ESTUDIO DEL VERSÍCULO
Leviticus 20:7-8 — Sanctify Yourselves, for I Am the Lord
God commands Israel to sanctify themselves and keep his statutes, declaring himself both their God and the one who sanctifies them.
Escritura
- 7.Santificaos, pues, y sed santos, porque yo Jehová soy vuestro Dios.Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy; for I am Jehovah your God.
- 8.Y guardad mis estatutos, y ponedlos por obra. Yo Jehová que os santifico.And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am Jehovah who sanctifieth you.
Qué significa este pasaje
Leviticus 20:7-8 opens with a call for the people to sanctify themselves and be holy, and the ground given is God's own identity: "for I am Jehovah your God." The verse reads as a brief summons rising out of the warnings of the preceding verses about Molech worship and turning to mediums (20:1-6). Holiness is not presented as an optional virtue but as the proper response to being in covenant relationship with the Lord.
Verse 8 then pairs the human action with the divine action: "Ye shall keep my statutes, and do them" stands alongside "I am Jehovah who sanctifieth you." The people are commanded to keep and do the statutes, while God himself is named as the one who sanctifies. The two clauses belong together: obedience is the human side of a holiness that God himself initiates and carries out.
The phrase "I am Jehovah who sanctifieth you" places God's name at the center of the verse. Because the Lord is who he is, and because he has bound himself to Israel as their God, he is also the one who sets them apart. Sanctification, in the grammar of these two verses, is grounded in God's self-disclosure and carried out by God himself, with the people called to correspond to it by keeping his statutes.
Contexto
In Leviticus 20, verses 7-8 sit between warnings against Molech worship and spiritism (20:1-6) and a series of capital penalties for sexual and family offenses (20:9-21). The chapter closes by restating the demand to keep all statutes and ordinances, and again ties Israel's holiness to the Lord's act of separating them from the peoples (20:22-26), so the language of 20:7-8 is echoed across the chapter.
The curated note for verse 7 highlights that holiness is God's own action, sanctifying the people from within. This frames 20:7-8 not as a self-help ethic but as a call to match what God is already doing. The repeated identification formula "I am Jehovah" in 7-8 is also picked up later in the chapter at 20:24 and 20:26, reinforcing that the same God who calls for holiness is the God who sets Israel apart.
Preguntas frecuentes
What does "sanctify yourselves" mean in Leviticus 20:7?
In the verse, sanctifying oneself means setting oneself apart in obedience to the Lord, here in contrast to the Molech worship and spiritism warned against in the preceding verses. The verse pairs this self-setting-apart with God's own self-identification as "Jehovah your God," so the human act answers the divine identity.
How are verses 7 and 8 related?
Verse 7 calls the people to sanctify themselves and be holy, grounded in God being their God. Verse 8 calls them to keep and do his statutes, grounded in God being the one who sanctifies them. The two verses pair human obedience with the divine act of sanctification, presenting them as two sides of the same call.
Does this passage teach that people make themselves holy on their own?
The passage pairs the command to sanctify oneself with the declaration "I am Jehovah who sanctifieth you." The initiative and the act of sanctification are attributed to God, while the people are called to keep and do his statutes. The curated note for the verse makes this point directly: holiness is God's own work, sanctifying the people from within, with human obedience corresponding to that divine action.