 |
|
     |
|
|
|
From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John
Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
In the tabernacle system, oil is used for light on the golden menorah. The priest receives aromatic oil that spread fragrance. Cakes and breads baked or spread with oil become a sweet savor, soothing the heated nose of Yahweh.
In both cases, oil bestows radiant power. In the Bible, Christs – anointed ones – create a field of radiance around them, a field of light or the aroma of a good name.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 5:40 am
In a 1996 article, Angel Manuel Rodriguez offers a close structural analysis of the day of coverings rite in Leviticus 16.
Overall, he finds that the chapter is a chiasm:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 7:52 am
Leviticus 23 has five speeches of Yahweh:
A. Sabbath, Passover, Unleavened Bread, vv 1-8
B. First Sheaf, Pentecost, Gleaning, vv 9-22
C. Trumpets, vv 23-26
B’. Day of Coverings, vv 26-32
A’. Booths, vv 33-44
Several links in this structure are worth noting.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 5:05 am
Pentecost is a bread feast, a feast of leaven (Leviticus 23:17). Animals are brought as offerings, plenty of them, but these are brought “with the bread,” accompaniments to the bread rather than the other way round.
It’s quite fitting, then, that after the leaven of the Spirit came upon the church at Pentecost, they went from house to house “breaking bread.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 4:37 am
The presentation of the first sheaf (Leviticus 23:9-13) provides a neat little allegory of redemption. The first sheaf is presented on the day after the sabbath, the day of resurrection. It is the “beginning” of the harvest (v. 10), and Leviticus uses the same word as is used in Genesis 1:1. This eighth day is the beginning of a new creation.
At the same time, a year-old lamb is brought as ascension to Yahweh, and that is followed by an offering of “bridal food” to Yahweh, a tribute of bread and a libation of wine. This is the first time Leviticus has used the word for “libation,” and the first time we’ve seen bread and wine offered up to Yahweh. And this happens after the harvest begins, after the first sheaf appears; a eucharistic feast begins on the eighth day.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 4:21 am
When Paul talks about the “fullness of time,” he’s likely alluding back to the calendar of Leviticus 23. Pentecost is calculated from the day of the first sheaf, and the time is described as a “complete” set of sabbaths. The word translated as “complete” is tamim, which describes perfect men and unblemished animals. A “perfect” time is a set of seven sevens, and this is the time that leads to Pentecost.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 4:17 am
Esau is a “hairy man” (sa’iyr), something we learn only when Jacob dresses himself in goat hair to approach his father (Genesis 27:11, 23). Jacob becomes a hairy one, subbing in for his brother. The only other use of the word in Genesis is in 37:31, where it describes the “kid” killed to fool into thinking that Joseph has died. Both passages involve substitution, and both involve deception of a father.
Leviticus 16 is the great chapter about hairy goats. The word is used 14x in the chapter to describe the two goats used in the day of atonement rite. On the day of “coverings,” Israel is covered with goat skin to receive the blessing of the firstborn; on the day of coverings, a hairy kid is killed in place of the beloved son.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 4:29 am
When Moses objects that he cannot speak, Yahweh assigns his “brother Aaron” to be his spokesman and prophet (Exodus 4:14; 7:1-2). The next time Aaron is identified as Moses’ brother is in Exodus 28, where he is given the garments of glory and beauty to approach Yahweh, and the phrase “Aaron your brother” appears again in Leviticus 16:2. In all these cases, Aaron as brother functions as mediator, the one who approaches the master, whether Pharaoh or Yahweh.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 3:53 am
Mary Douglas highlighted the analogies between body and social body in her work on Levitical defilements. Protecting the integrity and wholness of the individual body symbolized the aspirations of Israelite society for a whole and well-protected social body, without intrusions from outside or seepage from inside.
At the same time, Douglas sees ethical interpretations of Levitical purity rules as a Hellenic intrusion into Judaism. But why? If the individual body is homologous with the social body, can’t it also be the individual as a moral being? If the purity rules project a symbolic social universe, why can’t they intro-ject a symbolic psychological universe?
The quadriga rescues from this oversight, since the allegory of body and social body opens immediately into an allegory of body and soul.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 7:45 am
Mary Douglas writes in Leviticus As Literature
This is initially counter-intuitive: The covenant promises fertility, and central to the covenant promise is the promise of abundant seed. But Douglas may be onto something, because fertility for Abraham and his children does not come through flesh but through the Spirit (cf. Galatians 4). The circumcised people has renounced teeming in cutting off the flesh, and instead looks to Yahweh as the Lord and Giver of life.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 7:31 am
Nazirites were separated to Yahweh’s service and devoted to His holy war. Priests too were “separated” (nazir, Leviticus 22:2).
But Israel as a whole was a nation of devoted warriors. That is the whole rationale for the laws of cleanliness, that the sons of Israel will be “nazired” from their uncleanness (Leviticus 15:31).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 5:16 am
Leviticus 8-9 are organized by repetition of phrases about Yahweh’s commandments. Everything in the ordination rite is done “as Yahweh commanded Moses” (8:5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 29, 36; 9:6, 7, 10, 21).
It works: When Israel does as Yahweh commands, the glory appears and eats the ascension and the fat. Yahweh eats with obedience people.
Then 10:1: “Nadab and Abihu . . . offered strange fire before Yahweh, which He had not commanded.”
Sin is breaking rhythm.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 6:57 am
That Paul says that the crossing of the sea is a “baptism” is surprising enough; but then he says that the baptism is “into the cloud.” Where’d he get that?
You can suss that out from the exodus story, but I suspect that Paul has conflated the exodus story with the procedures for sacrifice. Leviticus 1:9 says that the legs and entrails of an ascension offering are first “washed with water” and then “turned to smoke.” The washing is immediately followed by a transfiguration into cloud. Sacrificial animals were literally “baptized into the cloud.”
