Levitival Regulations, Purity, and Holiness

Transcription

1 LESSON 16 OF 24 OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 Richard E. Averbeck, Ph.D. Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois The following lecture has been produced for the Christian University GlobalNet and is copyrighted by Christian University GlobalNet, Grand Rapids, Michigan. All audio rights are reserved worldwide. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written permission of Christian University GlobalNet. The lecturer holds exclusive publication rights to all of the intellectual material in the lecture. Richard E. Averbeck, Ph.D.: Okay, now we have been working on the tabernacle and sacrificial system of Ancient Israel in Exodus through Leviticus and parts of Numbers. We return now to Leviticus 5 and the guilt offering beginning with verse 14, Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, If a person acts unfaithfully and sins unintentionally... that s the same word: sins by going astray as we saw in chapter 4:1-2 with the sin offering. Against the Lord s holy things, now this is something that can be desecrated, for example, something that s in the temple that is holy and then gets used for common purposes outside the temple or, for example, if there is a firstborn lamb. Well, firstborn lambs are to be devoted to the Lord offered to the Lord. Well if you get a firstborn lamb mixed in with other lambs and you would, perhaps, eat that lamb without offering it to the Lord, then, in that case, you would have desecrated something that s already been consecrated to be holy. You ve used it in a common way, rather than in a holy way. So, anything that belongs to the Lord in that sort of way, it s devoted to Him in one way or another, that s a holy thing, and therefore, if you use it in a common way, then you ve desecrated it you ve sinned against the Lord s holy things by overstepping the boundaries, trespassing upon the Lord s holy things. They belong to Him; they need to be handled as those things that belong to Him, very directly, and have been devoted to Him. So he sins against the Lord s holy things, then he shall bring his guilt offering to the Lord a ram without defect from the flock according to the valuation in silver by shekels, in terms of the shekel, the sanctuary, for a guilt offering. So there s a bringing the corresponding offering. And he, verse 16, shall make restitution for that which he has sinned against the holy thing, shall add to it a fifth part. Since he s taken something, he has to pay a fine, and that s 20 percent of whatever was taken has to be added to the offering. So atonement is made for overstepping the boundaries of the Lord s holy things. 1 of 13

2 And, in addition to that, there is a fine of 20 percent (one-fifth part). So that s the basic idea behind a guilt offering. A sin offering is for desecration of say, the tabernacle, where you contaminate it. A guilt offering is when you desecrate it; you use it in a non-sacred way and therefore have desecrated it or profaned it, and then you have to bring a guilt offering and repay what you ve taken 20 percent extra. So that s the nature of the guilt offering. There are two different things: contamination for the sin offering, desecration for the guilt offering. Now this particular concept of a guilt offering shows up in an important way as a good example of this, for example, in Leviticus chapter 14. This is where we have the leper really the skinned-disease person who has been removed from the nation. He has to live outside the land specifically because he has been diseased, so he has to be removed from the nation. So in Leviticus chapter 13:45, we read this: As for the leper who has the infection, that means the skinned-disease person. It s not necessarily Hansen s disease (leprosy), but anything that manifests itself in skin legions of some sort. His clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be uncovered, and he shall cover his mustache and cry, Unclean! Unclean! He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp. So he has to go outside the camp, separated from the community. Of course, this is meant to prevent any kind of spreading of the disease. And so that, then, is the person who has the skin disease that s their lot. Now when that particular disease gets healed, then the priest, according to Leviticus 14, is to go out and look at him outside the camp to make sure he has been healed, that he no longer is infectious. And so, then, once he does that, then they can start the official cleansing process. The first part of that is in Chapter 14:1-7, what I m going to call the scapebird, because it s very similar to the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement. The bird certain rituals are done and it s applied to this live bird based upon the death of another bird. And then when they have taken care of that, then the bird is set free so that the uncleanness flies away. That s the image, that s the idea. Then in verses 10 and following, we have a particular ritual for the cleansing of the leper on the eighth day, later. Leviticus 14:10-13: Now on the eighth day he is to take two male lambs without defect, and a yearling ewe lamb without defect, three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering, and one log of oil. And the priest who pronounces him clean shall present the man to be cleansed and the aforesaid before the Lord at the doorway of the tent of meeting. Then the priest shall take the one male lamb and bring it for a guilt offering, with the log of oil, and present them as a wave offering before the Lord [something presented and shown before the Lord]. Next he shall slaughter the male lamb in the place where they slaughtered the sin offering and the burnt offering, at the place of the sanctuary for 2 of 13

