Comentário sobre Levítico 18:28

ולא תקיא הארץ אתכם THAT THE LAND VOMIT NOT YOU OUT — A parable! This may be compared to the case of a prince (i. e. a sensitive, refined person) to whom one gives a disgusting thing to eat which he cannot retain on his stomach but vomits it out thus Eretz-Yisrael is unable to retain sinners on its soil (Sifra, Kedoshim, Chapter 12 14). The Targum renders it by: ולא תרוקן a term for ״emptying out״ — it (the earth) empties itself of them.

ולא תקיא הארץ...כאשר קאה את הגוי, and by abstaining from these abominations the land will not spit you out eventually (for other sins) in the same absolute manner in which the people presently in that land are being disgorged by it.

ולא תקיא הארץ אתכם…כאשו קאה, "so that the land will not spew you out as it spewed out, etc." The Torah was not content with the statement in verse 25 that the land had already spewed out its inhabitants on account of their sins. It stresses the urgency of the matter much as what has been described in Torat Kohanim about the patient who receives a visit from a doctor who warns him not to eat certain things. This is followed by another doctor who warns the same patient that if he fails to heed his warning he would die just as another patient who had failed to heed the warning had died already. The patient takes the second warning more seriously than the first warning. Our verse may be viewed as the second warning.

ולא תקיא הארץ אתכם, “so that the land will not vomit you, etc.” This verse belongs to the one following it reminding the Israelites that the former inhabitants had already been disgorged by this land. The Torah wishes to emphasize that the Israelites would not only be disgorged by the land if they failed to observe the laws of עריות, family purity, but they would be subject to the karet penalty in addition.

So is the Land of Israel: It cannot sustain [sinners]. Because the plain reading of the verse implies that the land will not expel Israel even if they defile it; as it expelled the nation that defiled it. But if so, what threat is this to them that they should keep the laws and statutes? Therefore, he brings the parable of the king’s son. I.e., you will be like the king’s son who vomits immediately if he eats something disgusting because he is sensitive. So with you, if you defile the land, it will expel you immediately and you will not last many days on the land, like the nation before you that lasted may days on the land even though they did all these abominations. However, you it will expel immediately if you do these abominations.

ולא תקיא הארץ אתכם, “and the land will not spew you out.” If you do violate My commandments, not only will the land vomit you, but many of the sins you will become guilty of will carry the additional penalty of severing your souls from the Jewish people and their potentially eternal afterlife.

כאשר קאה, “as it had already vomited;”we find here that the same land had already once spewed out its former inhabitants. The word קאה in the masculine mode suddenly, [as compared with תקיא at the beginning of this verse, Ed.] reminds us of a previous time when the Torah used it in the masculine mode in connection with the noun ארץ, which is usually a feminine noun. The other time it was described as performing something in the masculine mode was in Genesis 13,6 when the land of Canaan was described as incapable of supporting both the herds and flocks of Avraham and his nephew Lot, as they had become too numerous. Our author quotes several other examples of this as in: Isaiah 9,18, Zecharyah 14,10, and Genesis 29,6.