So also are we: Baptized into the cloud of witnesses that surrounds the throne, baptized into the company of angels that constitutes the glory of God, baptized into the cloud that is the Spirit-presence of the Son, baptized into sacrificial ministry, baptized to ascend, clothed in smoke and fire, into the Lord’s presence.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, August 24, 2009 at 8:16 am
Scattered, inconclusive remarks on the prohibition of brother-sister incest in Leviticus 18 and 20.
A number of the relations prohibited in these chatpers recall relationships that existed among the patriarchs. Leviticus 18:11 prohibits a man from taking his half-sister, the daughter of your father. That is exactly the relationship of Abraham and Sara. In Genesis 20:12, Abraham explains to Abimelech that “she actually is my sister, the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.”
A more subtle, but striking, example along the same lines comes from the related rule in chapter 20:17.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, July 31, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Leavings from a paper on Leviticus 18.
Leviticus 18 is a chiastic structure consisting of smaller chiasms. 18:1 is an introductory formula, announcing the beginning of a new section of Leviticus. Verses 2-5 form the first section of the chapter, which repeats “I am Yahweh” three times and also contains a neat small-chiasm of judgment/statutes around the central declaration of the Lord’s Name.
A. I am Yahweh your God
B. Do not do what Egypt and Canaan do
C. Do my judgments and statutes
D. I am Yahweh your God
C’. Keep statutes and judgments
B’. To live
A’. I am Yahweh
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, July 31, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Leviticus 18 is about sex. Leviticus 20 goes over the same ground, but it’s about death. The phrase “dying you shall die” from Genesis 3 is used repeatedly in the passage, nine times. The verb “die” is used 20x. Let’s look a bit at the structure of chapter 20.
Verses 1-5 form the first unit, flanked by references to Molech. The first line of verse 1 warns against giving seed to Molech, while the last uses the phrase “play the harlot with” Molech. The link is important, since “give seed” can have a sexual connotation (18:20) as well as a connotation of idolatry. Israel is required to carry out the death penalty against the idolater, by stoning, but this is backed up by the Lord’s threat to “cut off” the person from Israel:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 11:40 am
Fragments from lectures given at the recent Biblical Horizons Summer Conference. The notes that follow examine the opening verses of Leviticus 18.
1) “I am Yahweh” or some equivalent phrase is used 49 (7 x 7) times in Leviticus. The phrase is never used before chapter 11, when the “holiness” section begins, and the concerns turn away from the rules of the sacrificial liturgy to the rules of cleanness and the land. Of the 49 uses in Leviticus, 24 are in chapters 18-20. This is the place where Yahweh most emphatically declares His name, and declares what it means for Israel to be bearers of that name.
2) The specific phrase “I am Yahweh your God” is used 21x in the book, and 12 of those are in chapters 18-20. Again, Yahweh is speaking to His twelve-fold people.
3) Verse 3 sets the context for these instructions. . . .
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 9:35 am
Radner has these final comments on the hermeneutics of the “holiness code”: “The difference between the sexual laws of Lev. 18 and the laws of clean and unclean flesh in Lev. 11 cannot simply lie in their respective relation to teh category of ceremonial character. The difference lies in the way Jesus himself carries these realities in his body and in the body of his church. With respect to the animals . . . they are gathered up by Christ as reconciled creative distinctions that he bears in his own death. But with respect to the laws of sexual relation and family, we see the legal particulars, much as in the Sermon on the Mount, taken up by Christ and passed on to his church in an almost exaggerated fashion, renewed and refocused. We see both these things, however, not according to a logic of categorization, but according to the discernment of time as the Scriptures have molded them in God’s good will. The Scriptures are the book of God in the same sense as Revelation speaks of ‘the Lamb’s book of life . . . they form the shape of life as God’s creative purpose.”
Then this key formulation: “The word/words distinction in this case is as potentially misleading as the ceremonial/moral distinction is unhelpful. Jesus as the word fulfills the words of the text by carrying them in his own flesh through time: word and words are one, and the bonds of blood and life are thereby made strong.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 6:19 am
Radner finds part of the fulfillment of the figures of Leviticus 18 in the genealoty of Jesus. On the one hand, Jesus’ own genealogy includes sexually illicit acts (Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba) and the various sins (not only sexual, but idolatry and oppression) represented in the genealogy eventually lead to Israel’s exile. Yet, “God also achieves a renewal of life through the suffering of mercy and through the maintenance somehow of the line of descent.”
On the other hand, the laws of Leviticus 18 trace out the historical/geneological path of God’s coming into the world: “we ought to see the abominable as including all that rebels against the shape of God’s coming into and passage through the world. And this rebellion is overwhelmed by the coming and passage of God. This is the key: God comes in this particular way, as described in Lev. 18. And this is the nature of the injunctions’ final weight: the world is shaped by this coming. This is the life that the laws provide.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 6:12 am
In dealing with the sexual legislation of Leviticus 18, Ephraim Radner (Leviticus (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible)
The prohibition of adultery, for instance, is “fulfilled by means of confession, self-recognition, forgiveness, and conversion in the Samaritan woman . . . and in the woman caught in adultery who is brought before Jesus.” The figure of sexual union is “fulfilled in Jesus’ own self-giving for the church in a full and exhaustive manner, a reality that draws together his own teaching on marriage . . . with the character of sacrifice as it is given in the mystery of human marriage.”
His remarks on the figuration of sodomy are particularly useful:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 6:04 am
Permission is given to use material on this site, provided the source is cited, blog entries are republished in full, and the author is notified in advance.
