2. You shall be holy, for I . . . am holy. Although the idea that the people of Israel is to make itself holy by emulating God’s intrinsic holiness is not unique to this group of texts in Leviticus, its enunciation as the supreme rationale and didactic rallying point for God’s commands is distinctive, and it is what has led scholars to designate the textual unit from chapter 17 through chapter 26 as the Holiness Code. When the sundry injunctions here conclude with the reiterated formula “I am the LORD,” the implication is “I am the LORD your God Who is holy.”

3. Every man shall revere his mother and his father, and My sabbaths you shall keep. It has been recognized since Late Antiquity that this section of laws, beginning with this verse, constitutes a kind of paraphrase and elaboration of the Ten Commandments, following a different order, using somewhat different turns of phrase, and introducing additional legal imperatives. Abraham ibn Ezra, as usual with an eye to compositional links, notes that the previous section was focused on prohibited sexual relations that could lead to the expulsion of people from its land. The variegated laws of the present chapter, he contends, came to remind Israel that there is a whole spectrum of commands which must be observed if it is to remain rooted in its land.

4. idols. The Hebrew ʾelilim refers not to the carved likenesses of divinities but to the nonentity of the pagan gods. Its most plausible derivation is from ʾal, “not,” and hence would suggest falsity or lack of being, but the term probably also puns on ʾel, “god,” using a diminutive and pejorative form that could mean something like “godlet.”

5. when you sacrifice. It is characteristic of the sacerdotal milieu that produced this paraphrase of the Decalogue that a sacrificial law is intertwined with the fundamental moral and theological imperatives. The LORD’s holiness is profaned no less by eating sacrificial meat on the third day than by dishonoring one’s parents or turning one’s daughter into a whore.

sacrifice it. The Hebrew thus switches to a distributive “it” after the plural “sacrifices.”

9. you shall not finish off the edge of your field, nor pick up the gleanings of your harvest. In an agricultural economy without coined money (weights of silver and gold could be used for exchange), the stipulation that an edge of the field be left unharvested and that what was dropped by the reapers should not be picked up amounted to a kind of poor tax. The indigent could follow the harvesters into the fields and pick up enough to sustain themselves, as we see dramatically in the Book of Ruth when the widowed Ruth, a newly arrived resident alien, goes out into Boaz’s fields.

10. sojourner. As elsewhere, the Hebrew term refers to a resident alien, who in this tribal agrarian society would have been without real property.

12. You shall not swear falsely in My name, profaning the name of your God. The main clause is a citation of the Decalogue. “Profaning the name of your God” adds a Holiness Code rationale—to swear falsely is to compromise God’s own reputation of holiness through the malfeasance of the people purported to be God’s special treasure.

13. You shall not keep the hired man’s wages with you through the night. The presumption is that the hired man is without reserves. Holding back his wages not only subjects him to a night of anxiety as to whether he will be paid but could impose actual hardship, for he may need the wages for his evening meal.

14. vilify the deaf, and before the blind . . . a stumbling block. There is both a common denominator and a logical discrepancy (the rhetorical figure of zeugma) between these two prohibitions. In both instances, the sensory impairment of the victim prevents him from perceiving that someone is exploiting his weakness in a nasty way. But abusing or verbally insulting a deaf man gratuitously humiliates him in a fashion that he himself, unhearing, may never become aware of, whereas placing a stumbling block before a blind man causes him hurt of which he will immediately become aware. A long exegetical tradition sees both these cases as figurative instances of a more general category of moral turpitude: placing a bottle of whiskey, for example, in front of a recovering alcoholic would fall under the rubric of putting a stumbling block before the blind.

15. You shall not favor the wretched and you shall not defer to the rich. Both Hebrew verbs involve idioms that make “face” the object of the verb—literally “lift up the face,” “glorify/honor the face.” The term for “rich” more generally means “great,” but in economic contexts (here as an antonym to “wretched” or “indigent”) it regularly has the meaning of “wealthy.”

