SEV Biblia, Chapter 17:7
Y nunca más sacrificarán sus sacrificios a los demonios, tras de los cuales fornican; tendrán esto por estatuto perpetuo por sus edades.
Clarke's Bible Commentary - Leviticus 17:7
Verse 7. They shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils] They shall not sacrifice µyry[Ťl lasseirim, to the hairy ones, to goats. The famous heathen god, Pan, was represented as having the posteriors, horns, and ears of a goat; and the Mendesians, a people of Egypt, had a deity which they worshipped under this form. Herodotus says that all goats were worshipped in Egypt, but the he-goat particularly. It appears also that the different ape and monkey species were objects of superstitious worship; and from these sprang, not only Mendes and Jupiter Ammon, who was worshipped under the figure of a ram, but also Pan and the Sileni, with the innumerable herd of those imaginary beings, satyrs, dryads, hamadryads, &c. &c., all woodland gods, and held in veneration among the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. After whom they have gone a whoring.] Though this term is frequently used to express idolatry, yet we are not to suppose that it is not to be taken in a literal sense in many places in Scripture, even where it is used in connection with idolatrous acts of worship. It is well known that Baal-Peor and Ashtaroth were worshipped with unclean rites; and that public prostitution formed a grand part of the worship of many deities among the Egyptians, Moabites, Canaanites, Greeks, and Romans. The great god of the two latter nations, Jupiter, was represented as the general corrupter of women; and of Venus, Flora, Priapus, and others, it is needless to speak. That there was public prostitution in the patriarchal times, see on "Gen. xxxviii. 21". And that there was public prostitution of women to goats in Egypt, see Herodotus, lib. ii., c. 46, p.
108, edit. Gale, who gives a case of this abominable kind that took place in Egypt while he was in that country. See also many examples in Bochart, vol. ii., col. 641; and see the note on "chap. xx. 16".
John Gill's Bible Commentary
Ver. 7. And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils , etc.] As it seems they had done, which was monstrously shocking, and especially by a people that had the knowledge of the true God. Such shocking idolatry has been committed, and still is among the Indians, both East and West: when Columbus discovered Hispaniola, and entered it, he found the inhabitants worshippers of images they called Zemes, which were in the likeness of painted devils, which they took to be the mediators and messengers of the great God, the only one, eternal, omnipotent, and invisible f599 ; and so at Calecut and Pego in the East Indies, and in other parts thereof, they sacrifice to the devil f600 : one can hardly think the Israelites would give into such gross idolatry as this; wherefore by “devils” may be meant idols in general; for if men do not worship God and Christ, let them worship what they will, it is only worshipping devils, ( 1 Corinthians 10:20 Revelation 9:20); and so the calves of Jeroboam are called devils, ( Chronicles 11:15); hence the golden calf also, the Israelites worshipped but lately in the wilderness, might go by the same name; to which sense is the Targum of Jonathan, “and they shall not offer again their sacrifices to idols, which are like to devils.”
The word here used signifies “goats”, and these creatures were worshipped by the Egyptians, and so might be by the Israelites, while among them; this is asserted by several writers. Diodorus Siculus says f601 , they deified the goat, as the Grecians did Priapus, and for the same reason; and that the Pans and the Satyrs were had in honour by men on the same account; and Herodotus observes, that the Egyptians paint and engrave Pan as the Greeks do, with the face and thighs of a goat, and therefore do not kill a goat, because the Mendesians reckon Pan among the gods; and of the Mendesians he says, that they worship goats, and the he goats rather than the she goats; wherefore in the Egyptian language both Pan and a goat are called Mendes; and Strabo reports of Mendes, that there Pan and the goat are worshipped: if these sort of creatures were worshipped by the Egyptians in the times of Moses, which is to be questioned, the Israelites might be supposed to have followed them in it; but if that be true, which Maimonides says of the Zabii, a set of idolaters among the Chaldeans, and other people, long before the times of Moses, that some of them worshipped devils, whom they supposed to be in the form of goats, the Israelites might have given in to this idolatry from them, and be the occasion of this prohibition: after whom they have gone a whoring ; idolatry being a spiritual adultery, a forsaking God, who had taken them into a conjugal relation, and been as an husband to them, and cleaving to idols, which were as paramours; (see Jeremiah 31:32 Ezekiel 16:26); this shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations : not only this of not sacrificing to devils, but all before commanded, particularly that they should bring their sacrifices to the priest, at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
Matthew Henry Commentary
Verses 10-16 - Here is a confirmation of the law against eating blood. They must ea no blood. But this law was ceremonial, and is now no longer in force the coming of the substance does away the shadow. The blood of beast is no longer the ransom, but Christ's blood only; therefore there is not now the reason for abstaining there then was. The blood is no allowed for the nourishment of our bodies; it is no longer appointed to make an atonement for the soul. Now the blood of Christ makes atonemen really and effectually; to that, therefore, we must have regard, an not consider it as a common thing, or treat it with indifference __________________________________________________________________
Original Hebrew
ולא 3808 יזבחו 2076 עוד 5750 את 853 זבחיהם 2077 לשׂעירם 8163 אשׁר 834 הם 1992 זנים 2181 אחריהם 310 חקת 2708 עולם 5769 תהיה 1961 זאת 2063 להם 1992 לדרתם׃ 1755
