18:16 thy brother’s wife. This proscription applied only while the woman’s husband was living. When he died, particularly if he had no children, the principle of Levirate marriage came into effect (see note on Deuteronomy 25:5-10).

18:22 abomination. Homosexuality has become so common today, just as in the ancient pagan tribes, that it is considered an acceptable–or even preferable–life style. God, however, who created men and women and ordained the proper and fruitful institution of marriage and the family unit, calls it abomination. Despite modern theories, it is not a natural condition; it is a learned behavior which, like any other sin prohibited by a holy God, can become a very difficult behavior to change when long practiced. Nevertheless, the Bible clearly forbids–and nowhere more forcefully than here in this eighteenth chapter of Leviticus–not only homosexuality but also adultery, incest, bestiality, and any other type of sexual commerce except that in monogamous, life-long marriage. God can and does forgive these and other sins (that is what the Levitical offerings in this same book teach). Persistent and unrepentant continuance therein will eventually result in the judgment implicit in Romans 1:27, “receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.”

18:25 the land is defiled. The land of Canaan, which had long before been promised by God to Abraham and his seed, had become so defiled by the time of Joshua that God was completely vindicated in ordering the extermination of its incorrigibly wicked inhabitants, lest the people of Israel and eventually the whole world be corrupted by their influence, as in the world before the flood. This chapter gives a representative listing of their pervasive sins–promiscuity, incest, homosexuality, bestiality, even burning their children in sacrifice to a pagan god (Leviticus 18:21) and blaspheming the true God. God had been long-suffering for four hundred years, but now their iniquity was full and their time was up (note Genesis 15:13-16).