The Lord speaking to Moses opens the closing chapter of Leviticus 18-20, which stands within the larger block of Leviticus 5-23. That larger block deals largely with laws about sacrifices and offerings, the consecration and duties of the priests, and the various feasts of the year. The laws given to Israel stand in contrast to the customs of the surrounding nations, and the chapter records what evil practices did to the nations living in Canaan.
Those nations had given themselves up to pagan abominations with Satan ruling through the flesh. After God in mercy extended hope to them for four hundred years and sent His servants to sojourn among them to win them to the right way, they filled up their cup of iniquity. Their removal from the earth was therefore a blessing to future generations. The chapter places human sacrifice among the practices forbidden by God, so offering Jephthah's daughter as a sacrifice would have been an abomination contrary to the law, not a lawful offering to the Lord.
The chapter gives laws against incestuous unions and unions violating prohibited degrees of kinship, which supports the view that the bastard barred from Israel's assembly in Deuteronomy 23:2 meant especially the offspring of such unions, not every child born outside marriage. Its opening verses set out the punishments inflicted under the former dispensation for breaking the other commandments. Those punishments were no part of the commandments themselves but a subsequent enactment for that people in that place and time, so keeping the commandments now, including the seventh-day Sabbath, does not require stoning the transgressor. The passage is cited as an example of God judging Nadab and Abihu for treating a substitute for what He commanded as acceptable, when they used common fire instead of holy fire and God destroyed them, showing that even seemingly small disobedience is serious before God.
The Lord speaking to Moses opens the closing chapter of Leviticus 18-20, which stands within the larger block of Leviticus 5-23. That larger block deals largely with laws about sacrifices and offerings, the consecration and duties of the priests, and the various feasts of the year. The laws given to Israel stand in contrast to the customs of the surrounding nations, and the chapter records what evil practices did to the nations living in Canaan.
Those nations had given themselves up to pagan abominations with Satan ruling through the flesh. After God in mercy extended hope to them for four hundred years and sent His servants to sojourn among them to win them to the right way, they filled up their cup of iniquity. Their removal from the earth was therefore a blessing to future generations. The chapter places human sacrifice among the practices forbidden by God, so offering Jephthah's daughter as a sacrifice would have been an abomination contrary to the law, not a lawful offering to the Lord.
The chapter gives laws against incestuous unions and unions violating prohibited degrees of kinship, which supports the view that the bastard barred from Israel's assembly in Deuteronomy 23:2 meant especially the offspring of such unions, not every child born outside marriage. Its opening verses set out the punishments inflicted under the former dispensation for breaking the other commandments. Those punishments were no part of the commandments themselves but a subsequent enactment for that people in that place and time, so keeping the commandments now, including the seventh-day Sabbath, does not require stoning the transgressor. The passage is cited as an example of God judging Nadab and Abihu for treating a substitute for what He commanded as acceptable, when they used common fire instead of holy fire and God destroyed them, showing that even seemingly small disobedience is serious before God.