Leviticus 20:22-27

"22 Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out. 23 And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them. 24 But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other people. 25 Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean. 26 And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine. 27 A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them." — Leviticus 20:22-27 KJV.

22. Spew you not out — See Leviticus 18:25, 28, notes.

23. Therefore I abhorred them — The word אָקֻ֖ץ signifies to be weary of, to loathe, to be distressed, to abhor; and it heightens the hatefulness of the sins of the Canaanites. How intensely repugnant to the divine mind must those actions be which awaken the emotion of abhorrence! We have no sympathy with the semi-deistic notion that God is a bare and cold intelligence, utterly devoid of sensibilities. To limit him to mere knowledge and volition is to represent him as inferior to man. If man is made in the image of God it must be that the divine prototype is possessed of the capacity of emotion.

24. Milk and honey — Both Grecian and Roman poets depict the highest pleasantness and fertility by an abundance of milk and honey. See Homer’s Iliad, 9:141; Ovid, Met., i, iii; See Joshua 5:6, note. Separated you from other people — This separation consisted in circumcision, a knowledge of the true God, a prohibition of idolatry, a unique sacrificial code, and the requirement to obey the moral and the levitical law, which rendered it impossible to mingle socially with the Gentiles without contracting pollution. This separation was subsequently made easier by the secluded position of the Holy Land, which was enclosed on the south and southwest by great wildernesses, on the north by the high mountains of Lebanon, and on the west by a seacoast having few harbours.

25. Clean beasts — This law may be considered both as a sanitary regulation and also a barrier between Israel and all idolatrous nations. See Leviticus 11:2-8, notes. Your souls — The word “souls” is here used for “selves.” See Isaiah 46:2.

26. Severed you… that ye should be mine — There can be no appropriation without separation. Consecration to Christ implies a death unto sin. Oehler wisely remarks that קֹדֶשׁ, the Hebrew for the word holy, “where it is a designation of a divine attribute, there evidently lies in it primarily a negative element, by which it designates a state of apartness, God raising himself above all others.” The connexion of thought in this verse may be thus expressed: “I am holy, and so I have separated you from among the nations to be mine.” Nothing created is in itself holy, though it is innocent. Holiness in a creature always involves an act of self-determination, and an act of the divine will in the completion of a perfection of life both inwardly and outwardly. “It is certain that in the biblical conception of society a very broad distinction is made between the people of God and all other people. This again is not arbitrary; it comes out of the very nature of the separating God himself. It is only because God is different from all other gods that his people are different from all other people. Monasticism is not taught by this text. Men are to move up and down in the world transacting all its usual business, and yet so to do the work of life as to exert a benign influence, and fill other men with encouragement to move in an upward direction.” — Joseph Parker.