And the land hath become unclean; and I visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land vomiteth out its inhabitants.
Leviticus 18 lists sins so vile that God says the land could no longer hold the people who did them. This verse is His verdict on Canaan, and it raises a hard question: was God right to give one nation's land to another?
The verse closes a long list of forbidden acts. One commentator shows how the guilt of the people spread to the ground they lived on:
The unnatural brutalities of verses 22 and 23 are plain enough, but you may not know how shamelessly the pagan nations practised them, even the Greeks and the Romans. What an abomination! It is confusion, says Jehovah. Israel were not to make themselves unclean in any of these things, as all the nations of Canaan did whom He drove out before them. How much more guilty then would Israel be! The very land was made unclean. Therefore He had visited the iniquity on it. The earth vomited out its inhabitants. So Israel must beware, and not only for themselves but for any stranger living among them. Otherwise the land would vomit them out, as it had the nations who lived there before them. Such evil was intolerable in His eyes, and even more offensive in His own people than in anyone else… It is by receiving the good that comes from God — His word and above all His Christ — that souls are kept from evil.
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The eviction was not sudden. God left His own people in Egypt for four hundred years while the guilt of Canaan filled up:
Here the critic of God's Word, and the one who scoffs at His ways, steps up and charges Him with cruelty and injustice. But they are shallow thinkers and dishonest judges; they jump to conclusions without examining the evidence. He had assigned that land to Israel, yet He kept them in the fiery furnace of Egypt for four hundred years. All that time He was patient with the wicked inhabitants of Canaan. He did not carry out His judgment on their horrible breaking of all His laws until the cup of their iniquity was full. Leviticus 18:25 describes the state of the land and gives the reason for God's way. So God's judgment of them was justified.
God never told Israel that He was rewarding them. He gave a different reason:
Israel was told exactly why these nations were judged: "Not because of your righteousness ... but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you" (Deuteronomy 9:5; 18:12). Leviticus 18 states this truth in the strongest possible way, warning Israel not to fall into the same abominations. So God lets a people ripen to the full height of their wickedness. Then He takes them as the occasion for showing His righteous anger and power. It is a great public sample of God's full judgment on the earth.
So what was Israel's role? Not that of a conqueror grabbing land:
The land itself was spewing them out for their abominations. In this Israel was only the executioner of divine judgment. They did not act from their own passion or greed for territory. He could have destroyed them by plague or famine. Instead He chose Israel to do this work. In this way He gave His people the most solemn lesson possible: the holiness of His own nature, and what sin is before Him. They themselves would come under similar awful judgments if they followed those nations in their sin.
Behind the eviction lies a question of ownership:
The Land — "My Land," whatever its state or divisions. It is Jehovah's Land, and if the people fail in every way, it falls into His hands. It was only entrusted to Israel.
God gave Israel the same warning, and history proved it real:
For these sins the land they were going to was casting out its inhabitants. They are warned that if they do the same things, it would cast them out too. God's righteousness is the same toward all His creatures. Israel, now cast out of their land, are witnesses to it.
- Defiled — the sins in this chapter did not stay private. They made the land itself unclean, and God judged the land.
- Delayed — judgment came only after four hundred years of patience, when the cup of iniquity was full. The charge of cruelty ignores the evidence.
- Deserved — Israel entered not for their own righteousness, but because of the wickedness of those nations. The conquest is a public sample of God's judgment on the earth.
- Delegated — Israel acted as executioner of a sentence already passed, not from greed. The task taught them the holiness of God, and the land stayed His own.
- Doubled back — God's righteousness is the same toward all. Israel was later cast out of that same land, proving the warning was real.
But *ye* shall observe my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of all these abominations the home-born, and the stranger that sojourneth among you;
Verse 26 turns from description to command: the land itself throws out those who defile it, so Israel must not copy the people who lived there before — native-born and foreigner alike. That raises two questions: why does a piece of ground react to human sin, and what keeps a people from sliding into the same evils?
Israel had lived in one corrupt culture and was walking toward another.
The opening verses of Leviticus 18 show that the Lord was looking back on Egypt and forward to Canaan. Very degrading idol worship gripped both these lands. So Israel faced that infection both before and after their journey through the wilderness. They were not to follow the evil, but to keep God's statutes and judgments. If they did, they would live in them. The Apostle quotes this statement in Galatians 3:12. This doing was not "of faith," and obedience would secure not heaven but continued life on earth.
The command rests on a judgment already carried out, and God did not leave Israel guessing why.
God told Israel plainly why those nations were judged: "Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out before you." Leviticus 18 states this truth in the strongest possible way. It warns Israel not to fall into the same abominations… So God let a people ripen to their full height of wickedness, and then used them as the occasion to show His righteous wrath and power. He warned Israel fully and told them the principle He acted on.
