Another Bible Commentary: Leviticus

Priests “protected” the holiness of the Tabernacle/Temple (and protected people from it—touching the wrong objects or attending without proper preparation were dangerous). “Holy” or “sanctified” means godly or set apart in contrast to things for common usage. “Clean” means in a proper, orderly, natural state. God’s solution for sin is neither apologies nor promises to improve, it is blood (Hebrews 9:22). Priests examined the lambs for defects, not the person offering it, and our Lamb is perfect.   

1:2 like Genesis 4:4.

1:3 A whole burnt offering symbolized total devotion to God, reminiscent of Abel’s offering. The burnt, grain, and fellowship offerings are sometimes called “voluntary” in the sense they are not in response to a specific sin, but they are part of the regularly scheduled required meat bribes in the Tabernacle/Temple system. A sacrifice must have a cost, so game and fish weren’t options. Offerings without defects foreshadowed Christ. Also, ranchers only need a few males to sustain a herd, so God’s commands for Old Testament believers gave them fewer mouths to feed. 

1:4 Romans 6:23 says that “the wages of sin is death.”  Sin and guilt offerings (discussed later) represent that price tag; this is more an acknowledgement of the need for substitutionary atonement. 

1:6 See Leviticus 7:8.

1:13 The bronze laver of Exodus 30:18 also had this function in addition to washing priests. Jesus’ baptism as High Priest and Lamb of God has many meanings. 

1:14 There have been hints at the menu of offerings, including Genesis 15:9. 

1:17 As this is a regular, non-sin offering, the closing statement sounds like Exodus 29:18.      

2:1-9 Those who were up to date with their atonement (or “back in fellowship with God” in a way that believers in Christ always are) with the burnt offering (Leviticus 1), etc., could then express gratitude to God with a grain offering. See Genesis 4:3. Cain didn’t come with blood first, and he didn’t bring the “finest” plants, either. 

2:11-12 Wine could be poured out (Leviticus 23:13, foreshadowing Communion), but fermentables (honey led to mead) were not burned. Yeast was associated with fermentation and decay.

2:13 Salt is a preservative. It symbolized permanence. Also, it made the flame yellow.  

3:1 Those who had gotten a foot in the door with God with the first two offerings in Leviticus could share a meal with Him with this offering. In this culture, to eat with someone was a mark of approval. The host provided for and protected guests. People gave offerings, but God provides everything (Deuteronomy 8:18, 1 Corinthians 4:7). God got the fat, and the priests got specific cuts of meat (Leviticus 7:31-35), and Leviticus 7:19 clarifies that the rest of this meat is eaten by the person that offered it (as long as they were ritually clean), allowing them to share a meal with God. With the overlap of sacrificial and dietary requirements, pagans would say that God was on the same diet as the Hebrews. There are a few Bible verses about providing God’s food (i.e. Ezekiel 44:7 in some translations) through offerings, but overall the Book is clear that He has no needs (Acts 17:25) and participates in activities like this for our benefit. 

3:9-10,17 The prohibition of eating fat pertains to visceral fat, etc., and blood is what drains from a slit throat (not myoglobin). Not that you’re under Old Testament food laws, but just for clarity the patriarchs cooking over campfires would not have fretted about a well-marbled medium steak. The same applies throughout i.e. Leviticus 7:25-27.      

4:1 The sin offering is also called the purification offering interchangeably (like after childbirth, etc.). Sin and guilt offerings are called “mandatory” offerings as they were required to amend the relationship with God after sinning and/or doing something that offended holiness. Think of Noah’s purification offering (as the head of the remaining family on behalf of all humanity) to restart the world after the mass deaths in Genesis 8:20 and the similar “new beginnings” behavior in 2 Chronicles 29:21. 

4:2 “unintentionally” See Numbers 15:30-31. Sinning on purpose was treated as blasphemy in practice. There was no offering for that. There was the death penalty or intercession by someone like Moses. Jesus saves us from all our sins (Hebrews 7:25, 1 John 2:1-2). 

4:3 That’s a bigger penalty than for laymen, since the whole community (Leviticus 4:13-14) would pay the same as the priest would.

4:35 Compared to Leviticus 1:17, this closing statement sounds more like the ending to the Golden Calf story (since this offering is in response to a sin). 

5:2 “but then they come to realize” They didn’t wash and wait per Leviticus 11 starting at verse 24. Being “unclean” is not a sin, but Leviticus 15:31, Leviticus 22:3, and Numbers 19 make it clear that failing to failing to address it, remaining unclean, and remaining in the camp of the Lord (especially approaching the Tabernacle/Temple) risked desecrating the Tabernacle/Temple sanctuary – which came with a death sentence. Thanks to Jesus, distinctions like clean/unclean are no longer an issue (Matthew 27:51, John 1:29). 

5:11 Since anointing oil connotes greatness, offerings pertaining to humility or penance lack oil.

5:14-6:7 If an Israelite harmed a neighbor’s body/finances/reputation/relationships/etc., they would pay restitution and give an offering to God as well. Hence, the sin offering that we’ve discussed can function as a restitution to God. Offerings can be paired: sin plus guilt, purification plus burnt, etc. 

6:10-11 Again, one of the purposes of the priestly clothing was to keep the ashes from clinging to them. Nudity isn’t bad, Peter stripped to fish, etc.

6:12-13 God started that fire in Leviticus 9:24. Offerings were only accepted by His grace.

6:26 Hosea 4:8 points out that the more sins the people committed, the better the priests ate. 

7:8 The priest keeps the skin. This is a reminder of how Adam and Eve could not communicate with God in fellowship again until their sin was covered. Their own works (Genesis 3:7) did not work, only God’s provision at the cost of a life (Genesis 3:21) did. 

7:34 Some things were burned to give them to God (smoke rises to the realm of the ethereal), and some things were “waved” at God and then given to His employees. I am reminded of an old joke in which a pastor proposed flinging the contents of the offering plate into the air so God could keep whatever stayed in the air; I assume whatever reached the ground was spent by the pastor on more shoes made from exotic reptiles.

7:37-38 After all this talk of sacrifices, remember that Jesus Christ’s death on the Cross is the only entirely satisfying sacrifice or “hilasterion” or “propitiation” if your pastor is showing off (1 John 2:2, Romans 3:25, Ephesians 5:2). Please read Hebrews 10:1-18 until you can marvel at Jesus like John the Baptist did in John 1:29: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Our “offerings” (What can you give Someone who has everything? Basically, just gratitude) are things like praising God, sharing (Hebrews 13:15-16), and living the good lives He saved us for (Ephesians 2:10, Romans 12:1-2). 

Leviticus 8 through Leviticus 9 fulfills what Exodus 29 prescribed.      

8:6,12 Christ was baptized and publicly acknowledged/anointed by the Holy Spirit      

8:15 See Leviticus 8:23-24.  

8:23-24 Priests are as much Tabernacle/Temple furniture as altars. Also, other commentators say this should remind us to listen, walk, and do right. 

9:24 See Exodus 19:18 note.      

