Discovery BoxLeviticus 18:22-28 
Context18:22 You must not have sexual intercourse with a male as one has sexual intercourse with a woman; 1 it is a detestable act. 2 18:23 You must not have sexual intercourse 3 with any animal to become defiled with it, and a woman must not stand before an animal to have sexual intercourse with it; 4 it is a perversion. 5
18:24 “‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things, for the nations which I am about to drive out before you 6 have been defiled with all these things. 18:25 Therefore 7 the land has become unclean and I have brought the punishment for its iniquity upon it, 8 so that the land has vomited out its inhabitants. 18:26 You yourselves must obey 9 my statutes and my regulations and must not do any of these abominations, both the native citizen and the resident foreigner in your midst, 10 18:27 for the people who were in the land before you have done all these abominations, 11 and the land has become unclean. 18:28 So do not make the land vomit you out because you defile it 12 just as it has vomited out the nations 13 that were before you.
1 tn Heb “And with a male you shall not lay [as the] lyings of a woman” (see B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 123). The specific reference here is to homosexual intercourse between males.
2 tn The Hebrew term תּוֹעֵבָה (to’evah, rendered “detestable act”) refers to the repugnant practices of foreigners, whether from the viewpoint of other peoples toward the Hebrews (e.g., Gen 43:32; 46:34; Exod 8:26) or of the
3 tn See the note on v. 20 above.
4 tn Heb “to copulate with it” (cf. Lev 20:16).
5 tn The Hebrew term תֶּבֶל (tevel, “perversion”) derives from the verb “to mix; to confuse” and therefore refers to illegitimate mixtures of species or violation of the natural order of things.
6 tn Heb “which I am sending away (Piel participle of שָׁלַח [shalakh, “to send”]) from your faces.” The rendering here takes the participle as anticipatory of the coming conquest events.
7 tn Heb “And.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have resultative or even inferential force here.
8 tn Heb “and I have visited its [punishment for] iniquity on it.” See the note on Lev 17:16 above.
9 tn Heb “And you shall keep, you.” The latter emphatic personal pronoun “you” is left out of a few medieval Hebrew
10 tn Heb “the native and the sojourner”; NIV “The native-born and the aliens”; NAB “whether natives or resident aliens.”
11 tn Heb “for all these abominations the men of the land who were before you have done.”
12 tn Heb “And the land will not vomit you out in your defiling it.”
13 tc The MT reads the singular “nation” and is followed by ASV, NASB, NRSV; the LXX, Syriac, and Targum have the plural “nations” (cf. v. 24).
