Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 14-15.

I am at a complete loss today as to what to write.  One can point to a few things about good hygiene presented in this passage, but what lesson can we take from it about how we should live our lives?  Perhaps one could make a metaphor out of the command that someone who is to be cleansed by this ritual must wash their clothes. shave all of their hair and then bathe their entire body for how we should spiritually cleanse ourselves from sin, but I cannot quite put that together.  Certainly, the section on bodily discharges reminds us that even as long ago as these commands were written down people understood the dangers of exchanging bodily fluids with others.  I guess the one point of value I will make is that we need to be willing to go to great lengths to cleanse ourselves from sin.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 10-12.

To my knowledge I have never come across anyone referencing the fact that Nadab and Abihu were among those who went up Mt Sinai with Moses, Aaron, and the 70 elders.  So, they had seen God, yet here they are using fire in their censers other than that which God commanded.  I believe that the honor they had received at Mt Sinai played a role in their deaths here.  Jesus said. “To whom much is given, much is required.”  These two men (I was going to write “young men”, but realized that was unlikely to be true, considering that Moses was in his 80s by this point and Aaron was Moses’ older brother) had been given a lot, both in honor and in knowledge.  They took a “short cut” when they knew the correct way, and they did this on their very first time as priests.  In the same way, those of us who have been given much knowledge about how God wants us to live (in my case, by the example of my parents’ faith and that of the many other great men and women God has put in my life over the years, and by my regular reading of the Bible) will be held to a higher standard of behavior than those who have rarely, or never, been exposed to God’s Word.  I probably deserve to suffer the same fate as these two of Aaron’s sons.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on   Leviticus 8-9.

Reading today’s passage about the ordination of Aaron as high priest when I came to Moses anointing Aaron it brought to mind the stories in the Gospels about a woman anointing Jesus.  One of the questions I have always had regarding those accounts was why all four Gospel writers thought it was so important.  Reading this today it struck me that the woman’s (women? the differences between the way the Gospels tell the story suggests that it may have happened more than once) anointing of Jesus represented His ordination as High Priest, which was completed by His offering of Himself as a sacrifice on the cross.  So, the Gospel writers were invoking the symbolism of the anointment portion of the priestly ordination when they wrote about the woman anointing Jesus.  So, while I see a connection, it is a connection of symbolism, not of ceremony.   Anointing someone represents setting them apart to serve God in a special way.  Here Moses anointed Aaron to set him aside to serve as high priest.  The woman who anointed Jesus was symbolically setting Him aside to serve God in ways which were probably unclear to her.  She may not have even been aware that she was doing so.  Perhaps I will explore that connection a little further when I get to those passages later in the year.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 5-7.

The first point I want to focus on out of this passage is the fact that one can sin unintentionally and unknowingly.  In fact this passage is about holding people accountable for sins they unintentionally, and/or unknowingly, committed.  There are really two points here. We are still guilty of committing sin, even if we did not realize that our action was a sin.  We are also still guilty of committing sin, even if we were unaware of committing the action which was a sin.  This applies to both things we have done against God and things which we have done against our fellow man.   When we discover that we have done that wrong regarding God or our fellow man, we should seek to make amends for our action.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 1-4.

There are three types of animal offerings described in this passage: burnt offering, fellowship offering, and sin offering.  In addition, Moses describes the process for making grain offerings.  The animal offerings were to be a representative of their type (cattle, sheep, or goat) which was without defect.  I want to note the significance of which offerings were explicitly to be male and which were to be female.  Since the animals eligible for offering were all herd animals, those who owned the animals could more readily spare a male animal to a female animal (with herd animals a single male breads with multiple females).  Which leads me to a thought that does not come directly out of this passage: a polygamous society values most men as less than fully human.  A polygamous society considers most men to be superfluous.  In such a society, men who have failed to obtain wives are considered disposable, and of less value than those who have wives.  This breaks down the order which the Bible teaches us is God’s intent, that all people were created by God to have value.  Not really when this passage is about, but the thought which the passage inspired in me.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.