📖 Biblical Definition
Sexual relations between persons related within prohibited degrees of kinship. The comprehensive biblical list is in Leviticus 18:6-18 and 20:11-21, with reinforcing material in Deut 22:30 and 27:20-23. The prohibited relations include: parent and child, sibling and sibling, half-siblings, aunt and nephew / uncle and niece, parent-in-law and child-in-law, mother and stepmother, and others. The Hebrew idiom is galloth ervah — uncovering nakedness — emphasizing that the offense violates a covenantal-honor relationship that ought to clothe rather than expose. NT continuation: 1 Corinthians 5 deals with the church-tolerated case of a man with his father's wife, calling for the most severe church discipline.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
Sexual relations within prohibited kinship degrees; comprehensive list in Lev 18:6-18 and 20:11-21; NT case 1 Cor 5.
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INCEST, n. Latin incestus. Sexual relations between persons related within prohibited degrees of kinship. The biblical lists (Lev 18:6-18; 20:11-21; Deut 22:30; 27:20-23) cover: parent-child, sibling-sibling, half-siblings, aunt-nephew, uncle-niece, parent-in-law and child-in-law, stepparent and stepchild, and adjacent relations. Hebrew idiom: galloth ervah (uncovering nakedness) — emphasizing that the offense violates a covenantal-honor relationship that should clothe rather than expose. NT continuation: 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 disciplines a man taking his father's wife, with the most severe church-discipline language (deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved).
📖 Key Scripture
Leviticus 18:6 — "None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD."
Leviticus 20:17 — "And if a man shall take his sister, his father's daughter, or his mother's daughter, and see her nakedness, and she see his nakedness; it is a wicked thing."
1 Corinthians 5:1-5 — "It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife... To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
The Lev 18 list of prohibited unions has largely been retained in Western law — but the cultural normalization of any consenting adults erodes the principle behind it.
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Most modern legal codes retain incest prohibitions. The cultural challenge is upstream: the principle on which Lev 18 rests — that some unions are inherently disordered regardless of consent because they violate covenantal-honor relations between persons God has placed in particular roles — has been increasingly eroded by the any consenting adults frame that processed homosexual acts from criminal to celebrated. The same frame, applied consistently, has no resistance to brother-sister or parent-adult-child cases. The principled boundary is at the upstream commitment to creation order and covenantal honor, not at the downstream legal-code retention.
Biblical disposition: the prohibitions are not arbitrary cultural taboo. They protect the household's covenantal-honor architecture — the relations that should clothe and protect (father-daughter, brother-sister) cannot also be sexual. 1 Corinthians 5 shows what church discipline looks like when the category is violated even in a less-extreme form (a man with his father's wife): the most severe procedure Scripture knows. The Christian recovers the principle (covenantal honor in the household) and lets the prohibitions follow naturally.
🔗 Greek & Hebrew Roots
Latin incestus; Hebrew galloth ervah; Lev 18:6-18, 20:11-21.
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['Hebrew', 'H1540', 'galah', 'to uncover (nakedness)']
['Hebrew', 'H6172', 'ervah', 'nakedness']
['Greek', 'G4202', 'porneia', 'fornication (1 Cor 5:1)']
Usage
"The principle is covenantal honor in the household, not arbitrary taboo."
"1 Corinthians 5 shows the church-discipline gravity of the category."
"The consenting adults frame has no principled stopping place."