Lev. 21
Apparently it defiles you to be near a dead body, even for mourning purposes - so if you're a priest you shouldn't do this at all (which is mighty strange. Were there no priest-led funeral services?). But an exception is made allowing a priest to visit his close relatives' bodies - even that of his sister, filthy woman that she is - provided she died a virgin. If that sister's ever been with a man, hey, she's that guy's problem.
If you're a priest you shouldn't shave the top of your head like a Benedictine monk, which - well, (a), did you realize this semi-non-hairstyle is called a tonsure? Learn something new every day. And (b), I never would have guessed anybody, anybody but a Benedictine monk would have thought of something as weird as that to do to their head, let alone that it had been happening often enough a couple thousand years before the Benedictines that it needed specifically to be banned.
However... now that I think about it... what priest would say, "Hey, fellow priests, let's shave the tops of our heads bald?" A bald priest, of course. Knock the bretheren down to baldy's level. But God knew well enough to forestall such shenanigans amongst Hebraical clerics.
(Did the Benedictines not feel constrained by this law? Or is it really true that out of the whole Levitican canon, only the gay bit shall apply to the modern world? Not that Catholic priests have been following even that bit. Wah-wah.)
--Moving along, if you're a priest, don't cut yourself ritually, or marry a harlot or divorcee. If the daughter of a priest becomes a harlot, she is to be "burned with fire" Not with a sip of overheated soup, mind you, or HCl or sunburn or pointed remarks. Fire.
(The foregoing rules, incidentally, are observed even more strictly for the head priest. Not an important point, but one I include in the interest of thoroughness. Or - is it an important point? Because who knew there was room for leniency in these rules, such that they apply more or less strongly to different people?)
Here's something. You're disqualified to become a priest at all if you "have a blemish" or a defect, including being, "blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or a man who has an injured foot or an injured hand, or a hunchback or a dwarf, or a man with a defect in his sight or an itching disease or crushed testicles." (18-20) Thought they could slip in that last entry in the list under the wire, did they? No, it will obviously be getting all of the attention here. Because though something about that passage strikes me as saddening all around (no injured hands allowed - carpal-tunnel makes you less holy?) - what I'm really left wondering is, how-on-earth much testicle-crushing was going on in ancient Israel? It was a thing? What is the story here? There seems to be a story and we're not being told it.
Lev. 22
Priests cannot touch "the holy things", meaning surely the wide array of implements, altars, and arks whose construction has been earlier described, when unclean. And what, pray, makes a priest unclean? Well, if you're a leper or have a discharge, or touch a corpse or insect, or if you've ejaculated - you're unclean. Which is to be remedied by a brisk bath of holy water and to wait patiently till sundown.
Nor should priests eat roadkill.
Gentiles living among the Jews can't eat any of the priests' food (aka, sacrifices given up to God). However, the priests' slaves can eat this food, because, be fair, how else are these holy men supposed to be feeding their slaves? Since slaves are a normal household possession of good and holy men, which the Bible finds unremarkable. And what beast of a priest would refuse his human chattel the burnt turtledove meat that was so recently sending up a pleasing odor to the LORD from his brazier?
(If a priest has a daughter, she can eat from the sacrifical-food fund while she grows up, but not after marrying. If she becomes widowed or divorced - and is childless - she can come back and eat again. Very good to have all these fine points cleared up, because where would we be if we had to live in the dark about all this?)
Holy food eaten in error must be paid back to the priests at 20% interest. Yes, interest on food. Grub appreciation.
Much like the priests themselves, the animals sacrificed by them must be unblemished, not blind, have all limbs the same length and et cetera - and of course their testicles must be intact. Which, again, I just have to wonder about. Who was going around crushing these poor oxen's testicles? Was it some Bronze-Age Jack the Ripper? (Serial killers usually start out with animal abuse, you know.) Could it be the Grays performing nocturnal cattle mutilations? I do not know, but one of these nights I plan to call Coast to Coast AM and get some answers.
Post-script to Leviticus 22: newborn animals must stay at least seven days with their mothers before being sacrificed by fire. For I am the LORD your God, and that only seems nice.
Lev. 23
This chapter's all about feasts. Which is great! Because the ancient Hebrews had some weird feasts.
Alright, the first one's not weird - keep the Sabbath each week. You know the scene in Religulous where Bill Maher visits the guy who makes special telephones you can dial without pressing buttons, since pressing buttons constitutes "working"? (This hard line drawn between work and casual effort isn't anything clearly stated in the Torah per se, but emerged in the Midrash, or later Rabbinical commentaries.) But in that spirit, you know, observe the Sabbath and keep it holy for all thine days. E.g., no screen time.
Quick pause to reflect - for all the attention given by modern orthodox Jews to Shabbat observance... how to do it, how not to do it... it is actually shocking that this is all we're getting from the Torah itself to kick off that level of care and concern.
