Leviticus 18 and 20
Leviticus 18:1-5
the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel & say to them, I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall follow my rules & keep my statues and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.
It makes sense to me that God doesn't want the people worshipping or trusting in these other gods that the Canaanites and Egyptians worship...He's saying, don't do what they do because I am the Lord your God, not whatever god they are worshipping, I am the one that is going to do what they are hoping those other gods will do for them.
In the land of Canaan & Egypt they worshipped multiple fertility gods that had rituals of worship & sacrifice including homosexual sex, cult prostitutes, child sacrifices, etc. God’s people were set apart from the other nations & pointed to the One True God by their code of laws and God’s provisions for them through their worship of just Him, but then they kept worshipping all these other gods that the Egyptians and Canaanites did & God got angry.
Leviticus 18 says that lying with a male as with a woman is an abomination… the word used is toebah. It is used 117 times in the Old Testament.
53 verses referring to idolatry (45 percent)
25 verses referring to injustice (mistreatment/harm to other people) (21 percent)
17 verses are just referencing “abominations” in general (15 percent)
7 Verses: Pride (6 percent)
6 verses: dishonesty (7 percent)
6 verses: Promiscuity (5 percent)
5 verses: Levitical Code (4 percent)
6 Verses: Unfaithful (5 percent)
3 Verses: intent (3 percent)
2 Verses: intermarry (2 percent)
1 verse: devising of folly/scoffer
1 verse: diet
1 verse: incense
2 verses: thoughts of wicked and way of wicked
Leviticus 18:24
Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.
But the Holy Spirit tells Peter not to call anyone unclean & he uses a food analogy to do it.
And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. (Acts 10:28)
Leviticus 19:1-3
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. Every one of you shall revere his mother and father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths: I am the Lord your God. Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal: I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 20: 1-5
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Say to the people of Israel, any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man & will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean & profane my holy name.
Thoughts: how does the sanctuary become unclean and profaned? By sacrifices, offerings, and worship to other gods
Leviticus 20:23-25
And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I detested them. But I have said to you, “You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples. You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean, and the unclean bird from the clean. You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean.
This sounds very similar to the passage in Romans 1 and in Acts. And we know detestable and abominable things are those sacrificed to idols. And God says I am the Lord your God I am God a lot of times reminding them that He is God. Don’t participate in the customs of the people of these lands who worship all these other false gods.
How many times does God say I am the Lord or I am God in each chapter?
Lev 18: 7 times
Lev 19: 16 times
Lev 20: 4 times
God always gets mad that the people forget Him and turn from Him. The people are going into a land where they are going to be with people who worship a lot of different gods for blessings, comfort, healing, provision, etc. And God wants them to be set apart and for people to know that He is God and there is only One and it’s Him. It makes a lot more sense in this context that He says over and over, I am God. I am your God. I am the Lord God. And it makes sense that these customs and being set apart dealt with worship and ritual practices for other gods.
It makes much more sense that the word used in Leviticus 18 and 20 was talking about sacrificial worship. Especially since Paul uses it again in two verses in the New Testament, one passage in reference to the unrighteous which he calls the unbelievers (1 Co 6:6). As well, Nero, the ruler at the time, married two men, but Paul didn’t say anything about that even if he was disgusted by it.
And Romans 1 talks about turning from God to unnatural relations and we know that repeatedly in the Old Testament turning from God was turning to worship and make sacrifices to other gods and idols and it was a common thing for people to do, but it’s not a common thing for people to have a homosexual orientation.