Leviticus: living with the holy God

About the book

Leviticus takes its name from the Greek Old Testament: the book of the Levites, the tribe of Aaron and his sons the priests. The Hebrew Bible names it by its first word, Vayiqra, ‘and he called’. Exodus ends with God's glory filling the tabernacle, so that "Moses was unable to enter the Tent of Meeting" (Exodus 40:35); Leviticus begins with the LORD calling to Moses "from the Tent of Meeting" (Leviticus 1:1).

Leviticus has long been received as a book of Moses. The words "Then the LORD said to Moses" (Leviticus 4:1) open chapter after chapter, and the book closes, "These are the commandments that the LORD gave to Moses for the Israelites on Mount Sinai" (Leviticus 27:34). Many scholars assign it instead to priestly writers of a later age, the source they call P, often setting chapters 17–26 apart as a ‘Holiness Code’, and date its present form around the exile or after, while holding that much of its practice is far older. Many others, among them evangelicals, who stress the authority of Scripture and the telling of the gospel, hold that it comes from Moses (see the Genesis lesson).

Its laws were given at Sinai in the month between the raising of the tabernacle (Exodus 40:17) and the census that opens Numbers (Numbers 1:1), in the era the map under the Jesus tab calls the exodus and the wilderness (the fifteenth or thirteenth century BC).

Many readers stall here, among sacrifices, skin diseases and lists of foods. But it answers the question Exodus leaves: how a sinful people can live with the holy God in the middle of their camp. Much of its uncleanness is not sin: a birth, a disease or touching the dead made a person unclean for a time and kept them back from the sanctuary.

How it unfolds

Key passages

The book's keynote is holiness:

For I am the LORD, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt so that I would be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy.

Leviticus 11:45

The Hebrew qadosh, holy, speaks of what is set apart, belonging wholly to God. Holiness is God's before it is Israel's, and Israel's rests on his rescue.

Near such a God sin cannot be ignored, and so he gives a way: "The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for your souls upon the altar" (Leviticus 17:11). Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest took blood into the Most Holy Place and laid Israel's sins on a live goat sent away into the wilderness (Leviticus 16:21-22):

because on this day atonement will be made for you to cleanse you, and you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD.

Leviticus 16:30

Holiness then reaches every part of life: food and family, harvest edges left "for the poor and the foreigner" (Leviticus 19:10), the feasts and the year of Jubilee. At its centre stands "love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD" (Leviticus 19:18). Its blessing is God's presence: "I will walk among you and be your God" (Leviticus 26:12).

Christians read these laws in more than one way. The Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian churches says that God gave Israel

ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, his graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits … All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated under the New Testament.

Westminster Confession, ch. 19.3

The judicial laws, it adds, expired with Israel's state, binding now only as far as their ‘general equity’ requires 19.4. Others hold that Scripture does not divide the law so, and that the whole law of Moses is fulfilled in Christ, whose law of love now guides believers. Both see the offerings fulfilled in Christ; in Matthew Henry's words, "the coming of the substance does away the shadow" Matthew Henry. See Law and covenant, in the doctrine course.

The book and Christ

The risen Jesus began "with Moses" (Luke 24:27), and Hebrews reads Leviticus most fully. The priests offered "again and again the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins" (Hebrews 10:11). Christ, priest and offering at once, "entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood" (Hebrews 9:12):

But when this Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God … because by a single offering He has made perfect for all time those who are being sanctified.

Hebrews 10:12-14

Matthew Henry sees both goats of the Day of Atonement in him: "The slain goat was a type of Christ dying for our sins; the scape-goat a type of Christ rising again for our justification" Matthew Henry. The cross and atonement, in the doctrine course, teaches what his death achieved.

Its holiness remains: Peter writes to believers, "Be holy, because I am holy" (1 Peter 1:16), and Jesus names its command "Love your neighbor as yourself" the second great commandment (Matthew 22:39).

Reading it

A chapter or two a day takes two to four weeks; begin with Leviticus 1. Read it beside Hebrews 8–10, which shows what its priests and sacrifices meant. Do not lose your way in the details: at each law ask what it shows of God's holiness and of his provision for sinners. Read chapter 16 and chapter 19 slowly. Then go on to Numbers.

Practice