Reading the Book of Leviticus, it is easy to notice that everything connected in one way or another with debauchery, marital unfaithfulness, and violations of the seventh commandment in general often appears here next to mentions of such things as...
Reading the Book of Leviticus, it is easy to notice that everything connected in one way or another with debauchery, marital unfaithfulness, and violations of the seventh commandment in general often appears here next to mentions of such things as pagan cults, magic, spiritism, mediumship, and the like. With regard to the things listed, one can speak of violations of the first and second commandments: they are the ones that forbid believing Yahwists both participation in pagan cults and various kinds of practices connected with dark spirituality like those mentioned above. Why then do violations connected with the sexual sphere stand in the book alongside violation of the first commandment, and also the second?
The simplest and most obvious answer is that many pagan cults of antiquity involved direct violation of the seventh commandment. This was so, for example, in the case of ritual prostitution connected with the cult of the Great Goddess, which was widespread throughout the Near East, including Palestine. Yet there was also something else linking debauchery and magic more deeply than it may appear at first glance.
This concerns the power for life given by God to human beings, the energy without which life in general is impossible. From the biblical point of view, a human being is a "living soul," and in the Bible the soul is not a static structure but a flow, a dynamic reality. This dynamism is the manifestation of the life force given by God to human beings, and its forms can be very different.
Sexual life is also one of these forms, and therefore it is blessed by God, but only when it does not become an end in itself, only as long as it remains an organic part of that fullness of relationship between two people which is called marriage. If a person uses sexuality solely as an instrument for giving himself pleasure, he thereby abuses the possibilities God has given him, wasting the power granted to him for attaining the fullness of life.
All forms of magic are the same kind of abuse, as are all attempts in general to use God's power present in creation for one's own purposes without turning to God and asking His blessing. In both cases, the issue is the abuse of the possibilities God has given to human beings, with the corresponding consequences.
20 Prohibitions against offering children to Moloch, Lev 20:1-5.
Against consulting wizards, Lev 20:6.
Holiness enjoined, Lev 20:7-8.
Against cursing parents, Lev 20:9.
Against adultery, Lev 20:10.
Against incestuous mixtures, Lev 20:11-21.
Holiness again enjoined, Lev 20:22-26.
Soothsayers to be stoned, Lev 20:27.
20:2 The people - Here follow the punishments of the crimes forbidden in the former chapters.
20:3 I will set my face against that man - Deal with him as an enemy, and make him a monument of my justice. To defile my sanctuary - Because the sanctuary was defiled by gross abominations committed in that city or land where God's sanctuary was: or because by these actions they declared to all men that they esteemed the sanctuary and service of God abominable and vile, by preferring such odious idolatry before it. And to profane my name - Partly by despising it themselves, partly by disgracing it to others, and giving them occasion to blaspheme it, and to abhor the true religion.
20:4 Hide their eyes - Wink at his fault, and forbear to accuse and punish him.
20:6 To go a whoring - To seek counsel or help from them.
20:8 Who sanctify you - Who separate you from all nations, and from their impurities and idolatries, to be a peculiar people to myself; and who give you my grace to keep my statutes.
20:9 Curseth - This is not here meant of every perverse expression, but of bitter reproaches or imprecations. His blood shall be upon him - He is guilty of his own death: he deserves to die for so unnatural a crime.
20:12 Confusion - By perverting the order which God hath appointed, and making the same off - spring both his own child and his grandchild.
20:13 Put to death - Except the one party was forced by the other.See Deu 22:25.
20:14 They - All who consented to it.
20:15 Slay the beast - Partly for the prevention of monstrous births, partly to blot out the memory of so loathsome a crime.
20:17 See her nakedness - In this and several of the following verses, uncovering nakedness plainly appears to mean not marriage, but fornication or adultery.
20:20 They shall die childless - Either shall be speedily cut off ere they can have a child by that incestuous conjunction; if this seem a less crime than most of the former incestuous mixtures, and therefore the magistrate forbear to punish it with death; yet they shall either have no children from such an unlawful bed, or their children shall die before them.
20:21 His brother's wife - Except in the case allowed by God, Deu 25:5.
20:27 A man or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, shall surely be put to death - They that are in league with the devil, have in effect made a covenant with death: and so shall their doom be.