Leviticus 20:25-27

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Leviticus 20:25 tn Heb “And you shall distinguish.” The verb is the same as “set apart” at the end of the previous verse. The fact that God had “set them apart” from the other peoples around them called for them to “distinguish between” the clean and the unclean, etc.
2. Leviticus 20:25 tn The word “creatures” has been supplied in the translation to make it clear that the following relative clause modifies the animal, bird, or creeping thing mentioned earlier, and not the ground itself.
3. Leviticus 20:25 tc The MT has “to defile,” but Smr, LXX, and Syriac have “to uncleanness.”
4. Leviticus 20:27 tc Smr, LXX, Syriac, and some Targum mss have the relative pronoun אֲשֶׁר (ʾasher, “who, which”), rather than the MT’s כִּי (ki, “for, because, that”).
5. Leviticus 20:27 tn See the note on the phrase “familiar spirit” in Lev 19:31 above.
6. Leviticus 20:27 tc Smr and LXX have “you [plural] shall pelt them with stones.”tn This is not the most frequently-used Hebrew verb for stoning, but a word that refers to the action of throwing, slinging, or pelting someone with stones (see the note on v. 2 above).sn At first glance Lev 20:27 appears to be out of place but, on closer examination, one could argue that it constitutes the back side of an envelope around the case laws in 20:9-21, with Lev 20:6 forming the front of the envelope (note also that execution of mediums and spiritists by stoning in v. 27 is not explicitly stated in v. 6). This creates a chiastic structure: prohibition against mediums and spiritists (vv. 6 and 27), variations of the holiness formula (vv. 7 and 25-26), and exhortations to obey the Lord’s statutes (and judgments; vv. 8 and 22-24). Again, in the middle are the case laws (vv. 9-21).