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 tn Heb “toward the altar” (see the note on Lev 1:9).
2 tn Heb “sacrifice.” This has been translated as “offer” for stylistic reasons to avoid the redundancy of “sacrifice their sacrifices.”
3 tn On “goat demons” of the desert regions see the note on Lev 16:8.
4 tn Heb “which they are committing harlotry after them.”
5 tn Heb “for your generations.”
6 tc Smr, LXX, Syriac, and some Targum
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
9 tn Heb “and your brothers, the sons of Israel, a man in his brother you shall not rule in him in violence.”
10 tn Heb “or then,” although the LXX has “then” and the Syriac “and then.”
11 tn Heb “and then they make up for.” On the verb “make up for” see the note on v. 34 above.