Leviticus 18:22

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(22) As with womankind.—This was the sin of Sodom (Genesis 19:5), whence it derived its name, and in spite of the penalty of death enacted by the Law against those who were found guilty of it (see Leviticus 20:13), the Israelites did not quite relinquish this abominable vice (Judges 19:22; 1Kings 14:24), to which the surrounding nations were addicted and which was so prevalent in the time of the Apostles (Romans 1:27; 1Corinthians 6:9; Galatians 5:19; 1Timothy 1:10). By the law of Christ those who are guilty of this sin are excluded from the kingdom of God (1Corinthians 6:9-10), whilst the laws of civilised Europe rightly inflict the severest penalties upon offenders of this kind.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

18:1-30 Unlawful marriages and fleshly lusts. - Here is a law against all conformity to the corrupt usages of the heathen. Also laws against incest, against brutal lusts, and barbarous idolatries; and the enforcement of these laws from the ruin of the Canaanites. God here gives moral precepts. Close and constant adherence to God's ordinances is the most effectual preservative from gross sin. The grace of God only will secure us; that grace is to be expected only in the use of the means of grace. Nor does He ever leave any to their hearts' lusts, till they have left him and his services.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Molech - See the note at Leviticus 20:2-5.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

21. thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, &c.—Molech, or Moloch, which signifies "king," was the idol of the Ammonites. His statue was of brass, and rested on a pedestal or throne of the same metal. His head, resembling that of a calf, was adorned with a crown, and his arms were extended in the attitude of embracing those who approached him. His devotees dedicated their children to him; and when this was to be done, they heated the statue to a high pitch of intensity by a fire within, and then the infants were either shaken over the flames, or passed through the ignited arms, by way of lustration to ensure the favor of the pretended deity. The fire-worshippers asserted that all children who did not undergo this purifying process would die in infancy; and the influence of this Zabian superstition was still so extensively prevalent in the days of Moses, that the divine lawgiver judged it necessary to prohibit it by an express statute.

neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God—by giving it to false or pretended divinities; or, perhaps, from this precept standing in close connection with the worship of Molech, the meaning rather is, Do not, by devoting your children to him, give foreigners occasion to blaspheme the name of your God as a cruel and sanguinary deity, who demands the sacrifice of human victims, and who encourages cruelty in his votaries.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Thou shall not lie with mankind as with womankind,.... By carnal knowledge of them, and carnal copulation with them, and mixing bodies in like manner: this is the sin commonly called sodomy, from the inhabitants of Sodom, greatly addicted to it, for which their city was destroyed by fire: those that are guilty of this sin, are, by the apostle, called "abusers of themselves with mankind", 1 Corinthians 6:9,

it is abomination; it is so to God, as the above instance of his vengeance shows, and ought to be abominable to men, as being not only contrary to the law of God, but even contrary to nature itself, and what is never to be observed among brute creatures.

Geneva Study Bible

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 22. - The fourth prohibition forbids the sin of Sodom (see Genesis 19:5; Judges 11:22; Romans 1:27; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10). The penalty is death (Leviticus 20:13). Leviticus 18:22

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Lastly, it was forbidden to "lie with mankind as with womankind," i.e., to commit the crime of paederastia, that sin of Sodom (Genesis 19:5), to which the whole of the heathen were more or less addicted (Romans 1:27), and from which even the Israelites did not keep themselves free (Judges 19:22.); or to "lie with any beast." "Into no beast shalt thou give thine emission of seed,...and a woman shall not place herself before a beast to lie down thereto." רבע equals רבץ "to lie," is the term used particularly to denote a crime of this description (Leviticus 20:13 and Leviticus 20:15, Leviticus 20:16, cf. Exodus 22:18). Lying with animals was connected in Egypt with the worship of the goat; at Mendes especially, where the women lay down before he-goats (Herodotus, 2, 46; Strabo, 17, p. 802). Aelian (nat. an. vii. 19) relates an account of the crime being also committed with a dog in Rome; and according to Sonnini, R. 11, p. 330, in modern Egypt men are said to lie even with female crocodiles.