10:1-2 In Exodus 24 starting at verse 9, Nadab and Abihu were among those who ate a meal with God. This time, they didn’t get the sacrifice right. They didn’t use the fire God said to use (Leviticus 6:12-13; it just landed in Leviticus 9:24). Leviticus 10:9-11 suggests they drunkenly forgot what to do (Isaiah 28:7). Biblical condemnations of drunkenness pertain to a) being so drunk you don’t know you’re sinning, b) drinking on the job while functioning as priest, since mixing up the holy and the common was less safe than flying planes drunk, and c) governing while drunk, which added oppressive taxation in an agricultural society to support that expenditure along with the issue of competence mentioned with regard to priests.     

10:6 See Leviticus 21:10-11.

10:7 See Leviticus 21:12.      

10:9-11 See Leviticus 10:1-2 note      

10:19 There is plenty of debate about this one, so it seems to be a special case of Leviticus 21:11 defilement by seeing death while in the holy place and/or Aaron’s sons’ sin pivoting the offering to an inedible scenario more like Leviticus 4:3-12.      

11:2 The Fall warped some animals more than others (Romans 8:19-21). For example, humanity has dominion over animals and predators don’t, so they’re unclean. Death is the result of sin, so scavengers are unclean. Look back to the Creation account: Flying birds were pronounced good, swarming fish tend to be scaled, etc. Light was called good, so nocturnal animals are disorderly and therefore unclean. Crawling on the belly and eating dust were not spoken well of, so those are out. Insects without association with feces or dead things are clean unless they undergo metamorphosis (and therefore do not reproduce according to their own “kind” in a straightforward fashion). The clean/unclean animal distinction isn't part of the New Covenant (Acts 10:9-16), so feel free to enjoy shrimp while reading this. 

11:3 God is the smartest. If it chews cud, it eats plants inedible by humans. Animals with cloven hooves walk land too rocky to plow (see Ezekiel 1:7 for angel feet, too). Following God’s Law kept people from using the little good farmland in hilly Canaan for milk and meat sources that compete with humans for food. 

11:10-12 “Eldritch horror of the deep” is a common feeling when faced with images of deep-sea creatures; not that many seem appetizing. 

11:22 They eat crops, and they get eaten. 

11:25-27 Leviticus 5:2 has the instructions to follow if they forgot to wash and wait.

11:32-38 Nonporous? Wash it. Porous? Get rid of it. Water carries impurity, and moving water carries impurity away. Food/grain is immune unless moistened. 

11:36 Living water remains clean (John 7:37-39). “Living water” is “water that God moves” like a spring or a waterfall.

11:39 Clean animals properly slaughtered with blood/life returned to the dust were okay to touch. Dead unclean animals, otherwise clean animals that died on their own, otherwise clean animals killed improperly with blood left in them, or rotting flesh were not okay to touch. 

11:40 The rules were different for priests (Leviticus 22:8). 

12:1-5 The double waiting period for a daughter has been explained as the difference between bringing a sinner into the world and bringing a sinner into the world that will bring sinners into the world. It could also be viewed as a reduced wait for a son to allow the mother to be present at the circumcision.

12:6,8 “Purification” offering is more appropriate in this instance. 

12:8 Jesus was not born into a rich family (Luke 2:24). 

Leviticus 13 – Since Hansen’s disease aka leprosy progresses too slowly to see the difference in a week, there is a Messianic Jewish idea that this was a pre-Cross (Jesus died for all sins, including these) spiritual punishment for anti-social sins: lies, slander, pride, sexual immorality, and (even truthful) badmouthing like Miriam did in Numbers 12 (lashon hara, or evil tongue). When people (or houses, etc.) had features resembling corpse decomposition (Numbers 12:12), they were considered unclean (like the dead). It gave the offender time away to repent (turn around). In verse 13, some see an analogy to grace under the New Covenant; if a sinner can admit to being no good and therefore totally dependent on the grace of Jesus Christ, they can be restored. Jesus said that words are what defile in Mark 7 and Matthew 15. Jews say gossip kills three people: the person saying it, the person it’s about, and the person who listened to it without insisting it stop. Unless there is some harm to be prevented by speaking, “if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all.” This one’s tricky: Earlier today, someone said something about someone that would have been a great example here, but even leaving out the identity of the gossip’s subject would still be committing this against the people that were gossiping by Jewish reckoning. However, that would make a sticky situation for Moses and the other Bible writers who widely published the sins of others for generations to see. James 1:26 “your religion is useless if you can’t tame your tongue” plus James 3:8 “no one can tame their tongue” means we all need Jesus. Also, no matter what the Word of Faith people or the Jews say, “word cursing” and/or complaining aren’t the issue they say it is, because they’re saying that the divinely inspired (see Hebrews 3:7-11 and Psalm 95:7-11) psalmists messed up badly by complaining a lot. Double-check claims against Scripture and common sense. See also Proverbs 26:2.

14:1-3 God heals; the priest confirms the healing. Christ came to our fallen world (outside the camp) to heal us. 

14:6-7 David’s reference to hyssop in Psalm 51 may compare sin to leprosy. 

14:12 The idea that disease comes from sin comes up frequently in the Bible. God forgives.  Therefore, God heals and gets paid like in Leviticus 15:15. This is why Jesus (in my favorite healing story) says to a paralyzed man in Mark 2:5 “your sins are forgiven”, which enables the man to walk away in Mark 2:12. These offerings in Leviticus 14:12 also compensate God for what He wasn’t getting from them while they were outside the community. 

14:14-17 Doing something resembling their own ordination to a cleansed leper (healed by God) is an object lesson to the priest: “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

14:34 reminds me of Zechariah 5:1-4. 

14:35 It has been said that this mold is like sin in our bodies. This is true in every sense for the unregenerate. Colossians 2:11 says a believer’s inherently sinful nature was cut away at salvation; the reins are cut, and Sin can no longer directly control us in the same way it does the unbeliever. Sin has access (through our bodies) to tempt us (Romans 7) until we get our new bodies (1 Corinthians 15, starting at verse 35) aka glorification. 

14:43-45 Jesus “cleansed” the corrupt Temple early in His ministry in the Gospel of John (John 2:14-16) and late in His ministry in the Synoptic Gospels (Mark 11:15-18, Luke 19:45-47, and Matthew 21:12-17). Then, the Temple came down in 70 AD.

14:47 Creation is defiled (Romans 8:19-21), and we all need Jesus to cleanse us.      

14:52 David’s reference to hyssop in Psalm 51 may compare sin to mold.         

Leviticus 15 – They had to remove death and manifestations thereof before they could kill animals and smear blood on stuff. I say that with a wink; understanding uncleanliness and sin to be contaminants draws a distinction between freshly killed ritually clean animals and other forms of death, disease, corruption, etc. By the time of Christ, a mikveh was an often nude (derived from “bathe his whole body with water”) full immersion for converts (There are some real sticklers for water baptism methods nowadays; it would be amusing if they read history), emission of semen, discharge, menstruation, skin conditions, contact with death, preparation of the red heifer ashes in Numbers 19, priest consecration, etc. John the Baptist offered a baptism/immersion of repentance (analogous to the Essenes’, which was a public declaration of a commitment to follow God’s rules). Jesus required no repentance, but “fulfilled all righteousness” by undergoing John’s baptism to be consecrated as our High Priest and washed as our sacrifice. Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8). The Holy Spirit is received by believing what you heard about Jesus’ death and resurrection (Romans 10:9; Galatians 3:2,5); Jesus prayed to be united with believers in John 17:20-26. The spiritual “dunk” is the one that matters (1 Corinthians 12:13 like Colossians 2:11), regardless of what method, outfit, location, age (the old Christening/Confirmation two-step), etc., a person was moistened. Gentiles in Acts 10:44-48 received the Holy Spirit and therefore salvation (Ephesians 4:30) while still dry. “Do you have Jesus Christ living in you?” is the test (2 Corinthians 13:5, Romans 8:16).

15:13 is for “unusual” discharge in Leviticus 15:2. 

15:15 “Unusual” discharge (still the subject since Leviticus 15:2) is sickness, so God forgives/heals and gets an offering.

15:16-18 I’m about to get gross, weird, and specific about things the Bible gets gross, weird, and specific about. No offering was required for “usual” discharge. This is a normal emission of semen in any context including nocturnal emissions and masturbation: “handling” or “touching” “things that perish with use” (Colossians 2:21-22) cannot be any more tactful concerning erections. Couples aren’t mentioned until Leviticus 15:18. Neighboring nations used semen (even from married couples) to summon rain, so being unclean on account of marital relations is a hedge against temple prostitution and ritual sex. If marital sex is a wash-and-wait, and Paul encouraged that (1 Corinthians 7), then other wash-and-waits are not a problem for the Temple of the Holy Spirit, either. That’s a smaller leap than Paul made in insisting the Galatians remain uncircumcised to fulfill prophecy while the Judaizers clung to Ezekiel 44:7-9. God provides a way out (1 Corinthians 10:13), and certain things are within reach for a reason (1 Corinthians 12:18). (Ladies, the Shulammite in Song of Songs/Solomon 5:5 got out of bed alone with her fingers dripping.) The couples’ context (verse 18) is mentioned later than Leviticus 15:16 because that is the natural order of things for most boys. No one disapproving of seed waste would have told the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13). Also, with nothing said about all the relations with postmenopausal/infertile women like Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth (and John the Baptist was a real stickler for the rules), seed waste aka non-procreative acts including heterosexual relations alluded to in Song of Songs/Solomon (“mouth stuff” and “hand stuff”) are not a problem. A focus on Aristotle’s telos argument (despite Paul’s warnings against philosophy in Colossians 2:8) that the highest purpose of an organ is its only purpose (God disproved that by making us urinate through our members of creation), Rabbinic prohibitions inherited from Christ-denying Pharisees, Greco-Roman philosophical preference for a “real man” being solely a penetrator, and hundreds of years of celibate Church fathers’ writings (which are also unbiblical on many other topics) even led to a few translation problems in English Bibles that we’ll address along the way. I’m not being licentious, I’m insisting on what the text says instead of our accumulated cultural niceties out of concern for a world gone mad from listening to the Accuser. Paul told the Colossians not to fall for “don't touch/handle/taste” as it does nothing about “evil” desires, which would be those in opposition to God’s universal rules from Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20. Celibate priests that obey the modern Pharisee rules who then eventually succumb to the lure of altar boys (Leviticus 18:22) is one example. Priests, teachers, scoutmasters, anyone: If semen poisoning is making you want to sin, get it out on your own and cast it away. Waiting around pent-up and white-knuckling it through life does not historically produce great decisions. I had felt that I was giving too much attention to this topic, but then recently a megachurch pastor that could have used this advice just publicly made us all look like hypocrites again.

15:19-23 Leviticus 17:11 provides context for this. Due to high infant mortality and the need for many sons to farm to support elderly parents, women were married shortly after puberty and kept pregnant or breastfeeding (up to age 3, even today in countries with bad water) constantly until menopause. Periods were actually pretty rare.

15:24 This is if it’s accidental. The intentional case is covered in Leviticus 18:19,29. The casual contact rules (chairs, handshakes, etc.) went away with the Temple system, but the death penalty for period sex in Leviticus 18 places it among the sins of Gentile nations (still under the covenant God made with everyone since Noah) that resulted in their expulsion even apart from the Law of Moses. This would lump it in with the “sexual immorality” prohibited in Acts 15. 

15:28-30 refers to the sufferer of the unusual, lengthy bleeding in verse 25. See Leviticus 15:15 note. 

16:6 If the Levitical priesthood became utterly corrupt, a 1 Samuel 3:14 scenario could cause the Day of Atonement to fail. I’m getting ahead of myself, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a Nazirite (Numbers 6:8, Luke 1:15) living in the wilderness (off the cursed ground—Leviticus 18:25) providing an alternative pathway to holiness (Matthew 3:1-11), or even better, a priest of the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:11-18) with an offering of more interest to God (Hebrews 9:1 through Hebrews 10:18) than bulls and goats?

16:9 A goat was slain like Abel’s offering and like Abel. Jesus died.     

16:10 A goat was exiled like Cain. Eventually, they started making sure it fell off a cliff for fear it would return and bring the sin back. Jesus left our world when He ascended and He, as our High Priest (Hebrews 2:17) and our Sacrifice, takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). 

16:11-13 “Aaron, you smell like a dude. Apologize for your presence. Also, no peeking.”     

16:16 Emphasis: “whatever their sins have been.”     

16:21 Emphasis: “all the wickedness and rebellion…all their sins.”     

16:22 Emphasis: “all their sins.”     

16:27 like Hebrews 13:11-13.     

16:29, 31 This is the one day of fasting per year required in the Law of Moses. Pharisees started fasting twice a week for bonus points. God expressed His opinion about that line of thinking in Zechariah 7. Fasting is a symbolic near death that was thought to bring people closer to the “other side”, a voluntary state of weakness from which to ask for God’s help, and a commitment to focus (since dining was the primary form of entertainment). It may be helpful to some believers sometimes, but it is not a magic spell to control God. 

16:30, 33-34 Emphasis: “atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you…you will be clean from all your sins.” Individual Israelites gave sin and guilt offerings all the time, but as you will see as we comb through more of the Law there is no way they covered all sins. God graciously granted a mechanism for an annual national clean slate and un-defilement of the Tabernacle/Temple. The Jews got annual forgiveness, Jesus offers once-for-all forgiveness (Hebrews 10:14), and trying to get forgiven sin-by-sin or sacrificing animals in your backyard are both ways to fall short of what we have in Christ. You can regret messing up, give thanks for how He fixed you, and move forward.

17:3-9 Things that also apply to foreigners living in Israel, especially things that are credited with getting the Canaanites removed, look a lot like the Noahide Laws (Leviticus 17 through Leviticus 24 and Deuteronomy 18 provide plenty of examples) and look a lot like the remaining rules for Gentile Christians in Acts 15:20.

17:10,12-14 See Acts 15:29. 

17:11 See Hebrews 9:22. “Humanity”, “blood”, and “dirt” sound similar in Hebrew.      

