Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance. As God is no respecter of persons, and as He will assuredly visit His own people with the same punishment which He inflicted upon the former occupants of the laud, the Israelites are to take special care to keep inviolate His ordinances.
Commit not any one of these abominable customs, which were committed before you. Better, Do not any one of these abominable statutes which were done, as the Authorised Version translates the word in Deuteronomy 6:24; Deuteronomy 16:12; Deuteronomy 26:16. These abominations were not practised simply as customs, but were legally enacted as statutes of the land, and formed part of their religious institutions (see Leviticus 18:3). A similar state of degeneracy is described by Isaiah, who tells us that the Divine statutes, which is the same word used in the passage before us, were changed. By deviating here from the usual rendering of this phrase the Authorised Version mars the import of the passage.
I am the Lord your God. — This is the declaration with which this group of laws was introduced. Its repetition at the end imparts peculiar solemnity to these enactments. (See Leviticus 18:1.)