Leviticus 17 - Introduction

The Law of Holiness (Leviticus 17-27).

The main section of the Book of Leviticus is constructed on a definite pattern. It commences with a description of the offerings and sacrifices of Israel (Chapter s 1-7), and ends with a description of the times and seasons as they are required of Israel (Chapter s 23-25). It continues with the establishment of the priesthood (Chapter s 8-10), which is balanced by the section on the maintenance of the holiness of the priesthood (Chapter s 21-22). This is then followed by the laws of uncleanness (Chapter s 11-15) which are balanced by the laws of holiness (Chapter s 17-20). And central to the whole is the Day of Atonement (chapter 16).

This second part of the book has been spoken of as ‘The Holiness Code'. We may balance this by calling Chapter s 1-15 ‘The Priestly Code'. The first part certainly has a priestly emphasis, for the priests control the offerings and sacrifices (Chapter s 1-7) and administer the laws of cleanness and uncleanness (Chapter s 11-15), and the second part a holiness emphasis. But this must not be over-emphasised. The whole book is mainly addressed to the people, it is for their benefit as God's covenant people, and the maintenance of the holiness of the priests is just as important in the second half. It is to be seen as a whole.

We may thus analyse it as follows (note the chiasm):

1). THE PRIESTLY CODE (Chapter s 1-15).

a) Offerings and Sacrifices (Chapter s 1-7) b) Establishment of the Priesthood (Chapter s 8-10) c) The Laws of Cleanness and Uncleanness (Chapter s 11-15)

2) THE DAY OF ATONEMENT (Leviticus 16)

3) THE HOLINESS CODE (Chapter s 17-25)

c) The Laws of Holiness (Chapter s 17-19) b) Maintenance of the Holiness of the Priesthood (Chapter s 20-22) a) Times and Seasons (Chapter s 23-25).

As will be seen the Day of Atonement is central and pivotal, with the laws of cleanness and uncleanness and the laws of holiness on each side. This central section is then sandwiched between the establishment of the priesthood (Chapter s 10-12) and the maintenance of the holiness of the priesthood (Chapter s 20-22). And outside these are the requirements concerning offerings and sacrifices (Chapter s 1-7) and the requirements concerning times and seasons (Chapter s 23-25).

So the Holiness Code may be seen as a suitable description of this second half of the book as long as we do not assume by that that it was once a separate book. The description in fact most suitably applies to Chapter s 19-22. It describes what Israel is to be, as made holy to Yahweh.

It was as much a necessary part of the record as what has gone before. The Book would have been incomplete without it. The Book of Leviticus is, as it claims, the record of a whole collection of revelations made to Moses at various times, brought together in one book, and carefully constructed around the central pivot of the Day of Atonement. There is no good reason for doubting this, and there are possible indications of colophons to various original records which help to substantiate it. It was the necessary basis for the establishment of the religion of Yahweh for a conglomerate people.

So having in what we know of as the first sixteen Chapter s of the Book laid down the basis of offerings and sacrifices (Chapter s 1-7), the establishment of the Priesthood (Chapter s 8-10), the laws of cleanness and uncleanness (Chapter s 11-15), and the requirements of the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16), the whole would have been greatly lacking had Moses not added some further detail of the holiness that God required of His people and of His priests.

The former is contained in Leviticus 17:1 to Leviticus 20:27. In this section Moses deals with the sacredness of all life (Leviticus 17), the sexual relationships which can defile (Leviticus 18), and the positive requirements for holiness in the covenant (Leviticus 19-20).

It is then followed by the further section dealing with the maintenance of the holiness of the priesthood (Leviticus 21:1 to Leviticus 22:16), with Leviticus 22:17 forming a transition from speaking to the priests to speaking to the people.

Chapter s 23-25 then deal with sacred times and seasons, including the seven day Sabbath (Leviticus 23:1), the set feasts of Israel (Leviticus 23:4), the daily trimming of the lamps and the weekly offering of showbread (Leviticus 24:1), the Sabbatical year (Leviticus 25:1), and the year of Yubile (Leviticus 25:8). Included in this is a practical example of blasphemy against the Name (Leviticus 24:10), which parallels the practical example of priestly blasphemy in Leviticus 10:1. Thus practical examples of the blasphemy of both priests and people are included as warnings.

Leviticus 26 seals the book with the promises of blessings and cursings regular in covenants of this period, and closes with the words ‘these are the statutes and judgments and laws which Yahweh made between him and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses' (Leviticus 26:46). Leviticus 27 is then a postscript on vows and how they can lawfully be withdrawn from, and closes with a reference to tithing, the sanctifying of a tenth of all their increase to Yahweh.