3 the guilt offering, like the sin offering, belongs to the priest; it is most holy. In other words, what s left from the guilt offering the blood is used for making atonement and then the meat goes to the priest who officiates at doing the cleansing of the leper. The priest shall then take some of the blood of the guilt offering, and the priest shall put it on the lobe of the right ear of the one to be cleansed, and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. Now this is the same procedure that is used for consecrating the priests in Exodus 29 and the parallel passage in Leviticus 8. The point is that this person because he has had this skin disease has been desecrated, removed from the kingdom of priests, the holy nation. Now in order to be brought back in after being healed from his disease, he has to be re-consecrated because he has been desecrated. Away from the holy nation, he s brought back in and made part of the holy nation and now we get the same thing, in terms of ritual procedures, for anyone in the nation priest or not a priest who has a skin disease, being brought back in with the blood applied to the earlobe, right thumb, and right toe. The point is that everyone in this nation is a sacred person they re a kingdom of priests, a holy nation and the guilt offering is specifically used here, because this person has been desecrated from the nation by his disease, has to be removed, and now is brought back in through the guilt offering. There s a sin offering that follows and burnt offering and so on, but the key offering here is the guilt offering to bring that man back in, [and] therefore consecrate him again to the holy nation. This is how this particular kind of system works. The primary purpose, then, of the guilt offering itself was to make atonement. There s a trespass upon the Lord s holy things, or, in Numbers 5:5-10, you have this same thing with property of others in the community, the same thing later on in Leviticus 6:1-7 for someone taking somebody s property. Well that property is holy to them; it s set apart for them; they own it, just like the Lord owns the holy things. So if you take it, either by swearing a false oath or simply by theft or whatever, you have to deal with the problem of having done that. And the way you do that is that you bring a guilt offering. And since you have dealt with it falsely by swearing a false oath with regard to it, therefore what you have to do is you have to deal with the fact that you ve trespassed upon the Lord s holiness by using the name of the Lord in a false way. So now you have to go and pay a guilt offering by bringing this lamb, and then you have to add again one-fifth to it. That s the nature of the way this works. Another example of this is with the Nazarene in Numbers 6. You have the Nazirite vow, and this particular vow is where the man is devoting himself he s not going to drink any wine or not going to cut his hair, that 3 of 13

4 sort of thing. Everything is dedicated to the Lord. And part of the vow is that this particular person must not come into contact with any corpse. But what happens if suddenly someone dies beside the person with the Nazirite vow and therefore he s in contact with the corpse? And so his holy head of hair has been desecrated. What the man does is in verse 9 of Numbers 6, But if a man dies very suddenly beside him and he defiles his dedicated head of hair, then he shall shave his head on the day when he becomes clean; he shall shave it on the seventh day. After he s become unclean, he has to wait for 7 days, because [the] corpse contaminates him. And then he shall shave his head on the seventh day: Then on the eighth day he shall bring two turtle doves or two young pigeons to the priest, to the doorway to the tent of meeting. The priest shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering, and make atonement for him concerning his sin because of the dead person. And that same day he shall consecrate his head, and shall dedicate to the Lord his days as a Nazirite, and shall bring a male lamb a year old for a guilt offering; but the former days will be void because of his separation being defiled (Numbers 6:10-12). So he brings a guilt offering to be restored from a desecrated Nazirite vow. Now, if the vow goes correctly, you can see in the following verses that he does not bring a guilt offering. He just brings the regular other offerings because that has not been a desecrated head of hair, so to speak. So this is all part of the procedure. The guilt offering has to do with dealing with the kinds of desecration of holy things that we see in these kinds of passages and there are many other different kinds of examples. And again, reparation is generally made if it s been taking something that belongs to the Lord or to another person. There s a 20 percent kind of payment because it belonged to the Lord or the other person. It s a reparation offering in some way, and that s one of the ways that the word guilt offering has sometimes been translated. Now we come to another whole section and another set of issues, but again having to do with the holiness of the tabernacle. And that s specifically the Nadab and Abihu catastrophe in Leviticus 10 and the priestly theology associated with this. The laws of the tabernacle holiness and purity are found in Leviticus It tells you how to use these offerings that we ve seen in Leviticus 1 7 in terms of maintaining holiness and purity with regard to the tabernacle. The latter part of Leviticus Leviticus is really laws about community, holiness, and purity. Outside of the tabernacle what do you have to do in order to maintain purity within the community at large, not just within the tabernacle, which was located in the middle of the community? 4 of 13