17:15-16 says “foreigners” so it might make us think of a universal rule for humanity, but it’s a wash-and-wait instead of death or blood sacrifice. Hebrews 9:22 says that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins; the requirement of death or sacrifice is a good field test to distinguish sin from instructions like “be fruitful and multiply” that sinless Jesus, Paul, etc., did not follow. Being unclean wasn’t a sin, but bringing unclean to the Tabernacle/Temple was. Those structures are gone now, and so is our concern for ritual cleanliness.     

18:3 If God was willing to do to Egypt and Canaan what the Old Testament in English said He did for this stuff, I doubt He would want His children to act this way, either. Egypt has been historically implicated in intrafamily marriage (ironic, given the Genesis 12:18-19 note) and idolatry; Canaan has been historically implicated in temple prostitution, idolatry, adultery, bestiality, incest, male-male buggery or anal penetration, child sacrifice, etc. Deuteronomy 18:9-13 also includes idolatry under other names (going to something other than God for its control over your circumstances, particularly with sacrifice and/or ritual) such as drug-induced religious hallucinations, divination, casting spells, and trying to get information from the dead instead of praying to God. Worshiping the sun (like in Ezekiel 8:16) and other heavenly bodies is also an issue. Therefore (not to get legalistic), (in addition to period sex and the forbidden relationships we will soon cover) Ouija, Tarot, EVP (as a method of getting information), crystals for magical use, most abortions, tying magic charms or strings to yourself, horoscopes, spells, seances, wishing on stars, hard drug abuse, etc., are also probably still things to avoid. 

18:5 See Proverbs 19:16. The principle of pikuach nefesh can be summarized as “save lives”, and therefore “lives are greater than laws” (with a few exceptions that cause death or national exile—murder, idolatry, and sexual immorality—as seen in Ezekiel 33:26). The religious leaders reasoned that if the point of keeping the Law was to live, then laws could safely (or even had to) be broken if lives were in jeopardy. This is how people who lie to killers (Rahab, the Hebrew midwives, etc.) end up getting rewarded by the God who says liars go in the fire. No one but Jesus ever kept the Law of Moses. Some of the 613 commands contradicted each other at times. There was much discussion of which commandments "weighed" more than others, or how to prioritize what to obey when. You can see this in Jesus' discussion of priests circumcising on the Sabbath, in His mention of David and his men eating the showbread, Jesus admonishing the tithing Pharisees about neglecting the weightier matters (justice, mercy, and faithfulness), and in the questions of which commands were the greatest (Love of God and neighbor). 

18:6 Adam and Eve didn’t get to pick their partners. Genesis 2:24 rules out parental incest, but Adam’s children in Genesis 5:4 were still stuck marrying siblings. Your likely aversion to that thought has been called the Westermarck effect; even the unregenerate Gentile conscience still has traces of what God intended per Romans 2:14-15. Everyone since Adam’s grandchildren (including the reboot after the Flood with Noah’s children) have been able to get by with the cousins-are-okay-to-marry/uncles-and-nieces-can-marry exceptions in this chapter (but obey your local laws per Romans 13). Issues in Genesis 20:12 and Exodus 6:20 are discussed in those notes. Also, “uncovering nakedness” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse.  Private bathing (private anything, really) is a recent innovation (the invention of the chimney in the Middle Ages was a leap forward for this), and diaper changing would be impossible according to the plain English of some translations. Obeying Numbers 31:17-18 involved checking the “private parts” of every female Midianite and implies no wrongdoing on the part of any person involved in the inspections. As wearing belts/loincloths counts as being clothed (Genesis 3:21), uncovering nakedness carries a connotation of exposing an orifice to use. 

18:8 Paul’s application of this in 1 Corinthians 5 means this version of the rules (whether they were different for earlier Bible characters) is applicable as a definition for sexual immorality in Acts 15:29. The Greek word porneia which is sometimes translated as fornication (disproven by all the allowable unwed intercourse we’ve seen so far) or prostitution (the Corinthian man wasn’t hiring his stepmother to sleep with him) is better understood as “sexual immorality” in the context of the Bible. When the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek, there was a problem. The Greeks lacked a word for the concept back then because their own standards of sexual morality were very different. The word porneia approximately means “things hookers do”, and here’s why: in Greco-Roman culture at the time, men were allowed one wife (it kept the inheritance simple), but the husbands could go out and get access to any orifice from any gender of slave, prostitute, temple prostitute, etc. There was no judgment baked into the word, it just meant “stuff not going on with the respected, noble-born mother of your children”. No one thought Paul was saying that the incestuous man in 1 Corinthians 5 was renting his (step)mother, so Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 spell out exactly what porneia means for both Jewish and Gentile believers.  

18:9 Pharaoh knew this one in Genesis 12:18-19, lending credence to the brand of righteousness attributed to Noah being a universal standard for all humanity.

18:16 while he is alive. It was actually mandatory in Levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5-10). 

18:17 People who say there is no command against having sex with your own daughter miss this verse. 

18:18 God, who does not sin (Leviticus 19:1-2), is portrayed as married to sisters in Jeremiah 3:8 and Ezekiel 23. Therefore, sororal polygamy (and polygamy in general) cannot be the sin intended here. A better way to read the rule was “do not take your wife’s sister as a wife to vex her”; they were actually to take their wives’ feelings into consideration and not marry rival sisters that would cause fights. We are called to live in peace (1 Corinthians 7:15). Minimizing the grumpiness level in your tent is a good thing.

18:20 Marriage portrays Christ’s relationship to the Church. He can always add more believers, but we cannot have Him and Baal. Adultery, properly defined, always involves a married woman. Infidelity can be unloving and therefore wrong, but precise definitions make the Bible clearer. Even Gentile kings in Genesis knew better than to approach another man’s wife.     

18:21 While Molech is named, I wouldn’t risk Chemosh or Nergal either. My critics will be tempted to accuse me of building a Pharisee fence even if they have to side with child-sacrificing idol worshipers to do so.

