Leviticus 18:8
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You must not have sexual relations with your father’s wife; it would dishonor your father.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
Intercourse with a father's wife, i.e., with a step-mother, is forbidden as uncovering the father's nakedness; since a father's wife stood in blood-relationship only to the son whose mother she was. But for the father's sake her nakedness was to be inaccessible to the son, and uncovering it was to be punished with death as incest (Lev 20:11; Deu 27:20). By the "father's wife" we are probably to understand not merely his full lawful wife, but his concubine also, since the father's bed was defiled in the latter case no less than in the former (Gen 49:4), and an accursed crime was committed, the punishment of which was death. At all events, it cannot be inferred from Lev 19:20-22 and Exo 21:9, as Knobel supposes, that a milder punishment was inflicted in this case.
Open source ↗Here is, I. A general law against all conformity to the corrupt usages of the heathen (Lev 18:1-5). II. Particular laws, 1. Against incest (Lev 18:6-18). 2. Against beastly lusts, and barbarous idolatries (Lev 18:19-23). III. The enforcement of these laws from the ruin of the Canaanites (Lev 18:24-30).
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
Cross-references
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If a man lies with his father’s wife, he has uncovered his father’s nakedness. Both must surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.
A man is not to marry his father’s wife, so that he will not dishonor his father’s marriage bed.
‘Cursed is he who sleeps with his father’s wife, for he has violated his father’s marriage bed.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is intolerable even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife.
They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the earth; they push the needy out of their way. A man and his father have relations with the same girl and so profane My holy name.
Uncontrolled as the waters, you will no longer excel, because you went up to your father’s bed, onto my couch, and defiled it.
In you they have uncovered the nakedness of their fathers; in you they violate women during their menstrual impurity.
While Israel was living in that region, Reuben went in and slept with his father’s concubine Bilhah, and Israel heard about it. Jacob had twelve sons: