Summary: Bible - Book of Leviticus

The GIST

Leviticus, a book of the Bible, is the third of the five books of Moses, the Torah, and it stands at their centre in more than position. Exodus ends with the Israelites camped at Mount Sinai and the Tabernacle, God's tent, newly built in the middle of the camp. Leviticus answers the question that follows: how can ordinary people live with a holy God next door? Almost the whole book is speech. God calls to Moses from the tent and gives instructions for him to pass on to the people and to their priests, Aaron and his sons. The story it tells covers only about a month.

Its English name comes from the Greek and refers to the priestly tribe, the Levites, and its Hebrew name, Vayikra, is its first word, "And He called". Tradition calls it the Third Book of Moses. Most scholars think it grew over a long time within priestly circles and reached its present form in the Persian period. Modern readers often give up on it among the regulations. Those who stay find the Bible's most worked-out account of sacrifice, forgiveness and holiness, and, in the middle of the laws, the sentence "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself".

What It Says

The offerings (chapters 1 to 7). The book opens with five kinds of sacrifice, described first for the person bringing them and then again for the priest who handles them. The burnt offering is wholly consumed on the altar. The worshipper brings an animal "without blemish", lays a hand on its head, "and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him." The grain offering of flour and oil must always be seasoned with salt. The peace offering is shared, part burned and part eaten. The sin offering deals with wrongs done unknowingly, "If a soul shall sin through ignorance", and ends with a promise repeated like a refrain: "the priest shall make an atonement for them, and it shall be forgiven them." The guilt offering covers cases needing repair, and here ritual is tied to restitution: what was taken must be restored in full with a fifth added.

Two features stand out. Confession is required: the guilty person "shall confess that he hath sinned in that thing". And the system bends for the poor. Whoever cannot afford a lamb may bring two turtledoves or pigeons, and whoever cannot afford birds may bring a measure of flour. Forgiveness is not priced out of anyone's reach. On the altar, "The fire shall ever be burning".

The priests (chapters 8 to 10). A stretch of narrative follows. Moses washes, robes and anoints Aaron and his sons before the whole congregation, pouring oil on Aaron's head "to sanctify him". On the eighth day Aaron offers his first sacrifices, and the sign of acceptance comes: "there came a fire out from before the LORD, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering", and the people shout and fall on their faces.

The joy does not last a chapter. Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu take their censers and offer "strange fire before the LORD, which he commanded them not." Fire comes out and they die on the spot. Moses gives the meaning: God will be treated as holy by those who come near him. Then comes one of the starkest lines in scripture: "And Aaron held his peace." Nearness to God is a privilege with real danger in it.

Clean and unclean (chapters 11 to 15). With sacrifice and priesthood in place, the book turns to everyday life. Land animals may be eaten if they have a split hoof and chew the cud, and water creatures if they have fins and scales. Other chapters deal with childbirth, with skin diseases, with mildew-like growths in clothing and houses, and with bodily discharges. These conditions are not sins. They make a person temporarily unfit to approach the sanctuary, and each has a set way back: washing, waiting, inspection by a priest, an offering. The person with a serious skin disease lives outside the camp and calls out "Unclean, unclean" until healed, and is then restored by ritual.

The reason given for the whole system is the book's refrain: "ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy." Scholars observe that the logic of the food laws is obscure and that the other rules seem to gather around the loss of life-force, especially blood. What the Bible calls leprosy here does not match the modern disease, and specialists think many of the conditions described were contagious skin infections.

The Day of Atonement (chapter 16). At the centre of the book stands its most solemn ritual. After the death of his sons, Aaron is warned not to come at will into the innermost room of the sanctuary, where God appears "in the cloud upon the mercy seat". Once a year, and only then, the high priest may enter. He offers a bull for the sins of the priests. Two goats are brought for the people and lots are cast, "one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat." The first is sacrificed and its blood used to cleanse the sanctuary. Over the second Aaron lays both hands and confesses "all the iniquities of the children of Israel", and it is led away: "the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited". The people fast and do no work. "For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the LORD."

The Holiness Code (chapters 17 to 22). The second half of the book widens holiness from the sanctuary to the whole of life. Blood is not to be eaten, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood", and it is given for atonement on the altar. Israel is not to copy the ways of Egypt behind it or Canaan ahead of it. A long list of forbidden sexual unions follows, with a ban on giving children to the god Molech.

Then comes chapter 19, the summit of the book. It begins, "Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy", and it defines holiness in startlingly practical terms. Leave the corners of your field and the fallen grapes "for the poor and stranger". Pay a hired worker the same day. "Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind". Judge fairly, favouring neither poor nor powerful. Do not spread slander. Do not nurse hatred or take revenge, "but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD." Stand up in the presence of the aged. Keep honest scales and weights. And the love owed to a neighbour is extended to the outsider: "the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt".

Chapter 20 sets penalties for the gravest offences, and chapters 21 and 22 give stricter rules for priests and for the animals they offer. The principle behind it all is stated once more: "ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine."

Holy time (chapters 23 to 25). Holiness also has a calendar. First comes the weekly sabbath. Then the yearly festivals: Passover in the first month, the offering of the first sheaf of harvest, a further harvest offering seven weeks later, the blowing of trumpets on the first day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement on the tenth, and the feast of tabernacles on the fifteenth, when all Israel lives in booths for seven days. Chapter 24 adds the lamps kept burning and the twelve loaves set out in the sanctuary, and an incident of blasphemy that leads to a statement of equal justice, "eye for eye, tooth for tooth", with "one manner of law" for the foreigner and the native.

Chapter 25 applies the sabbath to the land and the economy. Every seventh year the fields rest. After seven times seven years comes the fiftieth, the Jubilee: "proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof". Everyone returns to their ancestral property and family. The reason is a claim about ownership: "The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me." A fellow Israelite who falls into poverty is to be supported and not exploited.

Blessing, curse and vows (chapters 26 and 27). The code ends with a choice. Obedience brings rain, harvests, peace and, above all, God's company: "I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people." Disobedience brings escalating disasters, ending in exile: "I will scatter you among the heathen". Even that is not the last word. If they confess, God will remember his covenant with Jacob, Isaac and Abraham. "I will not cast them away". A final chapter, probably added later, regulates vows and gifts dedicated to God and declares the tithe holy. The book closes: "These are the commandments, which the LORD commanded Moses for the children of Israel in mount Sinai."

Why It Matters

Leviticus supplied the working law of Jerusalem's Second Temple and remains a major source of Jewish law. Its theology is contained in its structure: the first sixteen chapters set up the means of atonement, and the rest describe the life of a forgiven community. Scholars such as Jacob Milgrom have argued that its rituals express a coherent system of thought, with real ethical concern for the poor, and are not arbitrary rules.

Judaism has not offered the sacrifices since the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, and turned instead to prayer and study, yet Leviticus is traditionally the first book a child learns in the rabbinic system of education. Christianity reads the book through the New Testament, especially the Letter to the Hebrews, which presents Jesus as the high priest who offers his own blood, so that animal sacrifice is no longer needed. Christians generally hold that the ritual laws are superseded, though they have differed over where to draw the line between ritual and moral commands. Scholars generally distinguish a Priestly code in the first sixteen chapters from a Holiness code in chapters 17 to 26, the work of related schools.

Who Should Read It

Leviticus rewards readers who want to understand the rest of the Bible, since so much later language about sin, sacrifice, purity and atonement comes from here. It also rewards anyone interested in how a society builds care for the poor, the immigrant and the land into its laws. Do not start at chapter 1 and push through. Read chapter 19 first, then 16, then 25, and the remainder will make more sense.