Imamat 19:20

Lying with a Slave Woman

19:20 “‘When a man has sexual intercourse with a woman, ¹  although she is a slave woman designated for another man and she has not yet been ransomed, or freedom has not been granted to her, there will be an obligation to pay compensation. ²  They must not be put to death, because she was not free.

Imamat 20:3

20:3 I myself will set my face ³  against that man and cut him off from the midst of his people, ⁴  because he has given some of his children to Molech and thereby defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. ⁵ 

Imamat 25:33

25:33 Whatever someone among the Levites might redeem – the sale of a house which is his property in a city – must revert in the jubilee, ⁶  because the houses of the cities of the Levites are their property in the midst of the Israelites.

Imamat 26:16

26:16 I for my part ⁷  will do this to you: I will inflict horror on you, consumption and fever, which diminish eyesight and drain away the vitality of life. ⁸  You will sow your seed in vain because ⁹  your enemies will eat it. ¹⁰ 

[19:20]  ¹ tn Heb “And a man when he lies with a woman the lying of seed.”

[19:20]  ² sn That is, the woman had previously been assigned for marriage to another man but the marriage deal had not yet been consummated. In the meantime, the woman has lost her virginity and has, therefore, lost part of her value to the master in the sale to the man for whom she had been designated. Compensation was, therefore, required (see the explanation in B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 130-31).

[20:3]  ³ tn Heb “And I, I shall give my faces.”

[20:3]  ⁴ sn On the “cut off” penalty see the notes on Lev 7:20 and 17:4.

[20:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “for the sake of defiling my sanctuary and to profane my holy name.”

[25:33]  ⁶ tn Heb “And which he shall redeem from the Levites shall go out, sale of house and city, his property in the jubilee.” Although the end of this verse is clear, the first part is notoriously difficult. There are five main views. (1) The first clause of the verse actually attaches to the previous verse, and refers to the fact that their houses retain a perpetual right of redemption (v. 32b), “which any of the Levites may exercise” (v. 33a; J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 418, 421). (2) It refers to property that one Levite sells to another Levite, which is then redeemed by still another Levite (v. 33a). In such cases, the property reverts to the original Levite owner in the jubilee year (v. 33b; G. J. Wenham, Leviticus [NICOT], 321). (3) It refers to houses in a city that had come to be declared as a Levitical city but had original non-Levitical owners. Once the city was declared to belong to the Levites, however, an owner could only sell his house to a Levite, and he could only redeem it back from a Levite up until the time of the first jubilee after the city was declared to be a Levitical city. In this case the first part of the verse would be translated, “Such property as may be redeemed from the Levites” (NRSV, NJPS). At the first jubilee, however, all such houses became the property of the Levites (v. 33b; P. J. Budd, Leviticus [NCBC], 353). (4) It refers to property “which is appropriated from the Levites” (not “redeemed from the Levites,” v. 33a) by those who have bought it or taken it as security for debts owed to them by Levites who had fallen on bad times. Again, such property reverts back to the original Levite owners at the jubilee (B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 177). (5) It simply refers to the fact that a Levite has the option of redeeming his house (i.e., the prefix form of the verb is taken to be subjunctive, “may or might redeem”), which he had to sell because he had fallen into debt or perhaps even become destitute. Even if he never gained the resources to do so, however, it would still revert to him in the jubilee year. The present translation is intended to reflect this latter view.

[26:16]  ⁷ tn Or “I also” (see HALOT 76 s.v. אַף 6.b).

[26:16]  ⁸ tn Heb “soul.” These expressions may refer either to the physical effects of consumption and fever as the rendering in the text suggests (e.g., J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452, 454, “diminishing eyesight and loss of appetite”), or perhaps the more psychological effects, “which exhausts the eyes” because of anxious hope “and causes depression” (Heb “causes soul [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh] to pine away”), e.g., B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 185.

[26:16]  ⁹ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have causal force here.

[26:16]  ¹⁰ tn That is, “your enemies will eat” the produce that grows from the sown seed.