{"id":2101,"date":"2026-07-05T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/?p=2101"},"modified":"2026-07-27T13:38:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T20:38:29","slug":"leviticus-18-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/leviticus-18-22\/","title":{"rendered":"Leviticus 18:22 \u2014 The Purity Code in Its Own World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Reclaiming Library \u00b7 Entry 03 in the reading path. New here? Begin at Start Here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two verses in Leviticus \u2014 18:22 and 20:13 \u2014 have been made to carry more condemnation per syllable than any other lines in scripture. They have been read at funerals of people they helped kill. So this entry does what the tradition of quoting them rarely does: it reads them, whole, in their own world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the text actually is<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Leviticus 18\u201320 is the Holiness Code \u2014 a body of ritual and boundary law addressed to Iron Age Israel, defining the community against the temple practices of surrounding nations. The same code prohibits eating shellfish (11:10\u201312), wearing mixed-fiber garments (19:19), trimming beard edges (19:27), and sowing two seeds in one field (19:19). Christians who quote 18:22 while wearing poly-cotton blends after a shrimp dinner have already conceded, in practice, that the Holiness Code is not straightforwardly binding \u2014 the question is why one verse alone survived the concession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hebrew itself is stranger than the English lets on. The phrase mishkevei ishah<\/em> \u2014 “the lyings of a woman” \u2014 is rare and grammatically odd, and a substantial scholarly literature (Saul Olyan’s 1994 study in the Journal of the History of Sexuality<\/em>; Jacob Milgrom’s Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus 17\u201322) reads the prohibition as addressing specific acts in specific cultic and household-property contexts \u2014 not describing, let alone anticipating, mutual covenanted love between people of equal standing. Milgrom, the twentieth century’s preeminent Leviticus scholar and no radical, concluded the law’s scope was far narrower than its modern deployment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the text cannot be made to mean<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It cannot address sexual orientation, a framework that would not exist for another two and a half millennia. It cannot address trans existence at all \u2014 the verse has nothing whatever to say about gender identity, and quoting it at trans people is not even wrong; it is a category error performed with a straight face. And it cannot be lifted out of a code its quoters do not keep: hermeneutical honesty is a package deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.<\/p>\nLeviticus 19:18 \u2014 the same Holiness Code, eleven verses from the beard laws<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The command the Holiness Code itself elevates \u2014 the one Jesus called half the hinge of the entire law (Matthew 22:39) \u2014 sits in the same document. A reading of Leviticus that weaponizes 18:22 and mutes 19:18 is not conservative. It is selective, and the selection principle is the prejudice it claims to justify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What honest reading costs, and buys<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Honest reading costs the verdict. It does not cost the scriptures \u2014 it returns them. The Holiness Code remains what it always was: a fierce, strange, historically situated document about a people defining themselves against exploitation. Read that way, it indicts temple abuse and boundary violation. It has nothing to say against your marriage, your name, or your body \u2014 and it never did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Sources for checking this work:<\/strong> Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17\u201322<\/em> (Anchor Bible, 2000); Saul M. Olyan, “And with a Male You Shall Not Lie the Lying Down of a Woman,” Journal of the History of Sexuality<\/em> 5.2 (1994); Phyllis Bird, “The Bible in Christian Ethical Deliberation Concerning Homosexuality” (1997); K. Renato Lings, Love Lost in Translation<\/em> (2013). Disagreement is welcome when it engages the citations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next in the path: Entry 04 \u2014 Romans 1<\/a>. If this reading reopened more than it settled, Care<\/a> and the Faith Deconstruction group<\/a> are open doors.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reclaiming Library \u00b7 Entry 03 in the reading path. New here? Begin at Start Here. Two verses in Leviticus \u2014 18:22 and 20:13 \u2014 have been made to carry more condemnation per syllable than any other lines in scripture. They have been read at funerals of people they helped kill. So this entry does what […]\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bloom_homily_image":0,"_bloom_homily_focus":"","_bloom_hero_focus":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-2101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reclaiming-library","tag-clobber-passages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2236,"href":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions\/2236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}