Banned by the Bible

76 things banned in Leviticus

Here’s chapter and verse on a more-or-less comprehensive list of things banned in the Leviticus book of the bible. A decent number of them are punishable by death.

Unless you’ve never done any of them (and 54 to 56 are particularly tricky), perhaps it’s time to lay off quoting 18:22 for a while?

1. Burning any yeast or honey in offerings to God (2:11)

2. Failing to include salt in offerings to God (2:13)

3. Eating fat (3:17)

4. Eating blood (3:17)

5. Failing to testify against any wrongdoing you’ve witnessed (5:1)

6. Failing to testify against any wrongdoing you’ve been told about (5:1)

7. Touching an unclean animal (5:2)

8. Carelessly making an oath (5:4)

9. Deceiving a neighbour about something trusted to them (6:2)

10. Finding lost property and lying about it (6:3)

11. Bringing unauthorised fire before God (10:1)

12. Letting your hair become unkempt (10:6)

13. Tearing your clothes (10:6)

14. Drinking alcohol in holy places (bit of a problem for Catholics, this ‘un) (10:9)

15. Eating an animal which doesn’t both chew cud and has a divided hoof (cf: camel, rabbit, pig) (11:4-7)

16. Touching the carcass of any of the above (problems here for rugby) (11:8)

17. Eating – or touching the carcass of – any seafood without fins or scales (11:10-12)

18. Eating – or touching the carcass of - eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat. (11:13-19)

19. Eating – or touching the carcass of – flying insects with four legs, unless those legs are jointed (11:20-22)

20. Eating any animal which walks on all four and has paws (good news for cats) (11:27)

21. Eating – or touching the carcass of – the weasel, the rat, any kind of great lizard, the gecko, the monitor lizard, the wall lizard, the skink and the chameleon (11:29)

22. Eating – or touching the carcass of – any creature which crawls on many legs, or its belly (11:41-42)

23. Going to church within 33 days after giving birth to a boy (12:4)

24. Going to church within 66 days after giving birth to a girl (12:5)

25. Having sex with your mother (18:7)

26. Having sex with your father’s wife (18:8)

27. Having sex with your sister (18:9)

28. Having sex with your granddaughter (18:10)

29. Having sex with your half-sister (18:11)

30. Having sex with your biological aunt (18:12-13)

31. Having sex with your uncle’s wife (18:14)

32. Having sex with your daughter-in-law (18:15)

33. Having sex with your sister-in-law (18:16)

34. Having sex with a woman and also having sex with her daughter or granddaughter (bad news for Alan Clark) (18:17)

35. Marrying your wife’s sister while your wife still lives (18:18)

36. Having sex with a woman during her period (18:19)

37. Having sex with your neighbour’s wife (18:20)

38. Giving your children to be sacrificed to Molek (18:21)

39. Having sex with a man “as one does with a woman” (18:22)

40. Having sex with an animal (18:23)

41. Making idols or “metal gods” (19:4)

42. Reaping to the very edges of a field (19:9)

43. Picking up grapes that have fallen in your vineyard (19:10)

44. Stealing (19:11)

45. Lying (19:11)

46. Swearing falsely on God’s name (19:12)

47. Defrauding your neighbour (19:13)

48. Holding back the wages of an employee overnight (not well observed these days) (19:13)

49. Cursing the deaf or abusing the blind (19:14)

50. Perverting justice, showing partiality to either the poor or the rich (19:15)

51. Spreading slander (19:16)

52. Doing anything to endanger a neighbour’s life (19:16)

53. Seeking revenge or bearing a grudge (19:18)

54. Mixing fabrics in clothing (19:19)

55. Cross-breeding animals (19:19)

56. Planting different seeds in the same field (19:19)

57. Sleeping with another man’s slave (19:20)

58. Eating fruit from a tree within four years of planting it (19:23)

59. Practising divination or seeking omens (tut, tut astrology) (19:26)

60. Trimming your beard (19:27)

61. Cutting your hair at the sides (19:27)

62. Getting tattoos (19:28)

63. Making your daughter prostitute herself (19:29)

64. Turning to mediums or spiritualists (19:31)

65. Not standing in the presence of the elderly (19:32)

66. Mistreating foreigners – “the foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born”  (19:33-34)

67. Using dishonest weights and scales (19:35-36)

68. Cursing your father or mother (punishable by death) (20:9)

69. Marrying a prostitute, divorcee or widow if you are a priest (21:7,13)

70. Entering a place where there’s a dead body as a priest (21:11)

71. Slaughtering a cow/sheep and its young on the same day (22:28)

72. Working on the Sabbath (23:3)

73. Blasphemy (punishable by stoning to death) (24:14)

74. Inflicting an injury; killing someone else’s animal; killing a person must be punished in kind (24:17-22)

75. Selling land permanently (25:23)

76. Selling an Israelite as a slave (foreigners are fine) (25:42)