Approaching God as a Nation, as Families, and as Individuals
Acharei Mot and Kedoshim (Leviticus 16-20) are about how we are and are not to relate to God. Since marriage is an image of our relationship to God, they contain many examples of forbidden human relationships.- Leviticus 16 – Approaching God as a nation.
- Leviticus 17 – Approaching God as individuals. Things that will prevent closeness.
- Leviticus 18 – Mistakes other peoples made in their relationships. Judgment as a nation and as individuals.
- Men with women
- The offspring of relationships between men and women
- Men with men
- Men and women with animals
- Leviticus 19 – Being set apart from other nations by a healthy relationship with God and each other.
- Leviticus 20 – Refusing to be different creates unhealthy relationships with God and each other. Don’t blow it.
The Only Love that Matters
In Leviticus 19, God said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." In Leviticus 20, He said "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death."There is no contradiction. Love means doing what's best for people. It means refusing to tolerate behaviors that destroy the community & its relationship with God.
Celebrating spiritual disease is cowardly. It's an excuse to avoid speaking the hard truth that homosexuality is perverse rot. It's death. Love doesn't see a person committing suicide and say, "Oh, how sweet! Love wins." What vile filth has infected people's souls that they could possibly entertain such things?
No, love says to the man drinking poison, "Stop! No more!"
This is love by God's standard, the only standard that matters: "You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them." (Lev 20:22a)
Open sexual perversion defiles the entire nation, not just those who practice it. The closer a nation is to God, the quicker and more severe is the ruin brought on by their wickedness. Things that will bring a nation to ruin: perversion, blood-guilt, idolatry.
Do you want to save America? Then don't tolerate open perversion. End abortion. God won't wait forever.
Fortunately, forgiveness awaits the penitent. "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked."
Prohibited Degrees of Kinship
There are numerous methods of charting degrees of consanguinity floating around out there, so I thought I should post something about my own. Especially since I have mentioned elsewhere that God prohibits marriage to anyone closer than the fourth degree.Ancestors and descendants, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, and siblings are all out of bounds. First cousins are acceptable. At least to God. You might feel differently.
Don't use this chart for legal purposes, of course. Many jurisdictions define the degrees differently.
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| God's Law prohibits marriage with 1st, 2nd, or 3rd degree relations. There are rare, marginal cases that are not addressed or that don't fit neatly into this hierarchy, but that's why God gave us minds and spirits. |
so how does adam & eve or later abram & sari fit?
ReplyDeleteExcellent question! The best questions are always the hardest to answer.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I wrote in A Commentary on Marriage in the Bible regarding the incest of the patriarchs:
Genesis 4:17 ...Yeshua said that all of the Mosaic Law is based on the love of God and neighbor. It is easy to see how the law against sibling marriage demonstrates a love for neighbor because of the increased risk of birth defects in the offspring from such marriages. The question to answer is how sibling marriage might not have been contrary to neighborly love at the time of Creation. Before the Fall there was no sickness and therefore there were no inheritable genetic disorders. Until the discoveries of modern genetics concerning the nature of mutation and inheritance, this question was impossible to answer; we could only trust God that he had his reasons (which trust is not at all a bad thing). After the Fall there was death, but the extremely long life-spans testify to the rarity of disease and some mechanism which postponed or prevented aging altogether.<1> After the Flood, however, the genes of all living things endured an extended period of deterioration. Our life-spans decreased, our diseases increased, and we developed diabetes, anemia, and other inheritable genetic disorders.<2> Until that time, there was no reason to prohibit sibling marriage because there was nothing about it that demonstrated non-love for God or neighbor.
<1> Carl Weiland, ―"Living for 900 Years?" Creation Ex Nihilo 20(4):10–13.
<2> Carl Weiland, ―"Decreased Lifespans: Have We Been Looking in the Right Place?". TJ 8 (2, 1994):138–141. (Answers in Genesis, http://answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/v8n2_decreased_life.asp. 7 February 2004.)
Genesis 12:13 ...Although Scripture never actually says that God approved of Abraham and Sarah‘s marriage, he chose the house of Abraham, and specifically Sarah, to bear the promised line that would eventually produce the Messiah. It does not seem reasonable to me to suppose that God seriously disapproved of their incest, although he later gave Moses a law against this very relationship. I believe the reason that Abraham‘s and Sarah‘s marriage was acceptable while later such marriages were not, is the same reason that Cain was able to marry his full sister. The human gene pool had not deteriorated to the point at which close consanguinogamy is dangerous. Several generations later, when Israel left Egypt, congenital defects were more common, and the risk was higher. As Yeshua would state centuries later, all of the Torah rests on the principles of love for God and others. A marriage between half siblings today would be hateful to the next generation. Apparently, the purpose of the law is not to prevent consanguinogamy so much as to prevent its results.
I should add that it is dangerous to imagine God's justification for giving specific commands. I could be wrong. There could be any number of other reasons for God allowing sibling marriages in one century and not in another. Believing that we know God's reasons opens the door to setting aside his commands. If sibling marriages were forbidden to prevent birth defects, does that mean a man can marry his sister if a genetic analysis shows them to be perfectly clear of harmful mutations? I think it's better to keep the command than to presume too much and be wrong.
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