18:22-23 To anyone inclined to feel attacked by what I’m writing, there are many books available today that take the stance that homosexuality of any kind is not sinful, and your enemies will not read those books. A work that takes the ancient tome seriously about one specific activity between men (which in that historical and cultural context would have usually involved things like pagan rituals, pederasty, displays of dominance akin to prison rape, etc.) that also takes the ancient tome seriously about the necessity of kindness for everyone might get through to those who claim to take the ancient tome seriously. The Bible is silent about lesbianism. Male bestiality and female bestiality are clearly prohibited, and so is male-male anal penetration. Compare Romans 1:26-27. “Knowing” a spouse seems to always precede the birth of a child in Scripture; His primary concern throughout Leviticus 18 is the act that propagates His image. Various warm-up activities are spoken of approvingly in a premarital context in Song of Songs/Solomon as we will discuss, therefore they are not sex. The remaining possible way to “lay” with a man as one could with a woman is anally. 1 Kings 1:1-4 makes it clear that anything short of penile penetration is not in focus when discussing “laying” with someone.  Leviticus 18:22 prohibits penetrating a male in the way that the original hearers “would with a woman”. Think of the ancient world; the vagina can expand and self-lubricate in ways that the anus cannot. Since males lack vaginas, the assumption that straight couples were engaged in what is termed anal sex (which was done to avoid pregnancy in the days before reliable birth control methods by those who lacked the option of constantly making sons to use for farm labor) seems to be baked into Romans 1:26-27. That passage alludes to that being “unnatural”, but the Law of Moses acknowledges the idiosyncrasies of fallen humanity as Jesus alluded to (in Matthew 19) in His discussion of Deuteronomy 24 divorces against the ideal one-flesh pairing of Genesis 2:24 from before the Fall. The sin of Adam is not called the sin of Eve because Adam was in charge (Genesis 3:16). “Ruling over” another who is equally designed to plant seed and sweat from effort so to speak blurs a designation (penetrator/penetratee), as does intercourse between man and animal (Leviticus 18:22-23). (As for lesbianism and Genesis 3:16’s assertion that the desires of women will be for their husbands, the prevalence of what is termed “lesbian bed death” and often rape-like impregnation dreams featuring decidedly unfeminine men invites further discussion.) Paul mentioned the not-illegal male-female context to arrive at the behavior among males that is prohibited to all humanity in the Leviticus lists (as the Canaanites were punished for it apart from the Law). Efforts to expand this section beyond a penis owner’s manual ignore the different roles God gave men and women and the precision of His instructions (even prohibiting boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk in three different verses). Please see Leviticus 20:13 notes. 

Also, it’s a shame I have to write this to Christians, but nothing here grants a license to be unloving. Have you obeyed Leviticus 19:18 perfectly, especially while dealing with “sinners”?  Because the Law gets us all, one way or another. Be nice to everyone. Everyone can believe in Jesus to be saved. Feed and heal people without regard to such matters. Don’t give people any static on account of this particular sin that you wouldn’t give to any other believing sinner e.g. a blackout drunk. And if a customer wants, for example, your bakery to bake them a cake, I would recommend providing great service and not making a big deal out of anything short of asking you to commit buggery. The slaves that Paul told to obey their earthly masters had to cater all manner of pagan/sinful parties. Church discipline and leadership are other matters, but we are not the world police (1 Corinthians 5:12). This isn’t about secular matters like who can claim their friend-closer-than-a-brother on their taxes, adopt an unwanted child, visit each other in the hospital, hold hands skipping through a meadow, etc. Again, the specific action of buggery is in focus, not anyone’s personality, fondness for the movie Clue, sibilant “s” pronunciations, etc. 

18:24-30 Leviticus 18 has been about behavior God does not approve of in humans, regardless of whether they are under the Law of Moses or in what century they were born. See Acts 15:29. 

Leviticus 19 – I commend you for making it this far. You have made it through sacrificial regulations and gross sex stuff with which the original intended audience had trouble. Why do I say they did? Because Leviticus 19 contains some commentary about the Ten Commandments that was referenced by Jesus in His lecture to Jews about how they weren’t doing Judaism correctly: the Sermon on the Mount.

19:1-2 God does not sin, and holiness is imitation of God (Matthew 5:48, Luke 6:36, Ephesians 5:1-2). 

19:3-4 Straight from the Ten Commandments. The “metal” of the idols is emphasized here; humans were tempted to make representations of immortal divine beings from gold that doesn’t tarnish. Additionally, divine beings look like they are made of metal (Daniel 10:5-6, Revelation 1:14-16).

19:5 Jesus's explanation of how to do this in Matthew 5:23-24 is informed by Sirach 28. Sirach aka Ecclesiasticus (not to be confused with Ecclesiastes) is a book of wisdom that is not considered canonical by Protestants. It is like a commentary on the Law of Moses and Proverbs. Some of it sounds like what Jesus taught, and some of it sounds like what the Pharisees taught that Jesus reacted to. Therefore, I'm not saying the whole book is inspired, but Sirach 28 (and while we’re at it Tobit 4) will give you a contemporary Jewish context for the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Plain, and the book of James. 

19:6 Here’s another "day, next day, third day" construction that seems useful for those who support the Good Friday/Easter Sunday resurrection timeline as accounting for three whole days in the grave. 

19:8 Reminder: Exodus 31:14 suggests that this "cut off" seen throughout Leviticus is a death sentence. 

19:9 See Deuteronomy 10:14 and Psalm 24:1 

19:10 Notice that the poor still had the dignity of working for themselves to eat.

19:11 The Eddie Guerrero verse, for those that get the reference. It’s more commentary on the Ten Commandments. 

19:12-13 This part explains that the lying mentioned in verse 11 is blasphemy by misusing the Name in a false oath and that the deception in verse 11 is theft through fraud. Christian magicians that witness with their art, etc., are fine. Day laborers lived hand to mouth; not paying them immediately for services rendered was theft. 

19:14 See Exodus 4:11. The God who made humanity in His own image is not ugly nor a bad artist. Respecting His art is respecting your Maker (Leviticus 19:18). 

19:15 See Leviticus 19:18. 

19:16 Don't maliciously spread secrets (Proverbs 11:13) or bear false witness, which endangers lives. Don’t endanger lives in general (Leviticus 19:18). Deuteronomy 22:8 reaffirms the principle of safety, but dangerous professions like cutting down trees (Deuteronomy 19:5) and the military were still legal. 

19:17 See Matthew 5:22. Ironically, it is this frank rebuking of sin that brands Christians as hateful. The Old Covenant people tried to keep each other from sinning so they wouldn't lose the land. Now, we are not trying to clean up the behavior of the world (1 Corinthians 5:12); we are trying to give life to a dead world through the Gospel (Mark 16:15-16). 

19:18 See Matthew 5:43-48. Our respect for God overflows into respect for those He made in His image. The Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12) was here in the Law of Moses the whole time. Jesus holds this up as one of the top two commandments in the Law (as a part of a discussion of how to rank what to obey and when, as we saw with pikuach nefesh) in Matthew 22:39. No one sincerely obeying Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 ever broke any of the Ten Commandments, and only Jesus never sinned. “Love” is more like “behave loyally toward” than a fuzzy emotion here. Don’t cheat people; help them if you can (like you would want if you were in their shoes). Apart from not hating people, revenge belongs to God (Deuteronomy 32:35, Leviticus 19:18, Obadiah 15). Jesus said to get naked in court (Matthew 5:40) before thinking of revenge in a manner similar to his hand/eye cultural hyperbole that would have been more familiar to His original hearers. Jesus didn’t “raise the bar” in the Sermon on the Mount (because that’s illegal, as we’ll see later); he reminded the audience of what even the most scrupulous Pharisees were lacking that was already in the Law. Keeping this commandment perfectly is an already impossibly high bar that reveals our need for Christ’s grace. 

