Leviticus 20:10-21, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Leviticus 20:10-21
Sexual prohibitions return with severe penalties and childlessness formulas
Adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions.
What helps us understand it
Earlier material that actually helps
Leviticus 18:6–30Chapter 20 returns to many chapter 18 prohibitions and adds varied penalties; interpretation must hold the repeated acts and severe sanctions together.
Leviticus 20:10-21 opens with “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s…”; its reviewed main movement is: Adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions.
Leviticus 20:10-21 opens with “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s…” and closes with “And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his….”
How the passage moves
The unit opens the particular procedure, case, scene, or instruction named “Sexual prohibitions return with severe penalties and childlessness formulas.”
The unit closes with this interpretive boundary: These penalties belong to an ancient legal rhetoric and cannot authorize execution, assault, conversion coercion, anti-LGBTQ abuse, or family violence.
A phrase that matters
holy
קָדוֹשׁ · qadosh
It joins worship to embodied and social covenant life rather than using holiness as a prestige label.
abomination
תּוֹעֵבָה · toevah
It keeps a forceful ancient legal category from becoming a modern slur against people.
stranger
גֵּר · ger
It makes the resident outsider's obligations and protections visible instead of treating every outsider category as identical.
A needed correction
Before applying Leviticus 20:10-21, keep these boundaries visible:
Leviticus's holiness laws do not authorize vigilantism, theocracy, forced conversion, religious policing, or cruelty toward minorities.
A severe ancient prohibition or penalty is not permission to insult, dehumanize, criminalize, assault, expel, or deny care to LGBTQ people, women, foreigners, disabled people, or religious dissenters.
Israel's land and sanctuary legislation does not become a blank check for a modern nation, church, party, or ethnic group.
How this should shape us
How should this shape us today?
For “Sexual prohibitions return with severe penalties and childlessness formulas,” use this bounded response: State the ancient sexual or kinship rule and its power setting honestly, protect every person from coercion and violence, and refuse to copy the chapter's penalties into modern personal or civil action. Keep the unit's own limit visible: These penalties belong to an ancient legal rhetoric and cannot authorize execution, assault, conversion coercion, anti-LGBTQ abuse, or family violence.
Teach it back
Explain Leviticus 20:10-21 in your own words. Include its ritual, legal, narrative, or calendar movement; one source-supported detail; one uncertainty; and one use the context rules out.
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Go deeper
The explanation above is meant to stand on its own. Open these notes only if you want language, history, disagreements, or source locations.
Read it sentence by sentenceEach line inside the larger movement
Observe the actors and ordered actions
Adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions.
Keep the category boundary visible
These penalties belong to an ancient legal rhetoric and cannot authorize execution, assault, conversion coercion, anti-LGBTQ abuse, or family violence.
Original-language wording and grammarTechnical detail appears only where it helps
holy
Set apart in relation to the LORD and expressed through worship, justice, bodies, land, time, and treatment of neighbors.
How certain? probableabomination
A forceful category of abhorrence in its legal and cultural setting; it must be interpreted by context rather than used as a slur.
How certain? probablestranger
A resident outsider with specified obligations and protections; the social category changed across biblical and later Jewish settings.
How certain? probableWhat the first readers would have understoodRelevant history and culture
Ancient Israel, priestly systems, and responsible comparison
Leviticus 17-22 locates holiness in sanctuary allegiance, blood, kinship and sex, economic practice, speech, harvest, courts, treatment of immigrants, priestly households, and acceptable offerings. Its rules address ancient Israel's land and institutions, not a modern pluralist civil code.
How certain? probableWhy translations sometimes differMaterial translation choices
KJV wording and material alternatives
KJV 'abomination,' 'cut off,' 'stranger,' 'bondmaid,' and 'confusion' carry legal and cultural freight that modern readers can mishear. The study explains each in its clause and refuses to turn an older English label into a modern insult.
How certain? probableEarlier Scripture and inherited backgroundSupported quotations, allusions, and inherited ideas
Leviticus in Jewish Scripture and interpretation
The Holiness material reuses creation, exodus, covenant, sanctuary, and land themes and overlaps or differs with Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Prophets later join holy worship to justice and condemn bloodshed, exploitation, and idolatry.
How certain? strongHow this connects with the rest of ScriptureThe passage's own meaning remains primary
Canonical connections without category collapse
Jewish communities have interpreted these laws through Scripture, Mishnah, Talmud, responsa, liturgy, and lived practice rather than by simply executing a bare English verse. Christian writers selectively reuse holiness language; that reception must not erase Jewish legal tradition.
How certain? probableTextual variantsManuscript differences only when they affect meaning
Textual, lexical, and reconstruction limits
Most disputes here concern interpretation, social setting, legal relationship, and composition more than a single decisive textual variant. The Masoretic wording is displayed while ancient versions and modern translations are consulted where a term materially changes the issue.
How certain? probableWhere careful interpreters disagreeThe strongest options and their difficulties
Where do careful interpreters disagree?
Best judgment: Interpreters disagree over Priestly and Holiness composition, legal scope, ancient enforcement, kinship structures, sexual acts and rationales, moral versus ritual categories, resident-outside status, and how Jews and Christians should reason from these texts today. Material alternatives are stated without pretending the ethical stakes disappear.
How certain? probableTheology that emerges from this passageConclusions drawn after reading the complete section
Theological contribution
Holiness reaches worship and ordinary social life: God claims bodies, truth, labor, courts, land, harvest, and treatment of vulnerable neighbors. In 20:10-21, adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions.
How certain? strongTheological contribution
Across Leviticus this unit contributes to the movement from sanctuary approach through priestly service, embodied distinction, social holiness, sacred time, land responsibility, covenant, and vows: Adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions.
How certain? strongCommon ways this passage gets misusedFair explanation, context check, and stronger reading
Leviticus's holiness laws do not authorize vigilantism, theocracy, forced conversion, religious policing, or cruelty toward minorities.
A vivid ritual or legal phrase can feel easier to quote than the whole case, its actors, and its sanctuary or land setting.
Adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions. The received book presents this as part of Israel's approach to holy presence, priestly service, embodied distinctions, neighbor justice, land responsibility, covenant, and accountable vows; it must not be detached from that movement.
Devotion that harms neighbors, hides coercion, exploits poverty, corrupts judgment, or turns difference into contempt contradicts the chapter's own social reach. This unit especially requires readers to preserve this fact: These penalties belong to an ancient legal rhetoric and cannot authorize execution, assault, conversion coercion, anti-LGBTQ abuse, or family violence.
Adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions.
A severe ancient prohibition or penalty is not permission to insult, dehumanize, criminalize, assault, expel, or deny care to LGBTQ people, women, foreigners, disabled people, or religious dissenters.
Readers may collapse clean and unclean, holy and common, guilt and ritual status, or ancient penalty and modern application into one scale.
Adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions. The received book presents this as part of Israel's approach to holy presence, priestly service, embodied distinctions, neighbor justice, land responsibility, covenant, and accountable vows; it must not be detached from that movement.
Devotion that harms neighbors, hides coercion, exploits poverty, corrupts judgment, or turns difference into contempt contradicts the chapter's own social reach. This unit especially requires readers to preserve this fact: These penalties belong to an ancient legal rhetoric and cannot authorize execution, assault, conversion coercion, anti-LGBTQ abuse, or family violence.
Adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions.
Israel's land and sanctuary legislation does not become a blank check for a modern nation, church, party, or ethnic group.
A later Jewish or Christian reception can be treated as though it erased Israel's first horizon and every interpretive disagreement.
Adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions. The received book presents this as part of Israel's approach to holy presence, priestly service, embodied distinctions, neighbor justice, land responsibility, covenant, and accountable vows; it must not be detached from that movement.
Devotion that harms neighbors, hides coercion, exploits poverty, corrupts judgment, or turns difference into contempt contradicts the chapter's own social reach. This unit especially requires readers to preserve this fact: These penalties belong to an ancient legal rhetoric and cannot authorize execution, assault, conversion coercion, anti-LGBTQ abuse, or family violence.
Adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions.
These penalties belong to an ancient legal rhetoric and cannot authorize execution, assault, conversion coercion, anti-LGBTQ abuse, or family violence.
Strong wording can be recruited for institutional control even when the unit protects access, repair, the poor, or an affected body.
Adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions. The received book presents this as part of Israel's approach to holy presence, priestly service, embodied distinctions, neighbor justice, land responsibility, covenant, and accountable vows; it must not be detached from that movement.
Devotion that harms neighbors, hides coercion, exploits poverty, corrupts judgment, or turns difference into contempt contradicts the chapter's own social reach. This unit especially requires readers to preserve this fact: These penalties belong to an ancient legal rhetoric and cannot authorize execution, assault, conversion coercion, anti-LGBTQ abuse, or family violence.
Adultery, kinship violations, male-male intercourse, intercourse with a woman and her mother, bestiality, menstruation, and other family relations receive varied death, cutting-off, burning, or childlessness sanctions.
Research trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact reader-facing KJV wording, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage for this thought unit.
Leviticus 20:10-21, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Supports: Hebrew wording, morphology, ritual and legal vocabulary, names, clause relationships, KJV language controls, and translation limits.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Lev.xml, Masoretic words and morphology for 20:10-21
Supports: Unit-bounded translator notes on Hebrew, syntax, ritual vocabulary, measures, textual questions, and older-English wording; silence is not treated as evidence.
