Reading: Leviticus 21-23, Psalm 37

Getting tired of Leviticus? I certainly understand if you are, but the good news is we are almost through it! Something you may have noticed is that the instructions in the second half of the book (everything after chapter 16) seem very familiar, as if you had just read them a few days ago. Well, there is a reason for that- they are very similar instructions. The book of Leviticus uses a tactic often seen in ancient literature in which the main point of the document is located in the middle, with mirrored commands on either side. Leviticus opened with commands about appropriate methods for offerings, followed by the consecration of the priests, and then purity codes. Yesterday we read more of the purity code, and here we have a behavioral code for the priests followed by regulations about the quality of offerings which are brought to them. The rest of the book will reemphasize key commands, and finally close with promises for both obedience and disobedience of these rules.

So is there anything new in the behavioral codes for the priests? Other than additional details about how they are to deal with things that would make them unclean under the purity codes (basically they just can’t do them), what is happening here is a reaffirmation of a central point of the book: make a distinction between the common and the holy. The priests are dedicated to God’s service, and they are to exemplify holiness. Their behavior is not like the behavior of other people, even other people of Israel, even other Levites. There are some things here which would seem to be cruel to us. The disabled and the deformed cannot serve as priests. The sick and diseased cannot serve. Divorce is a disqualification. The priests cannot mourn the deaths of friends or distant family, and the high priest cannot go into mourning at all for any reason. Isn’t that kind of harsh?

Let’s think back for a minute about what the tabernacle is. The whole point of the tabernacle, the description and building of which occupies half of the book of Exodus, is to create a place where God and humans can interact. A different kind of place, a new place, an image of the new creation inside of the old one. The priests, who are the only people who can safely enter the tabernacle, are to be like that place- as devoid of the human problem and it’s consequences as may be. A deformed human is not to serve in this image of the new creation because there will be no deformed humans in the in it’s fulfillment. There is to be no mourning among them because when God fully fulfills his promise to Abraham there will be no mourning. The priests are not to marry divorced people because relationships will not fracture and end when humans occupy their rightful place in God’s world. The daily offerings and the show bread in the tabernacle ensure the priests will never be hungry, because in the new world no one will ever go hungry.

God is not interested in giving the people of Israel a truncated hope by normalizing death, deformity, deprivation, or disease. He is not willing to let them hold out hope for anything less than a perfect world. The priests are living out an image of that other world, one that doesn’t exist yet, but will. They are the future pulled into the present (or the past, from our perspective).

The restated commands about offerings are of a similar type. These are not to be the animals or grains no one wanted anyway, they are to be, like the priests, images of perfection, or as close to it as possible.

The behaviors of the priests and the quality of the offerings are signs of hope, and following right along those lines are the commands about festivals. I think it’s fair to say most people do not think of Leviticus as a guide to throwing a good party, but they haven’t paid enough attention to chapter 23. First off, the sabbath is recalled: the people of Israel are to rest on the seventh day. A day off every week. This wasn’t standard in the ancient world, or even in the modern world until very, very recently. Second, God proclaims six different mandatory vacations. Yes, they involve worship and sacrifice, but it should not be forgotten that each one was also a community event, a celebration, and a feast. The sixth one, the feast of “booths” (it just means tents) is literally a week long camping party. The entire nation is to camp out in tents and potluck. Sounds like a fine time to me.

The down slope of the book of Leviticus is all about hope. The world that the tabernacle promises is not a slight reduction in the consequences of our human problem, but a total repudiation and restoration of it. The life of the priests is to stand as an example of what could be, and the life of the people of Israel is to be marked by celebrations of what will be.