Leviticus 19-22: Guess What! More Laws!

[New Look for the Second Year! I'm not crazy about it, but it fixes some formatting problems I've been having.]


I have what might kindly be called a “penchant for organization,” as my new co-workers have been finding out to their amusement. Sorting through jumbled binders of information about various social service programs, I recently found three that were labeled “Seniors,” “Disability,” and… wait for it… “Seniors & Disability.” My head nearly exploded on the spot.

I bring this up because the lack of any overall structure to all of this this Biblical law is kind of wearing on me. The laws are not noticeably inconsistent, really, and they are organized into short lists of ordinances that all more or less address the same sorts of issues. But then these lists are all jumbled together, with the result that there is a lot of jumping around and also a lot of repetition. I want to rewrite them in an more orderly format. Call it the Book of Laws. Chapter One would be Violent Crimes and their punishments, Chapter Two would be Property Law, and so on. However, I can’t think that this rewrite, no matter how much it clarified things, would be popular with the religious community.

So instead, we will have to forge ahead with the laws in the order in which they are given. I will continue as your guide to good behavior as explained by the God of Moses.

Leviticus 19: More Do’s and Don’ts

Many of these we have already seen elsewhere.

• Respect Your Mom and Dad.
• No idols.
• Follow the sacrifice rules to a “T”.
• Don’t harvest all of your land; leave bits at the edges for the poor and for people passing through.
• Also, don’t pick your grapes too thoroughly; leave some for the poor and for strangers. (It strikes me – and I’m not trying to be snide here – that this is a tough mindset to achieve when farms and everything else are governed by corporate hierarchies.)

Lev. 19:11-18 lays out the essentials of decent social behavior, very clearly and without frills.

• Don’t steal.
• Don’t lie.
• Don’t deceive.
• Don’t swear falsely on god’s name.
• Don’t rob or defraud.
• Pay your employees on time.
• Don’t mess with the deaf or blind.
• Take the justice system seriously, and take care.
• Don’t slander.
• Don’t endanger your neighbor.
• Don’t hate.
• If you see someone screwing up, talk to him about it instead of implying your silent assent.
• No revenge.

Lev. 19:19 – 31 is much different. The rules here are far more specific, for one thing. And while the 11 – 18 set could be agreed on by almost any human society, the 19 – 31 set is much more peculiar. Several of them insist on the separation of unlike things, to an almost autistic extent.

• Don’t mate different kinds of animals. (No mules?)
• Don’t plant two kinds of crops in the same field.
• Don’t wear clothing woven from two different materials.
• If you have sex with somebody else’s slave, you don’t have to be killed (i.e. it isn’t rape as such) but you will need to do some sacrificing just the same.
• If you plant a tree, its first three years of fruit are forbidden. The fourth year, the fruit is for sacrifice. After that, bon appetite!
• No meat with blood.
• No practicing magic.
• No cutting the hair on the side of your head, and no trimming your beard.
• No tattoos.
• No forcing your daughter to become a prostitute.
• Observe the Sabbath.
• No consulting magicians.

And then, Lev. 19:32 – 36 winds up with more generally agreeable exhortations to good behavior:

• Respect old people. Get off your butt when they enter the room.
• Don’t mistreat foreigners. Don’t distinguish between immigrants and native-born.
• Don’t scam customers with crooked mismeasurements.
• Follow the laws!
  

Stretch Break: What About the New Covenant?

Several people have asked me why I am interested in Old Testament law, since the coming of Jesus Christ in the New Testament renders it all irrelevant. The first thing I’d say about that is that I don’t know yet if the Bible really says that. It sure hasn’t said anything about it yet. So here I am, reading the scriptures of Christianity – which many, many people believe to be divinely inspired, infallible, and incapable of improvement – in the order in which they are presented.

Here, still in the early going, I encounter the rules of behavior that God decrees should govern individual behavior and social organization. Why would that not be interesting? To say that there is some problem with the way I am understanding the big picture, when am I have just been plugging away from page 1 to, um, page 89, would suggest that there is either a structural problem with the Bible itself, or a problem with the textual focus of many Christians. Maybe that’s true. I dunno. I’m sure I’ll have a stronger sense once I finish page 923.

OK, let’s get back into it.

Leviticus 20: Crimes & Punishments

So far, the laws have presented without much in the way of teeth. But now, God laws down some mandatory sentencing guidelines. Many seem kind of draconian by modern standards.

• Sacrificing your child to Molech = death by stoning..
• Consulting magicians = exile (which, in the Hebrew context, we can assume was a death-unless-you-get-really-lucky penalty).

• Cursing your mother and your father = death penalty. (I am really curious on how “cursing” is defined for this one.)
• Adultery = death penalty for two.
• Having sex with your mother or step-mother = death penalty for both of you.
• Having sex with your daughter-in-law = death penalty for both of you.
• Male homosexual intercourse = death penalty for both of you.
• Marrying both of a mother-daughter set = death by fire for all three of you.
• Sex with an animal = death for both the human and the animal.
• Sex with your sister or half-sister = exile for both of you.
• Sex while a woman is menstruating = exile for both parties.
• Sex with an aunt or sister in law = “they will die childless.” (I’m not sure how this is supposed to work.)
• Don’t act like the neighboring tribes.
• Pay attention to the distinction between clean and unclean animals.
• Practicing magic = death by stoning.

Leviticus 21 & 22: Special Rules for Priests

As with last time, we round things up with some special laws for the priesthood. Many of the priestly regulations laid down after the unfortunate deaths of Aaron’s gung-ho sons are reiterated and summarized. And again, since I am pretty sure that none of the gentle readers are planning on joining the Hebrew priesthood, which has been defunct for about 1940 years, I will spare most of the details. Except for a few luridly interesting ones:

• Priests can’t marry widows, divorcees, prostitutes, or other non-virgins. It’s a cleanliness thing.
• Priests’ daughters who turn to prostitution, because of the shame this brings on their fathers, are to be killed by fire.
• No one with a serious physical disability, defect, or disease can approach the sacred alter. He can otherwise participate fully in religious life, but no presenting offerings. It’s a cleanliness thing.
• Dependant members of a priest’s household may, like the priest, eat the “holy food” of sacrifices. Anybody else who eats holy food by accident must pay the priest a restitution of 120% of the value of the food.
• Sacrifice animals need to be healthy and unblemished. None of this getting rid of the sick and deformed animals by sacrificing them. No way! Only the best animals are appropriate for sacrifice.

OK!

Next Week: Whew! Finishing Up With Leviticus!