Leviticus 16:1

The Day of Atonement

16:1 The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of Aaron’s two sons when they approached the presence of the Lord 1  and died,

Leviticus 20:9-10

Family Life and Sexual Prohibitions 2 

20:9 “‘If anyone 3  curses his father and mother 4  he must be put to death. He has cursed his father and mother; his blood guilt is on himself. 5  20:10 If a man 6  commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, 7  both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.

Leviticus 20:15

20:15 If a man has sexual intercourse 8  with any animal, he must be put to death, and you must kill the animal.

Leviticus 21:9

21:9 If a daughter of a priest profanes herself by engaging in prostitution, she is profaning her father. She must be burned to death. 9 

1 tn Heb “in their drawing near to the faces of the Lord.” The rendering here relies on the use of this expression for the very “presence” of God in Exod 33:14-15 and in the Lev 9:24-10:2 passage, where the Nadab and Abihu catastrophe referred to here is narrated.

2 sn Compare the regulations in Lev 18:6-23.

3 tn Heb “If a man a man who.”

4 tn Heb “makes light of his father and his mother.” Almost all English versions render this as some variation of “curses his father or mother.”

5 tn Heb “his blood [plural] is in him.” Cf. NAB “he has forfeited his life”; TEV “is responsible for his own death.”

sn The rendering “blood guilt” refers to the fact that the shedding of blood brings guilt on those who shed it illegitimately (even the blood of animals shed illegitimately, Lev 17:4; cf. the background of Gen 4:10-11). If the community performs a legitimate execution, however, the blood guilt rests on the person who has been legitimately executed (see the remarks and literature cited in J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 328).

6 tn Heb “And a man who.” The syntax here and at the beginning of the following verses elliptically mirrors that of v. 9, which justifies the rendering as a conditional clause.

7 tc The reading of the LXX minuscule mss has been followed here (see the BHS footnote a-a). The MT has a dittography, repeating “a man who commits adultery with the wife of” (see the explanation in J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 328). The duplication found in the MT is reflected in some English versions, e.g., KJV, ASV, NASB, NIV.

8 tn See the note on Lev 18:20 above.

9 tn See the note on “burned to death” in 20:14.