Leviticus 20 prescribes death penalties for violations listed in the previous chapter. The Targum Jonathan specifies four distinct methods of execution that the Hebrew Bible leaves vague—turning general death sentences into a precise penal code.
Stoning—"the casting of stones"—applies to Molech worship, cursing parents, and certain sexual transgressions. The adulterer faces a different fate: "strangulation, with the hard towel in the tender part." A man who takes both a mother and daughter is "burned with fire with melted lead in their mouth." Bestiality warrants execution "with spikes." Each crime has its calibrated punishment, and the Targum maps them systematically.
The chapter's treatment of incest between siblings contains a remarkable historical argument. God explains: "I showed mercy with the first ones, on behalf of the peopling of the world by them, while as yet I had not promulgated the law." Before the Torah was given, sibling relations were tolerated because the human population needed to grow. After Sinai, the same act became a capital offense. The Targum acknowledges that biblical patriarchs lived under different rules—and that the law changed.
Molech worship gets expanded punishment: God will "cause a reverse, to make prosperity to cease" with the offender. If the community looks away, God targets the offender's entire family "who protect him." Complicity in idolatry is itself punishable.
The divination ban mentions the same "bone of Jeddua" from the previous chapter, alongside those who "seek to bring up the dead." Necromancy carries a death sentence.
The chapter closes with dietary law connected to holiness: "you shall make distinction between the animal which is fit to be eaten, and that which it is improper to eat." Kashrut is not a separate topic—it is the practical expression of being "separated from the nations to be worshippers before Me."