NET Bible Leviticus PDF, complete PDF pp. 1-99, translation and translator notes for 20:10-21
Supports: Open critical orientation to Day of Atonement, holiness, social law, calendar, land, release, covenant, and final valuations.
Yale Bible Study, 'Leviticus Part 2,' complete guide sections on Leviticus 16, the Holiness Code, love of neighbor, festivals, land, covenant, and vows, applied to Leviticus 20:10-21
Supports: One prominent contextual reading of the male-male prohibitions, preserved as a material interpretation rather than declared consensus.
Nissinen, 'It's About Masculinity, Not Homosexuality,' complete article sections on Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Hebrew wording, ancient masculinity, and reception limits
Supports: A different critical model that treats Torah as legally polyphonic; it preserves denominational and compositional disagreement rather than deciding contemporary ethics by concealment.
Frankel, 'Male Homosexual Intercourse Is Prohibited - In One Part of the Torah,' complete source-critical comparison of Leviticus 18, 20, Priestly texts, and Deuteronomy
Supports: Primary Jewish reception evidence showing later legal restriction and disagreement around capital punishment; it does not erase Leviticus's penalties.
Mishnah Makkot 1:10, complete unit in Hebrew and English on a Sanhedrin executing once in seven or seventy years and the preserved rabbinic disagreement
Supports: Publisher-visible framing of scholarly disagreement about Hebrews and supersessionism, used as a restraint on Christian canonical claims rather than as a complete solution.
Church, 'Hebrews and the Question of Supersessionism,' Oxford 2024 official abstract and metadata, pp. 167-180
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact reader-facing KJV wording, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage for this thought unit.
Exact location: Leviticus 20:10-21, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Leviticus
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Hebrew wording, morphology, ritual and legal vocabulary, names, clause relationships, KJV language controls, and translation limits.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Lev.xml, Masoretic words and morphology for 20:10-21
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Leviticus with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
eBible.org distribution of the NET Bible, PDF generated 2025-12-31
Supports: Unit-bounded translator notes on Hebrew, syntax, ritual vocabulary, measures, textual questions, and older-English wording; silence is not treated as evidence.
Exact location: NET Bible Leviticus PDF, complete PDF pp. 1-99, translation and translator notes for 20:10-21
Open source ↗modern critical open study guide
Leviticus Part 2: Day of Atonement, Holiness Code, and Love of Neighbor
Joel S. Baden and Yale Bible Study
Yale Divinity School, 2023 course edition
Supports: Open critical orientation to Day of Atonement, holiness, social law, calendar, land, release, covenant, and final valuations.
Exact location: Yale Bible Study, 'Leviticus Part 2,' complete guide sections on Leviticus 16, the Holiness Code, love of neighbor, festivals, land, covenant, and vows, applied to Leviticus 20:10-21
Open source ↗modern scholarly open ancient sexuality study
It's About Masculinity, Not Homosexuality
Martti Nissinen
TheTorah.com, 2024
Supports: One prominent contextual reading of the male-male prohibitions, preserved as a material interpretation rather than declared consensus.
Exact location: Nissinen, 'It's About Masculinity, Not Homosexuality,' complete article sections on Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Hebrew wording, ancient masculinity, and reception limits
Open source ↗modern jewish scholarly open polyphonic reading
Male Homosexual Intercourse Is Prohibited - In One Part of the Torah
David Frankel
TheTorah.com, 2017
Supports: A different critical model that treats Torah as legally polyphonic; it preserves denominational and compositional disagreement rather than deciding contemporary ethics by concealment.
Exact location: Frankel, 'Male Homosexual Intercourse Is Prohibited - In One Part of the Torah,' complete source-critical comparison of Leviticus 18, 20, Priestly texts, and Deuteronomy
Open source ↗primary rabbinic legal reception text
Mishnah Makkot 1:10
Mishnah; digital Hebrew and English presentation by Sefaria
Sefaria, early rabbinic text; current digital presentation
Supports: Primary Jewish reception evidence showing later legal restriction and disagreement around capital punishment; it does not erase Leviticus's penalties.
Exact location: Mishnah Makkot 1:10, complete unit in Hebrew and English on a Sanhedrin executing once in seven or seventy years and the preserved rabbinic disagreement
Open source ↗modern christian scholarly handbook chapter abstract
Hebrews and the Question of Supersessionism
Philip Church
The Oxford Handbook of Hebrews and the Catholic Epistles, Oxford University Press, 2024
Supports: Publisher-visible framing of scholarly disagreement about Hebrews and supersessionism, used as a restraint on Christian canonical claims rather than as a complete solution.
Exact location: Church, 'Hebrews and the Question of Supersessionism,' Oxford 2024 official abstract and metadata, pp. 167-180
Open source ↗