Leviticus 19 - Introduction

Leviticus 19. Miscellaneous Collection of Precepts, some of them obscure, and placed in a strange order. The order, however, is easier, if we may excise, as later insertions, Leviticus 19:5 and Leviticus 19:20. With a little ingenuity, these laws may be arranged (as also those of Leviticus 18) in groups of five and ten (see Kent, Israel-' s Laws and Legal Precedents, p. 39), corresponding to the arrangement of the Decalogue. Or laws which use the second person singular may be different in their origin from those which use the plural (e.g. Leviticus 19:5; Leviticus 19:9; Leviticus 19:11; Leviticus 19:15, and Leviticus 19:10; Leviticus 19:13 f., Leviticus 19:16). It is more important to notice the meaning of holiness here. Originally ritual rather than moral (see p. 196), it is now to be preserved by morality even more than by ritual acts; and the morality demanded soars as high in this chapter as anywhere in the OT, especially Leviticus 19:18. But there is no sense of the gradation of duties; Leviticus 19:18 is followed by Leviticus 19:19, and Leviticus 19:19 by Leviticus 19:20! A threefold attitude can be observed; reverence for old practices and prohibitions of which the reasons were lost in a primitive antiquity; for the sacrificial system; and for the prophetic ideals of humanity and honourable dealing. A sufficient sanction for all these is that they proceed from Yahweh, the deliverer of Israel from Egypt (Leviticus 19:36).