Leviticus 20:22-26
New English Translation
Exhortation to Holiness and Obedience
22 “‘You must be sure to obey all my statutes and regulations,[a] so that[b] the land to which I am about to bring you to take up residence does not vomit you out. 23 You must not walk in the statutes of the nations[c] which I am about to drive out before you, because they have done all these things and I am filled with disgust against them. 24 So I have said to you: You yourselves will possess their land and I myself will give it to you for a possession, a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God who has set you apart from the other peoples.[d] 25 Therefore you must distinguish[e] between the clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean bird and the clean, and you must not make yourselves detestable by means of an animal or bird or anything that creeps on the ground—creatures[f] I have distinguished for you as unclean.[g] 26 You must be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the other peoples to be mine.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Leviticus 20:22 tn Heb “And you shall keep all my statutes and all my regulations and you shall do them.” This appears to be a kind of verbal hendiadys, where the first verb is a modifier of the action of the second verb (see GKC 386 §120.d, although שָׁמַר [shamar, “to keep”] is not cited there; cf. Lev 22:31, etc.).
- Leviticus 20:22 tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have resultative force here.
- Leviticus 20:23 tc One medieval Hebrew ms, Smr, and all the major ancient versions have the plural “nations.” Some English versions retain the singular (e.g., KJV, ASV, NASB, NRSV); others have the plural “nations” (e.g., NAB, NIV) and still others translate as “people” (e.g., TEV, NLT).
- Leviticus 20:24 tc Here and with the same phrase in v. 26, the LXX adds “all,” resulting in the reading “all the peoples.”
- Leviticus 20:25 tn Heb “And you shall distinguish.” The verb is the same as “set apart” at the end of the previous verse. The fact that God had “set them apart” from the other peoples around them called for them to “distinguish between” the clean and the unclean, etc.
- Leviticus 20:25 tn The word “creatures” has been supplied in the translation to make it clear that the following relative clause modifies the animal, bird, or creeping thing mentioned earlier, and not the ground itself.
- Leviticus 20:25 tc The MT has “to defile,” but Smr, LXX, and Syriac have “to uncleanness.”
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