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The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:5-9
The shewbread, or bread of the Presence. Corresponding with the number of the tribes, and representing them; a national offering; a meat offering, with frankincense, drink offering, and salt. Taken from the people, eate…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:5-9
The shewbread. The furniture and ministry of the tabernacle are most clearly understood in import, if it be remembered that they have a double reference. Like the clouds of the sky, one aspect is towards heaven, the oth…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:5-9
The lesson of the loaves. In this act of worship the Jews made weekly acknowledgment of the goodness of God to them and of their dependence on him; they presented to him a suitable offering of those things he had given…
Matthew Henry on Leviticus 24:10-23
This offender was the son of an Egyptian father, and an Israelitish mother. The notice of his parents shows the common ill effect of mixed marriages. A standing law for the stoning of blasphemers was made upon this occa…
The Blasphemy of Shelomith's Son; The Punishment of Shelomith's Son. (b. c. 1490.)
THE BLASPHEMY OF SHELOMITH'S SON; THE PUNISHMENT OF SHELOMITH'S SON. (B. C. 1490.) Evil manners, we say, beget good laws. We have here an account of the evil manners of a certain nameless mongrel Israelite, and the good…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:10-16
The crime of blasphemy. cf. 2 Chronicles 26:10-23; Daniel 5:1-4, Daniel 5:30. The sanctity of the Name of God is distinctly declared in the third commandment. There the Lord declared that he would not hold the blaspheme…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:10-23
The law of death. Blasphemy, murder, willful injury, whether by Israelite or stranger, judged and punished on the principle of compensation without mercy (cf. Isaiah 12:1-6; Romans 11:1-36). I. Here is the evil of a fal…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:10-12
A blasphemer punished. An incident is here inserted that explains part of the Law by pointing to its origin. It is a practical illustration that throws lurid light upon the possibility and consequences of transgression.…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:10-23
EXPOSITION The reason why the narrative of the blasphemer's death (Leviticus 24:10-23) is introduced in its present connection, is simply that it took place at the point of time which followed the promulgation of the la…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:10
The son of an Israelitish woman. This is the only place where the adjective Israelitish is found; and the word "Israelite" only occurs in 2 Samuel 17:25. Whose father was an Egyptian. The man could not, therefore, be a…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:10-23
Shelomith's son. Here a narrative is introduced into the midst of a code of laws; but this is done as a preamble to enactments of whose publication the case was the occasion. We notice— I. THE CRIME OF THIS SON OF SHELO…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:11
In the course of the straggle the Israelitish woman's son blasphemed the name of the Lord, and cursed. The word nakav is here rightly translated blasphemeth (cf. Leviticus 24:14, Leviticus 24:16, Leviticus 24:23), but t…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:12
And they put him in ward. The same course was followed in the case of the man found gathering sticks upon the sabbath day: "And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him" (Numbers 15:3…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:17
In close connection with the command to slay the blasphemer is repeated the prohibition of murder, and the injunction that the murderer shall surely be put to death. Thus a distinction is sharply drawn between the judic…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:17-22
The holy Law of God. These enactments, occasioned by the sin of the son of Shelomith, contain certain principles on which God founded his Law, and which he would have us introduce into our dealings and regulations now.…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:17-22
Public justice secured by the law of retaliation. cf. Matthew 5:38-48; Romans 12:19-21. There is here presented to us, as a law upon which Israel was to act, the principle of retaliation. And yet we have seen in the mor…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:18-21
A summary of the law respecting minor injuries is added to that respecting murder. He that killeth a man, he shall be put to death, but he that killeth a beast shall make it good; and this lex talionis shall apply to al…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:22
As it had been a stranger who had on this occasion been the offender, the law, Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country, with the sanction, I am the Lord your God, is emp…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 24:23
The penalty is inflicted on the offender solemnly as an act of the Law, not of mob fury. So it was by a judicial or semi-judicial proceeding that St. Stephen was stoned: "They brought him to the council, and set up fals…
Matthew Henry on Leviticus 25:1-7
All labour was to cease in the seventh year, as much as daily labour on the seventh day. These statues tell us to beware of covetousness, for a man's life consists not in the abundance of his possessions. We are to exer…
The Sabbatical Year. (b. c. 1490.)
THE SABBATICAL YEAR. (B. C. 1490.) The law of Moses laid a great deal of stress upon the sabbath, the sanctification of which was the earliest and most ancient of all divine institutions, designed for the keeping up of…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 25:1-55
EXPOSITION The subject of the sacred seasons is taken up again in this chapter, after the parenthetical insertion of Leviticus 24:1-23. There remain the septennial festive season and that of the half-century—the sabbati…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 25:1
And the Lord spake unto Moses in mount Sinai. The purpose of the words, in Mount Sinai, is not to distinguish the place in which the sabbatical law and the law of the jubilee were given from that in which the preceding…
The Pulpit Commentary on Leviticus 25:1-7
The fallow year. cf. Deuteronomy 31:10-13. We have here a ceremonial appendix to the fourth commandment. The land must have its sabbath as well as man, and so every seventh year was to be fallow year for the ground. The…