Leviticus 19

Leviticus 19:1-10

Some ceremonial precepts there are in this chapter, but most of them are moral. (1.) The laws peculiar to the Jesus, are, 1. Concerning their peace-offerings, ver. 5—8. 2. Concerning the gluing of their fields, ver. 9, 10. 3. Against westers of their cattle, feed, and cloth, ver. 19. 4. Concerning their trees, ver. 23—25. 5. Against some superstitious usages, ver. 26—28. (2.) Precepts moral obligatory upon all. 1. The sum of all the commandments in general, ver. 2, 18. 2. Something of each commandment. 1. A prohibition of enchantment, ver. 26. and withdrawal, ver. 31. which make a god of the devil, and are a breach of the first commandment. 2. Of idolatry against the second commandment, ver. 4. 3. Proclamation of God’s name against the third, ver. 12. 4. Sabbath sanctification is preiled, ver. 3, 30. 5. Children are required to honour their parents, ver. 3, and the aged, ver. 32. 6. Hatred and revenge are here forbidden, ver. 17, 18. 7. Adultery, ver. 20—22. and whoredom, ver. 29. 8. Justice required, ver. 15. theft forbidden, ver. 11. fraud, and withholding dust, ver. 13. and false weights, ver. 35, 36. 9. Lying, ver. 11. Slandering, ver. 14. Tale-bearing, and false witness, ver. 16. 10. The tenth commandment, laying a restraint upon the heart; is doth that, ver. 17. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart. And here is a solemn charge to observe all these statutes, ver. 37. Now these are things which need not much help for the understanding of them, but require constant care and watchfulness for the observing of them. A good understanding have all they that do these commandments.

1. AND the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2. Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, ‘Ye shall be holy: for the LORD your God am holy. 3. ¶ ‘Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father, and ‘keep my lab-baths: I am the LORD your God. 4. ‘Turn ye not unto idols, ’nor make to yourselves molten gods: I am

the LORD God. 5. ¶ And ‘if ye offer a sacrifice of peace-offerings unto the LORD; ye shall offer it at your own will. 6. It shall be eaten the same day ye offer it, and on the morrow: and if ought remain until the third day, it shall be burnt in the fire. 7. And if it be eaten at all on the third day, it is abominable; it shall not be accepted. 8. Therefore every one that eateth it, shall bear his iniquity, because he hath profaned the hallowed thing of the LORD: and that foul shall be cut off from among his people. 9. ¶ And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. 10. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the LORD your God.

It was Mofer’s concern to make God’s will known to all the people; and a faithful steward he was in God’s house. 1. A general command is given, including all the rest. Be ye holy. The design of both law and gospel, next to God’s glory, is the holiness and happiness of his people. For there can be no enjoyment of God, in which true happiness consists, without conformity to him. 2. Particular commands, wherein this holiness must be expressed. 1. In fearing father and mother. Implying that filial affection, dutiful obedience, diligence to please, and dread of offending, which every son of Israel must show in both his parents. 2. In franchising the Sabbath. They show themselves truly children of God, who join piety towards their Father in heaven, to dutifulness to their parents on earth. To despise father or mother, or to produce God’s Sabbaths, is the sure mark of a repentant son. 3. No idols must be worshipped. 4. Their sacrifices of peace-offerings must not be cut beyond the prescribed time. 5. They must consider and leave a portion for the poor in the harvest field, and at the vintage. Nate. (1.) There can be no true piety towards God, where there is no charity towards men. A covetous heart can never have written upon it, Halimah to the Lord. (2.) The prayers of the poor, who partake of our blessings, will make us ample amends for the handful we leave them. No gain to great, or sure, as what is thus lent to the Lord.

11. ¶ Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another. 12. ¶ And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD. 13. ¶ Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired, shall not abide with thee all night until the morning. 14. ¶ Thou shalt not curle the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD. 15. ¶ Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment; thou shalt not respect the perlon of the poor, nor honour the perlon of the mighty; but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour. 16. ¶ Thou shalt not go up and down as a tale-bearer among thy people; neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD. 17. ¶ Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. 18. ¶ Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

Leviticus 19:11-18

Farther moral precepts. 1. Against theft, fraud, and lying. ‘In a bad world we are in. Every trade almost is now so mixed with injustice, and so supported by lies, that ’tis hard for an honest man to live: but the straiter the gate the more should we strive to enter. And in the end, as loath, honestly and truth will prove the best policy. 2. Against false-swearing, or an irreverent use of the names of God. Which, to the shame of christian, is now made so common in ordinary conversation. 3. To be punctual in our payments. To detain a just debt, or wages, beyond the time agreed, is to defraud our neighbour. 4. We may not curle the deaf, nor make the blind to stumble. To sport with man’s natural insomniess is a high reflection upon God. 5. Justice must be administered with impartiality. No compulsion for the perlon of the poor, nor fear of the mighty, must have the least influence on our decisions. 6. The tale-bearer condemned. A vile character! that picks up his neighbour’s faults for the pleasure of relating them. To hurt a man’s reputation that is more injurious than to rob his house. 7. We may not bear false testimony ourselves, nor stand silent by and for the innocent condemned. 8. We owe our neighbour the rebuke of love. Nothing so friendly, nothing so faithful as these wounds, Prov. xxvii. 5. Vol. I.

