I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 22-23.

In today’s passage the priests are instructed to be very careful not to bring shame on God’s name.  As I was reading this I was struck by the fact that the end of the second verse of today’s passage reads to me like it should be translated, “…so they do not bring shame on my holy name, I am the Lord.”  It seems to me that the phrase, “I am the Lord” is God’s name, which is the reason why Jewish tradition is to avoid saying God’s name.  If we speak God’s name it becomes a short step to believing that His name applies to us.  

Later in this passage it describes the various festivals which God commanded the people of Israel to keep.  These festivals were designed to unite the people of Israel and to focus that unity on worshiping God.  Finding a way to unify the people is a challenge which faces every nation.  The effort of a nation’s political leaders to unify the people of that nation behind themselves presents a challenge to those who choose to worship God (and those who worship God present a challenge to those political leaders).  A study of history shows that, no matter how hard people try to avoid it, all attempts to instill political unity become idolatrous.  Sooner or later, political necessity comes into conflict with being faithful to God.  

I want to add at the end here that the title I gave today’s study, “Political Unity is Idolatry”, is not accurate.  More accurate is to say that unity, political or otherwise, quickly replaces serving God as our goal.  Time and again when people strive for unity they set aside being faithful to God to achieve it.  Or, to be more precise, they call on others to set aside being faithful to God in the name of unity.  

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 16-18.

When Aaron wanted to go before the Ark of the Covenant to enter into the presence of God, he needed to perform a series of sacrifices some for himself and some for the people of Israel.  As I read today’s passage, he could do this whenever there was a reason to do so, but he was required to do so at least once a year on the Day of Atonement.  The effort which Aaron needed to go through reminds us that entering into God’s presence is a serious matter.

The command to celebrate the Day of Atonement (celebrate is not really the right word here) each year is immediately followed by the command forbidding sacrifices any place but at the Tabernacle.  Later on in the Law of Moses God commands that the people only perform sacrifices at the place which He designates for such.  The purpose of this command was to create unity of worship among the Children of Israel and to call them away from idol worship.  Tied in with the prohibition on offering sacrifices away from the Tabernacle is a prohibition on consuming blood.  Which suggests that the Old Testament prohibition against consuming blood was partially because if its role in idol worship.

I want to add here that throughout much of the Old Testament the people of Israel worshiped many other gods.  This leads to the conclusion that the people of Israel were polytheists for much of their history, which is correct.  However,  many people reach the conclusion that this means that the religion which was established in the Book of Exodus (before the Book of Exodus the worship of God was not a religion. I don’t want to go into what that means at this point) was polytheistic.  This passage, among many others, makes clear that such was not the case.  While many of those who worshiped God were polytheists, the actual teaching was monotheistic.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 14-15.

The passage describes the process whereby a person who has been declared to no longer be contagious must go through a ceremony to become ceremonially clean once again.  The process both reduces the risk that the person will become reinfected and shows that there is a spiritual element to recovery from a serious illness.  Once a person has completed a quarantine to determine that they are not contagious, or no longer contagious, they were to remove all of the hair from their body and wash their clothes.  The priest would conduct a purification ceremony over them, then they would remain outside of their tent for seven more days.  At the end of these seven days of purification, they would once more shave all of the hair off of their body, then offer a purification offering and a sin offering.  While I am glad that we no longer need to go through the complex, involved ritual described here, there is a lesson to be learned about welcoming back those who were, for valid reasons, “outcast” from the community and who have done what is necessary to be welcomed back.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 10-12.

Two of Aaron’s sons died because they burned incense using the incorrect fire source. It is not clear how they were supposed to know the correct way to burn the incense, but perhaps that is the point. Perhaps their sin was that they tried to burn the incense without knowing the correct way to do so. We know of other incidents where people died from doing something they did not know was dangerous. There are two ways we can look at this, and both lead to the same conclusion. First, the materialistic way: they were working with fire and with a volatile mixture. Caution was in order to make sure that the incense mixture did not explode. They did not exercise such caution. Second, the spiritual way: they were working in an extremely holy environment. They should have waited for Moses to give them God’s instructions to be sure that they were doing it in the appropriately holy manner. In either case, they died because they did not wait for proper instruction. They did not know what they did not know because they were foolish. A wise person would have realized that what they were about to do was potentially dangerous and would have made sure they knew the correct way to do it.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 8-9.

Today’s passage describes Moses ordaining Aaron and Aaorn’s sons as priests.  There were two parts to the ordination.  Moses dressed Aaron and his sons in the garments which had been made for them as priests.  Once they were dressed in their priestly garments, Moses annointed the Tabernacle, its furnishings, and each of them. Then Moses offered a sin offering for Aaron and his sons, a burnt offering, and an ordination offering.  Once Moses was done offering these sacrifices he had Aaron and his sons sit vigil at the entrance to the Tabernacle for seven days and nights.  On the eighth day they began to serve as priests, offering sacrifices on behalf of the rest of the people of Israel.

The passage seems to imply that the sacrifices Moses offered were all done on one day, but I wonder.  First of all, looking at what was involved in those sacrifices seems challenging for one man to perform in one day.  Second, since it appears that Aaron and his sons only ate their portion of the sacrifices, what did they eat from the 3rd through 7th day of their vigil (earlier, God commanded that those portions not be eaten after the second day)?  It is possible that Moses spread the sacrifices out over the seven days of the vigil, or that other sacrifices were offered over that time period. 

I really wanted to focus on the vigil which Aaron and his sons sat.  They spent seven days thinking about what it meant to be called out to represent the people before God.  Each of us would benefit from sitting such vigils to meditate on what it means to serve God as followers of Christ.  Not necessarily for seven days, but a weekend now and again would serve us well (and I will not argue against spending seven days on such an endeavor).  I will note that Aaron went from making a gold calf for the people to worship to the High Priest before God in a relatively short period of time.