Next feast: passover. Which - also no surprise in the holiday roster - it involves eating unleavened bread for a week following the night-of, and it involves waving wheat, and measuring out ephahs of flour and so on; all of which we've mainly been told about before. There's a follow-up to Passover fifty days after the fact ("Shavuoth"), requiring the sacrifice of two loaves of bread, seven lambs, a bull, and two rams. You're not hearing a lot about this part these days, but Jews do have so many holidays on the calendar that I have not the slightest doubt that this one's still in there. But for Christians later on down the line, this follow-on observance evidently became the occasion of the Pentecost.
--And then there's a feast for the New Year, followed closely by the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur (which we heard about a few chapters back, what with the scapegoat being attacked in the wilderness by a mysterious spirit named Azazel and so on). So, okay. Though these feasts may be weird, they aren't weird in the sense of being unexpected at this Torahic point.
But what about this? "On the fifteenth day of the seventh month and for seven days is the feast of booths to the LORD." Yes, gentle folk. Booths. Like structures at a craft fair from which one might vend tchotchkes or gegaws or laginappes: booths.
What's this about, the Festival of Booths? Well let me intrude into my own narrative here to say I'm ten years older today, as I wend revisingly through this text, than I was when I first set out blogging the Bible. In that decade I have both dated and married into Judaism, let alone worked four years at a Jewish advocacy organization; so Sukkot carries none of the surprise it did when I blundered into it here in Leviticus in my late 30s. But I had gone that long in a mainstream American upbringing without hearing a breath about the thing (nor Purim, for that matter), which is interesting.
Anyway, per the original Levitican rulebook, one observes the Festival of the Booths / Sukkot by gathering up all the produce one can, performing no work at the beginning or end of the week (e.g., phonecalls not allowed), making sacrifices each day in between; and all the meantime, by the way, you have to live in a booth. You're not selling anything from the booth. You aren't in family-seating at a restaurant. Why, you aren't even being dunked for charity. But for a week, you live in a booth.
The weekly Sabbath holy-day commemorates the creation of the Earth. Passover celebrates god's delivery of the Israelites from slavery. The New Year - hell, everybody celebrates that, and why not? ("Auld lang syne": Hebrew, right?). And the Day of Atonement, witchy and weird as it may be with the goat/Azazel business, it makes a spiritual and purificational sense to me. We all could use a periodic rinse.
But - booths? I'm interested in where that came from. I'm going to venture that it started as something about sleeping with the grain during harvest-time, to prevent rodents from having at the stuff before it can get better stored. But it survives as a holiday which, like Purim (on which more later, in Ruth, not here), is mainly kind of... fun? A holiday unrooted in fear or absolution but which just gets you out of the same-old. I think I can dig from afar that there is something nice about this. But with stress on "afar". If my wife declared her insistence that we all sleep in the backyard in a shack for a week, I am not sure how nice I would still be calling it.
Lev. 24
God tells Moses to tell everybody to bring olive oil - which I hadn't realized was flammable! - to Aaron and the priests so they can keep a lamp burning outside the Tent of Meeting day and night, "throughout your generations." Leviticus sure is full of rules to be observed "throughout your generations" that aren't observed anymore.... Except for that one about the gays! It still counts.
Also, one dozen flour cakes arranged, with frankincense, on a table of pure gold must be whipped up every Sabbath for the priests to eat (cakes) and burn (frankincense). Pure gold, mind. Whooh!
And now, a little side-story. It's a charmer. This guy whose mom is Hebrew but whose dad is Egyptian, he gets in a spat with an Israelite and in the argument is publicly heard to take the LORD's name in vain. So God says everybody who heard the guy should lay their hands on him, and the whole city should stone him to death. The moral being that if you live among the Israelites, you should be put to death for breaking God's covenant whether you're a Hebrew yourself or not.
If you kill, you must be killed. If you kill an animal, you must replace it. If you disfigure your neighbor, you must be disfigured, "fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth." (24:20) And, if you weren't listening just now, if you kill an animal, you must replace it. If you kill, you must be killed.
Lev. 25
This chapter's about what I like to call SuperSabbaths, and zoning restrictions. But first the SuperSabbaths. You see, every seventh year the earth itself needs a rest, so you aren't allowed to plant it. Weirdly, you also aren't allowed to "reap what grows of itself", or "gather the grapes of the undressed vine." (25:5) I call it weird because God is specific that "The Sabbath of the land will provide food for you," (25:6) and "...you shall eat what it yields out of the field." (25:12) So if you're going to eat that year I guess you're supposed to tie your hands behind your back squat around in the field bobbing for vegetables, without reaping or gathering them?
(Well, God promises to send in extra with the pre-SuperSabbath harvest. That should help, but yet, be real. This is not always going to come through.)
Now, there's also a Super-SuperSabbath, called the Jubilee, which happens after a seven-count of seven-years. This Jubilee isn't held in the 49th year, though, but afterward on the 50th - which to my eye suggests that this time around, the fields will go untended two years running.
