Leviticus 23 - 27: If you thought there might be more laws, you are on the right track.

Today's reading brings us to the end of Leviticus, which means we are a whopping 60% of the way through the Pentateuch! Or, um, 1/13 of the way through the books of the Old Testament. Or, slightly more optimistically, 10.4% of the way through the Bible by page count. An exciting landmark by any measure. Or maybe not.

Leviticus 23: Holidays

God reaffirms yet again the importance of the Sabbath -- remember, we are still in the middle of God's long dictation of rules and laws to Moses -- and then lists the official holidays that he wants people to celebrate. These include some I've heard of, like Passover and the Day of Atonement, and several I haven't, like the Feast of Firstfruits, the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Trumpets, and the Feast of Tabernacles. There are also some instructions about what to do at each feast. For instance, the Feast of Trumpets is to be celebrated with trumpet music. And sacrifices, of course.

Leviticus 24: Oil, Bread, and Stones

The first half of this chapter directs that the lamp of the Tabernacle always be tended, full of olive oil, and burning, and that bread always be laid out on the Tabernacle table, for God but to be eaten by the priests.

The second half of the chapter breaks off of God's dictation to tell a short story from life in the camp. During a fight, a young man "blasphemes the Name with a curse." He is brought to Moses. God tells Moses that "anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord must be put to death." He is to be taken out of the camp, everyone who witnessed his transgression is to put their hands on his head, and then the entire community must stone him. ("Stoning" has such a quaint old-fashioned ring that it is worth considering its nature. It involves being rendered helpless and then having a large group of your neighbors and acquaintances throw rocks at you until you die. It's not a nice way to go.)

This is another instance where I find the familiar but shapeless language of the Bible quite maddening. This business of blasphemy is clearly a very important issue. But what exactly does it involve? Are we to consider that the utterance of the phrase "Goddammit!" warrants the death penalty? That seems pretty goofy from my perch in 2007's North America, but it's a reasonable interpretation. Or, is the crime to break an oath that has been sworn on the name of God? Or the actual invoking of a curse, as one might with a different deity say "May you rot in hell, Odin!"? The Bible tells us in no uncertain terms that this is an important subject, but doesn't really give us the detail we need to act on the news.

Leviticus 25: More bad news for the Real Estate market

God tells Moses that, in addition to the Sabbath Day, there is to be a Sabbath Year. Every seventh year, the land is not to be worked. You can harvest whatever grows on it naturally, but you can't plow or plant.

Now that's pretty standard agricultural practice, leaving land fallow occasionally to replenish its nutrients. But there's something more, something I have never heard of before, something that I am not surprised that conservative Christians downplay: The Year of Jubilee.

Jubilee year comes after every seventh Sabbath year; i.e. every fiftieth year. It is another Sabbath year, but God enjoins Moses not to worry about going two years without planting; he will make the year before the seventh Sabbath year so fruitful that they will be able to put aside three years worth of food.

During Jubilee year, all property is restored to its original owners. If you sold your land ten years after the last Jubilee, you get it back now. If you sold it last year, you get it back now. Which means that, according to God's law, YOU CAN NOT BUY OR SELL LAND. All you can do is contract a lease of between one and 49 years, from now to the next Jubilee.

There are exceptions. You can sell lots in a walled city permanently, or lots in the towns of the Levites, one of the 12 Hebrew tribes. But otherwise, land stays permanently in the ownership of a single family. Interesting, isn't it! And directly counter to the very foundation of modern economies! And almost never mentioned!

During the Year of Jubilee, people who have declined into poverty over the previous decades get a fresh start. Hebrews who have had to hire themselves out in servitude to other Hebrews -- Leviticus 25 prohibits either keeping another Hebrew as a slave or its modern equivalent, loaning money to them at interest -- get their land back, and their independence as well. The slate is wiped clean for another 50 years.

Leviticus 26: Why to be Good

In this chapter, God tells Moses what will happen to a society where people follow his orders, and what will happen to a society where people don't. This is one of the first points at which I have really been impressed with the oft-cited poetic language of the Bible, so I'll give you a few samples. First, here's what will happen to a people who obey God's dictates:

3 'If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, 4 I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. 5 Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.
6 'I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove savage beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country. 7 You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. 8 Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.