5 So, from the viewpoint of this particular narrative, recall that Leviticus 10 is when Nadab and Abihu are struck dead, burned, consumed by the Lord in verses 1 and 2. And then that s referred back to in Leviticus 16 when the Day of Atonement is introduced. This is after the death of the two sons of Aaron when they approached to presence of the Lord and died (16:1). And in between, we get these clean and unclean laws that we talk about. Now this, because it is a particularly teachable moment Aaron has lost his two sons, so he s going to pay attention to what the Lord says here. And so the Lord takes this occasion and He explains and says directly to Aaron exactly what he s supposed to pay attention to as the primary issues for the priests in relation to the tabernacle. Leviticus 10:8: The Lord then spoke to Aaron directly. Now usually the Lord speaks to Moses and then Moses speaks to Aaron or Aaron speaks to others. But, in this case, He speaks directly to Aaron because he s particularly teachable. He s been in a situation where he s lost his two sons and he s going to listen now. What in the world happened here? Verse 9: Do not drink wine or strong drink, neither you nor your sons with you, when you come into the tent of meeting. Now that suggests that perhaps something was going on with them being inebriated Nadab and Abihu when they violated the Lord s presence somehow in the early part of chapter 10. That s why the concept of strong drink seems to be brought up here. So you shall not come into the tent of meeting after drinking strong drink so that you will not die it is a perpetual statute throughout your generations. And you do this because it s important, according to verse 10, that you make a distinction between the holy and the profane, or the common, and between the unclean and the clean. Now these are two basic categories: holy and the common that s one dichotomy and then unclean vs. clean another dichotomy. And they re related to each other. The first one holy as opposed to common has to do with the status. A person either has a holy status or a common status. A place either has a holy status (like the tabernacle) or the camp, a common status. Even a time, a particular festival, is a holy time as opposed to other times during the year. An animal can be either holy or common depending on whether it s dedicated to the Lord or not these kinds of things. It s got to do with the status. Clean and unclean has to do with the condition of a person, place, or thing, whether it s holy or common. And a holy person, like a priest, can become unclean or he can be clean. And a common person can either be unclean or clean. So, for example, a priest in Leviticus 15, it s clear that a person becomes unclean through sexual intercourse. So if a priest is married and has sexual intercourse with his wife (and the priest wouldn t last long if they didn t, because the children had to come from there). And so what happened was, if they were a holy priest, they would become unclean, but they would never enter the tabernacle while unclean. If you had sexual intercourse, you d 5 of 13

