Leviticus

Overview

Leviticus answers the question Exodus leaves standing: now that a holy God lives in the middle of the camp, how does anyone come near Him and live? The answer runs through sacrifice, priesthood, cleanness and feast days — all of it given by God rather than invented by men.

It is the most skipped book in the Bible and one of the most quoted in the New Testament. Read it as a book about access, and the detail stops being tedious: every rule is about the distance between a holy God and a sinful people, and how He Himself closed it.

Background

The tabernacle has just been finished and filled with glory. Israel is camped at Sinai, a nation of former slaves with a tent of God in their midst and no idea how to live with Him there.

The offerings were not new inventions — Abel, Noah and Abraham had all sacrificed — but here they are ordered, explained and given to a nation, with a priesthood set apart to carry them out.

Key themes

• God is holy, and holiness is not optional for a people who bear His name.
• Sin is atoned for by substitution: life given for life.
• There is a right way to approach God, and He is the one who says what it is.
• Ordinary life — food, clothing, illness, harvest, neighbors — is where holiness is worked out.
• The calendar itself teaches: sabbaths, feasts, the jubilee, the Day of Atonement.

Outline

1. The offeringsChapters 1–7

   Burnt, meat, peace, sin and trespass offerings, and what the priests do with each.

2. The priesthoodChapters 8–10

   Aaron and his sons consecrated — and Nadab and Abihu struck down for strange fire.

3. Clean and uncleanChapters 11–15

   Food, childbirth, leprosy and discharges: what defiles, and how it is cleansed.

4. The Day of AtonementChapter 16

   Once a year, one man, one blood, and a scapegoat sent away bearing iniquity.

5. Holy livingChapters 17–22

   Blood, sexual purity, justice, honesty, and loving your neighbor as yourself.

6. Feasts and yearsChapters 23–25

   The appointed times, the sabbath year, and the jubilee when debts end and land returns.

7. Blessing, cursing and vowsChapters 26–27

   What obedience brings, what rebellion brings, and God’s promise to remember His covenant.

Key passages

• Leviticus 10:1-2 Nadab and Abihu offer strange fire and die before the LORD.
• Leviticus 16:21-22 The scapegoat carries the iniquities of the people into the wilderness.
• Leviticus 17:11 It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
• Leviticus 19:2 Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy.
• Leviticus 19:18 Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
• Leviticus 23:1-4 The feasts of the LORD, the holy convocations Israel is to proclaim.
• Leviticus 25:10 Proclaim liberty throughout all the land: the jubilee.

Christ in Leviticus

Hebrews reads Leviticus as a shadow: a high priest who must offer for his own sin first, blood that can never take sin away, a veil that stays shut. Christ is the better priest who offered Himself once, the better sacrifice, and the one who tore the veil. The Day of Atonement in chapter 16 is the clearest picture of it — and Jesus quotes 19:18 as the second greatest commandment.

Reading it

• Read chapter 16 first if the book feels impenetrable; it is the hinge everything turns on.
• Keep Hebrews 9–10 open alongside it.
• Ask of each law: what does this say about God, and about what sin costs?