In the ancient world the term leprosy covered a wide range of diseases, from simple and curable to the most fearful. Many of these skin diseases were infectious, so extreme precautions were taken. These Jewish sanitary rules were far in advance of the rest of the world. Some western medical practices didn’t catch up with them until the middle of the last century.
We are coming increasingly to understand that a profound tie exists between the health of the soul and the health of the body. It is significant that the tribe of Levi was responsible for both. They led the nation in worship and they watched over its health. “Glorify God in your body,” Paul said (1 Corinthians 6:20). Other things being equal, our bodies have their best chance for health when our spiritual lives are healthy. The Sunday morning jogger would do better to join in the adoration of God, and the worshiper should celebrate divine adoration with a body that has been treated with holy respect.
PRAYER: Help me, Lord, to treat my body as your temple, so that it may be blessed with your fullness of health; in Jesus’ name. Amen.
What connection do you find, in these chapters, between ritual and sanitary cleansing and inner personal purity?
Prayer Time
I will pray daily for the following professional church workers:
I will examine my heart about these aspects of my worship and service:
How the Drama Develops EXODUS 34—LEVITICUS 13
We might easily conclude that the development of the eternal drama is put on hold during the chapters currently under consideration. I’ll readily admit there is little physical action, little of the kind of movement that seems necessary to the unfolding of a plot. But action is only chaos unless there is also structure, and that’s where life’s rituals and laws come in. In these chapters, the action begins with a second chance. When we Christians think of the Law, we usually think of a rigid, unforgiving system. But the Exodus story tells us that before the Law ever had a chance to be implemented, it was violated, and that mercy had to intercede so the Law could be renewed and given again. The grace that culminates in Jesus Christ and the cross is foreshadowed in Exodus 34 when Moses cuts two tablets “like the former ones,” and God writes again.
How can a drama have any hope unless there is a second chance?
And then there is beauty, as symbolized by Bezalel and Oholiab and “everyone whose heart was stirred to come to do the work” (36:2). When I read the detailed listing of materials, measurements, and plans, I think of craftspeople I have seen at work—the kind of people who run their hands gently over a piece of wood to feel its texture in the soul, or the person who holds needlepoint at a distance and frowns, then smiles. The craftspeople who brought together that portable Tabernacle were sure they were involved in an eternal enterprise; they were constructing a place in which the Lord God would appear and where the people would meet the Eternal.
Of course, we find it hard to give attention to the intricate details regarding the sin offerings, the guilt offerings, the patterns of restitution, and the lengthy details of ordination. But perhaps we have hurried at the wrong places. Could it be that if we spent more time with sin and guilt offerings, we would spend less time on the psychiatrist’s couch? Did the ancient Israelites know something to which we ought to pay more attention when they took sin and guilt so seriously? Some issues of life simply won’t allow themselves to be hurried over; if we scurry on, ignoring them, they simply go undercover and attack us in our dreams or in uninvited thoughts. Israel had rituals for coping with sin and guilt; and at their best, they understood that those rituals were acted out before the God of the universe. It was this realization that brought true relief.
Ours is an age that easily confuses activity with achievement. The intricate, repetitive details of these chapters in Exodus and Leviticus require us to slow down, think, and be sure we do everything right. This is essential to the drama. A drama, after all, is more than action; it is scenery and setting, timing and costumes. Change the costuming in Shakespeare from seventeenth century to twenty-first century, and you give a very different flavor to the lines. And so it is with the rituals of our lives and the orderliness with which we receive them. When we read the insistent descriptions in these chapters, we are being prepared for the setting in which the action will take place. Without them, the action would be of a very different nature. All of this is part of who we are and how we relate to God.
Seeing Life Through Scripture
“Without blemish” is a phrase that appears often in the chapters of Leviticus that give us rules of worship. The people might be tempted to save the best of their flocks and herds for food or for marketing and give God the leftovers. No doubt! We are tempted as they were. When everything else is paid, we give God what (if anything) is left. We hurry to a church meeting with little preparation; we wouldn’t think of going so ill-prepared to a meeting for our business or profession. The church youth choir performs poorly; they admit their middle school or high school choir wouldn’t allow such shoddy work. We give God blemished offerings.
Another phrase that appears often is one that refers to certain offerings as having a “pleasing odor to the LORD.” A critic might think this language too anthropomorphic, portraying God as human. I think, rather, that the term puts God within our reach in a delightful way. It lifts my offering out of the tithe or line item on a tax form and lets me feel that God finds pleasure in my expressions of love. God is not austerely removed from me but so close as to smile when I place my envelope in the offering plate or when I labor to get my part right in the choir anthem. The Book of Leviticus tells us, in childlike yet profound ways, that God is blessed by our love.
The Sum of It All
“I am the LORD who brought you up from the land of Egypt, to be your God; you shall be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:45).
| LEVITICUS 14–15; PSALM 36 | Week 7, Day 1 |
Rabbis taught that the command for holiness had both a positive and a negative aspect. The positive is the Imitation of God. The negative means withdrawing from that which is impure and abominable. So Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair said, “Heedfulness leads to cleanness; cleanness to purity; purity to holiness; holiness to humility; humility to dread of sin; dread of sin to saintliness; saintliness to the possession of the Holy Spirit.” Such, surely, is the mood of these chapters. Their lengthy, patient list of regulations having to do with leprous diseases and with bodily discharges should be seen as the efforts of a people to avoid anything that might defile them. And they remind us again that there is often a close link between physical and spiritual defiling.
So many of the conditions of temporary uncleanness were “until the evening” (15:18, 19, 21, and so on). For the Hebrews, the new day began when the sun went down. Persons who had been unclean for a day could retire at night with a sense of purity; they began their new day at sunset with a sense of freshness and peace. When the Apostle said, “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26), he was working on the same principle. The mind and spirit, as much as the body, ought to be clean as we begin a new day by entering the sleep that will have so much to do with how the following morning will be experienced.
PRAYER: I want all of my person—body, mind, and spirit—to be clean in your holy sight, that I may truly please you. Amen.
We’d do well to remember, in the spirit of Leviticus, that there is often a tie between physical and spiritual defiling. List some examples from your experience or observation.
| LEVITICUS 16–18 |
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