Leviticus 20:6

Prohibition against Spiritists and Mediums 1 

20:6 “‘The person who turns to the spirits of the dead and familiar spirits 2  to commit prostitution by going after them, I will set my face 3  against that person and cut him off from the midst of his people.

Leviticus 20:10

20:10 If a man 4  commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, 5  both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.

Leviticus 20:27

Prohibition against Spiritists and Mediums

20:27 “‘A man or woman who 6  has in them a spirit of the dead or a familiar spirit 7  must be put to death. They must pelt them with stones; 8  their blood guilt is on themselves.’”

1 sn For structure and coherence in Lev 20:6-27 see the note on v. 27 below.

2 tn See the note on the phrase “familiar spirits” in Lev 19:31 above.

3 tn Heb “I will give my faces.”

4 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.

5 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.

6 tc Smr, LXX, Syriac, and some Targum mss have the relative pronoun אֲשֶׁר (’asher, “who, which”), rather than the MT’s כִּי (ki, “for, because, that”).

7 tn See the note on the phrase “familiar spirit” in Lev 19:31 above.

8 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 Lord’s statutes (and judgments; vv. 8 and 22-24). Again, in the middle are the case laws (vv. 9-21).