Commentaria in Leviticum
9. HE THAT CURSETH HIS FATHER, HIS BLOOD BE UPON HIM—“Blood,” that is, the guilt and penalty of blood, that is, of death which he has deserved, as if to say: Let him perish by his own fault, and be punished with death by the judge’s sentence.
Verse 10. 10. LET THEM BE PUT TO DEATH, BOTH THE ADULTERER AND THE ADULTERESS.—The penalty of death is here decreed against adulterers, namely that of stoning, as is expressed in Deuteronomy 22:23 and 24. For the penalty of stoning which is ordained against those who give seed to Moloch, verse 2, as being put in the first place, seems to be referred to the other following cases, and consequently to these adulterers, in that no other is afterwards put or expressed, as I shall show more clearly at the last verse. And this is what the Jews say to Christ of the adulteress, John 8:5: “In the law Moses commanded us to stone such.” The same is plain from Ezechiel 16:38, joined with verse 40. And Jerome of Prato teaches this expressly in the same place.
11. HE THAT LIETH WITH HIS STEPMOTHER, AND UNCOVERETH THE SHAME OF HIS FATHER—for the nakedness of the stepmother is the nakedness of the father; for by marriage they are made as it were one flesh. See what was said in chapter 18.
THEIR BLOOD—the penalty of blood, that is, of death, as I said at verse 9.
14. HE THAT, AFTER MARRYING THE DAUGHTER, MARRIES HER MOTHER, HATH DONE A HEINOUS CRIME: HE SHALL BE BURNT ALIVE WITH THEM—namely with the daughter and mother whom he married, if both consented that the other should be brought in over her, or if they married him at the same time: for if one who was first married resisted the second marriage to be entered into with the mother or daughter, she was innocent, and could not be punished. The penalty of burning is appointed for this incest, whereas for other even graver crimes the penalty of stoning only is appointed, because the Jews were more prone to this incest: hence they had to be deterred from it by a heavier penalty.
Hear the Gentile virgins, who avenged incest by parricide: Plutarch in the Parallels tells a tragedy from Aristotle: “At Rome,” he says, “at the Liberalia, Aruntius, who from birth had been abstemious, held the power of Liber in contempt.
By him [Liber] being thrown into drunkenness, he by force took away the virginity of his daughter Medullina. She, recognising the violator by a ring, meditating a deed beyond her age, made her father drunk and crowned him; and brought to the altar of Lightning, weeping, she slew him who had laid snares for her virginity.” Plutarch adds a similar, nay a double tragedy: “Cyanippus the Syracusan, drunk, forced his daughter Cyane. A plague arising, when Pythian Apollo had answered that the incestuous man must be sacrificed to the gods who avert evils, Cyane, perceiving the sense of the oracle which deceived others, dragged her father by the hair to infamy, and moreover slew both him and herself.” He adds a third, of Valerius, who, having had intercourse with his daughter, thinking her another woman, when the matter was known, threw himself from a precipice in grief. Likewise a fourth:
“Papirius,” he says, “a Roman, overcome by love, made his sister Canulia with child. Her father Papirius Tolucer, the matter being known, sent a sword to his daughter; she stabbed herself, and Romanus did likewise.” In like manner: “Macareus,” he says, “lay with his sister; and when she had borne a little boy, her father sent her a sword to kill the offspring: she, thinking this impious, killed herself.”
17. HE THAT TAKETH HIS SISTER (even from one parent only; for that is what follows), THE DAUGHTER OF HIS FATHER, OR THE DAUGHTER OF HIS MOTHER, AND SEETH HER NAKEDNESS, etc., SHALL BE SLAIN—because this showing of these members is most indecent, and a prelude and incitement to copulation. Secondly, St. Augustine, question 72, rightly explains “seeth” as “touch and lie with.” For it goes before: “He that taketh,” and follows: “because they have uncovered one another’s nakedness”; which phrase here and in chapter 18 everywhere signifies not only the sight but also the union. See what was said there.
THEY SHALL BEAR THEIR INIQUITY—the penalty of their iniquity, namely stoning and death.
18. IF A MAN LIE WITH A WOMAN IN HER FLOWERS, AND SHE OPEN THE FOUNTAIN OF HER BLOOD (that is, the genital member, through which the menstrual blood flows), BOTH SHALL BE CUT OFF—because this union is unseemly and harmful to offspring. Note: union with a woman in her courses does not seem by the law of nature alone to be so grave an evil and sin, nor so harmful to the offspring to be generated that it should be punished with death. Hence graver Theologians (though some think the contrary) teach that under the new law it is no longer a mortal sin if a husband have intercourse with his wife in her courses. So teaches Navarrus, chapter 16 of the Enchiridion, no. 32; the same teach St. Antoninus, Paludanus, Abulensis, Soto, Cajetan and others whom Thomas Sanchez cites and follows, book 9 On Matrimony, disputation 21. Whence it follows that intercourse with a woman in her courses was so severely forbidden the Jews here by a law not so much natural as positive and ceremonial, as the eating of fat and of blood was forbidden them under pain of death, chapter 7, verses 25 and 27. In the same way, then, the penalty of death is here threatened to the woman in her courses and to him who has intercourse with her, not so much for transgression of the natural law, as of the ceremonial law so strictly forbidding this uncleanness, because God wished the Jews to be most pure in body.
You will say: If this law is ceremonial, why is it put here among other natural precepts? I answer: Because all these concern union and lust, and because this union with a woman in her courses is by the law of nature evil and forbidden, and a sin at least venial; but with this positive precept of God added, it was a mortal sin; nor is it wonderful that a natural precept is mingled with a positive: for so these precepts are mingled in the preceding chapter, Exodus [chapter 22] verse 20, and elsewhere.
19. HE THAT DOETH THIS HATH UNCOVERED THE SHAME OF HIS OWN FLESH (his blood relation, namely his aunt by mother or by father, as is plain from the Hebrew and Chaldee).
20. OF HIS NEAR KINSMAN—namely of his uncle by father or mother, as went before.