Commentaria in Leviticum
Chapter 18
The degrees of consanguinity and affinity are prescribed in which it is not lawful to contract marriage. First, therefore, in the degrees of consanguinity, he forbids marriage and union with father and mother, verse 7; with a stepmother, verse 8; with a sister, verse 9; with a granddaughter, verse 10; with a step-sister, verse 11; with a father’s sister and mother’s sister, verses 12 and 13. Secondly, in the degrees of affinity he forbids marriage and union with an uncle’s wife, verse 14; with a daughter-in-law, verse 15; with a brother’s wife, verse 16; with a step-daughter and her granddaughter, verse 17; with a wife’s sister, verse 18. Thirdly, verse 20, he forbids adultery, sodomy, bestiality, and that they should offer their seed to Moloch, as the Chanaanites did, whom therefore God threatens to expel from their land.
1. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 2. Speak to the children of Israel, and thou shalt say to them: I am the Lord your God. 3. You shall not do according to the custom of the land of Egypt, in which you dwelt: neither shall you act according to the manner of the country of Chanaan, into which I will bring you, nor shall you walk in their ordinances. 4. You shall do my judgments, and shall observe my precepts, and shall walk in them. I am the Lord your God. 5. Keep my laws and my judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them. I am the Lord. 6. No man shall approach to her that is near of kin to him, to uncover her nakedness. I am the Lord. 7. The nakedness of thy father, and the nakedness of thy mother thou shalt not uncover: she is thy mother, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.
8. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s wife: for it is the nakedness of thy father. 9. Thy sister by father or mother, born at home or abroad, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. 10. The nakedness of thy son’s daughter, or of thy daughter’s daughter, thou shalt not uncover: because it is thy own nakedness. 11. The nakedness of thy father’s wife’s daughter, whom she bore to thy father, who is thy sister, thou shalt not uncover. 12. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s sister: because she is thy father’s flesh. 13. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother’s sister, because she is thy mother’s flesh. 14. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s brother, nor shalt thou approach to his wife, who is joined to thee by affinity. 15. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter-in-law, because she is thy son’s wife, neither shalt thou uncover her shame. 16. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife, because it is the nakedness of thy brother. 17. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy wife and of her daughter. Thou shalt not take her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter, to reveal her shame: for they are her flesh, and such copulation is incest. 18. Thou shalt not take thy wife’s sister for a harlot to her, nor uncover her nakedness while she is yet living. 19. Thou shalt not approach to a woman having her monthly courses, nor uncover her nakedness. 20. Thou shalt not lie with thy neighbour’s wife, neither shalt thou be defiled with mingling of seed. 21. Thou shalt not give any of thy seed to be consecrated to the idol Moloch, nor defile the name of thy God. I am the Lord. 22. Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind, because it is an abomination. 23. Thou shalt not copulate with any beast, neither shalt thou be defiled with it. A woman shall not lie down to a beast, nor copulate with it, because it is a heinous crime. 24. Defile not yourselves with any of these things with which all the nations have been defiled, which I will cast out before you, 25. and with which the land is defiled: the wickedness of which I will visit, that it may vomit out its inhabitants.
26. Keep ye my ordinances and my judgments, and do not any of these abominations, neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you. 27. For all these detestable things have the inhabitants of the land done, that were before you, and have defiled it. 28. Beware then, lest in like manner it vomit you also out, if you do the like things, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. 29. Every soul that shall do any of these abominations shall perish from the midst of his people. 30. Keep my commandments. Do not the things that they have done who were before you, and be not defiled therein. I am the Lord your God.
3. NOR SHALL YOU WALK IN THEIR ORDINANCES.—Ordinances (legitima) is the name for laws, especially ceremonial; for these the Hebrew chukkot properly signifies, as if to say: You shall turn away from the rites and ceremonies of the Gentiles, with which they worship their idols and demons.
4. YOU SHALL DO MY JUDGMENTS AND OBSERVE MY PRECEPTS.—“Judgments,” that is, judicial precepts, which establish justice and honourable living between you and your neighbour: hence the following matrimonial laws belong to these judgments; “and precepts,” namely ceremonial, by which you may duly worship me. For these are chukkot, as the Hebrew again has it.
5. WHICH IF A MAN DO, HE SHALL LIVE IN THEM—as if to say: Keeping these my laws, he shall be given by me a long and prosperous life, so that he may long live “in them,” that is, by them; he is again to fulfil them, and to walk in them as long as he lives. So Abulensis, Oleaster, Vatablus; indeed the Apostle intimates the same, Romans 10:5 and Galatians 3:12, where he indicates this difference between the New Testament and the Old, that the old promised to live in them (its laws), that is, promised temporal life, to carry them out continually; but the new promises absolutely eternal life and salvation. The Jews, however, who were pious and holy, kept these old laws out of charity: hence by this they also merited eternal life. But of that there is no question here literally: for elsewhere too throughout, the good things promised to the Jews are earthly and temporal, not heavenly and eternal, as is plain from Exodus 23:26; Deuteronomy 4:1 and chapter 30, verse 10. The Chaldee meant the same, translating: “he shall live the life of the age,” that is, a long life, though the translator of the Royal Bibles rendered it: “he shall live an everlasting life.”
Anagogically: the saints, says Rudolph, taught by the Spirit, referred this life to the land of the living in heaven, as he who sang: “I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living”; and Tobias, chapter 2: “We are the children of the saints, and look for that life which God will give to those that never change their faith from him.”
6. NO MAN SHALL APPROACH TO HER THAT IS NEAR OF KIN TO HIM (not any whatever, but that one only whom the following discourse will determine, says Rudolph), TO UNCOVER HER NAKEDNESS.—Nakedness (turpitudo) is the name for the unseemly members, which in Hebrew are called nakedness, by antiphrasis, because it is most unseemly that they should be bare. To uncover the nakedness of any one, therefore, is to know her carnally, and to have to do with her, whether in marriage or outside it. It is a Hebrew and modest metalepsis.
I AM THE LORD—who love honesty and modesty, whom you must obey commanding it here, unless you wish to experience him as avenger.
7. THOU SHALT NOT UNCOVER THE NAKEDNESS OF THY FATHER, AND THE NAKEDNESS OF THY MOTHER.—Here marriage and union with father (1) and mother are forbidden; for so great was the corruption of the Gentiles that Theodoret, question 24, asserts this of the Persians: “The Persians,” he says, “to this day are joined in wedlock not only with sisters, but even with mothers and daughters by the law of marriage.” In like manner among the Egyptians marriages of brother with sister were usual, as Diodorus attests, book 1, chapter 2. Hence Theocritus celebrates the marriage of Ptolemy Philadelphus with his sister Arsinoe as the marriage of Juno and Jupiter. Finally, here in verse 3 Moses sufficiently signifies that the morals of both the Egyptians and the Chanaanites were most corrupt in such unions and lusts. Of other barbarous nations hear Euripides in his Andromeda:
Such is the whole barbarian race: father with daughter, son with mother; sister is mingled with brother.
That the Indians, Ethiopians and Medes were wont to lie with their mothers and daughters, St. Jerome is witness, book 2 Against Jovinian.