The seventh commandment

Leviticus 20.17

“If a man takes his sister, a daughter of his father or a daughter of his mother, and sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace, and they shall be cut off in the sight of the children of their people. He has uncovered his sister’s nakedness, and he shall bear his iniquity.”

Here is another example of how the home was designed to serve as a training-ground for moral living in society. Presumably, this statute would have been applied from the earliest stages of life, thus training children to live modestly and with respect for one another all the days of their lives. For a man then – teen-aged and above – to look upon his sister’s nakedness would be to violate both the seventh commandment and the fifth, for he would show disdain for his parents’ teaching by deliberately acting against what he had been taught all his life.

This offense was to be punished by the guilty party(ies) being “cut off” from the community, perhaps for a season, until they understood the gravity of their offense and came to repentance. As in the case of the man in Corinth, re-institution of an offender into the community was to be sought both by the guilty sinner and the community as a whole. The purpose of the Law is to create a good and just society. It guides the believing community in the standards of godliness; serves to bring conviction of sin; and, through the obedience of our Lord Jesus Christ, provides the righteousness for repentant believers to grow in grace.

This series of In the Gates we present a detailed explanation of the Law of God, beginning with the Ten Commandments, and working through the statutes and rules that accompany each commandment. For a practical guide to the role of God’s Law in the practice of ethics, get The Ground for Christian Ethics by going to www.ailbe.org and click on our Book Store.