Discovery BoxLeviticus 20:6 
Context20:6 “‘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 20:27--21:1
Context20:27 “‘A man or woman who 4 has in them a spirit of the dead or a familiar spirit 5 must be put to death. They must pelt them with stones; 6 their blood guilt is on themselves.’”
21:1 The Lord said to Moses: “Say to the priests, the sons of Aaron – say to them, ‘For a dead person 7 no priest 8 is to defile himself among his people, 9
Leviticus 26:30
Context26:30 I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars, 10 and I will stack your dead bodies on top of the lifeless bodies of your idols. 11 I will abhor you. 12
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 tc Smr, LXX, Syriac, and some Targum
5 tn See the note on the phrase “familiar spirit” in Lev 19:31 above.
6 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
7 tn The Hebrew term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “soul, person, life”) can sometimes refer to a “dead person” (cf. Lev 19:28 above and the literature cited there).
8 tn Heb “no one,” but “priest” has been used in the translation to clarify that these restrictions are limited to the priests, not to the Israelites in general (note the introductory formula, “say to the priests, the sons of Aaron”).
9 tc The MT has “in his peoples,” but Smr, LXX, Syriac, Targum, and Tg. Ps.-J. have “in his people,” referring to the Israelites as a whole.
10 sn Regarding these cultic installations, see the remarks in B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 188, and R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 2:903. The term rendered “incense altars” might better be rendered “sanctuaries [of foreign deities]” or “stelae.”
11 tn The translation reflects the Hebrew wordplay “your corpses…the corpses of your idols.” Since idols, being lifeless, do not really have “corpses,” the translation uses “dead bodies” for people and “lifeless bodies” for the idols.
12 tn Heb “and my soul will abhor you.”
