Leviticus 20:1-27 - Exposition

The first of these penalties, burning with fire, does not mean that those on whom it was inflicted were burnt alive, but that their dead bodies were burnt after they had been stoned to death, as in the case of Achan ( Joshua 7:25 ). It is the punishment for taking a mother and daughter together into the same harem ( Leviticus 18:14 ). Stoning with stones is appointed for crimes which are at once offenses against religion and morals, viz. giving of his seed to Molech ( Leviticus 18:2 ), and witchcraft ( Leviticus 18:27 ). The other form of putting to death, which no doubt was strangling, is the penalty assigned to cursing parents ( Leviticus 18:9 ), adultery ( Leviticus 18:10 ), marriage or intercourse with a stepmother ( Leviticus 18:11 ) or stepdaughter ( Leviticus 18:12 ), the sin of Sodom ( Leviticus 18:13 ), and bestiality ( Leviticus 18:15 , Leviticus 18:16 ). Cutting off from his people may be effected either by death ( Leviticus 18:4 , Leviticus 18:5 , and perhaps 6), which is the penalty for Molech-worship, connivance at Molech-worship, and dealing with witches; or by excommunication ( Leviticus 18:17 , Leviticus 18:18 ), which was the punishment for intercourse with a sister, or with one who was unclean by reason of her monthly sickness (see Exodus 31:14 ).

The phrase, bearing his iniquity, means that the man continues in the state of a criminal until he has been cleansed either by suffering the punishment of his offense or making atonement for it, which sometimes he might, sometimes he might not, do. The man who committed incest with a sister would "bear his iniquity" ( Leviticus 18:17 ), because he would be put in a state of excommunication without permission of restoration by means of sacrificial offerings. And so with the man who took his aunt by blood ( Leviticus 18:19 ) or by marriage ( Leviticus 18:20 ) as his wife,—he would not be allowed to recover his status by offering sacrifice. Childlessness, the punishment for marrying an uncle's or brother's wife, probably means that in those eases the offender's children should not be counted as his own, but should be entered in the genealogical register as his uncle's or his brother's children.