Leviticus 18:24-28

Warning against the Abominations of the Nations

18:24 “‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things, for the nations which I am about to drive out before you ¹  have been defiled with all these things. 18:25 Therefore ²  the land has become unclean and I have brought the punishment for its iniquity upon it, ³  so that the land has vomited out its inhabitants. 18:26 You yourselves must obey ⁴  my statutes and my regulations and must not do any of these abominations, both the native citizen and the resident foreigner in your midst, ⁵  18:27 for the people who were in the land before you have done all these abominations, ⁶  and the land has become unclean. 18:28 So do not make the land vomit you out because you defile it ⁷  just as it has vomited out the nations ⁸  that were before you.

Numbers 35:33-34

35:33 “You must not pollute the land where you live, for blood defiles the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed there, except by the blood of the person who shed it. 35:34 Therefore do not defile the land that you will inhabit, in which I live, for I the Lord live among the Israelites.”

Psalms 106:37-38

106:37 They sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons. ⁹ 

106:38 They shed innocent blood –

the blood of their sons and daughters,

whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan.

The land was polluted by bloodshed. ¹⁰ 

Isaiah 24:5

24:5 The earth is defiled by ¹¹  its inhabitants, ¹² 

for they have violated laws,

disregarded the regulation, ¹³ 

and broken the permanent treaty. ¹⁴ 

Jeremiah 2:7

2:7 I brought you ¹⁵  into a fertile land

so you could enjoy ¹⁶  its fruits and its rich bounty.

But when you entered my land, you defiled it; ¹⁷ 

you made the land I call my own ¹⁸  loathsome to me.

Jeremiah 3:1-2

3:1 “If a man divorces his wife

and she leaves him and becomes another man’s wife,

he may not take her back again. ¹⁹ 

Doing that would utterly defile the land. ²⁰ 

But you, Israel, have given yourself as a prostitute to many gods. ²¹ 

So what makes you think you can return to me?” ²² 

says the Lord.

3:2 “Look up at the hilltops and consider this. ²³ 

You have had sex with other gods on every one of them. ²⁴ 

You waited for those gods like a thief lying in wait in the desert. ²⁵ 

You defiled the land by your wicked prostitution to other gods. ²⁶ 

Jeremiah 3:9

3:9 Because she took her prostitution so lightly, she defiled the land ²⁷  through her adulterous worship of gods made of wood and stone. ²⁸ 

Jeremiah 16:18

16:18 Before I restore them ²⁹  I will punish them in full ³⁰  for their sins and the wrongs they have done. For they have polluted my land with the lifeless statues of their disgusting idols. They have filled the land I have claimed as my own ³¹  with their detestable idols.” ³² 

Micah 2:10

2:10 But you are the ones who will be forced to leave! ³³ 

For this land is not secure! ³⁴ 

Sin will thoroughly destroy it! ³⁵ 

[18:24]  ¹ 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.

[18:25]  ² tn Heb “And.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have resultative or even inferential force here.

[18:25]  ³ tn Heb “and I have visited its [punishment for] iniquity on it.” See the note on Lev 17:16 above.

[18:26]  ³ tn Heb “And you shall keep, you.” The latter emphatic personal pronoun “you” is left out of a few medieval Hebrew mss, Smr, the LXX, Syriac, and Vulgate.

[18:26]  ⁴ tn Heb “the native and the sojourner”; NIV “The native-born and the aliens”; NAB “whether natives or resident aliens.”

[18:27]  ⁴ tn Heb “for all these abominations the men of the land who were before you have done.”

[18:28]  ⁵ tn Heb “And the land will not vomit you out in your defiling it.”

[18:28]  ⁶ 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).

[106:37]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew term שֵׁדִים (shedim, “demons”) occurs only here and in Deut 32:17. Some type of lesser deity is probably in view.

[106:38]  ⁷ sn Num 35:33-34 explains that bloodshed defiles a land.

[24:5]  ⁸ tn Heb “beneath”; cf. KJV, ASV, NRSV “under”; NAB “because of.”

