Leviticus 19:29-31 – Christian vs. Pagan Culture (Part 2)

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 27 Nov. 2016

Introduction

v In my sermon last week, I started with a thesis that what you believe results in forming a culture consistent with that belief. And Biblical faith results in forming a culture of holiness. I suspect nothing in recent years has done a better job of proving this academically than Robert Woodberry’s doctoral dissertation.

v “Robert… Woodberry traveled to West Africa in 2001. Setting out one morning on a dusty road in Lomé, the capital of Togo, Woodberry headed for the University of Togo's campus library. He found it sequestered in a 1960s-era building. The shelves held about half as many books as his personal collection. The most recent encyclopedia dated from 1977. Down the road, the campus bookstore sold primarily pens and paper, not books.
‘Where do you buy your books?’ Woodberry stopped to ask a student.
‘Oh, we don't buy books,’ he replied. ‘The professors read the texts out loud to us, and we transcribe.’
Across the border, at the University of Ghana's bookstore, Woodberry had seen floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with hundreds of books, including locally printed texts by local scholars. Why the stark contrast?
The reason was clear: During the colonial era, British missionaries in Ghana had established a whole system of schools and printing presses. But France, the colonial power in Togo, severely restricted missionaries. The French authorities took interest in educating only a small intellectual elite. More than 100 years later, education was still limited in Togo. In Ghana, it was flourishing.
…
While studying the Congo, Woodberry made one of his most dramatic early discoveries. Congo's colonial-era exploitation was well known: Colonists in both French and Belgian Congo had forced villagers to extract rubber from the jungle. As punishment for not complying, they burned down villages, castrated men, and cut off children's limbs. In French Congo, the atrocities passed without comment or protest, aside from one report in a Marxist newspaper in France. But in Belgian Congo, the abuses aroused the largest international protest movement since the abolition of slavery.
Why the difference? Working on a hunch, Woodberry charted mission stations all across the Congo. Protestant missionaries, it turned out, were allowed only in the Belgian Congo.
…
Woodberry's …14 years of research [was] published in 2012 in the American Political Science Review, the discipline's top journal... Its startling title: ‘The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy.’
‘Why did some countries become democratic, while others went the route of theocracy or dictatorship?’ asks Daniel Philpott, who teaches political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame. ‘For [Woodberry] to show through devastatingly thorough analysis that conversionary Protestants are crucial to what makes the country democratic today [is] remarkable in many ways. Not only is it another factor—it turns out to be the most important factor. It can't be anything but startling for scholars of democracy.’
…
Pull out a map, says Woodberry, point to any place where ‘conversionary Protestants’ were active in the past, and you'll typically find more printed books and more schools per capita. You'll find, too, that in Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, most of the early nationalists who led their countries to independence graduated from Protestant mission schools.”
Source: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january-february/world-missionaries-made.html?share=EniP5LFADsq7VHhltKZmQiYAyV2f82tL

v What you believe about God and man influences every aspect of human culture, and in this brief periscope of Leviticus 19, we see cultural differences highlighted in six arenas of culture: Media, Personal Grooming, Grieving practices, Family relationships, Holidays, and Leadership. In these six little verses we see that someone who is holy to God will stand out from the world in all these areas and develop a culture that is distinct from the world and consistent with God’s character.

v In my last sermon we looked at the first three cultural areas of Information sources, Personal Grooming, and Funerals and related expressions of grief. In this sermon, I would like cover the last three areas of culture addressed in this passage, starting with…

4) Family

v.29 You may not violate your daughter by causing her to engage in prostitution, so the land will not engage in prostitution lest the land become full of organized-crime.

v The plural you’s of the previous verses change to singular you’s in v.29, making this personal, and speaking to each and every one about a very personal subject. Even by this grammar, God takes a stand against the de-personalization of sex.

Ø In ancient Canaan, prostitution was apparently rampant. The early church father Athanasius mentions this in his book, Against the Gentiles.

Ø In N.T. Greece, the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth employed a thousand male and female prostitutes. It was considered part of their pagan worship service to commit adultery.

Ø Similar cults in India still exist today, but it is also rampant in the West, because Westerners have, by and large, bought into a religious ideology that man is nothing more than a random amalgamation of chemicals in an impersonal, survival-of-the-fittest universe, and so it is up to every man to do what feels good at the moment.

