Bibelkommentare

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

And the Lord spake. — See Trapp on " Leviticus 7:22 "

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Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, I am the LORD your God.

I am the Lord your God. — Your Maker and Master.

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After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances.

After the doings of the land of Egypt. — Where, and in Canaan, these heinous sins are counted peccadillos; as at this day also they are in Spain, Italy, Turkey, where their catamites are their serious loves; sodomy is hardly held a vice; bestiality was boasted of by Mohammed their prophet.

In their ordinances. — The Egyptians made it lawful, so did the Persians, for brother and sister to couple together in marriage. Of this and the like ordinances it might be rightly said, as once it was of the ceremonial law, that they were statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live. Ezekiel 20:25

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Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I [am] the LORD your God.

To walk therein. — Not to halt therein, nor to take a turn or two, or for a while, as Samson went with his parents till he met with a honeycomb; but indesinenter ambulabo, as David saith, Psalms 116:9 "Walk, and not be weary; run, and not faint," as those in Isaiah 40:31 . "So run, that ye may obtain," saith the apostle. 1 Corinthians 9:24

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Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I [am] the LORD.

He shall live in them. — As the flame lives in the oil, as the creature by his food, so the spiritual life is maintained by an evangelical keeping of God’s commandments. As on the contrary, every motion of the soul out of this way, tends to death; being as the motion of the fish out of his element.

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None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover [their] nakedness: I [am] the LORD.

None of you shall approach, — viz., To couple carnally with them. Ezekiel 18:6 Isaiah 8:3 Yea, though it be under a pretext of marriage: for by marriage they seem to justify their incest, which makes it the worse, saith Tostatus, whose reason here I like better than that of Cardinal Campeius, though it sound somewhat like. If comparison should be made, said this carnal cardinal, much greater offence it is for a priest to have a wife than to have and keep at home many harlots. For they that keep harlots, said he, Act. and Mon., fol. 790. as it is naught that they do, so do they acknowledge their sin; the other persuade themselves they do well, and so persist without repentance or conscience of their fact.

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The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover: she [is] thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.

She is thy mother. — And so it is against nature to lie carnally with her. Aristotle Hist. Animal., lib. ix. cap. 47. tells of a camel that killed his keeper for causing him to cover his dam, and of a horse that cast himself down headlong after he had done the like.

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The nakedness of thy father’s wife shalt thou not uncover: it [is] thy father’s nakedness.

It is thy father’s nakedness. — For "the wife hath not power over her own body, but the husband": 1 Corinthians 7:4 and when her chastity is assaulted, she should say, saith Chrysostom, Non est corpus meum, sed mariti, My body is not mine, but my husband’s.

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