Leviticus 20:22-27--You Shall Be Holy

Leviticus 20:22-27
English Standard Version

You Shall Be Holy
22 “You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them, that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. 23 And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I detested them. 24 But I have said to you, ‘You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.’ I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples. 25 You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean, and the unclean bird from the clean. You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. 26 You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.

27 “A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them.”

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Here we see the covenant renewed again.  God tells the people that the covenant of the land is conditional on their obedience to the Law and their cultivation of God's "culture" and them not taking on the culture of the pagan, idolatrous, wicked nations that would surround them.  Otherwise that land will not be fruitful for them and it may even "vomit them out" so that they will once again be a people in exile and enslaved to godless kings and cultures like during the time of the Exile where the northern 10 tribes and all the people who lived among them were taken into captivity by the Assyrians and the southern two tribes and all those who lived among them were taken into captivity by the Babylonians.  The Levites were not included in the count of 10 tribes and 2 tribes because they had no land of their own other than the cities of refuge (we'll get there later), but it is assume that the faithful Levites stayed in the southern kingdom to care for the Temple, though some of the unfaithful Levites became apostate and would join with the kings and people of the northern kingdom in worshiping the gods of the Canaanites and offering sacrifices to them in the "high places."

God said that the people should be holy and "clean" before Him and should be separate from any unclean or detestable thing, including the unclean animals.  Since they are not to eat to them or sacrifice them or even touch them, there was no reason for them to raise these animals whatsoever, so it is unlikely that the Jews kept dogs or cats as pets for themselves (for instance)   The people of God are to be different in all their ways and be holy and called out with a special name and a special purpose from among all the nations.  They are to reflect the nature and character of God as they received the Word of God, lived it out, told it to the rest of the world, and ministered as a nation of royal priests before Him and the world.

Last, but not least, we see the prohibition against engaging in fortune telling, sorcery, witchcraft, necromancy, and anything else along these lines forbidden as well as the command that anyone engaging in such practices is to be put to death.  We'll see that God has good reason to keep repeating this command as we go throughout the Old Testament, and it is one of the things that we see returning in the end times with the rise of the cultural and religious system that will be known as Babylon in the end times.  We also need to be careful to not be caught up in these things in our times as the end times are approaching as these prohibitions were not just for the people of that time but are still good boundaries for us today as the people of God living as a "holy nation" and a kingdom of "royal priests" as exiles and sojourners in a foreign land (see the epistle of 1st Peter if you have any doubt that these commands to be holy and live a life different from the "Gentile" nations around us isn't still in full effect for the Church).