Chapter s 11-15 dealt with the uncleannesses of Israel, leading up to the Day when all uncleannesses were atoned for (Leviticus 16). But the Day of Atonement covered far more than those. It covered every way in which the covenant had been broken. It also covers the direct transgressions of Israel. Leviticus 17 onwards therefore deals further with the basis of the covenant against which they ‘transgressed' and for which they also needed atonement. Chapter s 11-15 dealt with practical matters considering what was ‘clean' and ‘unclean' as they faced daily life, these Chapter s from 17 onwards now deal with the basis on which they should live their lives as Yahweh's holy people, and the attitudes that they should have. They deal with prospective sin and disobedience. The former were more within the cultic section up to Leviticus 16, but the latter are firmly directed at the people's moral response, so that their responsibilities under the covenant might be made clear directly to them. The distinction must not be overpressed. They are all still, of course, cultic, but the latter from a less direct viewpoint. They do not have so much to do with priestly oversight. They come more under the jurisdiction of the elders.

There is, however, no change of direction in overall thought. The whole of Leviticus emphasises holiness from start to finish. There is not a change of emphasis only a change of presentation because God is now directly involving the people.

It must, however, be firmly asserted that, as we shall see in the commentary, there is nothing in what follows that requires a date after the time of Moses. Having been given by God control of a conglomerate people (Exodus 12:38), with a nucleus made up of descendants from the family and family servants of the patriarchs (Exodus 1 - ‘households'), he had to fashion them into a covenant keeping nation under Yahweh and provide the basis on which they could be one nation and kept in full relationship with their Overlord. It was precisely because the disparate peoples believed that his words came from God that they were willing mainly to turn their backs on their past usages and customs and become one nation under Yahweh, culminating in them all being circumcised into the covenant when they entered the land (Joshua 5).

And with such a conglomeration of people with their differing religious ideas, customs and traditions, it is clear that this could only have been successfully achieved by putting together a complete religious system which was a revelation from Yahweh, which would both keep them together as one people and would ensure that when they reached Canaan they would have no excuse for taking part in the Canaanite religious practises such as he knew of from his time of administration in Egypt and from his time with the Priest of Midian. Had they arrived in Canaan without a single binding system, they would soon have fallen prey (as they almost did anyway) to the attractions of Canaanite religion. It was only the firm foundation that Moses had laid (combined with God's own powerful activities) that finally resulted in their rising above their backslidings, and in their constantly turning back to Yahwism, because Moses had rooted it so deeply within them. And this finally enabled the establishing of the nation under Samuel and David after times of great turmoil.

This system did not come all at once. He had to begin instructing them soon after the crossing of the Reed Sea (Exodus 15:26), and a system gradually grew up (Exodus 17:13) as they went along, based as we learn later on a tent of meeting set outside the camp (Exodus 33:7), until at Sinai the book of the covenant (Exodus 20:1 to Exodus 23:33) was written down as a result of God's words to the people and to Moses. Then in his time in the Mount this was expanded on. But it would continue to be expanded on in the days to come, until the time came when Moses knew that he had to accumulate in one record all the regulations concerning sacrifices, priesthood and the multitude of requirements that went along with them. By this time he had much material to draw on.

For leaders from different groups had no doubt been constantly coming to him for direction and leadership (Exodus 16:22), and especially for those who were not firmly established in the customs of Israel he no doubt had to deal with a wide number of diversified queries, and seek God's will about them. This explains why sometimes the collections may not always seem as having been put together in as logical order as they might have been. They partly depended on what questions he had been asked, and what particular problems had arisen, and what particular issues were important at the time. But it was on the basis of all this activity that we have the Book of Leviticus as a part of the wider Pentateuch.

Chapter 27 Concerning Vows.

Little is actually said about the actual necessity for making of vows in the Bible. It was not a requirement of the Law. But many sincere and dedicated people made them out of love for, or gratitude towards, God, or because they desired something deeply and thought that God might be the more ready to hear if they made a vow. It was therefore necessary for them to be controlled and for the consequences of them to be quite clear.

The writer in Ecclesiastes said, “Do not be rash with your mouth, and do not let your heart be hasty to utter anything before God, for God is in Heaven and you are on the earth, therefore let your words be few -- when you vow a vow to God, do not defer paying it, for He has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed, it is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay' (Ecclesiastes 5:2).

One vow that was often made was a vow of dedication to tabernacle service either of the person themselves or of someone over whom they had authority. This might be temporary or permanent. We have an example of such in the baby Samuel (1 Samuel 1:11) who was devoted by his mother to the service of the tabernacle all the days of his life and became a great judge of Israel.

The description that follows appears to refer to the price that the person must pay to be released from their vow once they were considered to have completed it. For being under a vow they were holy to Yahweh and they had to be redeemed. In some cases the reference appears to be to a vow made from which a person wishes to be released (e.g. for an animal or a house). The point that is being made is the seriousness of making such a vow. It could not easily or cheaply be rescinded.

Or the idea may be that the vow is made deliberately as an indication of the amount the person wishes to give to Yahweh, which he then does in terms of the value of the particular object.

This chapter is the icing on the cake of all that has gone before. The offerings of sacrificial animals, reference to the clean and the unclean, to houses and lands, all refer to what men possessed or came in contact with, and were expected under the covenant to deal with in a certain way. But this refers to going that one step further and vowing something to Yahweh. And this would result in a sacrifice on that person's behalf for the glory of God and the financial benefit of the Sanctuary.