Leviticus 19:29 is a very pointed and straightforward verse, but it is a verse with a complicated relevance in our own contemporary societies: “Do not prostitute your daughter, to cause her to be a harlot, lest the land fall into harlotry, and the land become full of wickedness.” If we are sentimental sort of people, without a great deal of experience in the world, we might assume that parents would naturally have a tender regard for the virtue and honor of their daughters, and want what was best for their children. This is not always the case, sadly, as can be seen in personal experience as well as found by research. As much as we might wish for parents to show respect for the honor of their children, all too often this is not the case.

In fact, this particular command is part of the flip side of the command to honor your father and mother. The honor children are commanded to give to their parents can easily become corrupted if parents are wicked and exploitative of their children. If parents demand honor and respect from their children but do not show honor and respect towards those children, it creates resentment and leads those children to have a great deal of difficulty in their own relationships and in their own view of authorities in general. The way that our parents treat us sets patterns for the way in which we will tend to deal with authorities in general. All too often authorities in this world demand respect and honor from those whom they abuse and exploit. Likewise, all too often the young demand respect and honor without being willing to give it. It is important for us to understand that the demand for honor and respect is a mutual obligation for all people in any relationship, and not merely what must be owed to the greater from the lesser.

There is an intriguing and often little-noticed connection between Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 19:29. Leviticus 18, of course, is most notable for being a lengthy catalog of improper sexual relations. Most of these forbidden relationships, it should be noted, take place in the context of a family. Practices like a father and a son enjoying the conjugal relations of the same woman, or for a man to marry two sisters (as Jacob did) create a great deal of tension and stress within families within and between generations. More to the point, it is strictly forbidden for relationships between parents and children and stepparents and stepchildren, as well as between nephews and nieces and their uncles and aunts. Although it is a squeamish and uncomfortable area to deal with, the fact is that before girls are prostituted by their parents, they are usually abused by their relatives.

And it is this which brings the problem full circle. Just as parents are to receive honor and respect from their children so that children can learn respect for authority in the house and then be able to learn how to respect authorities in general and be suitable to be authorities themselves someday. However, when parents exploit and abuse their children, they often teach the wrong lessons about God, including a belief that God is unjust and cruel Himself, and that He does not protect the innocent from those who should be their protectors and defenders. These are evil lessons to learn, and hard lessons to unlearn. When parents violate their sacred responsibility to raise up godly children and instruct them in God’s ways, but instead exploit them for their own selfish lusts and for the greed that profits from the sexual lusts of others, then those children are corrupted and so are many others who learn to treat children and teens as objects for the gratification of desire, and not as young people worthy of honor and respect. Those lessons, once learned, are hard to unlearn, and hard to uproot from a society. This is, of course, why God forbids that sort of behavior from the start of child abuse to the end of prostituting children for profit. Let us heed the warning and guard our conduct accordingly.