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Leviticus 18

Chapter 18 in 30 seconds

God tells Israel not to live like Egypt behind them or Canaan in front of them. Then comes a long list of forbidden sexual relationships, a rule against giving children to Molech, and a warning. The land vomited out the people before you, and it will do the same to you if you act like them.

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In this chapterField Notes · ArchaeologyThe Tophet of Carthage · after verse 21

Unlawful Sexual Relations// Matthew 5:27–30

¹Then Yahweh said to Moses, ²“Speak to the Israelites and tell them: I am Yahweh your God. ³You must not follow the practices of the land of Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not follow the practices of the land of Canaan, into which I am bringing you. You must not walk in their customs.

⁴You are to practice My judgments and keep My statutes by walking in them. I am Yahweh your God. ⁵Keep My statutes and My judgments, for the man who does these things will live by them. I am Yahweh.

LEV 18:5[ALLUDED TO]The New Testament refers to this → LK 10:28
LEV 18:5[QUOTED]Quoted in the New Testament → ROM 10:5
LEV 18:5[QUOTED]Quoted in the New Testament → GAL 3:12

⁶None of you are to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am Yahweh.

LEV 18:6[ALLUDED TO]The New Testament refers to this → ACTS 15:20
LEV 18:6[ALLUDED TO]The New Testament refers to this → ACTS 15:29

⁷You must not expose the nakedness of your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother; you must not have sexual relations with her.

⁸You must not have sexual relations with your father’s wife; it would dishonor your father.

LEV 18:8[ALLUDED TO]The New Testament refers to this → 1CO 5:1

⁹You must not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere.

¹⁰You must not have sexual relations with your son’s daughter or your daughter’s daughter, for that would shame your family.

¹¹You must not have sexual relations with the daughter of your father’s wife, born to your father; she is your sister.

¹²You must not have sexual relations with your father’s sister; she is your father’s close relative.

¹³You must not have sexual relations with your mother’s sister, for she is your mother’s close relative.

¹⁴You must not dishonor your father’s brother by approaching his wife to have sexual relations with her; she is your aunt.

¹⁵You must not have sexual relations with your daughter-in-law. She is your son’s wife; you are not to have sexual relations with her.

¹⁶You must not have sexual relations with your brother’s wife; that would shame your brother.

¹⁷You must not have sexual relations with both a woman and her daughter. You are not to marry her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter and have sexual relations with her. They are close relatives; it is depraved.

¹⁸You must not take your wife’s sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is still alive.

¹⁹You must not approach a woman to have sexual relations with her during her menstrual period.

²⁰You must not lie carnally with your neighbor’s wife and thus defile yourself with her.

²¹You must not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am Yahweh.

LEV 18:21[DEMONIC]Do not give your children to be sacrificed to Molech
LEV 18:21[FIELD NOTES]Child sacrifice was real in the ancient world. See the Tophet of Carthage Field Notes page.

Field Notes · Archaeology

The Tophet of Carthage

Leviticus 18:21 · Leviticus 20:2 to 5 · 2 Kings 23:10 · Jeremiah 7:31

Ancient stone markers still standing in the Tophet at Carthage, Tunisia. Photo BishkekRocks, public domain.

WHAT IT IS: A sacred burial ground at Carthage, a city in North Africa founded by Phoenicians from Tyre, the same people as the Canaanites up the coast from Israel. It holds about 20,000 clay jars with the burned bones of babies and young animals, under stone markers to the gods Baal Hammon and Tanit. Scholars call it a tophet, the Bible's own name for the place of child sacrifice outside Jerusalem, 2 Kings 23:10 and Jeremiah 7:31.
HOW OLD IT IS: It was used from about 750 BC until Rome destroyed Carthage in 146 BC, about 600 years.
WHERE AND WHEN FOUND: In 1921 a carved stone turned up in an illegal dig. Francois Icard and Paul Gielly bought it and started digging the site. Later teams dug there in the 1920s, the 1940s and the 1970s, when Lawrence Stager led an American dig.
WHAT ANCIENT WRITERS SAID: Greek and Roman writers said Carthage burned children to its gods. Diodorus of Sicily says that in a crisis in 310 BC the city sacrificed 200 children of noble families. Plutarch and the Christian writer Tertullian describe it too.
WHERE IT IS TODAY: The site is in the Salammbo area of Tunis, Tunisia. Many markers and jars are in the Carthage National Museum and the Bardo Museum in Tunis, the Louvre in Paris and the British Museum in London.
WHAT IT CONFIRMS: Burning children to the gods was not a made up charge. Most scholars think the Canaanite world really did it, which is why God banned it in Leviticus 18:21 and 20:2 to 5. In 1935 Otto Eissfeldt argued that molk, a word on some Punic markers, was the name of this kind of sacrifice, and that the Bible's Molech is the same word.
THE BIG DEBATE: Were all of these children sacrificed? In 2010 Jeffrey Schwartz and his team studied the bones and argued that many babies died before or at birth and were buried there, not killed. Patricia Smith and her team answered in 2011 and 2013 that the ages point to sacrifice. Most scholars today think child sacrifice did happen there, but the debate goes on.
WHAT IT DOES NOT PROVE: Carthage is not in the Bible, and its tophet is centuries after Moses and far from Canaan. It shows the custom among the same Phoenician people, not what happened in Israel.

CONFIDENCE: HIGH FOR THE SITE, DEBATED FOR HOW MANY WERE SACRIFICES

²²You must not lie with a man as with a woman; that is an abomination.

LEV 18:22[ALLUDED TO]The New Testament refers to this → 1CO 6:9
LEV 18:22[ALLUDED TO]The New Testament refers to this → 1TI 1:10

²³You must not lie carnally with any animal, thus defiling yourself with it; a woman must not stand before an animal to mate with it; that is a perversion.

²⁴Do not defile yourselves by any of these practices, for by all these things the nations I am driving out before you have defiled themselves. ²⁵Even the land has become defiled, so I am punishing it for its sin, and the land will vomit out its inhabitants.

²⁶But you are to keep My statutes and ordinances, and you must not commit any of these abominations—neither your native-born nor the foreigner who lives among you. ²⁷For the men who were in the land before you committed all these abominations, and the land has become defiled. ²⁸So if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it spewed out the nations before you.

²⁹Therefore anyone who commits any of these abominations must be cut off from among his people. ³⁰You must keep My charge not to practice any of the abominable customs that were practiced before you, so that you do not defile yourselves by them. I am Yahweh your God.”

Leviticus 18

Unlawful Sexual Relations// Matthew 5:27–30

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