Leviticus 18

It turns out that celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is quite time consuming. I have my work cut out for me finishing Leviticus by the end of the month, but I know that through Him all things are possible. Also, I've already read it. I just need to write up my thoughts.

We have reached the chapter on sexual behavior. Because verse 22 gets so much attention, I'm going to spend this entire post on one chapter.

We see "I am the LORD" six times in a 30-verse chapter. It's just randomly tacked onto the ends of various verses. Try that sometime in your everyday speech, and LORD is always capitalized so put a big emphasis on that. It's in the bible; it must be right.

OK, enough banter. And the Lord spake unto Moses:

1. Do not uncover the nakedness of any of your kin. You would think this covers the topic of getting naked with any family members, but no. God spells out the many variations, so listen up.
2. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father and mother. Various bible translations say "have sex connection" instead of uncovering nakedness. So don't take your parents' pants off, and don't fuck them (your parents, not your pants).
3. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's wife, also known as your mother.  
4. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy sister, whether she be born at home or born abroad.
5. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy son's daughter or of thy daughter's daughter.  Sons are OK though.
6. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's wife's daughter. I think we have some overlap here with #4. 
7. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's sister.  
8. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother's sister. OK, so no aunt fucking. Glad that took two shalt nots.
9. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's brother or his wife. Again, why not just leave it at "kin"?
10. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter-in-law. Sons-in-law are fair game though.
11. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife, although your sister's husband is up for grabs.
12. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son's daughter, or her daughter's daughter. This variation is "wickedness." Obviously.
13. Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex [her], to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life [time]. What?
14. Thou shalt not have a sex connection with a woman on the rag. God really hates that.
15. Thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbor's wife, to defile thyself with her. Didn't the all encompassing and perfect Ten Commandments already cover this one?
16. And then we have an oddball one about worshiping other gods: Thou shalt not let any of thy seed (aka children) pass through the fire to Molech (a rival god), neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God. Again with taking God's name in vain. Why is God so insecure about this?
17. I'm directly quoting this verse, since it gets so much attention: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it [is] abomination." You hear that, Adam and Steve? God is clear on this one, pree-verts. It is abomination!
18. Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it [is] confusion. So no screwing of the livestock.

We can all plainly see how relevant and useful this list is. God is very interested in what is going on with your various sex connections, and yet he doesn't say a thing about rape or sex with children. One would think a list of forbidden sexual behaviors would mention that. Works out nice for Catholic priests though.