Unlawful Sexual Relations

18 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ² “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, ^(A)I am the Lord your God. ^3 (B)You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and ^(C)you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. ^4 (D)You shall follow my rules^[a] and keep my statutes and walk in them. ^(E)I am the Lord your God. ^5 (F)You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; ^(G)if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.

⁶ “None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness. I am the Lord.

¹⁸ And you shall not take a woman as a ^(A)rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness ^(B)while her sister is still alive.

^19 (C)“You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness. ^20 (D)And you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor's wife and so make yourself unclean with her. ²¹ You shall not give any of your children to ^(E)offer them^[a] to ^(F)Molech, and so ^(G)profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. ^22 (H)You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. ^23 (I)And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is ^(J)perversion.

^24 (K)“Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, ^(L)for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, ²⁵ and the ^(M)land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land ^(N)vomited out its inhabitants. ²⁶ But ^(O)you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the ^(P)native or the stranger who sojourns among you ²⁷ (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean), ²⁸ lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. ²⁹ For everyone who does any of these abominations, the persons who do them shall be cut off from among their people. ^30 (Q)So keep my charge never to practice ^(R)any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you, and never to make yourselves unclean by them: ^(S)I am the Lord your God.”

^26 (A)You shall be holy to me, ^(B)for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.