Forbidden Sex

1The Lord told Moses 2to tell the people of Israel:

I am the Lord your God! 3So don't follow the customs of Egypt where you used to live or those of Canaan where I am bringing you. 4I am the Lord your God, and you must obey my teachings. 5 Obey them and you will live. I am the Lord.

6Don't have sex with any of your close relatives, 7especially your own mother. This would disgrace your father. 8 And don't disgrace him by having sex with any of his other wives. 9 Don't have sex with your sister or stepsister, whether you grew up together or not. 10Don't disgrace yourself by having sex with your granddaughter 11or half sister 12-13 or a sister of your father or mother. 14Don't disgrace your uncle by having sex with his wife. 15 Don't have sex with your daughter-in-law 16 or sister-in-law. 17 And don't have sex with the daughter or granddaughter of any woman that you have earlier had sex with. You will be having sex with her closest relatives, and that would make you unclean. 18As long as your wife is alive, don't cause trouble for her by taking one of her sisters as a second wife.

19 When a woman is having her monthly period, she is unclean, so don't have sex with her.

20 Don't have sex with another man's wife—that would make you unclean.

21 Don't sacrifice your children on the altar fires to the god Molech. I am the Lord your God, and that would disgrace me.

22 It is disgusting for a man to have sex with another man.

23 Anyone who has sex with an animal is unclean.

24Don't make yourselves unclean by any of these disgusting practices of those nations that I am forcing out of the land for you. They made themselves 25and the land so unclean, that I punished the land because of their sins, and I made it vomit them up. 26-27Now don't do these sickening things that make the land filthy. Instead, obey my laws and teachings. 28Then the land won't become sick of you and vomit you up, just as it did them. 29-30If any of you do these vulgar, disgusting things, you will be unclean and no longer belong to my people. I am the Lord your God, and I forbid you to follow their sickening way of life.