20:27 “ ‘A man or woman who46 has in them a spirit of the dead or a familiar spirit47 must be put to death. They must pelt them with stones;48 their blood guilt is on themselves.’ ”
tcSmr, LXX, Syriac, and some Targummss have the relative pronoun אֲשֶׁר (’asher, “who, which”), rather than the MT’s כִּי (ki, “for, because, that”).
47
tn See the note on the phrase “familiar spirit” in Lev 19:31 above.
48
tn This is not the most frequently-used Hebrew verb for stoning, but a word that refers to the action of throwing, slinging, or pelting someone with stones (see the note on v. 2 above). Smr and LXX have “you [plural] shall pelt them with stones.”
sn At first glance Lev 20:27 appears to be out of place but, on closer examination, one could argue that it constitutes the back side of an envelope around the case laws in 20:9–21, with Lev 20:6 forming the front of the envelope (note also that execution of mediums and spiritists by stoning in v. 27 is not explicitly stated in v. 6). This creates a chiastic structure: prohibition against mediums and spiritists (vv. 6 and 27), variations of the holiness formula (vv. 7 and 25–26), and exhortations to obey the Lord’s statutes (and judgments; vv. 8 and 22–24). Again, in the middle are the case laws (vv. 9–21).