I have worked in a few settings in the medical field. Some see healthcare providers as heroes on Jesus’ side in the war against the ill effects of the fallen world, and others see healthcare providers as vultures profiting from the way that world works. It’s easy to be prideful when you can say “I save babies” if you are asked what you do for a living. My coworkers and I handled the weirdest cases and the sickest patients in the state, and we treated the patients who could not pay just as well as those who could. What did I want for that? What did we deserve? A cookie? The impossible Law of Moses said we were supposed to do that: “Don’t stand by the blood of your brother” (Leviticus 19:16), “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), etc. Even worse, treating the poor and the rich differently is prohibited (Leviticus 19:15), so the spirit of the Old Covenant would demand that we give away our time, energy, medications, etc. for free to all who asked (Matthew 5:42, Luke 6:30). After all, charging one person for what another gets for free would be unfair. I guess we could have become carpenters to feed ourselves in order to support that endeavor; Paul was a tentmaker, after all. You see where this is going. That would work until a homeless guy couldn’t pay for a house; we’d have to slave away providing medical care and housing for free for everyone until we died of exhaustion just based on those few rules from Leviticus. If we’d tried to take the Sabbath off, Jesus’ interpretation of the Law of Moses would have sent us back to work. After all, if circumcision (a surgery) can be performed on the Sabbath, then other forms of health care are proper as well (John 7:23). Who is capable of working all the time (John 5:17) and pouring Himself out to save others (Philippians 2:7-8)? Who alone fulfills the Law of Moses (Matthew 5:17)? The Great Physician, Jesus Christ. Thankfully, He’s also a Carpenter (John 14:1-3). The purpose of The Law of Moses is to silence us and to make us see that He is God and we are not (Romans 3:19-20). Under the New Covenant, our source of righteousness is not our behavior; it’s our Savior (Ephesians 2:8-9). 

19:19 The Israelites were to be separate from the other nations, particularly by their obedience to God. They are told to keep certain categories separate. Some think this verse bans mating a horse and a donkey to make a mule (which is sterile), but their repeated use by mostly righteous people in the Bible suggests a prohibition of pagan animal bestiality attempts to breed a chimera (lion/goat/snake, for example), with horses and donkeys being the same "kind" of animal on the Ark without meshing with our modern notions of species being defined by the ability to produce fertile offspring. Skipping the advantages gained from planting two crops together (nitrogen fixation, etc.) meant that their good harvests were clearly a gift from God. Israel was meant to show the world about God.

19:20-22 There is an awkward sentence construction in most modern translations; this is about having sex with another man's concubine. Betrothed is as good as married for free women with regard to the adultery laws, but slaves cannot consent by definition. Wives are free and responsible, and were therefore stoned to death for adultery. 

19:23-25 He had to remind them of the forbidden fruit (Genesis 2:17), of course.

19:26 I mentioned the Deuteronomy 18 list of occult practices when we discussed the sins of the Canaanites not suitable for godly people in any place and time. 

19:27 provided a distinction from coiffed gender-bending pagan priests. Also, Israelites walked around wearing reminders to obey Leviticus 19:9. 

19:28 Now, there’s a pastor out there with this verse tattooed on himself in Hebrew as a witnessing tool about how Christ is the end of the Law for believers (Romans 10:4). Rebekah’s nose ring in Genesis 24, the frequent mentions of earrings, and the awl ceremony for lifelong servants mean not all piercing is prohibited; Leviticus 19:28 appears to be aimed at pagan mourning practices. 

19:29 Notice she’s not punished. A father could, by modern reckoning, sell her to one husband. Turning out a girl with a future is not a good imitation of our Heavenly Father. Some rabbis have interpreted this verse to be about failing to arrange a marriage, but sticking with the text what is prohibited is “making” a daughter into a prostitute so the land is thusly “filled with” wickedness, a non-functional society in which every woman is an ATM. It would have been easier to say “No Whores Allowed” if that were what He intended, but other than this and a few other rules like the one about priests’ daughters (Leviticus 21:9) not engaging in prostitution (which would have too closely resembled illegal temple prostitution), we’re looking at a regulated legal activity. The Food and Drug Administration enforces rules pertaining to food and drugs, but food and drugs may be obtained legally. There were always castoffs and Gentiles doing gray-area activities that fit into the cultural boundaries seen in Song of Songs/Solomon, Proverbs 6:26, etc. Two whores wouldn’t have asked for a public trial in the godly early days of Solomon about that dead baby (1 Kings 3) if they were worried for their lives. I say this not to encourage men to explore new hobbies, but to comfort anyone who has ever been trafficked or done a little of this or that to feed themselves or their children. Life did not get harder under Grace: we didn’t start with shellfish avoidance under the Law and eat fewer things under Grace, and we didn’t start with one Sabbath under the Law and have to keep two under Grace. If the Law of Moses that we cannot keep (Acts 15:10) is lenient about something, why are we as a Church particularly judgmental about it, especially former practitioners (Matthew 21:31-32)? 

19:31 like Deuteronomy 18:9-13. 

19:32 Teachers sat, and students stood (Matthew 5:1-2).      

19:33-34 “in your land” means the Canaanites still had to go and aren’t the source of a contradiction. Treating foreigners “as” well as native-born is not treating them better than native-born: if 2 Thessalonians 3:10 says you have to earn food, and Romans 13 says you have to obey your local laws, then it is not unloving to insist they do likewise. 

19:35-36 No stealing. 

19:37 See Matthew 5:48 again, as we did in Leviticus 19:1-2. 

Leviticus 20 – Based on the treatment of involuntary adultery in Deuteronomy 22:25-27, there is room to spare unwilling participants punishment. 

20:2-5 It gets a death sentence (Hebrews 9:22) therefore it’s sin; it applies to foreigners too, so the Noahide Laws say idolatry and murder are illegal for everyone. I’m being silly and pedantic, but God treats certain sexual practices that are lauded by most of the population of my nation as seriously as this. 

20:6 “Anyone” I’ve emphasized the sinfulness of serious involvement with the occult even for people under the New Covenant a few times now.

20:9 “Anyone” (Gentiles, too) because the Laws of Noah commanded establishment of and obedience to human government, and the family was the basic unit of government in the ancient world.

20:10 Therefore, ask yourself where the man was in John 8.

20:11 This is the relationship Paul freaks out about in 1 Corinthians 5 in a Gentile congregation, so you know some of this stuff still applies. We don’t throw rocks anymore (John 8), but those people were asked to stop attending church until they stopped doing this. Paul didn’t ask if they really loved each other, he didn’t offer to marry them or have the wedding reception at the church, and he didn’t say for the congregation to stop judging them and make the man their pastor. 

20:12 Since Judah had no intention of marrying Tamar to his remaining son at the time (Genesis 38:11, 14), and she had no living husband, their one-time experience of Hittite Levirate marriage squeaks by. Shelah is not mentioned in the genealogies of Matthew or Luke. 

20:13 Much has been made of the different words for “man” here: “ish” (grown manly soldier-type man) and “zakar” (males in general).  Some try to make this about child molestation, but killing the victim seems out of character for the God of Exodus 22:22 “don’t mistreat orphans” and Deuteronomy 22:25-27 “don’t stone rape victims”. Therefore, man is made in the image of God, and the popular notion that a natural penetrator being anally violated partially un-mans him flies close to what is intended here. This seems to be behind Paul pointing out the active and passive participants in male homosexual anal penetration in 1 Corinthians 6:9. Again, only men are mentioned here, and men and women with animals are specified in verses 15 and 16, so lesbianism is not addressed here. Homosexuality as an orientation isn’t either; the prohibition is at the level of specific acts between men.

