Leviticus

Lesson #1
And he said . . .

And he said . . .

Preview
Leviticus sits squarely at the center of the Torah, the
middle unit of Gods Law:
A (Genesis);
B (Exodus);
C (Leviticus);
B (Numbers);
A (Deuteronomy)
Sitting as it does between the brilliant narratives of
Genesis and Exodus and the wilderness tales of
Numbers and Deuteronomy, Leviticus seems a
moment of stasis, a pause in Scriptures forward
movement that dwells on the mechanics of sacrifice
and the minutiae of ritual law, subjects of little
interest or relevance to a modern audience.
In truth, most readers either bog down in Leviticus or
And he said . . .
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simply skip over it.

But not us!

If properly understood,
Leviticus is a thrilling
book, one that parts
the paper-thin veil
separating heaven and
earth, revealing Gods
plan of redemption in
intimate detail and
taking us into the
innermost sanctuary of
the living God.
And he said . . .

Fair enough,
but how does
Leviticus do
that while
fitting into
the overall
narrative
shape of
Scripture?

And he said . . .

The Hebrew name

for Leviticus is
vyeekrah, the first
word of the Hebrew
text, and it means
And he called.
In the literary
structure of the
Bible, Leviticus
continues the book
of Exodus,
suggesting that we
study Exodus and
And he said . . .
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Leviticus as one

Recall that when

we left Exodus,
God had come
down from Mt.
Sinai to manifest
himself in the
Tabernacle built
by his covenant
people,
according to his
detailed
instructions:

And he said . . .

Thus Moses finished all the

work. Then the cloud covered

the tent of meeting, and the
glory of the Lord filled the
tabernacle.
Moses could not enter the
tent of meeting because the
cloud settled down upon it and
the glory of the Lord filled the
tabernacle.
(Exodus 40: 33-35)

And he said . . .

The Tabernacle
Pillar of Cloud & Fire
(Theophany of God)

In Exodus, we hear
God speak to his
people from the top
of Mt. Sinai in a
voice of thunder; in
Leviticus, he speaks
intimately from
within the
Tabernacle. In
Exodus, God offers
the Israelites a
unique role in the
plan of salvation; in
And he said . . .
Leviticus, they learn9

As we enter Leviticus
the Israelites have been
in the wilderness for one
year (Exodus 40: 17);
Leviticus will span one
month (Numbers 1: 1);
and Numbers through
Deuteronomy will span
another 39 years, for a
total of 40 years in the
wilderness, or one
generation.
Our narrative from
Genesis through
Deuteronomythe Torah
And he said . . .
10
is thus linear in

Holiness is the theme of

Leviticus.
The Hebrew word for holy is
kawdoshe, and it appears more often
in Leviticus than in any other book of
the Bible. In Leviticus 20: 26, God says
to Israel, To me, therefore, you shall
be holy; for I, the Lord, am holy.
A relationship with God can be based
on nothing less..

And he said . . .

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But wait! As weve

already learned in
our study of Genesis
and Exodus,
humanity is not
holy; we are steeped
in sin and cut off
from God.

And he said . . .

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Indeed, thats right.

As far back as
Genesis 6: 5 we
read:
When the Lord saw
how great the
wickedness of human
beings was on earth,
and how every desire
that their heart
conceived was always
nothing but evil, the
Lord regretted making
human beings on the
and his heart was
And heearth,
said . . .
13

And in Romans 3: 23,

Paul tells us that
nothing had changed
by his day, for
all have sinned and
are deprived of the
glory of God.
In Pauls day, as in
Genesis and Exodus,
sinful man is a moral
pariah, and he cannot
gain access to an
infinitely
holy God.
And he said . . .

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But in
Leviticus,
God begins
to bridge the
gap between
himself and
sinful
humanity!
And he said . . .

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How does he do that?

And he said . . .

16

Leviticus lays out

two great
pathways to a
relationship with
God:
the 1st is the approach
to God through
sacrifice;
the 2nd is the walk with
God through
sanctification.
And he said . . .

17

Sacrifice
chapters 1-10

Sanctification
chapters 11-27

And he said . . .