16. You shall not go about slandering . . . You shall not stand over the blood. Jacob Milgrom neatly observes that the verbs are pointedly sequenced from going about to standing (and presumably doing nothing), both with the effect of complicity in doing harm. Although there is some dispute among interpreters about the meaning of “stand over the blood,” there is a degree of consensus among traditional commentators, supported by the bracketing of the two sentences in this verse, that it means to stand by without intervening while your fellow man’s blood—literally or figuratively—is spilled.

17. You shall surely reprove your fellow. The obligation to reprove someone you see engaged in a wrongful act may be linked psychologically with the immediately preceding injunction not to hate your brother in your heart: witnessing immoral behavior without attempting to intervene, the observer may feel resentment or contempt toward the perpetrator who in fact might conceivably have been dissuaded from the act by reproof.

19. shaʿatnez. This is evidently a loanword, and the etymology is uncertain. The way it is used here suggests it might have required some explanation for ordinary Hebrew speakers of the time of writing, and in Deuteronomy 22:11 (its only other biblical occurrence) it is explicitly glossed as a fabric made of interwoven threads of linen and wool (see the comment there). All the prohibitions in this verse appear to reflect that general Israelite aversion to the mingling of distinct categories on which Mary Douglas has written. It should be noted that, as with some other prohibitions, what is forbidden for profane use is permitted for cultic use—the high priest’s robe and the covering of the Ark were linsey-woolsey.

not be donned by you. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “not go up on you.”

20. put to death. A betrothed woman having sex with another man would be subject like her lover to capital punishment. A female slave, not being a free agent, would not receive the death penalty, and evidently this crime, too, is considered less grave. After an inquiry, a monetary penalty will be set to be paid to the man who betrothed her.

23. you shall leave its fruit uncircumcised. This analogy of fruit to foreskin, a little startling to the modern ear, includes both the idea of leaving a natural growth uncut and the notion, readily understandable in a society in which all male infants were circumcised, of something prohibited. These three verses reflect prudent arboricultural practice rather than any ethical imperative. Milgrom, who has consulted horticulturalists, reports that during the first three years a tree is generally not thinned or pruned or harvested but that the closed buds (from which the image of the foreskin would derive) are plucked before fruit emerges.

24. sacred, a jubilation before the LORD. What is envisaged is a festival of first fruit, to be offered in the sanctuary to God. Behind the term “jubilation,” some scholars have conjectured, may lie an old practice of festive celebrations at harvesttime, perhaps involving matchmaking or even orgies, in the vineyards.

26. You shall not eat over the blood. The meaning of this sentence, represented quite literally in this translation, has been disputed, but the most plausible explanation is the one proposed by the medieval Hebrew exegete Nahmanides and by Rashbam before him: what is involved is a pagan rite of divination—this would be the link with the second half of the verse—in which a ritual meal was consumed over a pit or large receptacle containing blood, perhaps with the idea that spirits of the dead could be conjured up from the blood.

27. round off the edge-growth of your head. The word for “edge-growth,” peʾah, is the same one used in verse 9 for the edge of the field, which is also not to be cut. This is an instance of what Mary Douglas characterizes as analogical thinking. This sort of bowl-shaped haircut does not appear to be the same thing as shaving the head, but it should be noted that shaving the head, tearing or mutilating the beard, and gashing one’s body are all pagan mourning practices.

28. for the dead. The polyvalent Hebrew noun nefesh often means “person,” but in some contexts it refers to a dead person or corpse, and the implication of mourning here points to that meaning.

32. defer to an elder. The idiom used is exactly the one that appears in verse 15 in the prohibition against deferring to the rich. Context is everything: in court proceedings, no special consideration can be given to anyone, regardless of status; in everyday interactions, an old person deserves deference. (Israeli buses used to carry a sign with the words “Before a gray head you shall rise” as a reminder that passengers should give up their seats to the elderly.)

35. in measure, whether in weight or liquid measure. The literal sequence of the Hebrew is: “in measure, in weight, in liquid measure.” Though some contend that the first word, midah, refers to measures of length and breadth, it is a general term introducing the category of measurement, which is then followed by different kinds of measure (hence “whether . . . or”).