Leviticus 19:19-32

The opening words of this section indicate a change of subject. God called on His people to honor the order of nature by not mixing things that God had separated in creation (Leviticus 19:19).

"Most of the ancient Near Easterners believed that all things that came into being were born into being. This was a major tenet of their belief system. They believed that not only animals were born, but also plants. (This is the reason that they ’sowed their field with two kind of seed,’ i.e., male and female seed as they thought of it; see Leviticus 19:19.)" [Note: Douglas Stuart, Ezekiel, p. 181.]

God probably intended these practices to distinguish the Israelites from the Canaanites too. [Note: See Calum Carmichael, "Forbidden Mixtures," Vetus Testamentum 32:4 (September 1982):394-415.]

"As God separated Israel from among the nations to be his own possession, so they must maintain their holy identity by not intermarrying with the nations (Deuteronomy 7:3-6)." [Note: Wenham, The Book . . ., pp. 269-70.]

Yahweh upheld the rights of slaves (Leviticus 19:20-22). A man was not to mix with a female slave engaged to another man by having sexual intercourse with her. The Israelites considered engaged people virtually married.

By allowing three years to pass before someone ate the fruit on a tree, the tree could establish itself and be more productive in the long run (Leviticus 19:23-25).

God’s people were to avoid pagan practices that characterized the Canaanites (Leviticus 19:26-32). These included eating blood (Leviticus 19:26), cutting their hair in the style of the pagan priests (Leviticus 19:27), and disfiguring their bodies that God had created (Leviticus 19:28). They were not to disfigure the divine likeness in them by scarring their bodies. These foreign practices also included devoting one’s daughter to prostitution (Leviticus 19:29), seeking knowledge of the future from a medium (Leviticus 19:31), and failing to honor the aged (Leviticus 19:32).

". . . there are indications of ancestor worship in Old Testament times but there was no ancestor worship in Israel." [Note: Andrew Chiu, "Is There Ancestor Worship in the Old Testament?" Evangelical Review of Theology 8:2 (October 1984):221.]

That is, God did not permit it, though the Israelites may have practiced it to a limited extent as a result of pagan influence.

Leviticus 19:30 prohibits seeking special knowledge either from the dead in general or from dead relatives (familiar spirits, spirits with whom the one praying had previous personal acquaintance).