Spirits, sex, and death

The LORD is hateful.

Welcome to the Daily Bible Chapter. My name is James Leroy Wilson and I invite you to join me as I attempt to read the Bible with fresh eyes, as if I don’t know anything about it. Let’s see where this takes us!

I’m reading Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Leviticus 20

So, what is Molech?

Gambling on Wikipedia for convenience, Molech is a Canaanite deity, or is the very concept of child sacrifice. So the LORD is saying, do not sacrifice your child to a rival god, OR the LORD is saying, don’t sacrifice your child to me thinking it’s a good idea; you won’t be blessed for it, you yourself will be put to death.

Good for the LORD to tell the Isrealites to “put to death” any notion of child sacrifice, which according to my extremely superficial knowledge of the times, was not uncommon in ancient history.Spirits, sex, and death

I looked up familiar spirit, mentioned in verse 6: “a spirit or demon that serves or prompts an individual.” This seems to be a reference to Azazel and the jinn of Chapter 17. The Isrealites are told to stay away from them and from wizards (presumably the practitioners of witchcraft and auguery mentioned in chapter 19) lest they be “cut off from the midst…