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Leviticus 20 · a question people ask

What does it mean to be "cut off"?

In the text

The chapter uses the words in two ways. Three times the LORD says he will do it himself: "I also will set my face against that person, and will cut him off from among his people" (20:3), and again in 20:5 and 20:6. Twice it is said of people who do wrong: "They shall be cut off in the sight of the children of their people" (20:17), and "Both of them shall be cut off from among their people" (20:18). The chapter doesn't explain what being cut off involved. In 20:2-3 it stands beside the death penalty, as something the LORD does: the people of the land are to stone the man (20:2), and the LORD will "cut him off from among his people" (20:3).

The verses

““‘If a man takes his sister—his father’s daughter, or his mother’s daughter—and sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness, it is a shameful thing. They shall be cut off in the sight of the children of their people. He has uncovered his sister’s nakedness. He shall bear his iniquity. “‘If a man lies with a woman having her monthly period, and uncovers her nakedness, he has made her fountain naked, and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood. Both of them shall be cut off from among their people.”
Leviticus 20:17-18 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Leviticus 20

Leviticus 20: Set apart to be mine

Leviticus 20 sets penalties for many of the wrongs chapter 18 forbade, and frames them with holiness: "be holy" and "I am the LORD who sanctifies you" (20:7-8), and "You shall be holy to me… that you should be mine" (20:26). Even the people who look away from a wrong are answered: "then I will set my face against that man" (20:5).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions