Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons being assembled immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business. (Riot Act 1715)
No grain offering that you bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven, for you must not turn any leaven or honey into smoke as an offering by fire to the Lord. (Lev 2:11)
In German, if we do not want to tolerate some kind of behaviour, lesen wir die Leviten. For German speakers at least, the third book of the Bible, Leviticus, has acquired a gloomy and negative reputation. And, to judge by our current church lectionary, where 25 of its 27 chapters go totally unread, it is not only negative but irrelevant.
Dipping at random into the book reinforces this view. It may be interesting to know that anyone who swears negligently needs to sacrifice a ewe or a nanny goat, and if they cannot afford it, two pigeons, and if they cannot afford the pigeons, two kilos of flour (5:4-12), that they can eat grasshoppers (11:22) but not rabbits (11:6), or that a woman between twenty and sixty years old was valued at 30 shekels but in her teens at only ten (27:4-5). The first sixteen chapters give a fascinating insight into how the Temple was supposed to operate (with a long digression from chapters 11 to 15 about cleanness and uncleanness). But is this useful for us today?
Of course, background reading is seldom completely wasted. In Luke's description of Mary's purification (Luke 2:24), we can infer from Leviticus 12:8 that she was not a wealthy person. What 'showing yourself to the priest' entailed for the cured leper is described in all its curious detail in Lev. 14:2-10. The writer to the Hebrews assumes that we have read Lev. 16 and know all about the Day of Atonement, yom kippur: the scapegoat (16:21-22) sent off into the desert to carry away the sins of the people is the image behind Isaiah's vision of the Servant who has borne our infirmities. "All we like sheep have gone astray..., and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Is. 53:6)
For this kind of background, though, we could as easily (perhaps even more easily!) refer to a good textbook or encyclopædia. So is there anything in the remainder of the book which we as Christians ought to read?
We know from Jesus and from the Acts of the Apostles that the Temple would be, and has been, superseded. And with it, the laws about what is clean and unclean. The Sabbath laws no longer held, just as the laws in Lev. 24 about the holiness of the offering bread in the Temple could be broken (Matt 12:3-4).
One section of the book stands out as less ritualistic than the rest. Chapter 19 contains the words "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy," and from this, scholars have given the name 'Holiness Code' to chapters 17-26. Much of this code, too, deals with ritual matters, and with matters related to the society of the time. It is almost impossible for us today to find a basis for saying that some of the code is useful, some is not.
While we can agree with some verses ("You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great" (19:15)), and might feel others are 'a good idea' even if a bit impractical ("You shall not gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien" (19:10)), others have no place in modern society ("You shall not keep the wages of a labourer until morning" - weekly or monthly pay not allowed! (19:13) "You shall not marry a woman as a rival to her sister while her sister is still alive" (18:18) - bigamy otherwise is not wrong.) Some of the prohibitions seem bizarre to us - growing two crops in the same field (19:19), trimming the edges of one's beard (19:27). And some seem illogical: why forbid some forms of activity (with one's uncle's wife, for example) but not others (pædophilia is nowhere mentioned)?
We can learn from Leviticus, but we should not be enslaved by it. The Law, said Paul, was good, but as a tutor leading us to Christ. From Christ we learn the law of love, and the true way of atonement - not with the blood of cattle and sheep, but in union with him who carried our own nature on the cross and through the grave. Through his death and resurrection, we are no longer slaves, but free! Praise him!
HD