Levivitus 19:30-37

 "30 Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD. 31 Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God. 32 Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD. 33 And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. 34 But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. 35 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. 36 Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt. 37 Therefore shall ye observe all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: I am the LORD." — Leviticus 19:30-37 KJV

30. Sanctuary — The tabernacle, the place of Jehovah’s abode among men, was reverenced when Israel approached in ceremonial and moral purity, bringing the required offerings in humility and penitence.

31. Familiar spirits — The Hebrew אֹבֹת֙ signifies skins used for bottles, Job 32:19. Its secondary meaning is the hollow belly of conjurers, supposed to be inflated by the spirit. Hence the אוֹב properly denotes, not the conjurer himself but the spirit which is conjured by him, and is supposed to speak in him. See the Seventy, who render it by ἐγγαστριμύθοις, ventriloquists. The “familiar” is not in the Hebrew; it comes from the idea that the necromancers, soothsayers, and the like had spirits or demons whom they could summon from the unseen world to wait upon them as famuli, servants, and execute their commands. The ventriloquists “peeped and muttered,” (Isaiah 8:19; 29:4,) to imitate the voice of the revealing “familiar.” All the descriptions of the ancient necromancy are strikingly like the practices of modern spirit-circles. The sin in such consultations of the dead is the implied abandonment of God and his word as man’s only and sufficient light on all questions respecting the future state, and the resort to unauthorized sources of revelation, whose utterances are repugnant to the Holy Scriptures, and frequently grossly immoral. Wizards — Wizard is derived from wise and the old English termination ard — a wise man, hence a magician or sorcerer. The Hebrew and Greek terms have the same meaning, indicating those that could by any means reveal the future. The rabbins derive the Hebrew word from a certain man-shaped beast, the bones of which the diviner held in his teeth. The Greek wizard ate certain portions of beasts supposed to be endowed with the faculty of divination. “Admitting that the terms ‘witchcraft,’ ‘wizard,’ and the like were used in their modern signification, as implying the possession of supernatural or magical powers by compact with evil spirits, it would follow, upon theocratic principles, that he who so much as pretends to exercise this power, seducing the people from their allegiance to God, would be worthy of death.” The law, like that on the statute books of England against the pretence to witchcraft among the negroes of Jamaica, does not assume the real existence of any such Satanic power attainable by men, but it pronounces its penalty against him or her who assumes to exercise this nefarious art. But Sir Walter Scott observes: “The sorcery or witchcraft of the Old Testament resolves itself into a trafficking with idols and asking counsel of false deities; or, in other words, into idolatry.” R.S. Poole regards it as a distinctive characteristic of the Bible that from first to last it warrants no trust in or dread of charms and incantations as capable of producing evil consequences when used against a man. In the Psalms, the most personal of all the books of Scripture, there is no prayer to be protected against magical influences, though every other kind of evil to body or soul is mentioned. These facts prove that the modern notion of witchcraft was a superstition entirely unknown to the early Hebrews.

32. Honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God — Respect for age is here associated with the fear of God. The two virtues are beautifully blended in the Latin word pietas, signifying dutiful conduct towards one’s parents and the gods. In Exodus 22:28, the law connects respect towards civil rulers with piety towards God. In the East age is invested with authority more than in the Western nations. Hence honour rendered to the old implies, in an eminent degree, obedience to parents, the germ of all good citizenship and of all reverence towards God. The converse is true, that contempt for the old and disobedience to parents is the germ of all lawlessness and irreligion.

34. The stranger… thou shalt love — Judaism, as Christianity in the bud, was a religion of love. The Mosaic law here sets up a safeguard against that hostility which is so natural to differences of race and religion that in the Latin tongue the word hostis, stranger, soon came to signify an enemy. The contempt of the Gentile as a dog, which was manifested in the time of Christ, was no part of true Judaism, but a sad degeneracy from its own law. See Leviticus 23:22, note. The permission to exact interest on money loaned to a stranger, granted in Deuteronomy xxiii, 20, shows that this verse is not to be understood as making absolutely no distinction between an alien and a Hebrew.

35. Meteyard — Measuring line or rod.

36. Balances are found on Egyptian monuments as early as the time of Joseph, and they are alluded to in the story of the purchase of the cave of Machpelah, Genesis 23:16. Before coinage they were necessary to all payments of money. The weights at first were “stones,” which gave to them their name in later times, when lead was used. A parallel is found in England. The weights were carried in a bag suspended from the girdle. The habit of carrying a set of large weights to buy with and of smaller to sell with, sprang up very early. Inasmuch as there was a “shekel of the sanctuary” it is probable that the standard weights and measures were sacredly kept in the tabernacle by the priests. Numbers 3:47, note. Ephah — This measure is the same as the bath, and according to Josephus it contains about eight and a half gallons; according to the rabbins less than four and a half. Hin — This is estimated, in like manner, at about one and a half, or at about three quarters of a gallon. Since the dealings of man with his fellow in the marts of trade constitute a school for the development and discipline of moral character, they are not matters of indifference to the holy and just One. True holiness shines out in the measuring of tape and in the weighing of sugar more convincingly than in prayer and praise and conspicuous acts of beneficence. See Matthew 5. 16; and Philippians 2:15. “A book which talks in this language is a book which ought to be carefully preserved by the people. The Bible is not a sentimental book, dealing with abstract emotion, or confining itself to metaphysical mysteries. A religion that examines the balances and weights is a religion that may be trusted to attach a true value to praise and prayer. This is the strength of biblical doctrine.” — Joseph Parker.