6 be unclean for the rest of that day. You would wash and at the evening you would be clean again. And that s the way that worked. You didn t always have to bring an offering for anything like being unclean. There [are] different levels of clean and unclean, which we will see later. So a holy person can be clean or unclean, as well as a common person can be clean or unclean. That s why, in the chart there, we have status and condition, and the line down through the middle is intended to be a hard line that shows that they are really separate and they are related in a particular way. Status: you re either holy or you re common. And if you re holy and you make yourself or if an animal s holy and you make it common, treat it as common, then you desecrate it. Therefore, the arrow [is] pointing down to common. But if something is common and it s made holy, you are consecrating it, or sanctifying it. On the other side of the line, you have condition: something is clean or pure. If you make it unclean, you defile it. But if you take something that is impure or unclean and cleanse it, you are purifying it. These are the basic categories of the system. Now atonement is made either through the sin offering or the guilt offering. The sin offering deals with the condition of this: clean vs. unclean. Remember, the sin offering is about the contamination of sacred things the tabernacle especially. So it has to do with clean vs. unclean, whereas the guilt offering has to do with desecration in other words, the problem with the relationship between holy and common. And you make atonement with a sin offering or a guilt offering depending on whether you re dealing with condition or the status of a particular person, place, or thing or time. So verse 17, then, in Leviticus 10 says, Why didn t you eat the sin offering [Moses is saying to Aaron]? Why didn t you eat the sin offering in the sanctuary area? Apparently on this day this is the inauguration day they had burned the sin offering. Now normally when a sin offering is made on the part of the people, the priest would eat it. It would be part of their celebration, part of their eating during that day. On this day, however, Aaron s sons had died: Nadab and Abihu. So Aaron had not eaten. He was mourning, on that level, his two sons. And so Moses says, Why didn t you eat the sin offering in the sanctuary area? It is most holy, as given to you to take away the guilt of the community by making atonement for them before the Lord. The point being that You should have eaten this and now you re going to do another violation like Nadab and Abihu did and we re going to have another problem. What happens though, is that Aaron responds, and he says in verse 19 (this is Leviticus 10:19), Behold, this very day they presented their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord. When things like these happen to me, if I had eaten the sin offering today, would it have been good in the sight of the Lord? When Moses heard that, it seemed good in his sight. The point being that he agreed with Aaron that it was legitimate for him to not eat the sin offering on this particular day. 6 of 13

7 All of these regulations are set forth in Leviticus 1 7 and in the following chapters for how they re supposed to handle the offerings to the Lord. Now what happens then, in understanding this, is that we develop, then, between Leviticus 10 and Leviticus 16 sets of clean and unclean laws. First, we have clean and unclean animals. In other words, what you can and what you cannot eat amongst the animals. Then you have the impurity/ clean and unclean issues for the woman who bears a child. Then skin diseases diagnoses in Leviticus 13; and then the remedy for skin disease and purification for skin diseases in Leviticus 14; and then, in Leviticus 15, various flows from the male or female body. These are all physical uncleannesses, and we already talked about the issue of physical uncleanness earlier. When we look at this section then, it s broken down into particular units. So we have a summary at the end of most of these units (Leviticus 12 is pretty short, so there s no summary there). But for example, at the end of Leviticus 11:46-47: This is the law regarding the animal and the bird, and every living thing that moves in the waters and everything that swarms on the earth, to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean, and between the edible creature and the creature which is not to be eaten. Now if you look through this terminology that we have here for the animals, the zoology that we have in Leviticus 11 for clean and unclean animals, you can notice that if you read in Genesis 1:20-30 that this structure here of the clean and unclean animals is really related to the creation design in the fifth and the sixth day in Genesis 1. The birds and the fish are on day five and the land animals and mankind on day six. And so the Leviticus 11 clean and unclean animals are related to the cosmology or the zoology of Genesis 1, the way God created it. So in those two verses, then, at the end of Leviticus 11, these are the regulations concerning the animals that s the land animals on the land, the birds, and then every living thing that s in the water. So you got the land animals, the birds, and the water animals and all the other creatures that move along (that crawl) on the ground. And you must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between the living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten (Leviticus 11:47). So the issue of clean and unclean is edibility. Now the four main categories show up then. According to Genesis 1, the birds and the fish were created on the fifth day, land animals and mankind on the sixth day. And this is reflected also in Leviticus 11 so that the inedible land animals are referred to as unclean, while inedible fish and birds, which are created on the fifth rather than on the sixth day, are termed detestable. And that s true also with the creeping land creatures that just creep along close to the ground. So there s a distinction made between different levels of uncleanness amongst these animals. The ones that were created on the sixth day and walk around on the earth like man does would be unclean if they are not to be eaten. But other things: birds and fish and so on, that are unclean, are detestable it s a stronger term. So this builds off the Genesis zoology there. 7 of 13

