20:27 “‘A man or woman who 1 has in them a spirit of the dead or a familiar spirit 2 must be put to death. They must pelt them with stones; 3 their blood guilt is on themselves.’”
1 tc Smr, LXX, Syriac, and some Targum
2 tn See the note on the phrase “familiar spirit” in Lev 19:31 above.
3 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). Smr and LXX have “you [plural] shall pelt them with stones.”
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
4 tn Heb “or from the sojourner who sojourns”; NAB “an alien residing in Israel.”
5 tn Heb “his seed” (so KJV, ASV); likewise in vv. 3-4.
6 tn Regarding Molech and Molech worship see the note on Lev 18:21.
7 tn This is not the most frequently-used Hebrew verb for stoning (see instead סָקַל, saqal), but a word that refers to the action of throwing, slinging, or pelting someone with stones (רָגָם, ragam; see HALOT 1187 s.v. רגם qal.a, and B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 136).