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The order is important:

1. the five great sacrifices made
at the Tabernaclethe burnt
offering, grain offering, peace
offering, sin offering, and guilt
offeringestablish the basis
for a relationship with God;
2. the laws that lead to
sanctification operate within
this sacrificial framework.

And he said . . .

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In the New
Testament, the
epistle to the
Hebrews offers a
detailed
commentary on
Leviticus, seeing
in the sacrifices a
foreshadowing of
the person and
work of Christ.
And he said . . .

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But when Christ came as high priest of the good

things that have come to be, passing through the
greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by
hands, that is, not belonging to this creation, he
entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the
blood of goats and calves but with his own blood,
thus obtaining eternal redemption. For if the blood
of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of a heifers
ashes can sanctify those who are defiled so that
their flesh is cleansed, how much more will the
blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit
offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our
consciences from dead works to worship the living
God.
(Hebrews 9: 11-14)
And he said . . .

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If we read Leviticus
through the lens of
the New Testament,
we see in the five
great sacrificesand
in the Day of
Atonement (Yom
Kippur) in chapter 16
the most perfect
portrait of Christ in
all of Scripture. In
the Gospels, we see
Christ through mens
eyes;
in Leviticus, we
And he
said . . .
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Francisco de Zurbaran. Agnus Dei (oil on canvas),

1635-1640.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
And he said . . .

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Leviticus is a thrilling
book of tremendous
depth and beauty.
For a Jewish reader,
Leviticus rests at the
very heart of Torah,
Gods most precious
gift to his people; for
the Christian reader,
it sets forth the inner
dynamics of salvation
and of our
relationship with
And he said . . .
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God.

A+

A+

Book of Leviticus (title

page),
Warsaw edition, 1860.
And he said . . .

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A Note on Met
hodology

And he said . . .

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As we begin our
study of Leviticus,
we need to lay out
some guidelines on
how to proceed. In
scholarly circles, this
is called
hermeneutics,
strictly defined as
the study of the
methodological
principles of
interpretation.
And he said . . .

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When we began our verse-by-verse

study through the Bible, we noted that
the 73 books of the Septuagint canon
were written over a period of at least
1,500 years by many different authors,
and that nearly all the books had passed
through the hands of editors and
redactors to become the completed
texts that we now have. Although
ascribed to Moses within the context of
our narrative, Leviticus, for example,
didnt flow directly from Moses pen, but
developed over many centuries,
incorporating rituals and laws from
several different periods of Israelite
history, reaching its final form sometime
during the Persian Period, 538-332 B.C.

And he said . . .

28

We went on to insist, however, that the

Bible has traditionally been read in its
final, finished form as a unified literary
work, and that it has influenced Western
thought and imagination as a unified
work. As Professor Northrop Frye
argues in his seminal book, The Great
Code: the Bible and Literature, the
Bible has a beginning, middle and end;
it has a body of consistent, concrete
images; and its unifying principle is one
of narrative shape. This is a
foundational principle for anyone
approaching Scripture as a literary
work, and much of todays most
insightful and productive biblical
scholarship approaches Scripture from
this perspective.
And he said . . .

29

This approach of
seeing the Christian
canon of Scripture
as a tightly knit
fabricthe Old
Testament prefiguring the New and
the New Testament
fulfilling the Oldis
an essential element
of Roman Catholic
exegesis, and it is
summarized in the
And he said
...
Catechism
of the 30

The Church, as early as apostolic times,

and then constantly in her Tradition, has
illuminated the unity of the divine plan
in the two Testaments through typology,
which discerns in Gods works of the Old
Covenant pre-figurations of what he
accomplished in the fullness of time in
the person of his incarnate Son.
Christians therefore read the Old
Testament in the light of Christ crucified
and risen. Such typological reading
discloses the inexhaustible content of
the Old Testament; but it must not make
us forget that the Old Testament retains
its own intrinsic value as Revelation
reaffirmed by our Lord himself. (Article
III, par. 128-129)

And he said . . .

