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Leviticus 18

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1 And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying,

2 Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, I am Jehovah your God.

3 According·​·to what·​·is·​·done in the land of Egypt, in which you dwelt, you shall not do; and according·​·to what·​·is·​·done in the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, you shall not do: neither shall you walk in their statutes.

4 You shall do My judgments, and keep My statutes, to walk in them; I am Jehovah your God.

5 And you shall keep My statutes, and My judgments; which man shall do, that he may live in them: I am Jehovah.

6 A man, a man, shall not come·​·near to any kin of his flesh, to reveal their nakedness; I am Jehovah.

7 The nakedness of thy father, and the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not reveal; she is thy mother; thou shalt not reveal her nakedness.

8 The nakedness of thy father’s wife shalt thou not reveal; it is thy father’s nakedness.

9 The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or the daughter of thy mother, whether she be born inside, or born outside, thou shalt not reveal their nakedness.

10 The nakedness of thy son’s daughter, or of thy daughter’s daughter, their nakedness thou shalt not reveal; for theirs is thine own nakedness.

11 The nakedness of the daughter of the wife of thy father, born of thy father, she is thy sister, thou shalt not reveal her nakedness.

12 Thou shalt not reveal the nakedness of the sister of thy father; she is thy father’s kin.

13 Thou shalt not reveal the nakedness of the sister of thy mother; for she is the kin of thy mother.

14 Thou shalt not reveal the nakedness of the brother of thy father, thou shalt not come·​·near to his wife; she is thine aunt.

15 Thou shalt not reveal the nakedness of thy daughter-in-law; she is thy son’s wife; thou shalt not reveal her nakedness.

16 Thou shalt not reveal the nakedness of thy brother’s wife; it is thy brother’s nakedness.

17 Thou shalt not reveal the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son’s daughter, or her daughter’s daughter, to reveal her nakedness; for they are her near kinswomen; it is a crime.

18 And thou shalt not take a woman in addition to her sister, to be·​·an·​·adversary, to reveal her nakedness by her, in her life time.

19 And to a woman in isolation for her uncleanness thou shalt not come·​·near to reveal her nakedness.

20 And to the wife of thy fellow·​·man thou shalt not give thy lying·​·down for seed, to defile thyself with her.

21 And thou shalt not allow of thy seed to pass·​·through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God; I am Jehovah.

22 And thou shalt not lie with a male, as thou wouldest lie with a woman; it is abomination.

23 And thou shalt not allow thyself to lie with any beast to defile thyself with it; and a woman shall not stand before a beast to lie·​·down with it: it is confusion.

24 Defile not yourselves in all of these; for in all these the nations are defiled which I sent·​·out from before you:

25 and the land is defiled; and I visit her iniquity upon her, and the land herself vomits·​·out those who dwell in her.

26 And you shall keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native born nor the sojourner sojourning in your midst;

27 for all these abominations have the men of the land done who were before you, and the land was defiled;

28 lest the land vomit· you ·out, when you defile her, as it vomited·​·out the nations that were before you.

29 For all who do any of these abominations, and the souls doing them shall be cut·​·off from among their people.

30 And you shall keep My charge, to do not any one of the abominable statutes, which were done before you, and defile not yourselves with them; I am Jehovah your God.

   


Thanks to the Kempton Project for the permission to use this New Church translation of the Word.

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Woman

  
woman looking to sky
woman looking to sky

The word "woman" is used a number of different ways in the Bible – as a simple description, as someone connected to a man ("his woman"), as a temptation to the men of Israel (women of other nations) and even as a term of address (Jesus addresses Mary as "woman" twice). There are also various spiritual meanings, and context is important. In most cases, a "woman" in the Bible represents a church, either a true one following the Lord or a false one out to deceive. This follows from the idea that the true character of an organization – or of an individual person – is determined by its goals, its mission, what it cares about most. This is well represented by women, because women are, at their inmost levels, forms of affection and love. Men, by contrast, are forms of thought and intellect, which appear prominent but actually play the secondary role of describing and supporting the defining loves and affections. The most central of a woman's loves and affections is the love of truth. On an individual scale this is central to the union between a wife and a husband: She loves his intellect and ideas, and blends them with her own to produce acts of love and kindness; meanwhile her love inspires him to seek more true ideas and greater wisdom so those acts of love and kindness can be ever better. The relationship between the church and the Lord is different, obviously, because the Lord is perfect love and perfect wisdom in balance, and is ultimately both masculine and feminine. The church is also not specifically feminine, being made up of men and women working in harmony. Even so, the defining aspect of a church is its love for truth, and how it receives ideas from the Lord. So while "woman" sometimes represents a church in general, it can also represents the love of truth that exists in that church, or the love of truth itself. Not all churches are true, of course. The reason the people of Israel were so strongly forbidden to intermarry with the people that surrounded them was that the foreign women represented false churches and false beliefs. And for an Israeli woman to take a foreign husband represented introducing falsity into the Israeli church. Two other uses of "woman" are more limited, primarily to the Book of Genesis. One of them is Eve, the first woman, formed from the rib of Adam. In that story Adam represents the Most Ancient Church, and the woman represents what the Writings call the "proprium," a sense of self, of identity, of control that the Lord gave to people of the church at that time. In a way this fits with the more general representation, because the love of truth is an important way we can feel a sense of power in our own spiritual growth, but the representation of Eve is relatively unique. Much of the rest of Genesis is dealing rather directly with the Lord's own development during his childhood on earth. Since the Lord thought and felt more deeply than we can possibly imagine, the women in this stories – Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel and others – represent true ideas themselves, rather than affections for truth.