8 Now anthropologists often talk about people shaping their own world by the way they select or deselect what they would eat. For example, I grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, so I did not grow up eating squid; that would be deselected automatically by the region in which I live. However, if I lived in Japan, I might have eaten a lot of squid. The point is that there s a certain shape of the world depending on how you are living in the context and what s available and that sort of thing. What we have in Leviticus 11 is really God shaping their world for them. He s defining what they can eat and that will determine what kind of things they get involved in and it will also effect how they relate to the nations around them. Now let s walk through those principles just for a moment. The original design was for God s creatures man, land animals, and the birds to live off the land and the vegetation. We see this at the end of Genesis 1 to eat off the vegetation that grows off the land. And it s important to realize, in Leviticus 11, we don t have anything about any unclean plants. Plants are, by definition, clean. Now that helps us to understand that this is not really just about hygiene or anything like that, because there are some poisonous plants. So, if that s not the issue, the issue is the animals and how they live and that sort of thing. The struggle that came into the realm of animal life because of the fall created extremes of chaos and violence. Now land animals that chew the cud and these are the rules in chapter 11:2 and following, They chew the cud and they split the hoof those particular animals, by definition, are vegetarians. And they eat therefore plants. They [are not carnivorous] and do not eat other animals. So those that chew the cud, that s where they will take in forage, and then they will have stomachs and they will regurgitate and chew it some more and then it will go down another stomach. Cows are like this, various other animals. The point is that the reason they do that is because they eat forage. And so there s a certain kind of animal there [that] does not eat any kind of game. So those kinds of animals are clean. Scavenger birds in the next section of the chapter, where we pick up with the water animals and then the birds, what you ll find is the ones that are bottom feeders or the scavenger birds are the ones who are considered to be unclean. And you get lists of them. The point is that we re not supposed to eat flesh with the blood in it. According to Genesis 9 and Leviticus 17, the blood represents a life that goes to God. We don t eat that. Well not only that, we re not supposed to eat animals that eat flesh and blood either. And so that removes us from that kind of animal that animal then becomes unclean. So this system is set up so that we, in ancient Israel, would eat only things that are really vegetarian types of animals. Now you can take this one step further if we look at Leviticus. Leviticus 20 the latter part of Leviticus 20 where the Lord is using the clean and unclean animal laws in relation to the corruption of the nations 8 of 13

9 that are around about Israel. In Leviticus 20, I ll start with verse 22: You are therefore to keep all of My statutes and all My ordinances and do them, so that the land to which I am bringing you to live will not spew you out. Moreover, you shall not follow the customs of the nations which I will drive out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I have abhorred them. Hence I have said to you, You are to possess their land, and I Myself will give it to you to possess it, a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God, who separated you from the peoples. You are therefore to make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean bird and the [clean]; you shall not make yourselves detestable by animal or by bird or by anything that creeps on the ground, which I have separated for you as unclean. So this is referring back to the regulations in Leviticus 11. Thus you are to be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy; and I have set you apart from the peoples to be mine (Leviticus 20:26). Back in Leviticus 11, the conclusion to that chapter as well (or close to the conclusion) has these kinds of statements in verse 44, For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth. For I am the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God; that you should be holy, for I am holy. That s the first occasion of this expression, be holy, for I am holy, and it has to do with what you eat clean or unclean flesh/animals. The point in Leviticus 20 is that if you obey these particular rules of what you can eat and what you cannot eat, then, by definition, that will keep you separate from the nations around about you, because they don t keep those regulations. That would mean therefore, because of your diet, you would not be able to associate with them eating meals with them, doing covenants with them which involve eating meals, and so on. You can t do that. So, if you keep these regulations, that will automatically separate you from the nations around you. Now this is part of the rationale of the system in the Old Testament. God shaped their world what they could eat, what they could not eat specifically, partly at least, to separate them from the nations around them. In Acts 10, when Peter gets this vision three times, when the sheet comes down from heaven with these unclean animals, on it and his response is, I would never eat these things, God says, Take and eat. The point being that now there s not to be this separation between Jews and Gentiles through the food laws. In fact, he is being called to go and speak to Cornelius, a Gentile in that context, and God is trying to make it clear to him that the Gentiles can 9 of 13

