Biblical Theology III: Leviticus

Leviticus continues the teaching of Exodus in revealing God’s character, how He must be worshiped, and who can, and cannot, have a relationship with God as a member of His kingdom. The book is filled with the daily rituals of the people and priests concerning everything from what they plant and eat to what they do when bodily fluids get on them or in the camp. Holy days are meant to remember the days when God delivered them from death; and the sacrifices are set in place to cleanse them from ritual impurity in order to preserve them as holy in light of God’s deliverance of them. All of these rituals, holy days, sacrifices, etc. are meant to communicate the theology and ethics of the book through vivid, living pictures. If Exodus is the Old Testament book of justification, Leviticus is the Old Testament book of sanctification.

Theology: The book teaches that God is Holy (distinct from other gods), and therefore, His people must be holy as well (distinct from other people). Those who are not clean cannot enter His presence and be a part of His kingdom. Those who would be a part of His kingdom must be cleansed and remain clean. This will differentiate them from the world as God is differentiated from it in His purity. His wrath is upon the unclean/unholy and His favor and acceptance upon the clean/holy. “'By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored'” (Lev 10:3). The book sets up spheres of life and holiness represented by the camp, the tabernacle/holy place, and the holiest place within the tabernacle, which is where God’s presence is represented by the ark containing the covenant, i.e., the law. Outside the camp is the wilderness, which represents disorder/chaos/death, and everything unclean is sent there. Once made clean by virtue of being healed or bathed, but always accompanied by an animal sacrifice, the individual must be declared clean by a priest, and then may reenter the camp, which represents the world of the living and life itself in the presence of God. God at the center represents that God is life Himself, and the closer one gets to Him, the closer to life one gets. The further from Him one gets, the further from life he is.

Ethics: As God is holy, His people are to be holy (19:2; 20:7, 26), and to treat God as holy. To treat God as holy is to obey His commands in their specific details, not wavering from them or improvising in any way. The purpose of the rituals that keep everything meticulously separated is to teach that the moral ideas of the culture are not to be blended with God’s commands. His people are to refrain completely from those cultural practices that are in conflict with what God has commanded. The central focus of this holiness is in the area of sexuality. As God made humans to take upon the role of the image in their being creational, Leviticus 18, which is the highlighted portion of the Holiness Code in the book, God commands His people to be creational in their sexuality as evidence that they follow the Creator, as opposed to the pagans who evidence their judgment in their sexuality, and were kicked out the of the land for it. The creation principle in Chapter 18 surrounds children and how the sexual activity of two people will effect a possible child that is either not born due to the nature of the anti-creational act, or is killed shortly after being conceived or born due to the act. Like the pictures presented by the spheres of the camp and the identification of what is clean and unclean, those who are morally unclean are removed from the camp (i.e., “cut off from the people”) and enter into the land of death via execution. The rest of the code reaffirms that there is to be no mixture of pagan practices with the religion of YHWH, and to do so is to reject YHWH, and therefore, to reject life itself.