Ø When I was a college student, I was driving through downtown Chattanooga to drop off a kid after church. I stopped at a stop sign, and a woman tried to climb into my car. At first I thought she was in distress and asking for help, but then I realized she was trying to sell herself to me. I was horrified!

Ø With the advent of photography and the Internet, contemporary man can now go beyond what anyone in ancient times could have even conceived of in de-personalizing sex.

Ø The embrace which God designed to advance an interpersonal relationship between a man and wife of really knowing one another, leading to new life, gets spent instead on a stranger or, even stranger, on an LED screen, to attain a mere ecstatic experience that is both irrational and sterile. Nothing could be greater in contrast between what God designed for us and what man in rebellion to God will do.

Ø The first way that fathers can stand against selling their daughters into prostitution is to resist in their own hearts the world’s ideas promoted in popular media about sex. When fathers have bought into the same lies that the pornographers peddle, how can we expect them to have any fortitude against them when it comes to their own daughters? We must care about purity in our own relationships so that we can care about purity in our daughter’s relationships.

v In America, most fathers aren’t feeling tempted to sell their daughter to a local pagan temple, so what is the general equity of this principle for us today? What kind of protection do daughters need from their fathers today?

Ø I’ve heard it estimated that something like a half of the content exchanged on the Internet is pornographic. That means a staggering number of women and children being photographed. Where are they all coming from? Why aren’t their fathers protecting them from being taken advantage of?

Ø In economically-depressed communities all around the world, including our own home State, organized crime systematically targets young women, offering them and their families money in exchange for whisking daughters off to the big cities to literally become human slaves in the big business of prostitution.

Ø A heart attitude that underlies this lack of protection is the belief that girls are not valuable. I’ve heard this stated in various ways by people in our own church:

§ One person who attended our church once said something like the following to my wife, “What do you know? You’re just a woman!”

§ And I think there’s been more than one man who has attended our church who has belittled and even hit his wife because of the warped belief that women are inferior creatures that must be put down.

§ In some cultures daughters are devalued because they are considered an economic liability – you spend a bunch of money raising them, then you have to foot the bill for a wedding, and then they leave your family.

§ It’s a saying in Islam, “Better to be a dog than a woman,” and a prayer in Judaism, “Thank you Lord for not making me a woman.”

§ These are all terribly warped and twisted views of women. God’s word teaches us that children are a gift from the Lord (Psalm 127:3), that a godly woman is extremely valuable, worthy of honor and respect (Prov. 31:10&28), that a believing wife is a co-heir of the grace of life with her husband (1 Peter 3:7), and a co-heir with Christ (Rom. 8:17).

§ Men, we must fight against the lies of our culture that brute force or earning power equals superiority and instantiate the truth of God’s word that women are just as much the image of God as we are (Gen 1:27) and must therefore be nourished, cherished, and protected.

Ø The father is the first line of defense – and, in many cases, the only line of defense – against the ravages of predators – sexual and otherwise. Fathers, don’t send your daughters out into unsafe situations alone and unprotected. (Brothers, you can help with this too.) Think through the vunerabilities of your wife and daughters (or sisters) and take extra precautions to make sure that the ladies in your life are safe at all times. This may include:

§ equipping them with weapons or self-defense skills,

§ escorting them where they need to go (especially at night or in high-crime areas),

§ or limiting them from certain activities that you think would be risky.

Ø But it seems like what is even more common is the need to protect daughters from being their own worst enemy. My understanding is that girls are more likely to take and circulate pictures of themselves than they are to let a pornographer do it for them. And girls are more likely to put themselves in compromising situations than they are to submit to a pimp. That means that fathers need to be proactive in helping the ladies in your life see the dangers in things that they might otherwise want to do (and brothers can help with this too).

§ Talk to her about the way she dresses. Who else is going to stop her if she wants to wear something inappropriate? This is part of protecting her from putting herself at risk through her own ignorance.

§ Spend time with the friends she hangs out with so that you know who they all are and whether they are a good or bad influence. As she grows up and shows more and more wisdom in her associations, you can entrust her with more and more responsibility and back off in this area, but it is an area which first requires training.

§ Monitor social media like a hawk. I remember talking with one young man in a church who said he had been coached over social media by an ex-convict in how to isolate girls and take advantage of them. If you don’t know who your children are communicating with over social media, you are leaving a wide-open door for evil men to step in and influence your children.

§ Furthermore, every video, every song, and every article your child pours into their head from the Internet is either discipling them towards Godliness or toward ungodliness. Fathers, God has commanded us to raise our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, not leave our children to be discipled by media moguls in the discipline and instruction of paganism.

Ø I want to be like Phillip the Evangelist in Acts 21 who not only managed to raise four daughters and keep them virgins in the midst of the pagan Roman army town of Caesarea, but so raised his daughters in the instruction of the Lord that they were commended by no less than the Apostle Paul and Luke the Evangelist for how they could make conversation using God’s word, every one of his daughters! That’s what I’m talking about!

v Fathers, we might not be actively selling our daughters or even passively allowing our daughters to engage in prostitution, but because we live in a culture that is already overrun with lewd wickedness, if we do not actively supervise and coach our daughters in all their social and private activities, someone will take advantage of them. We’ve already had that happen to too many girls in our own church to let our guard down in this area.

5) Holidays

v.30 It is my Sabbaths that y’all must keep, and my holiness y’all must respect; I am Yahweh.

v In Hebrew, the words for “Sabbaths” and “Sanctuary/holiness” are put at the beginning of the clause for emphasis. The emphasis then is not so much upon on the command to “keep” and “respect” but rather upon what should be kept and respected, namely God’s Sabbaths and that which is holy to Him.

v Every culture has holidays.

Ø There’s usually a holy day of the week: In Hinduism it’s Thursday, Islam it’s Friday, Judaism it is Saturday, and for Christianity it is Sunday.

Ø And there are always certain annual holidays:

§ Diwali, Holi, Dasara in the Hindu culture,

§ Ramadan and the Eid’s in Islam,

§ Christmas and Easter and various saint’s days recognized by the Roman Catholics,

§ and perhaps you’ve noticed how Hallowe’en has grown more and more popular in America as a big holiday while the more uniquely-Protestant holiday of Thanksgiving has lost significance. This is a prime example of a change in religion driving a change in cultural holiday practices.

§ God gave the Jews three annual holiday weeks: Passover, Pentecost, and Succoth. These were the Lord’s Sabbaths.

Ø When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, God gave the people of Israel a set of weekly and annual holidays that set them apart as holy to Him as their Lord. They were different from the holidays observed by their pagan neighbors.

Ø When Jesus rose from the dead, He gave Christians a set of holidays to set them apart as holy to Him as well. After the resurrection, Jesus met weekly with His disciples on the first day of the week, the day we call Sunday, or the Lord’s Day, training them in to a new Christian Sabbath day. And the day of Jesus’ resurrection – Pasca or Easter – has always been remembered by Christians the world over each year as the greatest Christian holiday.

Ø Remember, the holiness is not in the day itself but in the holy God who did something special on that day.

Ø So will you set apart the day of the week that Jesus gave us for holy use rather than treat it like every other day of the week? And when you celebrate holidays, will you purpose to fill them with uniquely Christian meaning to honor God?

§ Share ideas on making Christmas holy?

v Verse 30 also talks about revering a holy place. Every culture has holy objects or places or people that are revered and treated with respect.

Ø In Islam there is the sacred Qabba’ in the city of Mecca.

Ø In India there are sacred cows and sacred rivers.

Ø And even in cultures which have denied the supernatural, such as Communist China and Russia, still the images of Stalin and of Chairman Mao have been treated with the same kind of reverence that religious cultures give to images their gods.

Ø The Jews were to give that kind of reverence to the one true God alone, which is one reason I chose to depart from most English translations and render it “my holiness” instead of “my sanctuary.” Now they were certainly to treat the holy objects like the Ark of the Covenant with great respect, but the reason for that was not because the Ark was holy in-and-of itself but because God, who is the source of holiness, had associated Himself with it in a special way.

Ø Jesus is called “The Holy One” in the New Testament^{^[1]}, and He told His disciples “not to give the holy stuff to the dogs” (Matt. 7:6a, NAW). The principles of holiness from Leviticus also apply to Christians.

Ø What is it that you revere in your life? What are the occasions when you will drop everything you are doing and pay attention? What would you be sure to keep if you had to give up everything else?

§ If praying to God is the first thing that gets squeezed out of your schedule when you have a busy day, then God is not holy to you. Some other business is.

§ Maybe it’s your cell phone. Have you ever watched people when their phone bleeps to notify them that a text message is coming in? Suddenly nothing matters but that text. Even if they were talking to someone face to face, they will stop in mid-sentence to look at their phone. That’s a form of worship. There’s a difference between using technology as a tool to do God’s will and letting it subvert the place of respect you should give to God.

§ And if you don’t drop everything when the Bible is read, then God is not holy to you. Somebody else’s word is.

§ Also be careful about your attitude toward fellow-believers. It’s easy to get annoyed and talk bad about other Christians, but we must remember that God calls them “saints,” which means He considers them holy. God wants you to show respect to them as a part of showing respect to Him. Will you respect other Christians?

v Matthew Henry commented, “this law obliges us to respect the solemn assemblies of Christians for religious worship, as being held under a promise of Christ's special presence in them, and to carry ourselves with a due decorum while in those assemblies…”

v Being a Christian means being holy to God and that means being distinct from pagan culture in our worship and holiday practices.

6) Guidance

v.31 Y’all may not pay attention to their mediums or to their wizards. Y’all may not seek to become unclean with them; I am Yahweh your God.

v Those who are holy to God are not to “turn their faces toward” or “pay any attention/heed” to mediums and spiritists.

Ø The Hebrew word translated “mediums” or “those who have a familiar spirit” creates a word picture of a person asking to speak with their dead “father”^{^[2]}. This is about necromancy or conjuring ghosts.

Ø The other Hebrew word translated “wizards” has to do with someone who tries to get “knowledge” of the forbidden, and the two Hebrew words always occur together.

v Deuteronomy 18:11 links these practices with divination and fortune-telling, which we just covered in v.26, so it brings us full circle in a sense,

Ø although these particular forms of interaction with the spirit world in v.31 could be considered more hard-core direct communication with evil spirits,

Ø whereas v.26 was about more indirectly obtaining information from the spirit world through patterns observed in nature.

Ø Both, however, are spiritual “adultery,” as Deuteronomy 18 puts it – unfaithfulness to the One True God – the only Spirit with whom we are to communicate directly.

v We live in a culture much like Israel’s neighbors which has popularized witchcraft and wizardry.

Ø I remember browsing the youth section of the public library not too long ago, for a book that I could recommend to my kids. I couldn’t find but maybe one wholesome book on the popular shelf because every other book on the shelf was about werewolves!

Ø One of the most popular fiction books is about a boy who is attending a School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Peter Green, a doctorate student at Wheaton College, and a self-proclaimed fan of the Harry Potter series noted that the author, “Rowling sets her magic in the context of our real world and explicitly ties it to historic pagan religions such as druidism. That is, within the logic of the books themselves, the magic practiced by Harry and co. is equated with magic practiced by real pagans in our world.”^{^[3]}

v Now, what did Christians do with sorcery in the New Testament? Encourage their children to read about it? No!

Ø They told sorcerers (μαγεύω) to repent and believe in Jesus, like Peter did with Simon in Acts 8.

Ø And they burned their magic (περίεργος) books, like the Philippians did in Acts 19:19. Such influences are too dangerous to keep around.

Ø To listen to any spirit other than the Holy One is dangerous. I have heard many stories of people (even Christians) who came under the influence of demons who would fill their mind with promptings to do things that were physically dangerous. Satan hates us and loves death, and so that’s the kind of messages he will send, and they are really bad advice, but for people who have opened themselves up to satanic influence, it becomes really hard to recognize it as false guidance.

v In 1 Samuel 28, King Saul, after his rebellion against God, found himself in a pickle when the Philistine army showed up to conquer him, so he sought out a woman described by this same word, in an attempt to conjure up the dead prophet Samuel and ask him what to do. God had already told him in the Bible what to do: Repent of his rebellion against God and trust God alone. King Saul’s action of going to a medium to ask a spirit what to do was part of his rebelliousness, seeking advice somewhere other than God’s word.

Ø 1 Chronicles 10:13-14 “So Saul died for his unfaithfulness which he had committed against the LORD, because he did not keep the word of the LORD, and also because he consulted a medium for guidance. But he did not inquire of the LORD; therefore He killed him, and turned the kingdom over to David the son of Jesse.” (NKJV)

v Isaiah 8.19-20 shows the contrast clearly that consulting mediums and wizardry are the opposite of consulting the Bible: “And when they shall say to you, “Seek after the mediums and to the wizards, the ones who chirp and mutter: should not a people seek after their God – to the living instead of to the dead? To the Torah and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, then that one has no dawn.” (NAW)

v In the New Testament, we are told who to “turn to/pay attention to.” The same Greek word (επακολουθησετε) is in 1 Peter 2:21b, “Christ suffered on our behalf, leaving behind an example for you in order that y’all might adhere to His tracks.^{^[4]}”

v To read the Bible and follow Christ and pray only to the Lord and seek guidance only from Him is a way of setting Him apart as holy which also sets you apart as holy. Lev. 20:6-7 “And the person who turns to mediums and familiar spirits, to prostitute himself with them, I will set My face against that person and cut him off from his people. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am the LORD your God.” (NKJV)

CONCLUSION

v As I mentioned last week, your Christian experience, which begins with trusting Jesus to make you right with God, doesn’t stop there. That faith, over a lifetime, generates a whole culture full of actions.

v Some of the cultural practices we’ve looked at today have to do with:

Ø Giving Biblical honor to women,

Ø Setting apart Sunday as holy and treating other Christians as holy,

Ø and looking for guidance through the word of God and prayer, rather than the spirit world (or, for that matter, looking to mere human common sense).

v What we believe about God is going to make us different from the world in all these areas and more.

v May God give us the faith to want to do these things and the courage to stand against the tide of popular culture actually put them into practice!

Comparative translations of Leviticus 19:26-31

When a translation adds words not in the Hebrew text, but does not indicate it has done so by the use of italics (or greyed-out text), I put the added words in [square brackets]. When one version chooses a wording which is different from all the other translations, I underline it. When a version chooses a translation which, in my opinion, either departs too far from the root meaning of the Hebrew word or departs too far from the grammar form of the original Hebrew, I use ~~strikeout~~. And when a version omits a word which is in the Hebrew text, I insert an X. (Sometimes I will place the X at the end of a word if the original word is plural but the English translation is singular.) I occasionally use colors to help the reader see correlations between the various editions and versions when there are more than two different translations of a given word. Hebrew text that is colored purple matches the Dead Sea Scrolls, and variants between the DSS and the MT are noted in endnotes with the following exceptions: When a holem or qibbutz pointing in the MT is represented in the DSS by a vav or a hireq pointing in the MT is represented in the DSS by a yod (the corresponding consonantal representation of the same vowel) or when the tetragrammaton is spelled with paleo-Hebrew letters, I did not record it a variant. In Chapter 19, 11Q1 paleoLeviticus^a contains verses 1-4, 1Q3 PaleoLev-Num contains verses 30-34, 4Q26a Leviticus^e contains verses 34-37, and 4Q23 Leviticus-Numbers^a contains verses 3-8.

LXX	Brenton	KJV	NAW	MT
26 Μὴ ἔσθετε ἐπὶ τῶν ὀρέων καὶ οὐκ οἰωνιεῖσθε οὐδὲ ὀρνιθοσκοπήσεσθε.	26 Eat not on the mountains, nor shall ye employ auguries, nor divine by inspection of birds.	26 Ye shall not eat any thing with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantment, nor observe times.	26 Y’all may not eat [meat] with the blood, and y’all may not practice divination, and y’all may not practice fortune-telling^{^[A]}.	26 לֹא תֹאכְלוּ עַל-הַדָּם^{^[B]} לֹא^{^[C]} תְנַחֲשׁוּ וְלֹא תְעוֹנֵנוּ:
27 οὐ ποιήσετε σισόην ἐκ τῆς κόμης τῆς κεφαλῆς ὑμῶν οὐδὲ φθερεῖτε τὴν ὄψιν τοῦ πώγωνος ὑμῶν.	27 Ye shall not make a round cutting of the hair of your head, nor disfigure X X your beard.	27 Ye shall not round the corner[s] of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corner[s] of thy beard.	27 Y’all may not cut around the top of your head and y’all may not lay waste to the top of your beard,	27 לֹא תַקִּפוּ פְּאַת רֹאשְׁכֶם וְלֹא תַשְׁחִית אֵת פְּאַת זְקָנֶךָ^{^[D]}:
28 καὶ ἐντομίδας ἐπὶ X ψυχῇ οὐ ~~ποιήσετε~~ ἐν τῷ σώματι ὑμῶν καὶ γράμματα στικτὰ οὐ ~~ποιήσετε~~ ἐν ὑμῖν· ἐγώ εἰμι κύριος [ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν^{^[E]}].	28 And ye shall not ~~make~~ cuttings in your body for a ~~dead body~~, and ye shall not ~~inscribe~~ on yourselves ~~any~~ marks. I am the Lord [your God].	28 X Ye shall not ~~make~~ any cuttings in your flesh for the ~~dead~~, nor print ~~any~~ marks upon you: I am the LORD.	28 and y’all may not give yourselves a gash in your flesh for someone’s soul, and y’all may not give yourselves an engraving of a tattoo; I am Yahweh.	28 וְשֶׂרֶט^{^[F]} לָנֶפֶשׁ לֹא תִתְּנוּ בִּבְשַׂרְכֶם וּכְתֹבֶת קַעֲקַע לֹא תִתְּנוּ בָּכֶם אֲנִי יְהוָה:
29 οὐ βεβηλώσεις τὴν θυγατέρα σου ἐκπορνεῦσαι αὐτήν, καὶ οὐκ ἐκπορνεύσει ἡ γῆ καὶ ἡ γῆ πλησθήσεται ἀνομίας.	29 Thou shalt not profane thy daughter to prostitute her; so the land shall not go a whoring, and the land be filled with iniquity.	29 Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.	29 You may not violate your daughter by causing her to engage in prostitution, so the land will not engage in prostitution lest the land become full of organized-crime.	29 אַל-תְּחַלֵּל אֶת-בִּתְּךָ לְהַזְנוֹתָהּ וְלֹא-תִזְנֶה הָאָרֶץ וּמָלְאָה הָאָרֶץ זִמָּה^{^[G]}:
30 Τὰ σάββατά μου φυλάξεσθε καὶ [ἀπὸ] τῶν ἁγίων μου φοβηθήσεσθε· ἐγώ [εἰμι] κύριος.	30 Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuaries: I am the Lord.	30 Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD.	30 It is my Sabbaths that y’all must keep, and my holiness y’all must respect; I am Yahweh.	30 אֶת-שַׁבְּתֹתַי תִּשְׁמֹרוּ וּמִקְדָּשִׁי תִּירָאוּ אֲנִי יְהוָה
31 οὐκ ἐπακολουθήσετε ἐγγαστριμύθοις καὶ τοῖς ἐπαοιδοῖς οὐ προσκολληθήσεσθε ἐκμιανθῆναι ἐν αὐτοῖς· ἐγώ εἰμι κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν.	31 Ye shall not attend to those who have in them divining spirits, nor attach yourselves to enchanters, to pollute yourselves with them: I am the Lord your God.	31 Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.	31 Y’all may not pay attention to their mediums or to their wizards. Y’all may not seek to become unclean with them; I am Yahweh your God.	31 אַל-תִּפְנוּ אֶל-הָאֹבֹת וְאֶל-הַיִּדְּעֹנִים אַל-תְּבַקְשׁוּ לְטָמְאָה בָהֶם אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם:

^{^[1]} Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34; John 6:69; Acts 2:27; 13:35; 1 Peter 1:15; 1 John 2:20; Revelation 16:5.

^{^[2]} The Greek word (ἐγγαστριμύθοις) isn’t in the N.T., but pictures someone with something “mystical in their belly.” Gill was the only commentator who seemed to think the Hebrew word had to do with “bottles.”

^{^[3]} Quoted from wheatonblog.wordpress.com, 2015.

^{^[4]} The other Greek word used to describe “seeking” uncleanness is προσκολληθήσεσθε, found in Acts 5:36 to describe joining up with a loosing army, and in Ephesians 5:31 to describe getting married.