Verse Lens · Expanded explanation
Leviticus 20:21 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 21. 21And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse assigns childlessness language to taking a brother's wife within this collection.
Read It With
- Leviticus 20:10-21
Use 20:10-21 as the reading frame for Leviticus 20:21. The verse assigns childlessness language to taking a brother's wife within this collection, while the complete unit shows that 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.
Why This Verse Appears Here
Placed here, the verse assigns childlessness language to taking a brother's wife within this collection; Leviticus 20:10-21 supplies the actors, category, and outcome needed to interpret it.
Follow the Context
- The unit opens the case or movement named “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.
- These penalties belong to an ancient legal rhetoric and cannot authorize execution, assault, conversion coercion, anti-LGBTQ abuse, or family violence. That boundary keeps ritual status, moral guilt, ancient description, enduring truth, and modern application from being collapsed.
What This Verse Is Not Saying
Leviticus 20:21 does not stand apart from Leviticus 20:10-21; these penalties belong to an ancient legal rhetoric and cannot authorize execution, assault, conversion coercion, anti-LGBTQ abuse, or family violence.
What Remains True
Assigns childlessness language to taking a brother's wife within this collection. Within Leviticus 20:10-21, this contributes to the larger claim that 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 It Can Shape Life
- When teaching Leviticus 20:21, keep the verse inside Leviticus 20:10-21. Hold this boundary: These penalties belong to an ancient legal rhetoric and cannot authorize execution, assault, conversion coercion, anti-LGBTQ abuse, or family violence. Apply only the noncoercive truth the complete unit supports.
Teach It Back
Explain Leviticus 20:21's contribution to Leviticus 20:10-21. Name the category involved, what the surrounding verses add, any material uncertainty, and what the verse does not authorize.
Your explanation stays in this browser. It is not sent or saved.
Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read Leviticus 20:10-21 — Sexual prohibitions return with severe penalties and childlessness formulasSources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
Where care is needed
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.
These are the sources used directly for this lens. Language, grammar, disagreements, and the complete source shelf remain attached to the full thought-unit research record.
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 ↗