10 now come to the Lord just as easily as the Jews through faith in Jesus Christ. So now the wall is being broken down here between Jew and Gentile. Ephesians 2 makes that very clear in Paul s talk about the breaking down of the wall between Jew and Gentile. And actually, in Galatians 2, there s an incident in which Paul actually blows up at Peter because what happens is, Peter s eating with Jews and Gentiles before people come from Jerusalem. When they come from Jerusalem, from the Jewish church there, he separates because he doesn t want to be offending the Jews. But in the meantime, what he s done is said, Okay, we ve go to separate out from the Gentiles in the church so we have two churches a Gentile church and a Jewish church. And that s the whole point that Paul is making is that there is no division between Jew and Gentile in Jesus Christ. So Paul rebukes Peter for making that distinction and therefore giving the indication that somehow there should be a Gentile separation from Jews, and Jews from Gentiles. Well, the church is to be a united group one in Christ. So there s a shift that takes place from the Old Testament into the New Testament. Wherein the Old Testament, the Jews are to be separate, in the New Testament in the church kingdom of God, in that context there s no separation between Jew and Gentile. Therefore, the use of eating clean animals as opposed to unclean, dietary laws, that sort of thing must not be used any longer to separate Jews from Gentiles in the Church. Now, shifting from cosmology to divine presence, Leviticus 12 and 13 talk about the purity laws for childbirth and sexual discharges. And remember Leviticus 15:31 when it says, You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness by defiling My dwelling place which is among them. Now, in the context of the tabernacle, any kind of discharges, like a woman s discharge of blood, if a woman loses all of her blood, of course she s going to die. Losing blood is a very dangerous thing. That makes childbirth very dangerous. It makes the flow of blood unclean. Any kind of discharges like that from the body are, by definition, things that make a person unclean. So this becomes, then, an issue of God s presence. You must make sure that that uncleanness does not somehow get attached to the tabernacle, where God demands perfect cleanliness. This, in effect then, is the terminology that s being used with regard to defiling the tabernacle, and it becomes a most worrisome thing. If you defile the tabernacle, God may break out against you. In Leviticus 13 and 14, we come to the issue of how to keep the community pure so that people all over the community are not becoming unclean through leprosy or other kinds of skin diseases. And therefore, you re going to automatically there s no way you re going to avoid contaminating the tabernacle. So you have Leviticus 13 and 14 dealing with one of the very most simple ways there is to tell there s some kind of 10 of 13

11 disease, and that is if it manifests itself on the skin in one way or another. So they actually had the priests being the ones who had diagnosed whether something is truly infectious or not, whether the person had to go outside the camp and be quarantined away from the community. And so, in this particular case, this is about maintaining the community as a holy community together with the problem of dealing with diseases. Now there are levels of uncleanness, then, through this section. I want to talk about those levels of uncleanness. First, there is what I would call regular uncleanness, and this requires that once a person is no longer experiencing the flow or whatever it is whether it be a seminal or a menstrual excretion they remain unclean for a period of time, and they wash themselves and then they become clean without offering any sacrifices. These are normal flows that come, just through normal, daily life of a man or a woman. And so, there s no sacrifice involved. In this case, they simply wash and become clean after that day, without offering any sacrifice. So this restricts a person from entering the tabernacle, less they defile it. If you are unclean during that day, you cannot be involved in going into the tabernacle because then you would contaminate the tabernacle. That s the basic rule. The second category is what I would call irregular uncleanness and it requires that, when the discharge stops whether it s, for example, a male s abnormal flow from his body or a female s blood flow after giving birth or something like that the person becomes clean by washing and then offering sacrifices. This is an irregular uncleanness of some sort. Now in neither regular nor irregular uncleannesses [is] the person expelled from the community or the camp. But in this one, as opposed to the regular uncleanness, they do have to bring an offering for purification purposes. Then there s a third category called severe uncleanness here. This requires that a person that is no longer plagued with the condition skin disease of some sort you must wash and associate with certain priestly rituals and then offer sacrifices. After all of that, the person is allowed access into the tabernacle but also readmitted to the community at large. The point here is that this one is a severe situation, where the person, while they re unclean, even has to be separated from the community, not just from the tabernacle. These are levels or degrees of uncleanness that have to be dealt with in these chapters in Leviticus The Day of Atonement really is one day during the year in the fall. It s really what we might call the fall housecleaning day for the tabernacle. The Day of Atonement actually picks up at the end of the year, and you get a re-consecration of the tabernacle a re-purification, consecration setting it apart, and the purpose is to start over for the new year. Get it all cleansed so that there s nothing that would cause the Lord to either leave the tabernacle or break out against the people in the tabernacle. Now, according to Leviticus 16:29-30, one purpose and rationale 11 of 13