Now, here's what will happen to people who don't, as a kind of warning shot:

14 'But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, 15 and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant, 16 then I will do this to you: I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and drain away your life. You will plant seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it.
17 I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you.
18 " 'If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. 19 I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze. 20 Your strength will be spent in vain, because your soil will not yield its crops, nor will the trees of the land yield their fruit.

And if they persist in their disobedience, things really get rough:

27 'If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, 28 then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you. 31 I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings. 32 I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled. 33 I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. 34 Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. 35 All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.

This puts me in mind of the late Jerry Falwell's pronouncement that the attacks of September 2001 were America's punishment for homosexuality and what-not. Dr. Falwell was being speculative at best, but such an equation would not be wildly out of line with the laws and actions of the Old Testament God.

Leviticus 27: Redemption

I still haven't figured out what the hell "redeeming" is all about. The word seems to be used differently in different places. The gist of the thing seems to be that every first-born animal belongs to God (through his agents in the priesthood), and that a tenth of all crops, herds, and so on are to be dedicated to God as well. That much, and various technical footnotes explained in this chapter, I can understand. But then, every firstborn human son is apparently supposed to belong to God, too, and I'm not sure how that works. Also, this chapter talks about how much it costs to dedicate adult men and women to the Lord, without explaining what that means. So, the language here is a little fuzzy.

Leviticus Roundup

Leviticus offers some surprises and frustrations. Among the frustrations is the jumbled and often repetitious presentation of the law. It is on the whole coherent and consistent, but there is no discernable organizing principle. Also, it sometimes seems to count rely on the reader already understanding the specifics. We're apparently supposed to already know what constitutes blasphemy or redemption, for instance. In other instances, though, we are given far MORE detail than a modern reader needs. "Don't have sex with your immediate relatives" doesn't require as much detailed elaboration these days as it gets in Leviticus. On the other hand, considering the various intramural hijinks in Genesis, maybe an itemized list made sense at the time.

For me, there were four main surprises in Leviticus:

1 - The preoccupation with sacrifice. I knew that sacrifice was important in the Old Testament, but not THIS important. What to sacrifice, and exactly where, when, and how it should be sacrificed, is without exception the greatest preoccupation of God in his conversations with Moses. It is given far more elaboration, specificity, and sheer length of discussion than any other element of law. It is certainly given more attention than, say, the Ten Commandments, back in Exodus.

(One can't help noticeing, as an aside, that the sacrifice system guarantees a rich diet of the best available foods, along with other luxuries, to a priestly class. In return, the priests perform rituals that are too complex and elaborate to be carried out by the uninitiated, but which are much less taxing than any other form of work in the community. But perhaps I'm being uncharitable.)

2 - The elaborate system of cleanliness and uncleanliness. Again, I knew it was there, but I didn't know it was so important.

3 - This whole "Year of Jubilee" thing, with its unambiguous hostility towards private land ownership -- in many ways the basis of the modern way of life.

4 - How much of what is said to be God's direct instructions to Moses regarding how human beings are supposed to live is completely ignored today. And I'm not just talking about mainstream Christianity here. There is virtually no one, no matter how extreme a fundamentalist Christian or Jew they claim to be, who is practicing the proscribed rites of the Tabernacle, or who observes the practice of the Jubilee year.

This fourth point is very interesting. It implies that God's instructions to Moses are considered null and void. But if that is the case, why is the Book of Leviticus considered part of the Bible? Are people who choose to support arguments against (for instance) homosexuality by reference to Leviticus just whistling Dixie? Or, is some of Mosaic Law still in effect? And if so, which laws? And how do we know which laws?

Maybe this will all become clear as I keep reading.

Next Week: Time to do the Numbers!

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!

Leviticus 15-18: Sex, Blood, and Bodily Fluids

Advisory: This entry discusses adult topics. Also disgusting ones. But it's religious scholarship, so everything's cool.

Leviticus 15: the Fluids

The first 15 verses of Leviticus 15 are about men's "bodily discharges," which raises a fairly obvious question: What's a bodily discharge? At first, I thought we were talking about good ol' fashioned ejaculation, but since verses 16 - 18 are specifically about semen that can't be it. Browsing around in different translations, I see that some of them specify -- I hope that none of you are reading this before breakfast -- oozings from, you know, genital sores. Other of them don't make this distinction. So, based on this Biblical scholarship, let's preliminarily define bodily discharges as "any pussy oozings, especially if they are coming from your naughty bits."

