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Leviticus 24

KJV · Chapter 24/27

1And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

2Command the children of Israel, that they bring unto thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamps to burn continually.

3Without the vail of the testimony, in the tabernacle of the congregation, shall Aaron order it from the evening unto the morning before the Lord continually: it shall be a statute for ever in your generations.

4He shall order the lamps upon the pure candlestick before the Lord continually.

5And thou shalt take fine flour, and bake twelve cakes thereof: two tenth deals shall be in one cake.

6And thou shalt set them in two rows, six on a row, upon the pure table before the Lord.

7And thou shalt put pure frankincense upon each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, even an offering made by fire unto the Lord.

8Every sabbath he shall set it in order before the Lord continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant.

9And it shall be Aaron’s and his sons’; and they shall eat it in the holy place: for it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the Lord made by fire by a perpetual statute.

10And the son of an Israelitish woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel: and this son of the Israelitish woman and a man of Israel strove together in the camp;

11And the Israelitish woman’s son blasphemed the name of the Lord, and cursed. And they brought him unto Moses: (and his mother’s name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan:)

12And they put him in ward, that the mind of the Lord might be shewed them.

13And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

14Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp; and let all that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.

15And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin.

16And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.

17And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.

18And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast.

19And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him;

20Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.

21And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it: and he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death.

22Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country: for I am the Lord your God.

23And Moses spake to the children of Israel, that they should bring forth him that had cursed out of the camp, and stone him with stones. And the children of Israel did as the Lord commanded Moses.

📖 Chapter study

Summary

Instructions about the oil for the tabernacle's lamps and the twelve loaves of showbread on the sacred table. The chapter then tells of a man who blasphemed the name of the LORD and was stoned, with the law of 'eye for eye' repeated in that context.

Explanation

The first part of the chapter deals with the tabernacle's ongoing maintenance — light and bread always kept before God, symbolizing his constant provision and presence among the people. The second part narrates an actual case of blasphemy, showing how the law was applied in practice: even a man with an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father (someone on the margins of the community) was under the same law as anyone else. The principle of 'eye for eye, tooth for tooth' (lex talionis) was not meant to encourage personal revenge, but was a legal limit to prevent disproportionate punishment — the penalty had to match the harm, no more and no less. Jesus later teaches an even higher personal ethic on this point (Matthew 5:38-39), without invalidating the principle of proportional justice in the courts.

Fun facts

  • The 'twelve loaves of showbread' represented the twelve tribes of Israel continually before God — replaced every Sabbath and eaten by the priests, never wasted.
  • The law of 'eye for eye' also appears in the Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian legal text that predates the Law of Moses, but there the penalty varied according to the victim's social class — in the biblical Law, the same rule applied equally to everyone, 'as well the stranger as the homeborn.'

Verse-by-verse explanation

  1. Leviticus 24:1This opening formula introduces a more technical topic: the daily upkeep of the lampstand and the bread of presence inside the tent.
  2. Leviticus 24:2“Beaten” describes a method of extracting oil by pounding the olives, not pressing them with a millstone. It was a more labor-intensive process that produced purer oil, reserved only for keeping this lamp burning without interruption inside the tent.
  3. Leviticus 24:3It fell to Aaron personally to keep the lamps burning from evening until morning, outside the veil — a daily maintenance task, nothing glamorous, but assigned directly to the high priest, not to some assistant.
  4. Leviticus 24:4The same care for the lamps repeats here, with the focus on the pure gold lampstand — the specific object that needed continuous, ongoing attention.
  5. Leviticus 24:5The twelve loaves represent the twelve tribes of Israel, placed on the table inside the tent every week. This is the origin of what would become known as the bread of the presence, renewed every sabbath.
  6. Leviticus 24:6The twelve loaves mentioned in the previous verse were arranged in two rows of six on the table — the number twelve almost certainly represented the twelve tribes of Israel.
  7. Leviticus 24:7Pure frankincense was placed with the bread as a “memorial” — the same concept of a symbolic representative portion already seen in the grain offering of chapter 2.
  8. Leviticus 24:8This bread was replaced with fresh loaves every week, on the sabbath day, a ritual repeated continually on behalf of the whole people of Israel.
  9. Leviticus 24:9The old bread, removed at each weekly changeover, became food for Aaron and his sons — one more piece of the priestly support system described throughout the book.
  10. Leviticus 24:10Here the chapter interrupts the laws to tell a real story: a man, the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father, got into a fight with an Israelite inside the camp — a concrete case that prompts the law that follows.
  11. Leviticus 24:11This is one of the rare moments where Leviticus interrupts the laws to tell a real story: a fight that ends in blasphemy. The concrete case is what triggers the legal decision that follows, and not by coincidence, right after come the eye-for-eye rules, applied to this very episode.
  12. Leviticus 24:12While they waited for a decision, they put the man under guard — a rare moment when not even Moses had a ready answer on hand, needing to wait for a new revelation from God to settle the case.
  13. Leviticus 24:13This opening formula introduces the divine answer to the specific case just told.
  14. Leviticus 24:14The witnesses laid their hands on the condemned man’s head before the execution, a gesture of formally taking responsibility for their own testimony. And the stoning being carried out by the whole congregation, not by a single executioner, turned the penalty into a collective act, not a personal act of revenge.
  15. Leviticus 24:15The general rule comes first: whoever cursed “his God” bore his own sin — a broader foundation before the specific rule about blaspheming the Lord’s name in the next verse.
  16. Leviticus 24:16The specific law against blaspheming the Lord’s name applied equally to the foreigner and to the native-born Israelite — a relevant detail, since the accused in the story was himself the son of a foreign father.
  17. Leviticus 24:17From here the text inserts a small code of laws right into the narrative itself: whoever killed a person had to die — the most basic principle of capital justice in the book.
  18. Leviticus 24:18Killing an animal, on the other hand, required only restitution, life for life — a very different penalty from the one for killing a person, clearly distinguishing property from human life.
  19. Leviticus 24:19Before the more famous formula of the next verse, the general principle appears here: injuring your neighbor brought back the same kind of harm on whoever caused the injury.
  20. Leviticus 24:20This is the famous law of “eye for eye,” also repeated in Exodus. In the ancient world it worked as a limit against disproportionate revenge — the punishment could not exceed the harm caused — and, according to similar codes of the time and later tradition, it was often settled with payment rather than literal mutilation.
  21. Leviticus 24:21The summary returns: killing an animal calls for restitution, killing a person calls for death — closing the distinction the text weaves between the “eye for eye” law and the real case that opened this section.
  22. Leviticus 24:22The chapter closes here making clear that the same law applied equally to the foreigner living there and to someone born in Israel. That includes the death penalty for blasphemy and the eye-for-eye principle, with no difference in treatment between the two.
  23. Leviticus 24:23The chapter closes by returning to the story from the start: the man was taken outside the camp and stoned, exactly as Moses had ordered — the newly given law was applied immediately to the real case.

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