12 for the Day of Atonement was to cleanse the community. And this is really associated with the scapegoat. And we talked about the scapegoat how that took all the sins away from the community sent the scapegoat away and takes away all the sins. And it says in verses 29 and 30: This is going to be a lasting ordinance for you: On the tenth day of the seventh month you must deny yourselves and not do any work whether native-born or an alien living among you because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins. And so this is taking care of uncleanness in the community (sin, iniquity, and so on) and sending it away. That happens through the scapegoat. Now, according to Leviticus 16:31-33, there s another purpose, and that is to actually atone or purge the tabernacle from uncleanness, not just the community. And this is done with the sacrificial offerings that are done on that day the sin offerings brought for the priests earlier in the chapter and for the people, to cleanse the tabernacle on behalf of the people. Verse 31, It is a Sabbath of rest, and you must deny yourselves; it is a lasting ordinance. Now this Day of Atonement is a solemn day, it s not a celebration. It s dealing with impurity, contamination, sin, and so it s a solemn day. And so, on this day, the community functions in a certain way. The priest functions as one who is anointed and ordained to succeed as [father, as the high priest] to make atonement. He is to put on the sacred linen garments and make atonement for the most holy place, for the tent of meeting and the altar, and for the priest and all the people of the community. Now, in the translation that I ve given you there, I have suggested that there are better translations here in verse 33, because in the Hebrew text, when the word atonement is used for things that are the tabernacle or parts of the tabernacle, they are the direct object of the concept of atonement. So it would be better translated: And you shall atone the most holy place and atone the tent of meeting and the altar for the priests and all the people of the community. The word atone, here, is the word atonement, to make atonement and what it means is you shall purge it from any impurities that have attached to it. That s how the term is actually being used. It has to do with purging away any kinds of impurities that would desecrate or contaminate the tabernacle in any way. So the regular sin offerings used on that day cleansed the tabernacle, and the scapegoat ritual cleansed the community. So this, then, becomes the day when everything is brought to culmination in terms of cleansing the whole tabernacle complex and the community as a whole in Ancient Israel. Now the rest of Leviticus Leviticus really focuses on laws of the community and how to maintain holiness and purity, not just with regard to the tabernacle, but with regard to how they function as a community of people. You have the 12 of 13

13 laws regarding centrality and exclusivity of the tabernacle altar in Leviticus 17. While they re traveling through the wilderness, they re not to offer offerings to anything else like goat demons out in the wilderness or anything like that. Bring everything to the tabernacle altar, so that the priest can be sure that they re worshiping the Lord properly. You have laws of community holiness and separating from the nations in Leviticus And it s very important that they remain separate from those nations, that they not be contaminated by them. In Leviticus 19:17-18, we have the second great commandment, and this is really at the heart of the whole thing. In this section of Leviticus, the motto that we have is, Be holy because I the Lord your God is holy. And sometimes it will just say, I am the Lord you God, but this is what we call the holiness formula. Having the Lord as our God, and the fact that He is truly holy, as a God has serious implications for our life. This holiness towards God is really summarized well in terms of how we relate to others to the second great commandment, You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18). That s why it s picked up in the New Testament by Jesus (Matthew 22:37-39), and the rabbis could not criticize Him for His teaching in that regard, because this is clearly central to the whole law loving your neighbor as yourself. That means you don t seek revenge, you don t bear grudges, you don t do things that would pervert justice with regard to them this is all part of what is focused on here in Leviticus 19 and in the context as a whole. It also has priestly worship and community worship holiness sections, but again, it s focusing on how the community functions in relationship to having the Lord in the middle of the community, in the tabernacle that the nation surrounds. So we have to have holiness in the tabernacle, and we have to have holiness in the community. Leviticus 1 16 is about holiness in the tabernacle. Leviticus is more about holiness in the entire community. This course is a part of the curriculum offered through Christian University GlobalNet (CUGN). To learn more, visit us at All material in the preceding lecture is protected by registered international copyright and may not be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written permission of Christian University Globalnet. 13 of 13