Christians’ concern with the sinfulness of male-male anal/penile congress is properly with regard only to the behavior of professing Christians; 1 Corinthians 5:12 reminds us that we are not in the business of cleaning up the behavior of unbelievers. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 doesn't tell us whom we can safely be unloving to, who can love whom, whom God doesn't love and grieve for, whom can be discriminated against, who cannot adopt society's unwanted extra babies, etc. Romans 14:4, James 4:11-12, and James 5:9 provide warnings to those who would slander other believers. Condemning anyone is above my pay grade, but the church discipline outlined in Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5 and the rebuking of sinning elders in 1 Timothy 5:20 and of wrong teachers in Titus 1:13 suggest that there is a difference between judging personal slights and using the precedent of what God has already judged within the church.  In 1 John 3:10, we find: “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister." 1 John 5:1 tells us “everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves his child as well.” The only thing Paul preached to pagan Corinthians at first was Christ crucified, not a bunch of behavior improvement modules. However, within the church that formed there, Paul addressed behavior inconsistent with God's prior judgments. “God loves these people, and so do we,” is a great starting place. From there, encourage living out the lives God saved us for. To briefly address common objections, 1) Paul was likely writing against buggery as part of pagan worship. However, some Christian couple got a book deal for having sex every day for a year, but period sex has plenty of verses against it, too, and there are no caveats about whether it is done next to an idol. 2) Accusations of picking and choosing verses are made: I heard two pastors denounce gays while wearing hats in the pulpit, which violates 1 Corinthians 11. The things that still apply are the things that always applied, even to Gentiles, lest there be any jokes about eating shrimp. There may be allegations that the early church “changed” the Law to allow the Gentiles in, skipping over the distinctions we will discuss in Acts 15 and Acts 21. 3) There are frequent arguments of changing interpretations over time: Christians abolished slavery (a form of slavery with illegal aspects per several Old Testament verses, but many modern working arrangements would still be construed as slavery by an ancient observer), the roles of women have changed (but good luck getting all of the denominations to agree on that one), etc. 4) “Judge not” will probably be shouted out of context, and Matthew 25’s Sheep and Goats will be offered as the end-all-be-all concerning the Last Judgment, with only kindness as the criteria and no Law-keeping mentioned. (Matthew 25 is part of a larger rant against the religious and political leadership of Jesus’ day. There are three categories present: the sheep, the goats – which Zechariah 10:2-3 in the King James Version defines as the bad shepherds, and finally Jesus’ brethren. We are with Him. The bad shepherds are out because of their treatment of us, and the Good Shepherd is in.) Romans 10 says we are not to make judgments about who's going to Heaven or not. God wants to save everyone. Love everyone and intercede for everyone with God like Moses. 

20:14 In the same vein as our discussion of the ages of the participants in verse 13, this was a man marrying a grown woman and then also marrying her mother at the same time (with the likely accompanying tag-team encounters). God didn’t tell them to burn little girls and their mothers because some pervert couldn’t control himself (by analogy from Deuteronomy 22:25-27). Also, it is likely anyone under this sentence would have been stoned to death and then burned like in Joshua 7:15, 25. Since Deuteronomy 27:23 doesn’t seem to be cursed beyond the rest of the accursed behaviors mentioned near that verse, it appears that kareth/spiritual extinction was carried out through the Joshua 7 procedure and that the Leviticus 20 punishments are more uniform than it would seem from some of the literal English translations. Genesis 38:24 may be an early reference to this type of punishment. 

20:15-16 Anything that turns your stomach in the Bible was actually done by enough people (frequently in the context of pagan worship) that it merited both God’s and a human writer’s time to warn against it. You may be familiar with Greek myths in which Zeus disguised himself as a swan in order to get laid. Pagans reenacted such things at church. Still, it doesn’t specify “for an idol”, and neither do the restrictions on period sex or buggery. Yes, there was plenty of anal penetration in the context of pagan worship, but it’s not like Moses’ God would have approved as long as it was exclusive to one partner and in a secular context. 

20:17 We’ve discussed how Abe might have still been lying to killers in Genesis 20:12. 

20:18 Compare with Leviticus 15:24. Logically, since Exodus 31:14 implies a death sentence with the phrase “cut off” the earlier case was an accident whereas this is intentional per Numbers 15:30-31. 

20:20 We’ve discussed how the Septuagint says Amram and Jochebed were actually cousins in Exodus 6:20. Leviticus 18:29 includes this among the acts for which the Exodus 31:14 death penalty was to be applied. Therefore, dying childless could mean they’d be executed before they spawned. Or, since it is an unlawful marriage, Deuteronomy 23:2 prohibits ten generations of their offspring from being part of Israel. 

20:21 Everything we just discussed about applying verse 20 applies here, too. (That is, if it is a living brother. Deuteronomy 25:5-10 Levirate marriage is a special case.) This is the scenario John the Baptist (Mark 6:18) was ultimately beheaded for criticizing. Since the setting for Mark 10:1-12 was in Herod Antipas’ jurisdiction, when Jesus was asked about the legality of Hillelite “any-cause” divorces based on Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (excluding divorces based on other passages like Exodus 21 in the Jewish canon law that Jesus endorsed in Matthew 23:1-3), Jesus wasn’t just being asked whether He agreed with Shammai or Hillel; they were trying to get Him killed for publicly criticizing their ruler’s sexual immorality.

20:22,26 See Matthew 5:48. Being as holy as God and keeping all the decrees is a tall order.      

20:23-27 Don’t act like a Canaanite. Israel ate a different diet to be distinct from nations that did the things for which Sodom burned, etc. as a part of their special calling to introduce the world to God. Eat bacon-wrapped shrimp if you like while enjoying the New Covenant, fellows, but stay away from other dudes, their wives, incest, animals, mediums, etc. 

20:24 “milk and honey” Plentiful agriculture and forage opportunities.      

20:25 Emphasizing “for you” means Israel specifically. See Acts 10.      

21:6,8 This image of God eating echoed in Ezekiel 44 is balanced with His lack of needs in Psalm 50:12 and Acts 17:25.

21:7 Priests were called to a higher standard. Widows were still okay. A certain type (Pharisees) that uses the “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6) to extend priestly rules to everyone forgets to own nothing (Deuteronomy 18). 

21:9 This is exclusive to priests. Deuteronomy 23:18 makes it clear that God does not want to be worshiped via temple prostitution like a pagan deity. (It is not distaste for prostitution, per se, because in Isaiah 23:15-18, God pimps out Tyre and gives His people the money.) This act looks too much like temple hooking, and a leader is supposed to be able to manage his own family (1 Timothy 3:4-5). 

21:10-12 Seeing a dead human body contaminates a high priest. Other people had to get clean even to get near where he had to stay, so he had to stay clean. 

21:13-15 Not even a widow is good enough for a high priest (Leviticus 21:7 note), and our High Priest Jesus Christ is utterly sinless (John 8:46). Why? Instead of mere prudery, it is because maintaining the bloodline mattered. At this point, the genealogy of the high priest mattered and in Ezekiel 44:10-16 it got even more specific. The certainty this required resulted in the fathers of virgin girls being able to demand high bride prices.