Discharges are, as you might well imagine, ceremonially unclean. So is anyone who touches the oozing guy, or his bed, or sits in the chair where he sat. Anything wood he touches has to be scrubbed; any pottery he touches has to be broken. Once he stops oozing, he has to wait seven days, do some serious bathing, and then take a couple of doves or pigeons to the priest for sacrifice.

Semen is less of an issue. When it is "emitted," the folks involved are merely unclean until evening. They just need to wash themselves and anything the semen got on, which is always a good idea anyway in my opinion.

Verses 19 - 24 are about regular menstruation. For the seven days of her period, a woman is unclean, as anyone who touches her. If you touch her, or her bedding or chair, you've got to wash yourself and be unclean until evening. And if, in the delicate wording of the text, a man lies with her and her monthly flow touches him, he then in unclean for the next seven days, along with his bedding and clothing, much as if he was himself having a menstrual period. Verses 25 - 30 unusually prolonged menstruation or other female "discharges," which are treated much like the male discharges discussed above.

This might be a good moment to remember from last week that "uncleanness" is a ceremonial deal, and doesn't necessarily carry a moral weight. But no one really knows. (Personally, I'm pretty skeptical that it wasn't considered pejorative. There, I've said it.)

The point of all these regulations, God says to Moses at the end of the chapter, is that:

31 '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, which is among them.'

It's an interesting passage, in that it again gives God a specific physical location of being, which is an idea I'm not used to. It also seems ambiguous about the nature of God's relationship to the law. Will God kill unclean people because he wants to, because he feels it right that they should die? And if so, why?

(Alternatively, sometimes God seems to be explaining something that just is, as if people will simply die if they come into his presence with no volition on his part one way or the other. Saying so they will not die instead of so I will not kill them makes the giving of law sound more like a practical warning of the way of things, rather than the willful imposition of a set of commands.)

Leviticus 16: More Ritual

Recall that, when we last saw Aaron the priest, two of his sons had just been struck dead for ad libbing during a religious service. To ensure against a repeat, God now gives very detailed instructions for how priests are to enter the sanctuary of the Tabernacle. This involves goats, bulls, rams, blood, linen garments, and so on, and since I do not believe any of my readers are considering the priesthood I will skip over most of the details.

Two interesting tidbits, though. For one, this is the chapter that introduces the "scapegoat." The scapegoat is a sacrificial goat that the priest ceremonially burdens with all of the sins of the community, after which it is led out into the desert and released. It makes a nice piece of symbolism, and a heck of a metaphor. Then, at the end of the chapter God creates a new sabbath on the tenth day of the seventh month, given over wholly to atonement. I imagine this is the basis of Yom Kippur. [note: I'm right. I checked.]

Leviticus 17: Eating Blood

Actually, the main thrust of this chapter is that sacrifice has to be done in the temple, by the priests, damnit! Any sacrifice outside of the Tabernacle is designated as equivalent of manslaughter, punishable by exile. Wow! That's very harsh! But the reason for this draconian rule is pretty transparent; as the chapter goes on there is first a complaint about how too many people are sacrificing in the open fields. Then, we get to the REAL problem:

They must no longer offer any of their sacrifices to the goat idols to whom they prostitute themselves. (7)

Ah-ha! God wants sacrifices under strict control of the priests to make sure nobody is sneaking in a sacrifice to some other deity, or supernatural power.

Then, there is the part about blood. It is put in very strong terms, and also made punishable by manslaughter. Here, though, the reasoning is less clear: for the life of a creature is in the blood. (11) Apparently, since animal blood is so important in sacrifice rituals, it is not to be messed without outside of those rituals. Maybe this is another way to close a backdoor to sneaky polytheistic practices outside of camp? Just guessing.

Finally, anybody scavenging an animal that they found already dead is ceremonially unclean, and needs to bathe and wash his clothes. Not a bad idea.

Lev 18: Unlawful Sexual Relations!

