Leviticus 20:9-10

Family Life and Sexual Prohibitions ¹ 

20:9 “‘If anyone ²  curses his father and mother ³  he must be put to death. He has cursed his father and mother; his blood guilt is on himself. ⁴  20:10 If a man ⁵  commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, ⁶  both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.

¹ sn Compare the regulations in Lev 18:6-23.

² tn Heb “If a man a man who.”

³ tn Heb “makes light of his father and his mother.” Almost all English versions render this as some variation of “curses his father or mother.”

⁴ tn Heb “his blood [plural] is in him.” Cf. NAB “he has forfeited his life”; TEV “is responsible for his own death.”

⁵ 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.

⁶ 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.