As the result of these human abominations of sexual vileness
2. THE EFFECTS OF SEXUAL UNCLEANNESS As the result of these human abominations of sexual vileness even '"'the land is defiled'. If such wickedness as these be practised and connived at, the land is therefore made unfit to have God's Tabernacle in it. The pure and Holy God will withdraw the tokens of His gracious presence from it. It is also rendered unwholesome to the inhabitants who are hereby infected with sin, and exposed to plagues. It is really nauseous and loathsome to all good men in it, as the wickedness of Sodom was to the soul of righteous Lot.
These have been the abominations of the former inhabitants. Therefore it was necessary that the laws should be made, in the same way that antidotes and preservatives against plague are needed when we go into an infected place. They should not practise any such things because the nations that had practised them now lay under the curse of God and were shortly to fall by the sword of Israel. They knew how odious those people had made themselves who wallowed in this mire, and how they stank in the nostrils of all good men. Shall, then, a people sanctified and dignified as Israel was make themselves thus vile? When we observe how ill sin looks in others, we should use that as an argument with ourselves.
For these and like sins the Canaanites were to be destroyed. The tremendous judgments of God executed on those who are daringly profane and atheistical are intended as a warning to those who profess religion. The ruin of the Canaanites is an admonition to Israelites not to do like them. Nay, to show that not only the Creator is provoked, but the creation burdened by such abominations as these, it is added, ''The land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants." The very ground they went upon did, as it were, groan under them, and was sick of them, and not easy till it had discharged itself of these enemies of the Lord (Isa. i. 24).
Wicked Israelites are as abominable to God as wicked Canaanites, and more so, and will as soon be spued out, or sooner. Such a warning as this here given to the Israelites is given by the apostle to Gentile converts with reference to the rejected Jews, in whose room they are substituted (Rom. xi. 19). They must take heed of falling "by the same example of unbelief'? (Heb.
ive rT)