OK, you've been very patient. Here goes. God tells Moses that the Israelites must avoid certain behaviors common among the Egyptians and the Canaanites, who were apparently some serious, serious swingers. In the interest of your moral enlightenment, I will summarize the rules here, in the order in which they are given:

• Don't have sex with your mom.
• No, don't have sex with any other wife of your father either.
• Don't have sex with your sister. No, not your half-sister either. No, not even if she didn't grow up with you.
• Don't have sex with your granddaughter. Freak.
• Again, don't have sex with your half-sister.
• Don't have sex with your aunt on your father's side.
• No, don't have sex with your aunt on your mother's side, either.
• No, you still can't have sex with your aunt even if she is only your aunt by marriage.
• Don't have sex with your daughter-in-law.
• Don't have sex with your sister-in-law.
• Don't have sex with both a woman and her daughter. Don't have sex with both a woman and her granddaughter; "that is wickedness." (17)
• Don't have sex with your wife's sister.
• Don't have sex with a woman during her period.
• Don't have sex with your neighbor's wife.
• Don't give any of your children to be sacrificed to the bull-god Molech.
• Don't "lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable."
• Don't have sex with an animal. No, not even if you are a woman.
• All of the above applies to alien residents as well as full Israelites.
• All of the above punishable by exile.

OK, much of the above lays out what I hope we can all agree are good common-sense tips for avoiding really, really tense Thanksgivings with the family. But then, there are some surprises. The prohibition against sacrificing your children to Molech, an incarnation of Ba'al, is the real oddball on the list. (And the kind of law that makes me think: "If I was the kind of guy who sacrificed my children to Molech, would the rule stop me?) Strict prohibitions against beastiality aren't surprising, although it's not especially flattering to your aunt to have her and Fido on the same list.

Prohibition of homosexuality.... or at least male homosexual intercourse... is not a big surprise; we knew we'd run into it eventually. Its equal billing with the prohibition of sex during a woman's period is maybe more of a surprise. Now... let's be delicate here... I am aware that there is more than one school of thought out there about sex during a woman's period. Yet, I have always understood this to be a question of, shall we say, practicality and personal qualms, not a moral or religious issue. Just saying.

Next Week: More laws! More punishments!

Leviticus 12 - 14: Keepin' it Clean

Leviticus 12: Childbirth Law

Leviticus 12 deals with the procedures to be followed following childbirth. Knowing that at least a couple of the gentle readers have buns in the proverbial oven, I thought it would be a good public service to summarize the protocol here.

First of all, if it's a boy, the mother will be "ceremonially unclean" for seven days. After that, there will be 33 more days when she will also be kind of unclean, although perhaps not quite as unclean. (And day 8 is when you circumcise the lad.)

If it's a girl, on the other hand, Mom is ceremonially unclean for 14 days, and then kinda unclean for 66 more days. No circumcision, of course.

Dad is off the hook in either case.

At the end of the 40 or 80 days, bring a year-old lamb and a pigeon or dove to the priest, and he will do the sacrificing necessary to make you ceremonially clean again. If you can't swing a lamb -- $100 to $150 currently, if I'm reading the ag reports right -- you can bring two pigeons (around $20 apiece for a non-racing bird) or two doves instead.

And that's that. Now, you might be thinking "what does 'clean' and 'unclean' mean?" Excellent question!

The Oxford Companion to the Bible, as well as the very wording of the New International Version translation, are rather at pains to emphasize that this isn't about hygeine or literal cleanliness. No no no. Nothing like that. It is "a system of ritual purity."

Yes, but what does it mean? Turns out that no one is sure. The OCB lays out three theories, all of which seem like they would come off as rather pie-in-the-sky to the earthy, practical Israelites. So we are left wondering. It might be a matter of "Brenda has just given birth and is unclean -- not that there's anything wrong with that." Or, it might be a matter of "Brenda has just given birth and is unclean. Scumbag."

So, if you are planning on keeping it old school, there are going to be some details to work out. However, the OCB points out that with the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the cultic basis of the system of ritual purity was first disrupted and then destroyed. The Second Temple was sacked by Emporer Titus in 70 A.D. So, it has been a while since this set of laws was in active use.

