Month: February 2020

Week 6 Leviticus 14-Numbers 2

Leviticus 16 talks about the ceremony called the Day of Atonement – a big, annual, public event that involved everyone.
Atone isn’t a trendy word. Not a Top 1000 word in the Hat. The dictionary says it means the same as reconciliation.
At one. If two people are not at one, then it’s not until they reconcile that they become at one.
Atonement – at-one-ment – is an OT word.
Atone, atoned, atonement, atoning – that group of words is found about 93 times in the OT; about 66 times in Leviticus-Numbers. About 0 times in the NT.
When I bring it home, personalize it, I think of atonement this way. There are two players. There’s the Lord and there’s me. And the two of us are at-two-ment (being at loggerheads with the Lord is the sorry foundation of the relationship, it’s the key thing).
And there’s only one thing that can make me at one. That, unfortunately, is that something has to die.
Something has to die for me. That’s what I’m seeing as I read about animal sacrifices. An animal, something subbing in for me, can stand in my place. It can die for me. It’s either that or else I die, all alone and at two.
At-one-ment necessitates blood.

Note: the word counts are mine, so don’t take them to the bank.

Week 6 Leviticus 14-Numbers

About 80% of Leviticus is legal-religious directions and practices.
So after reading the absorbing (and unnerving) story of Aaron’s sons I’m not surprised to land in five chapters of what’s clean and what isn’t clean.
I decided to read 11-15 all at once: there are lists of animals that can or can’t be eaten; there is uncleanness related to childbirth, and uncleanness related to seminal discharges. In between there’s a long section on leprosy. Maybe not Top-100 reading, but pretty manageable.
The big idea that’s staring right at me is this: being clean is important (I ran the numbers: there’s about 60 references to cleanness and more than 100 to uncleanness in these five chapters – 1 reference every 1.25 verses).
What do I make of it?
I think there are two answers: nothing much and something.
I don’t know anyone who says that after sexual intercourse a contemporary man and woman have become ritually unclean. So in one sense I disregard these rules. There’s really nothing much to them for me.
But Leviticus says that there’s a why-do-I-do-it behind the what-do-I-do. The author quotes the Lord: for I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy.
Only two verses out of 200. But they link cleanness with the holy.
So even if there’s nothing much here for me, there is something.

Note: quote is from Leviticus 11:44-45 (NASB version)

Week 5 Exodus 33-Leviticus 13

In the sequel to the deaths of Nadab & Abihu two things stand out.
First, Aaron isn’t allowed to take the day off to grieve his sons. Reason? He’s right in the middle of a ceremonial procedure that’s serious enough that walking out would have been his very last act.
The idea seems to be that the Lord is in solemn earnest about what happens in the sanctuary. He’s prescribed what’s to be done. The priests are to do exactly that – accurately, precisely, completely. No kidding around.
The second thing is that Aaron’s two remaining boys – Eleazar & Ithamar – make a huge blunder in sacrificing the goat (sure, it was a mistake, but now what’s going to happen?) Moses is all over them for the gaff. In self-defense Aaron says: I just lost two of my sons. What if I had eaten the sacrifice instead of burning it? Would the Lord have approved?
Not the best defense, I guess. But the feeling is: don’t my circumstances count for anything? And I guess they do. Moses (and the Lord) cut him some slack.
So two men didn’t conform, and died.
And two men didn’t conform, and didn’t die.
It looks like Eleazar & Ithamar made a mistake; it looks like Nadab & Abihu didn’t. I’m left with this: religious conformity is super important; and also, there’s more to ritual exactitude than ritual exactitude.

Note: Aaron’s exact words to Moses are in Leviticus 10:19.

Week 5 Exodus 33-Leviticus 13

Reading Leviticus 1-9 is like standing on a moving walkway, humming a lullaby as I move along in a state of low-energy, non-urgent mental locomotion. Then I lurch off the walkway as I bump into Nadab & Abihu.
The two priests had just received all of the Directions for Priests in chapter 8. But they decided to modify the rules. Miraculous fire had already come from the Lord to burn the sacrificial offering, and now more miraculous fire came from the Lord to incinerate the brothers.
I’ve already read a couple of other cases in the bible where a person commits an offence and is punished, and sometimes I have trouble fitting the two together.
I look at the crime and think: this is what I’d do.
Then the bible does something different, maybe quite a bit different.
So then I’m left asking: who’s right? The bible says something. I don’t much like it. So who gets the deciding vote when it comes to my bible likes and dislikes?
In the case of Nadab and Abihu I’m personally inclined to think that what they did was not a capital offense. But then in fact they did die for what they’d done, so it actually was a capital crime.
Which means the Lord was right.
Which means I don’t necessarily like what that means for me.

Notes: the story of Nadab & Abihu is in Leviticus 10 (and see the run-up in 9:22-24).

Week 5  Exodus 33-Leviticus 13

Before I’ve taken a second breath Leviticus is into fire and wood and leaven and entrails and bulls and altar – the whats and how-tos of sacrifice. 
So it’s very fortunate I’m reminded right away that something else is going on. There is why.
Q: why does a person bring a sacrifice?
A: so he can be accepted before the Lord.
I need to keep that in mind: the sacrificer doesn’t sacrifice because that’s the rules. He sacrifices because he’s not acceptable.
He needs to re-establish his intangible, elusive state of acceptability before the Lord.
Behind his what do I sacrifice is his how do I become acceptable again?
The energy that drives sacrifice is the problem of unacceptability. I need to keep that in mind.

Note: quotation is from Leviticus 1:3 (NASB version).
Comment: my reading plan tells me to read three or four chapters a day. It’s a day-in-day-out plan, a daily-equalization scheme. It’s a good plan but I have to remember that the bible isn’t split up like that.
I was reminded of that today. Leviticus has a heading at the top of page 145 that says I’ll be reading about burnt offerings. I turn the pages: grain offerings in chapter 2, peace offerings in 3, sin offerings in 4 and 5, guilt offerings in 5 and 6. Six chapters on offerings.
It would probably make good sense to read all of them together (maybe 7 as well), read them as a unit. But as always, there’s the question of time.