It's a good thing that the Bible starts with Genesis and all the interesting stories therein because if it started with Leviticus, nobody would ever read the darn thing. We journalists call this starting with a strong lead. Although we also have the phrase "If it bleeds, it leads" and there's a whole lot of blood in Leviticus so take what you will from that...
As I alluded to above, Leviticus is boring, boring, BORING. As far as I can tell, this book is all about rules. We start off with the rules for offerings. There are many types of offerings: grain, fellowship (also called peace offerings as the footnotes in my Bible tell me repeatedly), sin, guilt and burnt. All these offerings result in slaughtering some sort of large animal and sprinkling their blood on the walls. It made me wonder, if you have to kill an animal every time you make an offering for one reason or another, how were there any animals left to breed? And, their Tabernacle wall must have looked like a Pollack painting after about a week.
There are lots of other rules too. There are rules for what you can eat and what you can't. Have no fear - eating locusts, katydids, crickets and grasshoppers are ok! There are rules for purification after childbirth. You're unclean for twice as long after you have a girl than after you have a boy. There are rules for cleansing oneself after having infectious skin diseases and discharges(I was unlucky enough to be reading that part over lunch...ewww!). There are even rules for cleansing mildew. Who knew I needed a priest to come over and inspect my shower after I finished cleaning it?
There are all sorts of rules about who you can and can't have sex with. That part was rather humorous. Most of these rules were about not having sex with close relatives. And honestly, was bestiality such an issue back then that God had to officially state for the record not to have sex with animals? It is in this section of the Bible that many folks quote a verse saying it is wrong for man to lie with man, thus defending their position that being gay is immoral. But know what? Two pages later this very same book of the Bible says that anyone who curses their mother or father must be put to death. By this literal reading of the Bible, pretty much nobody would live past their teen years. I'm just sayin'.
Then there's a whole section labeled "Various Laws." These laws are many and varied. Some are basic: do not lie, do not steal, do not go about spreading slander. There there are some odd ones: do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material. That's really missing out on the wonder of the poly blend, but I digress. The punishments for these types of things generally tend to be death or being cut off from your people. There's also a law that says you are not to put tattoo marks on your body so things aren't looking too good for me here...or for Pastor Becca.
After all the rules we see a rather long list of feasts, which also have some sort of offering, thus endangering more bulls and lambs. These feasts are Sabbath, Passover/Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Feast of Weeks, Feast of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, Feast of Tabernacles, Sabbath Year and Year of Jubilee. Honestly, I couldn't tell what goes on during any of these.
I have to say that the God that I'd been reading about in Leviticus is not the God I was brought up knowing. This is a jealous and vengeful God. And I swear a couple of times it seems like Moses had to "talk him down." This has been difficult for me. I thought that reading the entire Bible might help me grow in my faith, but so far it's only tested it more. I wasn't expecting that at all. I find myself questioning lots of things here in the Old Testament. For example, in Lev 24:17, it says, "If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death." Then 8 verses later God tells the Israelits to stone a blasphemer. So God basically just told them to take a human life. I just don't get it. I really hope that things will come together after a while.
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