21:16-23 It may seem awfully superficial to us to require handsome waiters at Chez God, but the deeper truth is that since we’re one with the Perfect Lamb and Perfect High Priest (John 17:23) all of this stuff gets fixed when we get our new bodies (1 John 3:2, 1 Corinthians 15). The healings during Jesus’ earthly ministry were just a taste. 

22:14 The same 20% restitution required for stealing from a person (Leviticus 6:5) applied.      

22:17-25 The offerings had to be as free of defects as the priests in Leviticus 21:16-23, and our Lamb is perfect (John 8:46). The “on your behalf” bit meant He thought highly of the Israelites, too, by demanding quality substitutes for them.

22:28 The God who cares for the poor includes a stop-loss for small herds. 

23:5-8 Sometimes, the Festival of Unleavened Bread week and Passover are just called Passover (Numbers 28:16-24). This is how Jesus and His disciples ate “Passover” (or erev Pesach, depending on whom you ask) together, and yet Jesus died as the Passover lambs were being slain (John 19:14) and the Jewish leaders were anxious about being able to eat the Passover (John 18:28). The Sabbaths on days 1 and 7 will come in handy later for establishing a timeline of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

23:10-11 We’ve discussed Passover/The Crucifixion, so here’s Resurrection Sunday (1 Corinthians 15:20-23). 

23:13 Notice that the offering consisted of a perfect lamb, bread, and wine. At Communion, we remember the Lamb’s sacrifice with bread and wine. 

23:15-16 Pentecost, which was also when the Law of Moses being given at Sinai was traditionally celebrated.

23:17 See John 12:24 for symbolism of the Church.

I will briefly address the Jewish holidays to provide context to the stories that follow in the Bible. Hanukkah was added as a winter holiday during the time between the Old and New Testaments. 

23:24 Rosh Hashanah/Jewish New Year/Trumpets – The fall rains came after typically dry summers; this festival marked the beginning of the agricultural cycle. This trumpet blast is a wake-up call to repent. The shofar is a ram’s horn, like what would have been available after Genesis 22, for example. Other trumpet references include but are not limited to Exodus 19:13, Leviticus 25:9, Joshua 6:16, Isaiah 27:13, Amos 3:6, Zephaniah 1:14-16, 1 Thessalonians 4:16, Revelation 8:1-2, etc.  My point is the signal can be for celebration, battle, joyous returns home, fearful judgment on the Day of the Lord, etc. Context can tell you which trumpets refer to each other. 

23:27 Yom Kippur/Day of Atonement – the only required fast for the Old Covenant. 

23:34 Sukkot/Tabernacles/Booths – First came the trumpet blast, then 9 days to Yom Kippur, then 5 more days, then they lived in makeshift shelters for a week.

23:36 Numbers 29 says what they offered.

23:40 These branches combined to form a lulav. Shaking a palm frond sounds like the rain for which they prayed and gave thanks to God. This festival also came to feature a water offering poured from the Pool of Siloam as seen in John 7. Shaking palm fronds and singing Psalm 118:25-27 are behaviors you may remember from Palm Sunday. Doing this Sukkot stuff on Passover week for Jesus was due to Him being the Messiah: “Save us!” Also, they used “luxuriant” trees, so it’s also a reminder of humanity’s brief time in Eden. Both then and in the wilderness, God distinctly provided their sustenance. Temporary shelters are a reminder that Heaven is home, not this world.

24:5-9 Bread of the Presence: Grain came from ground that God gave Israel (and God made humans from dirt, too). A symbol of God as Creator, Provider, and Preserver (supernaturally fresh all week in air) to Israel. Also a symbol of Israel offering (themselves as) massive bread (about 7 pounds of flour to make each loaf) to God like hospitable Abe in perpetual table fellowship (provision and protection are part of the host/guest relationship) with Him.

24:10-11 “Egypt” and “profane” were mentioned back in Leviticus 22:31-33. Like in Leviticus 10, another son messes with the holiness, which did not bode well for Israel’s future staying separate from the pagan world. Throughout Leviticus, priests cared for the holiness of the Tabernacle. In this anecdote, the nation cared for the holiness of the Name of God. Murder and blasphemy both attack God’s Image. 

24:14 The witnesses’ ears are contaminated. They lay hands on him to a) confirm they heard blasphemy and b) transfer the sin back, similar to touching an offering.   

24:17,21 Only God’s Image is worth God’s Image. This is about murder; soldiers, execution mobs, etc., were still legal.

24:19-20 Prevents disproportionate retribution.

25:4-7 The Lord owns the land. Humanity was made from dirt, so dirt gets to rest too. Sodium from irrigation builds up over time, as well, as experienced by the Sumerians when their civilization ended. 

25:9 In Exodus 19, a horn honked on the way back to the slaves’ homeland. See 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 and 1 Corinthians 15:52 for what we’ll hear when it’s time to go home.

25:10 This preserves God’s tribal boundaries and keeps the promise of Genesis 13:15 and Genesis 17:8. 

25:13 like the Exile and Return.

25:23 Heaven is home; we’re just passing through. Deuteronomy frequently mentions caring for the outsiders partly as a way to remember this and to remember their time in Egypt.

25:29-31 The focus of the promise is land of agricultural value (“milk and honey”).

25:35-55 Compare with Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15.

25:35-36 “so they can continue to live among you”: The poor provide opportunities to score blessings from God. He repays debts others do not.  He also gives double for trouble.  Additionally, He will burn down this whole reality and replace it with a better one. 

25:39-43 See Exodus 21. This just means to treat them better than Gentile slaves. Leviticus 25:53 clarifies.

25:40 Still not a handout.

25:41 See Exodus 21:3 for clarification.

25:46 See Exodus 21:4; they could even breed more slaves. 

25:55 The Israelites went from being slaves in Egypt to being God’s slaves. This is the context of why John 8:33 was funny to the original audience. 

Leviticus 26 – Time for blessings and curses. The two trees from the Garden figuratively stand before them again. What are the odds they obey this time?

26:13 Not all pride is evil. Remember to Whom you belong.

26:18,21,23-24,27-28 The sevenfold punishments of Revelation are a callback to this. See also Genesis 4:15.

26:25-26 The “sword, famine, and pestilence” Jeremiah kept mentioning. 

26:31 Another “arson, murder, and jaywalking” instance.

26:33 Exile: The Anti-Jubilee.

26:29-39 Spoiler alert: All of this happened.

26:40-42,45 Did they repent? Ezekiel 36:20-23 suggests they were brought back to prevent further profaning of the Name of God among the nations by their conduct abroad. This explains why they were still under the thumb of foreign oppressors even after the Return.

27:1-8 If, for example, another Hannah (1 Samuel 1:22) changed her mind…

27:10 No “backsies”. Thanks to Christ, our holiness is irrevocable. 

27:30-33 Tithes were agricultural taxes in the Old Testament. A shepherd would send a flock through a narrow gate and mark every tenth animal rather than letting the rancher pick the worst ten percent. Matthew 17:24-26 says that we children of God don’t pay taxes to our Father like subjects do.

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