death in the case of both parties (Lev 20:14), because they were “wickedness,” זמּה, lit., invention, design, here applied to the crime of licentiousness and whoredom (Lev 19:29; Jdg 20:6; Job 31:11).
Verse 18
Lastly, it was forbidden to take a wife to her sister (עליה upon her, as in Gen 28:9; Gen 31:50) in her life-time, that is to say, to marry two sisters at the same time, לצרר “to pack together, to uncover this nakedness,” i.e., to pack both together into one marriage bond, and so place the sisters in carnal union through their common husband, and disturb the sisterly relation, as the marriage with two sisters that was forced upon Jacob had evidently done. No punishment is fixed for the marriage with two sisters; and, of course, after the death of the first wife a man was at liberty to marry her sister.Prohibition of other kinds of unchastity and of unnatural crimes. - Lev 18:19 prohibits intercourse with a woman during her uncleanness. טמאה נדּת signifies the uncleanness of a woman's hemorrhage, whether menstruation or after childbirth, which is called in Lev 12:7; Lev 20:18, the fountain of bleeding. The guilty persons were both of them to be cut off from their nation according to Lev 20:18, i.e., to be punished with death.
Verse 20
Lev 18:20 “To a neighbour's wife thou shalt not give שׁכבתּך thy pouring as seed” (i.e., make her pregnant), “to defile thyself with her,” viz., by the emissio seminis (Lev 15:16-17), a defilement which was to be punished as adultery by the stoning to death of both parties (Lev 20:10; Deu 22:22, cf. Joh 9:5).
Verse 21
To bodily unchastity there is appended a prohibition of spiritual whoredom. “Thou shalt not give of thy seed to cause to pass through (sc., the fire; Deu 18:10) for Moloch.” המּלך is constantly written with the article: it is rendered by the lxx ἄρχων both here and in Lev 20:2., but ὁ Μολόχ βασιλεύς in other places (2Ki 23:10; Jer 32:35). Moloch was an old Canaanitish idol, called by the Phoenicians and Carthaginians Melkarth, Baal-melech, Malcom, and other such names, and related to Baal, a sun-god worshipped, like Kronos and Saturn, by the sacrifice of children. It was represented by a brazen statue, which was hollow and capable of being heated, and formed with a bull's head, and arms stretched out to receive the children to be sacrificed. From the time of Ahaz children were slain at Jerusalem in the valley