31

In addition to the
Catechism of the
Catholic Church,
several other
documents are also
important for
establishing a solid
hermeneutic (or
method) for a
Catholic reading
Scripture. They are
available here:
CatholicAnd he saidresources.org/Churc
...
32

These texts are essential reading

Documents of the Second Vatican
Council
Dei Verbum (1965)

Documents of the Pontifical Biblical

Commission
The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture
(2014)
The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church
(1993)
Instruction on the Historical Truth of the
Gospels (1964)

And he said . . .

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Now,
back to
Leviticus!

And he said . . .

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To properly engage
Leviticus we need to
begin with an
understanding of
biblical cosmology, of
the tripartite nature
of Gods creation as
it was viewed in the
ancient Near East, c.
1500-500 B.C., and
as it is mirrored in
Scripture.
And he said . . .

35

God as Architect of the Universe (illumination on parchment),

Frontispiece of the Bible Moralisee, [Codex Vindobonensis 2554, f. 1
verso], c. 1220-1230.
Austrian National Library, Vienna.
And he said . . .

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The Hebrew Scriptures

envision a 3-part world,
with the heavens above,
the earth in the middle
and the underworld
(sheol) below. This 3part world floated in a
mythological cosmic
ocean, which
encompassed the earth
until God created the
firmament to divide it
into upper and lower
portions, revealing dry
land. According to
biblical cosmology, the
And he said . . .
37
world has been

As Scripture reads:
In the beginning, when God
created the heavens and the earth
and the earth was without form or
shape, with darkness over the abyss
and a mighty wind sweeping over
the watersthen God said: Let
there be light, and there was light.
God saw that the light was good.
God then separated the light from
the darkness. God called the light
day, and the darkness he called
night. Evening came, and morning
followedthe first day.
Then God said: Let there be a
dome in the middle of the waters ,
to separate one body of water from
the other. God made the dome, and
it separated the water below the
dome from the water above the
And he said
. . .so it happened. God
dome.
And

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And he said . . .

39

When God created man

and woman he placed
them in the Garden of
Eden to nurture and
care for it, and God
himself walked with
them in the Garden at
the breezy time of the
day, sharing intimacy
and fellowship.

And he said . . .

40

Hieronymus Bosch. Garden of Earthly Delights [detail] (oil on oak

panel), c. 1490-1510.
Prado Museum, Madrid.
And he said . . .

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But in Genesis 3 conflict

enters our story when
Adam and Eve sin,
turning their backs on
God to follow their own
desires.
In our study of Genesis 3
we defined sin as:
a condition of
alienation and
separation from God that
manifests itself in
outward, sinful action.
And he said . . .

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And a holy
God must
judge sin.

Michelangelo. Face of God

(fresco), 1511.
Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.

And he said . . .

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William Blake, God Judging Adam (color relief print with pen, ink and
water color), c. 1795.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
And he said . . .

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God evicts Adam and Eve

from the Garden, and once
outside, Adam must live by
the sweat of his brow until
he returns to the ground
from which he was taken,
and Eve must bear children
in pain and be ruled over
by her husband.
After the fall, God
seemingly disappears from
the scene, only to visit
humanity occasionally in
dreams or in a theophany,
as when he appears to
Abraham in the form of a
And he said . . .
man,
or to Moses, speaking 45

Aert de Gelder. Abraham and the Angels (oil on convas), c. 16801685.

Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
And he said . . .

46

Moses and the Burning Bush

(mosaic), 6th cent.
St. Catherines Monastery, Mt. Sinai,
Egypt.

Not until Exodus does

God overtly reenter our
story in his theophany
at Mt. Sinai:
On the morning of the third
day there were peals of thunder
and lightning, and a heavy cloud
over the mountain, and a very
loud blast of the shofar, so that
all the people in the camp
trembled. But Moses led the
people out of the camp to meet
God, and they stationed
themselves at the foot of the
mountain. Now Mount Sinai was
completely enveloped in smoke,
because the Lord had come
down upon it in fire. The smoke
rose from it as though from a
kiln, and the whole mountain
And he
said . . .
trembled
violently. The blast of48

