성경 주석서

Leviticus 18:1. It being one special design of God to preserve his people from the lewd and idolatrous customs of other nations, Moses now receives particular orders to prohibit the Israelites from many of those unnatural practices which were common among the ancient idolaters.

Leviticus 18:2. Your God — Your sovereign and lawgiver. This is often repeated, because the things here forbidden were practised and allowed by the Gentiles, to whose custom he opposes divine authority and their obligation to obey his commands.

Leviticus 18:3. Egypt and Canaan — These two nations he mentions, because their habitation and conversation among them made their evil example in the following matters more dangerous. But under them he includes all other nations.

Leviticus 18:4. My judgments — Though you do not see the particular reason of some of them, and though they be contrary to the laws and usages of the other nations.

Leviticus 18:5. He shall live in them — Not only happily here, but eternally hereafter. This is added as a powerful argument why they should follow God’s commands rather than men’s examples, because their life and happiness depended upon it. And though in strictness, and according to the covenant of works, they could not challenge life for so doing, except their obedience was universal, perfect, constant, and perpetual, and therefore no man since the fall could be justified by the law; yet by the covenant of grace this life is promised to all that obey God’s commands sincerely. I am the Lord — Hebrew, I am Jehovah; that is, I am faithful to keep my covenant, and to fulfil my promises. See on Exodus 6:3. I am the sovereign dispenser of life and death, and therefore they that keep my laws shall live.

Leviticus 18:6. The first of these prohibitions is against all improper and incestuous marriages, a thing very common among the Canaanitish nations and in Egypt, even to the last degree of unnatural mixtures. Diodorus Siculus relates, that it was permitted by law in the latter country, contrary to the custom of other nations, that a man might marry his own sister. None of you shall approach — The prohibition is absolute, and no advances were to be made toward its violation. Indeed the only way to avoid actual transgressions, is to resist and guard against the first motions of evil. Principiis obsta, withstand the first approach of sin, is a most important precept. And it is to be well observed, that as these laws forbade marriages between near relations, they certainly much more prohibited unchastity between them, and every approach to it. Any that is near akin to him — Hebrew, The remainder of his flesh; that is, his immediate relations, so near akin to him, that they are, as we say, his own flesh and blood; such as a man’s sister, mother, daughter. Indeed, had near relations been allowed to marry each other, the most mischievous and fatal consequences must have resulted from it. For being much together in youth, temptations to unchastity would frequently have been too powerful to have been resisted. But, by such a restriction as this, being taught to look upon all such intercourse as prohibited and incestuous, they were assisted to withstand temptations to evil.

Leviticus 18:7. The nakedness of thy father, or of thy mother — This is but one fact, though expressed two ways, as appears from Leviticus 18:8, compared with Leviticus 20:11. The expression imports, that such an action is doing the greatest dishonour to one’s father and mother.

Leviticus 18:9. Whether she be born at home, or born abroad — Whether she be legitimately born in wedlock, or illegitimately out of wedlock. Others explain it thus: “Whether she be thy sister by the same father, or by another marriage.”