The verse names two groups: the native-born and the foreigner living among them. One writer shows why the warning had to reach that far.
Israel must not make themselves unclean in any of these ways. The nations of Canaan did all these things, and He cast those nations out before Israel. How much guiltier, then, would Israel be! The very land was made unclean. Therefore He had visited the iniquity on it. The earth vomited out its inhabitants. So Israel had to be careful — not only for themselves, but for any foreigner staying among them — in case the land should vomit them out too, as it had the nations that lived there before them. Such evil was intolerable in His eyes. It offended Him even more in His own people than in anyone else. The Jews soon forgot that truth, and Christendom forgot it later.
The acts listed earlier in the chapter were not random vices. They came with the religion of the nations around Israel.
The most unnatural crimes and vile acts named in verses 22-23 belonged to the idol worship of the nations around Israel. People did these things in Egypt and in Canaan… Idol worship and moral degradation always go together. The fearful road of the apostasy in Christendom is no exception. When people reject what God has revealed, they slide into idolatry — not always idols of wood and stone — and into moral decline.
Israel did not stand outside the standard God gave them. Their own later history shows He kept to the same measure with them.
The land they were going to was casting out its inhabitants for these sins. They are warned that if they practised such things, it would cast them out too. God's righteousness is the same towards all His creatures. Israel, now cast out of their land, are witnesses to it.
The chapter opens and closes with the same words about who is speaking. One writer treats that repeated sentence, not the list of bans, as the real protection.
Just as this chapter begins, so it ends with the positive declaration, "I am the LORD your God" (v. 30). If only Israel would recognise this wonderful, positive blessing as they should, it would keep them from all the negative evils of this chapter.
Kelly ends his comments on the chapter with the same point, stated positively: "It is by receiving the good that comes from God, His word and above all His Christ, that souls are kept from evil."
- Cause. The nations lost the land for what they did in it. God told Israel the reason plainly, so no one could think the land was a reward for Israel's goodness.
- Command. Israel had left one corrupt culture and was walking into another. The answer was not just avoidance but obedience: keep His statutes.
- Reach. The rule covers the native-born and the foreigner alike. It weighs heavier, not lighter, on God's own people.
- Root. These evils came with idol worship. When people reject what God has revealed, moral collapse follows — and Christendom is no exception.
- Result. Israel, scattered from their land, became the witness that God's righteousness is the same towards everyone. Their one safeguard was the sentence that frames the chapter: "I am the LORD your God."
(for all these abominations have the men of the land done, who were before you, and the land hath been made unclean);
Leviticus 18 ends its long list of forbidden practices with a reason, not a new rule. Canaan's earlier residents had done these things, and their sin defiled the land itself. That raises the hardest questions in the chapter. Why did God drive out whole nations? Would He treat Israel any differently?
Israel had just left one corrupt country. They were walking toward another.
The opening verses of Leviticus 18 show that the Lord was looking back on Egypt and forward to Canaan. Both these lands were in the grip of very degrading idolatry, and so Israel was exposed to the infection both before and after their wilderness journey.
These sins stain the ground, not only the people who commit them. The point then turns back on Israel.
Israel were not to make themselves unclean in any of these things. That is what the nations of Canaan did, and He drove them out before Israel. How much guiltier, then, would Israel be! The very land became unclean. So He visited the iniquity on it. The earth vomited out its inhabitants. So Israel must beware, both for themselves and for any foreigner living among them. The land might vomit them out, as it had the nations that lived there before them. Such evil was intolerable in His eyes, and even more offensive in His own people than in anyone else.
Canaan lost the land through its own conduct. Israel's arrival was not the reason for the eviction.
Every landlord has a perfect right to evict bad tenants. The nations of Canaan had not only failed to pay their rent, as we say. They had damaged and defiled the property so badly that God could no longer put up with them. So He was going to drive them out, quite apart from the incoming tenants. Whoever was going to take possession of the property, these dreadful tenants had to go... He had put up with the wickedness of the seven nations until it became unbearable. The very land itself could not bear it.
God's judgment on Canaan did not fall the moment its sin began.
God had assigned that land to His people. Yet in His patience with the wicked inhabitants of Canaan, He kept them in the fiery furnace of Egypt for four hundred years. He did not carry out His judgment on their horrible breaking of all His laws until the cup of their iniquity was full. Leviticus 18:25 describes the condition of the land and gives the reason for God's way: "And the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants." So God's judgment of them was just.
This warning pointed at Israel too. Their own history proved it.
