After the death of two of Aaron’s sons, Moses was angry with Aaron’s two remaining sons for not following eating the goat of the sin offering as the rules for the sin offering instructed them to do (Aaron was also guilty of this, but Moses appears to have confronted his sons, not Aaron). Aaron responded that the loss of two of his sons justified he and his remaining sons not celebrating the sin offering by eating the portions intended for them. Moses found this answer satisfactory. This shows us that we need to make allowances for special circumstances.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 8-9.
Over the last few years I have had a growing awareness that the times of offering sacrifices was also a time of feasting. With a few notable exceptions, each offering was divided into three portions. One portion was burned on the altar, one portion went to the priests (this portion was where most of the food for the priests came from), and one portion was eaten by those who offered it (and their households). In this passage today, the offering for their ordination was only to be eaten by the priests. However, for the seven days of the ordination the priests being ordained were to remain at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, where the people could come and meet with them. It seems to me that the intention was for the people to be able to interact with those who were about to become priests so that these newly ordained priests would understand the people to whom they would minister. At the end of the seven days on the eighth day, the newly ordained priests would offer sacrifices for all of the people…sacrifices which would be the basis for a feast and celebration for the people. So, the sacrifices formed a bond between the people who offered the sacrifice, the priests who performed the sacrifice, and God.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 5-7.
I am not sure where I am going to go with today’s blog. I want to start with this: it is a sin to not come forward with what you know about a crime, whether your knowledge points to who committed the crime, or whether it indicates that a particular suspect is not guilty. While this passage only addresses crimes which the authorities know about and are seeking those with knowledge about what happened, I am convinced it also applies to crimes of which the authorities are not yet aware.
Next I want to spend a little time looking at the idea of unintentional sin. This passage makes it clear that sin is still sin even if you did not intend to do it. So, while your intentions matter, what matters more is what you actually do, and its results. Even if you did not intend to do harm, when you have done harm you must seek to make it right. This is a complex issue. Doing wrong is still wrong even if you did not know it was wrong when you did it. However, the passage also makes clear that intentionally doing wrong is much worse than unintentionally doing wrong. Further, the passage tells us that the one who decides that they had sinned is the person who unintentionally committed the sin. This highlights the fact that any system of laws only works when the overwhelming majority of those to whom the laws apply intend to do what is right. No set of laws will work in a society where the only arbiter of right or wrong is whether or not you get caught.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 1-4.
I find it interesting that if the grain offering was baked before being offered it was to not include any yeast. I thought I fully understood why the Passover bread was to be made without yeast: because the Israelites did not have time to allow it to rise on the first Passover. However, the fact that these offerings were required to be made without yeast suggests that there was more to it than that. Unfortunately, I do not know what that something more was. I did an Internet search on the question, but I did not consider any of the results which I found satisfactory. I have never before given this much thought, and now it has become something to which I would really like to know the answer.
God promised the people of Israel blessings if they obeyed His commands and the punishments they would suffer if they failed to obey. Some people read these blessings and conclude that godliness leads to wealth. There is some truth to this, but it misunderstands what this passage promises. First, God’s promise here is for the people of Israel, not everyone. More importantly, these promises are for an entire people, not for individuals. I believe that any large group of people who faithfully follow God’s commands will experience blessings similar to those recorded here, and any such group which violates God’s commands will suffer the punishment. I believe that God built this into the world when He created it. Having said all of that, I believe that choosing to obey God brings joy and choosing to rebel against God will bring pain.
I think the ideas presented with the Sabbath Year and the Year of Jubilee have real lessons for us. The Sabbath Year solves a problem which modern farmers address by crop rotation and leaving fields fallow every so many years. However, academia and mission organizations have adopted the idea of a sabbatical year from this concept. The idea of the Year of Jubilee is to level the economic stratification which happens in society every so many years. The idea being that everyone should have equal chances in life. I do not see any way we could make the idea of the Year of Jubilee work in a non-agrarian society, but we should keep its ideal in mind. Even in this passage there is an exemption made for property within cities. The Year of Jubilee reminds us that we should seek ways to give those who suffer from the bad economic decisions of their parents, or even their own bad economic decisions, a chance for a fresh start.
