Leviticus 6:17

6:17 It must not be baked with yeast. ¹  I have given it as their portion from my gifts. It is most holy, ²  like the sin offering and the guilt offering.

Leviticus 7:2

7:2 In the place where they slaughter the burnt offering they must slaughter the guilt offering, and the officiating priest ³  must splash ⁴  the blood against the altar’s sides.

Leviticus 14:12-13

14:12 “The priest is to take one male lamb ⁵  and present it for a guilt offering ⁶  along with the log of olive oil and present them as a wave offering before the Lord. ⁷  14:13 He must then slaughter ⁸  the male lamb in the place where ⁹  the sin offering ¹⁰  and the burnt offering ¹¹  are slaughtered, ¹²  in the sanctuary, because, like the sin offering, the guilt offering belongs to the priest; ¹³  it is most holy.

Leviticus 14:24

14:24 and the priest is to take the male lamb of the guilt offering and the log of olive oil and wave them ¹⁴  as a wave offering before the Lord.

Leviticus 17:3

17:3 “Blood guilt ¹⁵  will be accounted to any man ¹⁶  from the house of Israel ¹⁷  who slaughters an ox or a lamb or a goat inside the camp or outside the camp, ¹⁸ 

Leviticus 19:22

19:22 and the priest is to make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before the Lord for his sin that he has committed, ¹⁹  and he will be forgiven ²⁰  of his sin ²¹  that he has committed.

Leviticus 20:11-13

20:11 If a man has sexual intercourse with his father’s wife, he has exposed his father’s nakedness. ²²  Both of them must be put to death; their blood guilt is on themselves. ²³  20:12 If a man has sexual intercourse with his daughter-in-law, both of them must be put to death. They have committed perversion; ²⁴  their blood guilt is on themselves. 20:13 If a man has sexual intercourse with a male as one has sexual intercourse with a woman, ²⁵  the two of them have committed an abomination. They must be put to death; their blood guilt is on themselves.

Leviticus 20:16

20:16 If a woman approaches any animal to have sexual intercourse with it, ²⁶  you must kill the woman, and the animal must be put to death; their blood guilt is on themselves.

Leviticus 20:27

Prohibition against Spiritists and Mediums

20:27 “‘A man or woman who ²⁷  has in them a spirit of the dead or a familiar spirit ²⁸  must be put to death. They must pelt them with stones; ²⁹  their blood guilt is on themselves.’”

---

¹ tn Heb “It must not be baked leavened” (cf. Lev 2:11). The noun “leaven” is traditional in English versions (cf. KJV, ASV, NASB, NRSV), but “yeast” is more commonly used today.

² tn Heb “holiness of holinesses [or holy of holies] it is”; cf. NAB “most sacred.”

³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the officiating priest) has been specified in the translation for clarity. This priest was responsible for any actions involving direct contact with the altar (e.g., the splashing of the blood).

⁴ tn See the note on Lev 1:5.

⁵ tn Heb “And the priest shall take the one lamb.”

⁶ tn See the note on Lev 5:15 above. The primary purpose of the “guilt offering” (אָשָׁם, ’asham) was to “atone” (כִּפֶּר, kipper, “to make atonement,” see v. 18 below and the note on Lev 1:4) for “trespassing” on the Lord’s “holy things,” whether sacred objects or sacred people. It is, therefore, closely associated with the reconsecration of the Lord’s holy people as, for example, here and in the case of the corpse contaminated Nazirite (Num 6:11b-12). Since the nation of Israel was “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” to the Lord (Exod 19:6; cf. the blood splashed on all the people in Exod 24:8), the skin diseased person was essentially a member of the “holy nation” who had been expelled from the community. Therefore, he or she had been desecrated and the guilt offering was essential to restoring him or her to the community. In fact, the manipulation of blood and oil in the guilt offering ritual procedure for the healed person (see vv. 14-18 below) is reminiscent of that employed for the ordination offering in the consecration of the holy Aaronic priests of the nation (Exod 29:19-21; Lev 8:22-30).

⁷ tn Heb “wave them [as] a wave offering before the Lord” (NAB similar). See the note on Lev 7:30 and the literature cited there. Other possible translations include “elevate them [as] an elevation offering before the Lord” (cf. NRSV) or “present them [as] a presentation offering before the Lord.” To be sure, the actual physical “waving” of a male lamb seems unlikely, but some waving gesture may have been performed in the presentation of the offering (cf. also the “waving” of the Levites as a “wave offering” in Num 8:11, etc.).

⁸ tn Heb “And he shall slaughter.”

⁹ tn Heb “in the place which.”

¹⁰ sn See the note on Lev 4:3 regarding the term “sin offering.”

¹¹ sn See the note on Lev 1:3 regarding the “burnt offering.”

¹² tn Since the priest himself presents this offering as a wave offering (v. 12), it would seem that the offering is already in his hands and he would, therefore, be the one who slaughtered the male lamb in this instance rather than the offerer. Smr and LXX make the second verb “to slaughter” plural rather than singular, which suggests that it is to be taken as an impersonal passive (see J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:852).

¹³ tn Heb “the guilt offering, it [is] to the Lord.” Regarding the “guilt offering,” see the note on Lev 5:15.

¹⁴ tn Heb “and the priest shall wave them.” In the present translation “priest” is not repeated a second time in the verse for stylistic reasons. With regard to the “waving” of the “wave offering,” see the note on v. 12 above.

¹⁵ tn The complex wording of vv. 3-4 requires stating “blood guilt” at the beginning of v. 3 even though it is not mentioned until the middle of v. 4. The Hebrew text has simply “blood,” but in this case it refers to the illegitimate shedding of animal blood, similar to the shedding of the blood of an innocent human being (Deut 19:10, etc.). In order for it to be legitimate the animal must be slaughtered at the tabernacle and its blood handled by the priests in the prescribed way (see, e.g., Lev 1:5; 3:2, 17; 4:5-7; 7:26-27, etc.; cf. vv. 10-16 below for more details).

¹⁶ tn Heb “Man man.” The reduplication is way of saying “any man” (cf. Lev 15:2; 22:18, etc.). See the note on Lev 15:2.

¹⁷ tn The original LXX adds “or the sojourners who sojourn in your midst” (cf. Lev 16:29, etc., and note esp. 17:8, 10, and 13 below).

¹⁸ tn Heb “or who slaughters from outside to the camp.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “on his sin which he has sinned.”

²⁰ tn Heb “there shall be forgiveness to him” or “it shall be forgiven to him.”

²¹ tn Heb “from his sin.”

²² sn See the note on Lev 18:7 above.

²³ tn See the note on v. 9 above.

²⁴ tn The Hebrew term תֶּבֶל (tevel, “perversion”) derives from the verb “to mix; to confuse” (cf. KJV, ASV “they have wrought confusion”).

²⁵ tn Heb “[as the] lyings of a woman.” The specific reference here is to homosexual intercourse between males.

²⁶ tn Heb “to copulate with it” (cf. Lev 20:16).

²⁷ 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”).

²⁸ tn See the note on the phrase “familiar spirit” in Lev 19:31 above.

²⁹ 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).