[24:5]  ⁹ sn Isa 26:21 suggests that the earth’s inhabitants defiled the earth by shedding the blood of their fellow human beings. See also Num 35:33-34, which assumes that bloodshed defiles a land.

[24:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “moved past [the?] regulation.”

[24:5]  ¹¹ tn Or “everlasting covenant” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT); NAB “the ancient covenant”; CEV “their agreement that was to last forever.”

[2:7]  ⁹ sn Note how contemporary Israel is again identified with her early ancestors. See the study note on 2:2.

[2:7]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “eat.”

[2:7]  ¹¹ sn I.e., made it ceremonially unclean. See Lev 18:19-30; Num 35:34; Deut 21:23.

[2:7]  ¹² tn Heb “my inheritance.” Or “the land [i.e., inheritance] I gave you,” reading the pronoun as indicating source rather than possession. The parallelism and the common use in Jeremiah of the term to refer to the land or people as the Lord’s (e.g., 12:7, 8, 9; 16:18; 50:11) make the possessive use more likely here.

[3:1]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “May he go back to her again?” The question is rhetorical and expects a negative answer.

[3:1]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Would the land not be utterly defiled?” The stative is here rendered actively to connect better with the preceding. The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer.

[3:1]  ¹² tn Heb “But you have played the prostitute with many lovers.”

[3:1]  ¹³ tn Heb “Returning to me.” The form is the bare infinitive which the KJV and ASV have interpreted as an imperative “Yet, return to me!” However, it is more likely that a question is intended, expressing surprise in the light of the law alluded to and the facts cited. For the use of the infinitive absolute in the place of a finite verb, cf. GKC 346 §113.ee. For the introduction of a question without a question marker, cf. GKC 473 §150.a.

[3:2]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and see.”

[3:2]  ¹² tn Heb “Where have you not been ravished?” The rhetorical question expects the answer “nowhere,” which suggests she has engaged in the worship of pagan gods on every one of the hilltops.

[3:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “You sat for them [the lovers, i.e., the foreign gods] beside the road like an Arab in the desert.”

[3:2]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “by your prostitution and your wickedness.” This is probably an example of hendiadys where, when two nouns are joined by “and,” one expresses the main idea and the other qualifies it.

[3:9]  ¹² tc The translation reads the form as a causative (Hiphil, תַּהֲנֵף, tahanef) with some of the versions in place of the simple stative (Qal, תֶּחֱנַף, tekhenaf) in the MT.

[3:9]  ¹³ tn Heb “because of the lightness of her prostitution, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood.”

[16:18]  ¹³ tn Heb “First.” Many English versions and commentaries delete this word because it is missing from the Greek version and is considered a gloss added by a postexilic editor who is said to be responsible also for vv. 14-16. This is not the place to resolve issues of authorship and date. It is the task of the translator to translate the “original” which in this case is the MT supported by the other versions. The word here refers to order in rank or order of events. Compare Gen 38:28; 1 Kgs 18:25. Here allusion is made to the restoration previously mentioned. First in order of events is the punishment of destruction and exile, then restoration.

[16:18]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “double.” However, usage in Deut 15:18 and probably Isa 40:2 argues for “full compensation.” This is supported also by usage in a tablet from Alalakh in Syria. See P. C. Craigie, P. H. Kelley, J. F. Drinkard, Jeremiah 1-25 (WBC), 218, for bibliography.

[16:18]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “my inheritance.”

[16:18]  ¹⁶ tn Many of the English versions take “lifeless statues of their detestable idols” with “filled” as a compound object. This follows the Masoretic punctuation but violates usage. The verb “fill” never takes an object preceded by the preposition בְּ (bet).

[2:10]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Arise and go!” These imperatives are rhetorical. Those who wrongly drove widows and orphans from their homes and land inheritances will themselves be driven out of the land (cf. Isa 5:8-17). This is an example of poetic justice.

[2:10]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “for this is no resting place.” The Lord speaks to the oppressors.

[2:10]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “uncleanness will destroy, and destruction will be severe.”