Whales are not common.  But, I have seen one every August in Alaska.  God’s instructions aren’t common.  We don’t find his plans under every rock and behind every door.  How many of us have languished waiting for God’s next step.  Yet, when we read Leviticus we read it as oppressive.  The book of law is also a book of intimacy.  God speaks into every facet of the ex-slaves lives.  God had been silent for 400 years.  Now they are getting a buffet of speech.  God has a plan for the Israelites’ medicine cabinets and pantries.

Lev 8:2-3 “Take Aaron and his sons… assemble all the congregation.”  There is a long list of things in v2: Aaron, sons, garments, anointing oil, bull, two rams, bread.  But notice at the heart is the priest and the people.  In this chapter God takes a family of people, purifies them, and sets them apart from the set-apart people.  This is scandalous to how we want God to work.  How dare God be so specific?

Lev 8:31 “Boil the meat at the entrance.” This is the end of the ordination festivities.  Aaron and sons are priests.  What is their first duty?  Climb a mountain?  Meditate for days?  Sing a beautiful song?  Get out of the tent of meeting and eat your food.  The priests don’t take the place of God.  They aren’t even allowed to eat there.

Lev 9:2-3 “Take a bull… take a goat… [to the congregation] take a bull, goat, lamb.” The first sin offering [chattath] and burnt offering [olah] by the new priests.  These first offerings have a promise, “Today Yahweh will appear to you” (v4).  The new guys better not screw up.

Lev 9:7 “Approach the altar… make your sin offering [chattath]… atone for your… make the offering [qorban] of the people… atone for them.”  The priest’s sins come first.  Was the promised fulfilled?  “Fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar. And when all the people saw it, they shouted for joy and fell facedown” (v24).

Lev 10:4 “Come near… carry your brothers.”  Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu are consumed by fire from the tent for bringing “strange fire” before God.  It appears they messed up the command for incense from Exo 30:34-38.  The result, “So Aaron kept silent.”  At first, I want to read this as Aaron the stoic father, but Leviticus is a book about priests.  Here’s what happened.  When God’s glory was most sullied, which was only “strange fire”, the first and head priest was silent.  Not because he was lazy or complacent, but because he didn’t need to defend God’s honor.  Aaron’s God can defend his own honor.

Lev 10:12 “Moses said… ‘Take the grain offering… eat it unleavened.”  The rest of Lev 10 is a scene between Moses and the priests.  What is interesting is Aaron and the priests disobey Moses.  They compromise Moses’ command about how to eat this grain offering and consume the non-sin offering.  They blow it.  Aaron’s excuse?  “I’m having a bad day.”  Moses is satisfied.  Notice how there is no internalization of God’s holiness by Moses or Aaron.  Moses is not self-righteous.  Aaron is honest about his weakness.  Reconciliation occurs.  These two brothers just witnessed a cataclysmic display of God’s holiness, they respond with grace and mercy.

Lev 11:2 “Speak to the Israelites, ‘Of all the animals… these are the ones you may eat.’”  The priests have had their turn.  Now God has a message for the average Joe, “Watch what you eat!”  I have heard it said that these animal regulations have to do with not mixing categories.  Essentially, if an animal looks more hybridized it’s no good.  Fish that look like fish are good.  Catfish, fish that are so weird they are named after a land mammal are no good.  I’m not sure I buy that.

Lev 12:1 “Speak to the Israelites, ‘A woman… will be ceremonially unclean.’”  From diet to childbirth the uncleanliness flows.  Specifically, a woman’s bleeding after childbirth is unclean.  She has eight days of “don’t touch anything” uncleanliness for a boy, and fourteen for a girl.  Then she moves into a period of “don’t touch holy stuff” uncleanliness.  Why the difference between boys and girls.  At eight days it is time for circumcision so people need to come around.

Lev 13-14 has all the regulations on diagnosing and cleansing people from skin disease.  Also, there is a snippet on molds.  This whole section contains no imperatives.  Was Moses just writing this part down?  Why?  Let’s see.

Lev 15:2 “Speak to the Israelites, ‘When any man… his discharge will be unclean.’”  Now men are unclean.  The discharge in this chapter is specifically from the genitals.  Essentially, if anything comes out, the man and anything he touches, or even spits on is unclean in the “don’t touch holy stuff” sense.  So, the man’s uncleanliness is shorter than the woman’s, but it is always ‘contagious’ in the sense that everything near him becomes unclean.

What’s the big deal?  “‘You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place” (v31).  That’s a good reason.  But more seriously, these ex-slaves have to be confused.  Almost every other ancient deity had temple prostitutes, phallic rituals, or some fertility cult.  Ancient religions were essentially an enshrining of sex and fertility.  You lived and died by whether or not your wife, your sons, your crops, your herds had offspring.  Sex was life.  The otherness of this Yahweh was strange.  He doesn’t need our fertility to create.

Lev 16:2 “Tell your brother Aaron that he shall not enter… the holy place.”  The book of Leviticus sure spends a lot of time undercutting the potency of the Levitical priesthood.

Lev 17:2 “Speak to Aaron and his sons… this is what the LORD has commanded [tsavah].”  Moses is to tell the priests how to protect the tabernacle system.  If anyone kills an animal for a sacrifice someplace else, then they are cut off from the community.  Yahweh’s people are the people that use the tent Yahweh designed.  The place mattered because Yahweh made it matter.  This is a new thing.  Jacob didn’t have to worry about place (Gen 31:54).  The patriarchs definitely listened to God’s call for sacrifice at specific times and places (Gen 22:2), but there isn’t really a category of right or wrong places.  After Judah and Israel split, the northern kingdom is condemned beginning with Jeroboam’s setting up an alternate temple at Bethel and Dan (1Kings 12:25-30).  A whole nation was doomed to worship at the wrong place.

God cares about medicine cabinets and pantries.  He cares about you.  The ex-slaves had served a god-king that didn’t care about them.  He made them make bricks with no straw.  Their new God-king cares about all of the details of their lives.  What’s different?  Pharaoh cared about how much the people could produce before they died.  This new God-king cares about how holy the people are while they live.  Notice that so far, none of these instructions are impossible.  The only one that would be a big challenge to a modern person would be no pork.  The biggest shock to our lives would not be abstaining from grubs, eating eagles, or cleaning our house of mold.  The biggest shock to our world would be the unending stream of blood and sacrifices.  As Yahweh sets up a tent in the midst of his people, sins become more serious not less.