At the beginning of the passage it discusses the need for priests to maintain both spiritual and physical holiness. The passage then goes on to command that flawed animals are not acceptable offerings to God. Every time I read this I think about what this means when we make offerings to God today by donating to charitable causes. When we make an offering to God it must be perfect not used, not our castoffs. That does not mean that we should not donate such things that still have use to charity. It just means that we should not think of that as an offering to God. If we have clothes which no longer fit us but are still in good repair, it is a good thing to donate it to a thrift store or other charity, but doing so does not qualify as an offering to God.
From time to time someone comes to the conclusion that Christians can benefit from paying closer attention, perhaps even from celebrating the festivals God commanded the Israelites to observe. There is some merit to the idea. Yet in every case I am aware of, they start the discussion with the Festival of First Fruits. Oh, they mention the Sabbath in passing, but they start their discussion with the Festival of First Fruits. However, I think we should pay more attention to that very first of the festivals which God established for the people of Israel. I do not believe it matters whether we celebrate that Festival on Saturday or Sunday. The important thing is that we should gather once a week to celebrate God. Which brings up another point, our Sunday services should be a celebration. They are not an obligation which we grudgingly spend an hour or two fulfilling. No, they should be celebrations which we eagerly look forward to taking part in and regret when they come to an end.
There are a lot of very basic, good life rules in today’s passage.
do not deceive and cheat
do not twist justice to favor the poor or show partiality towards the rich
I think it is worth noting that this command spells out our human tendency to twist justice in favor of the poor when we don’t twist it to gain favor with the rich and that both are wrong.
Do not spread slanderous gossip
help people when they are in danger
do not nurse a grievance, instead confront the person directly whom you believe to have wronged you
All of these represent good rules to follow and are summed up by the one which Jesus listed as the second most important command (which is in this passage): Love your neighbor as yourself.
There are more rules that are worth noting in chapter 19, then I see a kind of transition and a series of rules with a different focus in chapter 20. While the rules in chapter 20 can also be summed up by loving others as you love yourself, I see a somewhat different common thread among them. I am not quite sure how to summarize these rules, but I think they are tied together. Here God forbids sacrificing children, attempting to communicate with the dead, dishonoring your parents, and a laundry list of sexual acts. All of these involve putting yourself and your own pleasure over the best interest of others.
In today’s passage God gave Moses the instructions for the Day of Atonement. The first thought I had about this passage was curiosity about where the “wilderness of Azazel” was. As I suspected, the place being referred to is ambiguous. In fact, some translations say that the goat should be driven into the “wilderness for Azazel”. In fact, there are Jewish legends which say that Azazel was a demon, whom the goat was intended to appease. That would essentially make the goat an offering to a demon, which seems to me to be inconsistent with the commands against idolatry. A little further research on my part revealed that the Hebrew word “azazel” is composed of the Hebrew word for rugged, “azaz”, and a generic word for God, “el”. (note: “el” in the Bible usually, and perhaps always, applies to God, but was used by the people of that area for other gods as well, even in some of their names for their gods). All of which suggests to me that the original writer of this passage would have understood the phrase to mean that the goat would be driven into a rugged wilderness dedicated to God (perhaps so dedicated by its use for this purpose?). I want to add that it is from this passage that we get the term “scapegoat”, which is sometimes misspoken as “escape goat”. Interestingly enough, the “scape” in “scapegoat” is almost certainly a shortening of the word escape. The importance of all of this is that words change meaning over time and Ancient Hebrew was a language which, at least the written form, contained many words whose meanings changed significantly depending on context.
Later in today’s passage, in chapter 18, there are a series of prohibited sexual practices. When Christians refer to these prohibitions as guidelines, some people ask why they do not also follow kosher food rules. There is a relatively simple answer to that question of which most Christians fail to be aware. When the Jerusalem Council, recorded in Acts, sent out a letter instructing Gentile believers on the issue of following Jewish “Law”, they specifically said that Gentile believers only needed to follow three elements of Jewish Law. Those elements were: do not worship idols by taking part in their feasts (eating food offered to idols), do not eat/drink blood, do not commit fornication. These instructions contained here would have been more or less what they were thinking of by fornication.
I write this sometime around now every year, this stretch of passages is one of the reasons I write this blog. If I did not write this blog I would get bogged down reading these and start skimming over the passages, or even skipping days. While I cannot ind anything in this passage today which builds my faith, I still think there is value in reading this passage regularly (in my case, once a year). One of the reasons it is important to read these passages regularly is that people with anti-Christian, or anti-Judaism, biases will often misrepresent what is written here. If we read them regularly we will recognize when someone is doing that.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 10-12.