Nate. To see our brother sin, and not reprove him, is the greatest injury we can do him, and brings great guilt upon our own souls. 9. All secret resentment is forbidden, and all revenge. We must forgive and forget every injury; and so far from desiring to hurt our enemy in return, must not cease to pray that God would forgive and forget his sin. 10. We have the whole in a word: we must love our neighbour as ourselves. Love will make us honest, true, just, tender, kind, jealous for his good, and sincerely desirous of, and laborious for his welfare in body and soul, as for our own. Lord shall abroad this love in my heart!

19. ¶ Ye shall keep my statutes: Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a divers kind: Thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled feed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee. 20. ¶ And whoever lieth carnally with a woman that is a bond-mind; be tempted to an husband, and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given her, the shall be scourged: they shall not be put to death, because she was not free. 21. ¶ And he shall bring his trespasses offering unto the LORD, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, even a ram for a trespasses offering. 22. And the priest shall make an anomenon for him with the ram of the trespasses offering before the LORD, for his sin which he hath done: and the sin which he hath done shall be forgiven him. 23. ¶ And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you; it shall not be eaten of. 24. But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be a holy to praise the LORD withal. 25. And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof: I am the LORD your God. 26. ¶ Ye shall not eat any thing with the blood: neither shall ye use inhumanment, nor observe times. 27. ¶ Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. 28. ¶ Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD. 29. ¶ Do not prostrate thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore: lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.

Leviticus 19:19-20

Sundry laws. 1. Against mixtures between different cattle, in which is something unnatural; against sowing mingled corn, or wearing lurley woolley garments. Israel must be kept pure from mangling with the heathen in their usages. Nate. All blending works with faith, as conducting to our justification, is making this hateful and forbidden mixture. 2. The punishment and sacrifice for seducing an espoused bondwoman. They who give way to their fleshly lusts must suffer for it, by the loungings of repentance now, or by the arm of the tormentor for ever. 3. Concerning fruit-trees. Three years after their planting they must not eat of them; the fourth their produce was sacred, and given to God’s priest; afterwards it was their own. When we have served God with a part of our three fish, we may hope for a blessing and comfort in what we use ourselves. 4. Against superfluous customs. Such as eating round the blood of their sacrifices, in honour of demons; or using inchantments, or observing superstitiously days and times, or rounding their heads, or cutting their beards, in honour of idols; or making incidents in their flesh, or prints in their skin for the dead, or to appraise the infernal deities. Let these vain and lawful customs admonish us of the folly and sin of fortune-telling, seeking to gypsies, conjurors, &c. all amusers, charms, &c. fearing cross days, or cross knives and forks, or split fats, and such solderies. Shall the dress of paganism enter amidst the profession of christianity? To have any dependence on these faliens, (nothing) is full to have fellowship with devils. 5. Against prostitution of their children, as was common in some lewd rites of the heathen gods. These gods are renounced; but he who deludes the urinary, and sacrifices injured beauty to his own vile lusts, is still the votary of these unclean spirits.

30. ¶ Ye shall keep my Sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD. 31. ¶ Regard not there that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God. 32. ¶ Thou shalt rise up before the heavy head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD. 33. ¶ And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not ye yee him. 34. ¶ But the stranger

Leviticus 19:30-37

1. God’s fathaths must be kept, and his fanctuary reverenced. Wherever Christians assemble for worship, there is the divine Shoshinah. 2. A warning against wizards, or ventriloquiffs, who either had, or pretended to have more than human sight; they must neither be sought to for advice, nor feared in their predictions. 3. Age must be honoured: the younger must rise up before the elder, and shew him the respect that to his years and wisdom. 4. Strangers are to be treated kindly. The remembrance of their own state in Egypt must teach them to pity others. They must not be oppressed, nor defrauded, nor reproached, but loved as a brother, and treated with equal affection. They who are strangers, have a right to pessilize kindness: it is enough that they are removed from their domestic comforts, they need not have their absence more embittered by ill usage. 5. Justice must be observed, in measures, weights, and scales. To sell less than weight or measure, it at least equally criminal with other acts of theft, which though man may never discover, shall be severely ridiculed, when God weighs such in his balances, and finds them wanting. 6. All God’s statutes must be observed and done; head, heart, and hand, must concur. Nor, No man sincerely obeys God, who makes any reserves; and he will never really please him by obedience to any one command, who does not in simplicity seek to observe them all.