "the hardness of their
hearts" [[Matthew 19:8](../../../kjv/matthew/19/8); [Mark 10:5](../../../kjv/mark/10/5)]
—tolerated it in the people of a rude and early age. The second
interpretation forms the ground upon which the "vexed question"
has been raised in our times respecting the lawfulness of marriage
with a deceased wife's sister. Whatever arguments may be used to
prove the unlawfulness or inexpediency of such a matrimonial
relation, the passage under consideration cannot, on a sound basis of
criticism, be enlisted in the service; for the crimes with which it
is here associated warrant the conclusion that it points not to
marriage with a deceased wife's sister, but with a sister in the
wife's lifetime, a practice common among the ancient Egyptians,
Chaldeans, and others.

**21. thou shalt not let any of thy
seed pass through the fire to Molech,** c.—Molech, or Moloch,
which signifies "king," was the idol of the Ammonites. His
statue was of brass, and rested on a pedestal or throne of the same
metal. His head, resembling that of a calf, was adorned with a crown,
and his arms were extended in the attitude of embracing those who
approached him. His devotees dedicated their children to him and when
this was to be done, they heated the statue to a high pitch of
intensity by a fire within, and then the infants were either shaken
over the flames, or passed through the ignited arms, by way of
lustration to ensure the favor of the pretended deity. The
fire-worshippers asserted that all children who did not undergo this
purifying process would die in infancy; and the influence of this
Zabian superstition was still so extensively prevalent in the days of
Moses, that the divine lawgiver judged it necessary to prohibit it by
an express statute.
**neither shalt thou profane
the name of thy God**—by giving it to false or pretended
divinities; or, perhaps, from this precept standing in close
connection with the worship of Molech, the meaning rather is, Do not,
by devoting your children to him, give foreigners occasion to
blaspheme the name of your God as a cruel and sanguinary deity, who
demands the sacrifice of human victims, and who encourages cruelty in
his votaries.

**24. Defile not yourselves in any of
these things**—In the preceding verses seventeen express cases of
incest are enumerated; comprehending eleven of affinity [], and six of consanguinity [], together with some criminal enormities of an
aggravated and unnatural character. In such prohibitions it was
necessary for the instruction of a people low in the scale of moral
perception, that the enumeration should be very specific as well as
minute; and then, on completing it, the divine lawgiver announces his
own views of these crimes, without any exception or modification, in
the remarkable terms employed in this verse.
**in all these the nations are
defiled which I cast out before you,** c.—Ancient history gives
many appalling proofs that the enormous vices described in this
chapter were very prevalent, nay, were regularly practised from
religious motives in the temples of Egypt and the groves of Canaan
and it was these gigantic social disorders that occasioned the
expulsion, of which the Israelites were, in the hands of a righteous
and retributive Providence, the appointed instruments (). The strongly figurative language of "the land itself
vomiting out her inhabitants" [], shows the hopeless depth of their moral corruption.

**25. therefore I do visit the
iniquity thereof upon it; and the land itself vomiteth out her
inhabitants**—The Canaanites, as enormous and incorrigible
sinners, were to be exterminated; and this extermination was
manifestly a judicial punishment inflicted by a ruler whose laws had
been grossly and perseveringly outraged. But before a law can be
disobeyed, it must have been previously in existence; and hence a
law, prohibiting all the horrid crimes enumerated above—a law
obligatory upon the Canaanites as well as other nations—was already
known and in force before the Levitical law of incest was
promulgated. Some general Iaw, then, prohibiting these crimes must
have been published to mankind at a very early period of the world's
history; and that law must either have been the moral law, originally
written on the human heart, or a law on the institution of marriage
revealed to Adam and known to the Canaanites and others by tradition
or otherwise.

**29. the souls that commit them shall
be cut off**—This strong denunciatory language is applied to all
the crimes specified in the chapter without distinction: to incest as
truly as to bestiality, and to the eleven cases of affinity [], as fully as to the six of consanguinity []. Death is the punishment sternly denounced against all
of them. No language could be more explicit or universal; none could
more strongly indicate intense loathing and abhorrence.

**30. Therefore shall ye keep mine
ordinance, that ye commit not any one of these abominable customs**—In
giving the Israelites these particular institutions, God was only
re-delivering the law imprinted on the natural heart of man; for
there is every reason to believe that the incestuous alliances and
unnatural crimes prohibited in this chapter were forbidden to all men
by a law expressed or understood from the beginning of the world, or
at least from the era of the flood, since God threatens to condemn
and punish, in a manner so sternly severe, these atrocities in the
practice of the Canaanites and their neighbors, who were not subject
to the laws of the Hebrew nation.

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