Because of these sins the land they were going to was casting out its inhabitants. The warning to Israel was this: if they practised such things, it would cast them out too. God's righteousness is the same toward all His creatures. Israel, now cast out of their land, are witnesses to it.
These practices were not random vices. They went together with the false worship of the surrounding nations.
The most unnatural crimes and vile things in verses 22–23 belonged to the idolatries of the nations around Israel. People practised these things in Egypt and in Canaan. Romans 1:18–32 gives the inspired history of the degradation of the Gentile world. Idolatry and moral degradation always go together... When people reject God's revelation, they fall into idolatry — not necessarily idols of wood and stone — and into moral decline.
And they reached far beyond Canaan.
It may not be known how openly these things were practised among the nations, even by the Greeks and the Romans. What abomination!
- Defiled — The sins in this chapter pollute the land itself, until the ground can no longer bear the people living on it.
- Patient — God waited four hundred years while Canaan's iniquity filled up. He evicted these tenants only when His patience had run its course.
- Equal — The righteousness that removed the Canaanites also faced Israel. God's standard does not change with the tenant, and Israel's later exile proved it.
- Rooted — These practices travelled with idolatry. Reject God's revelation, and moral collapse follows — in Canaan or anywhere else.
- Guarded — Israel stood between Egypt behind and Canaan ahead. The same sin offends God more, not less, in His own people.
that the land vomit you not out, when ye make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.
Leviticus 18 ends with a warning: the land Israel was entering had already thrown off one set of tenants, and it could do the same to them. The image is physical — a land so sickened by what happens on it that it heaves out the people living there.
Scripture describes the removal of the Canaanites in the strongest terms. God did not take them by surprise. He had warned them over a long stretch of history before the sentence fell.
Every Christian must feel that the Lord was fully right to punish the Canaanites for their sin. In the vivid language of Scripture, the land could not help vomiting out the people living on it. Their idolatry was detestable, and their unnatural crimes were almost too vile to name. They had many warnings too. God judged the most notorious people in the land at the start of His ways with the fathers. He warned them again at the end, when He brought the children out of Egypt and through the wilderness, with wonders that spoke to their consciences — however much they defied it all at the last.
The verse looks back on an expulsion that had already started. God sent Israel in to finish a sentence He had passed, and the task itself taught them something about Him.
The land itself was spewing them out for their detestable practices. In this Israel only carried out God's judgment. They were not acting out of their own passion or greed for land. God could have destroyed the Canaanites by plague or famine. Instead He chose Israel to do the work. In this way He taught His people the most solemn lesson possible about the holiness of His own nature, and about what sin is before Him. They would come under the same awful judgments themselves if they followed the Canaanites in their sin.
The verse names no exception. Israel had to watch themselves and any foreigner living among them, and their place as God's people made the danger sharper, not softer.
Those practices made the land itself unclean, and so He punished the land for that sin. The earth vomited out the people living on it. So Israel had to beware, not only for themselves, but for any foreigner staying among them, in case the land should vomit them out too, as it had the nations that lived there before Israel. Such evil was intolerable in His eyes, and even more offensive in His own people than in anyone else — a truth soon forgotten among the Jews, and later in Christendom. What keeps souls from evil is receiving the good that comes from God — His word, and above all His Christ.
Behind the threat lies a question of ownership. The land was never Israel's to keep.
The Land — "My Land," whatever its condition or divisions. It is the Lord's Land. If the people fail in every way, it falls back into His hands. He had only entrusted it to Israel.
The threat was not for the Canaanites only. Israel's own history shows God held them to the same standard.
If they did not keep God's statutes and judgments, the land would "vomit you out." God had set that land apart as His own "holy land." It would expel the nations living there, because they worshipped idols and evil spirits. It could do the same to Israel if they sank to a similar level. History has proved this true in the scattering of Israel from their land for centuries after they rejected Christ, their promised Messiah.
The rules of this chapter are not there for their own sake. They aim at a distinct people, unlike the country Israel left and unlike the country they were entering.
Leviticus 18 speaks of the purity that separates the people of God from the corruption of Egypt and of Canaan. "Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God."
- The land defiled. The practices in this chapter made the ground itself unclean. Throwing out the people living on it followed naturally.
- The land God's. God entrusted Canaan to Israel; He never signed it over. It stays "My Land," and failure returns it to His hands.
- The land warning. God told Israel the rule in advance. The fate of the Canaanites showed them what sin is before Him.
- The land impartial. The warning spared no one, Israelite or foreigner. The same evil offended God more in His own people than in anyone else.
- The land emptied. Centuries of scattering show God kept His word. The escape was never mere care, but receiving God's word and His Christ.