Leviticus 13 and 14: Infectious Skin Diseases and Mildew

Eew. The two chapters that deal with procedures for dealing with infectious skin disease and mildew take up three pages, roughly the same real estate spent on the stories of Creation, Adam and Eve, the Fall of Man, and Cain and Abel put together.

Looking at things historically, keeping flesh-eating diseases and destructive mildews under control was clearly a public health imperative. Chapters 13 and 14 make examination, diagnosis, and quarantine of these problems the job of the priests. Detailed descriptions of various skin conditions are provided, with instructions given for each as to whether an unclean state is indicated.

Treatment is a combination of the practical -- scrape and replaster a mildew-infested house, for instance -- and the ritual. The rituals, as usual, involve animal sacrifice and highly detailed procedures. For regaining purity after infectious skin diseases, for instance, part of the procudure is

14 The priest is to take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the lobe of the right ear of the one to be cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. 15 The priest shall then take some of the log of oil, pour it in the palm of his own left hand, 16 dip his right forefinger into the oil in his palm, and with his finger sprinkle some of it before the LORD seven times.

And so on. It is pretty long and involved. And, as appears to be the usual case, there is a sliding scale -- if you can't afford a big expensive sacrifice animal, a dove or a pigeon will usually do the trick to get you ceremonially clean again.

And really, if you have an infectious skin disease, you definitely want to get ceremonially clean again ASAP. There's a special rule for people with skin trouble:

45 "The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out, 'Unclean! Unclean!' 46 As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp.

This kind of suggests that, at least in the case of infectious skin diseases, ceremonial cleanliness might have a little more weight than the Oxford Companion to the Bible is letting on.

Next Week: Orgasms! Unlawful Sexual Relations! Eating Blood!

Leviticus 8-11: Mind the Fine Print

Continuing from the very detailed descriptions of sacrifice procedures in Leviticus 1 - 7, Leviticus 8 and 9 describe the ritual sacrifice attendant upon Aaron and his sons being ordinated as priests of the Hebrews. The description is both graphic and rather tedious. Sample text:

22 He then presented the other ram, the ram for the ordination, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on its head. 23 Moses slaughtered the ram and took some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron's right ear, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. 24 Moses also brought Aaron's sons forward and put some of the blood on the lobes of their right ears, on the thumbs of their right hands and on the big toes of their right feet. Then he sprinkled blood against the altar on all sides. 25 He took the fat, the fat tail, all the fat around the inner parts, the covering of the liver, both kidneys and their fat and the right thigh. 26 Then from the basket of bread made without yeast, which was before the LORD, he took a cake of bread, and one made with oil, and a wafer; he put these on the fat portions and on the right thigh. 27 He put all these in the hands of Aaron and his sons and waved them before the LORD as a wave offering. 28 Then Moses took them from their hands and burned them on the altar on top of the burnt offering as an ordination offering, a pleasing aroma, an offering made to the LORD by fire.

It goes on like this for a long time. The point, I think, is less to capture the pomp and pageantry of the moment than to emphasize the importance of doing everything exactly per instructions.

This emphasis on exact protocols is hammered home in Leviticus 10 when two of Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, start burning some incence during the ceremony. There's nothing that suggests that this was anything else but some well-intended freestyle praise. Yet, fire leaps from the presence of God and kills them both.

Moses tells Aaron, essentially, that this is the kind of thing that's going to happen if the rules aren't followed, and that there will be yet more trouble if he or his other sons react at all. As other relatives carry the smoking bodies off for burial, Moses gives Aaron grief about another infraction of the complex sacrifice rules:

16 When Moses inquired about the goat of the sin offering and found that it had been burned up, he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron's remaining sons, and asked, 17 "Why didn't you eat the sin offering in the sanctuary area? It is most holy; it was given to you to take away the guilt of the community by making atonement for them before the LORD.

It's worth mentioning, too, that these rules are brand new -- this is the first time anyone has ever performed the ordination sacrifices. The take-home message: when God gives instructions, follow the rules to the letter, immediately, or else!

Mmmm... Split-hoof ruminent.....

In Leviticus 11, we have the first chapter of what looks like it will be a great many laying down additional laws and moral codes. This particular chapter is concerned with food prohibitions. If it is representative we are going to see less emphasis in Leviticus on laws that mandate solutions to everyday social problems -- what to do when somebody steals somebody else's goat, say -- and more emphasis on rules of behavior that are, on their face, somewhat arbitrary.