The concept of the Jubilee is a really interesting one. At its heart is the notion that there are certain things owned by God, and by no man. Or the commons, you might say. These include pastureland, and individual Hebrew men. Land - or at least land outside walled cities - is considered occupied by the Israelities only by the grace of God. Therefore it can be leased out, in increments reckoned against Jubillee periods, but never sold. And at the end of each half-century all land reverts to the Israelite who's occupying it, or his family. Its value when leased out is prorated against the amount of time left till the next Jubilee. (Exceptions include homes inside walled cities [you have a right to buy it back for a year after sale, after which the buyer owns it forever] and the real estate of the Levites which is reclaimable by the priests into perpetuity.)
And ditto for Hebrew men: if they fall into penury, they can sell themselves off to the wealthy, but only as indentured servants; they must be freed at the time of Jubilee (though depending on where you fall in the cycle... I mean, yow, 49 years is a long time to wait). Moreover, it's incumbent on the families of men sold into such servitude to buy them back out prior if they can.
So to be quite clear about slavery: you're free to buy as many men or women as you like if they're from another country, or if they live where you do but aren't Hebrews. My impression is that you'll own their children as well, but this isn't expressly spelled-out. And I like this: when a Hebrew man does indenture himself as a servant, the master "shall not rule over him with harshness in your sight." Kind treatment is a great thing, but its absence is conspicuous in the rules on how to treat non-Hebrew slaves.
Lev. 26
Well here's the tour de force, the big frightening capper on the big frightening book of Leviticus. It goes something like this:
Do what I tell you to do. You know what I've told you to do; I've been repeating it ad nauseam since at least the middle of Exodus, and will carry on doing repeating it at least through the end of Deuteronomy. Do not make or worship idols and etc.; observe my statues. Because you know why? I would like to tell you why.
Because if you follow the statutes, I'll send rain when you want it and food when you need it. You'll live in peace, at least to the extent that nobody'll be invading your lands; but not in peace, to the extent that you'll happily be invading other people's lands. In short, "my soul shall not abhor you." (26: 11)
But suppose, uh, suppose you don't follow my statutes. Suppose you do not hearken, and rather spurn. Well, "I shall appoint over you sudden terror, consumption, and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it; I will set my face against you, and you shall be smitten before your enemies; those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you." (26:17)
(Fleeing when no one pursues you. Sounds like a great description of generalized anxiety disorder!)
So that's clear, right? I think that makes a very strong case that you should - wait, what's this? You still don't want to observe my statutes? You still wouldst hearken not? Well, "I will chastise you again sevenfold for your sins", and "break the pride of your power," making the "heavens like iron and the earth like brass." (26:20)
So I'm glad we've cleared that up, and can - what? What do you say? Still you do not hearken? Still you walk contrary to me? Well, how about some more plagues, buddy, sevenfold plagues, whatever that even means - but you know it can't be good - and I'm'a gonna send wild beasts into your town who'll carry off your children for lunch; I'll destroy your cattle, and kill so many of you that "your ways shall become desolate." (26:22)
Whew. I sure am glad we see can eye to eye on this, or should I say "eye for eye" on it, ha ha. Nothing like a one true god sharing a joke with his chosen people, eh? So with that behind us, let's - oh no. Are you serious? You want to know what'll happen if you still walk contrary to me? Well I'm going to walk a little contrary to you, pal, and I have a feeling you aren't going to like it. I'm going to smite you sevenfold, bring a sword on you, sow pestilence, and deliver you into the hand of your enemy. It'll take ten women to work one oven, 'cause that's how little bread you're going to have.
And if you still won't obey me, after all that? - remember we've already gone four rounds of disobedience here, folks - I am going to walk contrary to you, as you know - I've been walking contrary to you for some time now in this passage, so it comes as no surprise - but this time I'm going to do it in fury. Guess what that mean. It means the beasts won't be eating your children - you will, punk, like in a Cormac McCarthy novel. How does that sound to ya', being so hungry that you're off cooking your kids? That's how things will be when you dis-hearken me four times in a row. I'll lay waste to your altars, cast your corpses upon the corpses of your false idols - I "will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing odors." (26:31)
Lev. 27
Not content to close on a poetic note when it's reached one, let's tack on one chapter at the end, eh? Consider Chapter 27 here to be an appendix.
So. If you vow a thing to the LORD, here are the cash equivalent values:
Male, 20-60 yrs 50 shekels Female, " 30 Male, 5-20 years 20 Female, " 10 Male, 1 mo. - 5yrs 5 Female, " 3 Male, 60+ yrs 15 Female, " 10 Animals, sacred Not exchangable Animals, not-sacred Negotiable, with 20% redemption surcharge Houses Negotiable, with 20% redemption surcharge Land sufficient for sowing one homer of barley 50 shekels, Jubilee-prorated and with 20% redemption surcharge 1-homer land (if pledged by tenant) ", with reversion to original owner at Jubilee Animals, firstlings Not exchangable Animals, not-sacred Negotiable, with 20% redemption surcharge Proscribed things Not negotiable Reclaimed tithes 20% surcharge
Good to know! But - what does it mean to vow a thing to the LORD? It appears these valuations are for reference in making voluntary charitable contributions to the priests/temple. So we get, for example, the equivalent amount of donating a whole person (?), and the costs required if, I guess it looks like, you think you made a mistake in your home economics and need to claw a gift back.
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