Land of
Goshen

Via Maris

Rameses

Succoth
Bitter Lakes

Marah
Elim

Rephidim
Mt. Sinai

Mt. Sinai

Photography by Ana Maria Vargas

At Mt. Sinai we
encounter no cozy,
gentle God!
When the Lord came down
upon Mount Sinai, to the top of
the mountain, the Lord
summoned Moses to the top of
the mountain, and Moses went
up. Then the Lord told Moses:
Go down and warn the people
not to break through to the Lord
in order to see him; otherwise
many of them will be struck
down. For their part the priests,
who approach the Lord must
sanctify themselves; else the
Lord will break out in anger
against them. But Moses said
to the Lord, The people cannot
go up to Mount Sinai, for you
And he said . . .
yourself warned us, saying: Set51

Notice how our story at

Mt. Sinai subtly mirrors
the tripartite cosmology
of the ancient biblical
world.
As we have God in his
heaven and man on the
earth, with the
firmament and the sky
separating the two, so
do we have God at the
top of Mt. Sinai and the
people at the foot of the
mountain, with the
towering slopes
And he said . . .
52
separating the two.

God in Heave

Firmament and
Sky
Man on Earth

And he said . . .

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Moses/God
Priests
People
Mt. Sinai

Photography by Ana Maria Vargas

In the post-lapsarian
world, God no longer
permits sinful humanity
to stand before him.
The people stay at the
foot of the mountain,
forbidden from even
touching it; the priests
(Nadab & Abihu and 70
of the elders), after
sanctifying themselves,
are permitted only to
climb the lower slopes of
the mountain; only
Moses may go to the top
And he said . . .
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of the mountain to

When God gives

the blueprints for
the Tabernacle in
Exodus, it too
mirrors the
tripartite
cosmology of
ancient Israel, as
well as of Mt.
Sinai.
And he said . . .

56

Holy of Holies
Holy Place

High Priest/Go

Priests

People

Courtyard

People

accompanied
by

Priests
for
sacrifice

People

People

In Leviticus as Literature
(1999), the brilliant
anthropologist Mary Douglas
suggests that Leviticus
embodies a mode of thought
that she calls analogical, a
mode entirely different from
Western analytic thinking.
Douglass suggests that
Leviticus sees reality as an
elaborate system of
correspondences between
the cosmos and Mt. Sinai, on
one hand, and Mt. Sinai and
the Tabernacle on the other
hand.
With this general scheme in
view, Douglas claims that
Leviticus displays a
And he said . . .
58
purposeful literary structure,

This is a dazzling
insight, and one
that shines an
incandescent light
on our study of
Leviticus!
Although we have
discerned a clear 2-part
structure to Leviticus
Sacrifice (1-10) and
Sanctification (11-27)that
2-part structure is
imbedded deeply within
the tripartite vision of the
cosmos that is mirrored in
Gods theophany at Mt.
And he said . . .
Sinai and in the structure59

Consequently, when
we examine the rituals
of the five great
sacrifices, the detailed
functioning of the
priesthood and the
hundreds of laws
concerning food, sex
and various diseases,
we do well to see each
detail in the context of
the whole.
Leviticus is like a 3dimensional mosaic,
mirroring reality itself,
with each individual 60
And he said . . .
command a single tile

Oh, this is
going to be
fun!

And he said . . .

61

Questions for discussion and

thought
1. Why is Leviticus so seldom read and
studied, particularly by Christians?
2. What is the relationship between
Exodus and Leviticus?
3. As Christian readers, how might we
best approach Leviticus?
4. Establishing a method for reading
Leviticus is called what?
5. What book in the New Testament is a
gloss or commentary on Leviticus?

And he said . . .

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Copyright 2015 by William C.

Creasy
All

rights reserved. No part of this course

audio, video, photography, maps, timelines or
other
mediamay
be
reproduced
or
transmitted in any form by any means,
electronic
or
mechanical,
including
photocopying, recording or by any information
storage or retrieval devices without permission
in writing or a licensing agreement from the
copyright holder.
[All Tabernacle illustrations in these lectures
are taken from:
Paul F. Kiene. The Tabernacle of God in the
Wilderness of Sinai, trans. by John S, Crandall.
Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing
House, 1977. Used by permission.]
And he said . . .

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