Now, I have often heard that many of the Old Testament prohibitions are public health measures in disguise, and that the prohibition against certain foods were the Hebrews' way of avoiding potentially diseased or contaminated meats.

Well, maybe. But this point is not addressed in the text. God doesn't say "don't eat bats, because they carry disease." He just says not to eat bats (11:19). He doesn't say that, although flying insects are forbidden, locusts, katydids, crickets, and grasshoppers are OK because they have a great protein content and, not being scavengers, are less likely to carry disease. He just says of these you may eat. (11:22)

I won't rehearse all of the restrictions, as they are very numerous. The pig is of course a leading offender, joined by camels, rabbits, and shellfish. Unlikely to be problematic for my readers are specific prohibitions against eating ravens, horned owls, geckos, skinks, and snakes.

With much of the rest of Leviticus looking to be similarly legal in tone, the sheer volume of law accumulating in the Bible is really starting to add up. And the law is not always straightforward, either; there are lots of puzzling exceptions and loopholes scattered throughout, a typical example being:

37 If a carcass falls on any seeds that are to be planted, they remain clean. 38 But if water has been put on the seed and a carcass falls on it, it is unclean for you.

Given the increasing complexity of the law, and the apparent neccessity of getting it exactly right, it is no surprise that a professional priesthood is necessary. Aaron and his sons have been ordained just in time.

Next Week: All sorts of uncleanliness, but no sex yet. That's not until the week after. You'll just have to be patient.

Leviticus 1-7: Sacrifice, Sacrifice, Sacrifice

There's no break in the action as we transition from Exodus to Leviticus. We're still at the base of Mt. Sinai, and God is still quite literally laying down The Law with Moses, as they sit together in the Tent of Meeting.

The subject of the first seven chapters is sacrifice -- not the metaphorical kind of sacrifice that you and I are familiar with, but literal sacrifice, where critters or grain is burned at an alter to produce "an aroma pleasing to God." And really, it's hard to think of an element of religious practice that is less comfortable to a modern American. No matter how much cash you are dropping in the collection plate at your church, mosque, or synagogue, it doesn't have the same visceral drama to it as cutting your goat's kidneys out and throwing them onto the sacred flames. Or so I would assume.

The Bible is often treated as though it were an instruction manual or handbook for living, and here in Leviticus, it really is. These chapters tell you exactly how to sacrifice cattle, flock animals, birds, and grain. Different occasions for sacrifice are laid out -- the burnt offering, the fellowship offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering -- and we are given fairly precise specs for which parts of the beast go where, and when, and how. Separate instructions are given for where to drip the blood, how to burn the fat, what to do with certain organs, and so on. There are also specific rules about the participation of people who have been in contact with ritually impure things -- basically, they can't be part of a sacrifice, and if they break this law they are to be exiled. Other specific laws govern what portions of the animal and grain sacrifices are given over to support the priests.

The problem, of course, is that these are instructions that virtually no one -- not even the most rabid of the extreme religious conservatives -- would have any intention of following. Anyone who followed scripture on this point would be considered the most bizarre kind of barbarian, and would likely be locked up unless he or she lived in a very isolated rural area. So that's interesting.

From the historical perspective, it's also kind of interesting the volume of sacrifice that God is demanding here. In nomadic pastoralism, do herd and flock populations balloon out of control if left unchecked? I don't know if this is true, but unless there was a reliable natural excess of animals, it seems like the proscribed sacrifices being demanded by God would reduce the people to starvation in a hurry.

Interestingly, though, there is a sliding scale for certain sacrifices. The preferred sin offering is a lamb, but if you can't afford that you can sacrifice a dove or a pigeon, or, if you can't even afford that, you can sacrifice a modest quantity of grain.

Final note: I think it's interesting that I can't find any decent art, illustrations, or cartoons on the topic of Biblical animal sacrifice. Even the fearless Brick Testament conspicuously skips over Leviticus 1 - 7. It's almost like it's part of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition that nobody wants to think about, or something.

Next Time: Michael Reads the Bible will be taking a break on Sunday, July 1. I'll be back on July 8 with more rules! and more regulations! as we continue our way through Leviticus.