Israel stayed there for a short time. While he was there, Reuben slept with Israel’s woman servant [214] Bilhah. Israel heard about this and was very angry.
But your passion was like a flood
you couldn’t control.
So you will not remain
my most honored son.
You climbed into your father’s bed
{and slept with one of his wives}.
You brought shame to my bed,
to the bed you lay on.”
That good person does not go to the mountains and share in foods offered to false gods. He does not pray to those filthy idols in Israel. He does not do the sin of adultery with his neighbor’s wife. He does not have sex with his wife during her period.
If a man has sexual relations with his father’s wife, then both the man and the woman must be put to death. They are responsible for their own death. [353] It is as if that man had had sexual relations with his father! [354]
“If a man has sexual relations with a woman during her monthly time of bleeding, then both the woman and the man must be separated from their people. They sinned because they exposed her source of blood.
They pushed those poor peoples’ faces into the ground and walked on them. They stopped listening to suffering people. Fathers and sons have sexual relations with the same woman. They have ruined my holy name.
People are really saying that there is sexual sin among you. And it is such a bad kind of sexual sin that it does not happen even among those people that don’t know God. People say that a man there has his father’s wife.
“{The Levites will say,} ‘Cursed is the person that has sexual relations with his father’s wife. [179] Why? Because he brings shame to his father [180] !’