Leviticus Part 5

 

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Crime and Punishment

(So what else is new?)

One of the things I think we've learned about God so far is that he likes to use repetition to make a point. And I can't disagree, after all it is a tried and true pedagogical method. If you missed him telling you not to tell a lie in Exodus he's going to remind you in Leviticus and it will probably come up later too. He also likes to make any promised disciplinary actions memorable. The next two chapters we're going to look at here consist of more rules (surprise!), many of which are going to be repeats, followed by the consequences if one doesn't follow the rules, although it must be pointed out that not all of the Do's and Don'ts in Chapters 18 and 19 are covered in the This Is What Will Happen To Yous of Chapter 20. Once again, a good editor would have come in handy, but then again, who is going to line edit God? He's gonna tell us what he wants to tell us and anything he leaves out is none of our damn business.

    Let's get to it.

    Can anyone tell me what Chapter 19 begins with? If you answered,

The Lord spoke

    you've been paying attention and I appreciate you. And what the Lord spoke about in this chapter has to do with Ritual and Moral Holiness.

• Ritual
• Keep the sabbath
• No messing about with idols
• Anytime you make a sacrifice of well being, which I'm sure you recall is what you call it when an animal is ritually slaughtered as a sort of bloody thank you card to God, make sure all the resulting roasted meat is eaten within two days. This may be one of the first examples of the use of "Best By" dating on food. 
• Anyone nibbling on the leftovers on the third day receives a one way ticket out of town.

• Moral Holiness
• When harvesting grain or grapes, leave some for the less fortunate
• I know I brought this up earlier, but what is the point of handing out agrarian life guidelines, however kindhearted and well intended, to vagabonds? These folks aren't destined to settle down in one place for forty years for goodness sake. Maybe hold those agricultural helpful hints for when the Israelites are within a week or so of dispossessing the Canaanite farmers.
• Don't steal. This is covered in both verse 10 and verse 13. Oh, and The Ten Commandments.
• Don't lie. We've heard that one before.
• Don't "swear falsely by my name." 
• Don't commit fraud.$
• Don't hold back wages from your workers.$
• Don't make fun of the disabled.$
• Don't be unjust.
• Don't defer to "the great".
• My take on this is we shouldn't assume that just because someone is famous, or has acquired a bunch of money, that they are somehow wiser or kinder or more moral.
• Don't slander.$
• Don't try to advance yourself through violence (bloodshed).$
• Don't hate.
• Don't seek vengeance.$
• Don't bear a grudge.$
• Here's a Do. It shares Verse 18 with the bits about not taking vengeance or bearing a grudge.
• "but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord."
• I do like the bit of emphasis he put on this one.
• Back to the Don'ts. Don't cross breed animals. I guess that was an issue then and perhaps the results were unfortunate. Unicorns with platypuses perhaps. Awkward.
• Only one kind of seed per field.
• Maybe crop rotation is still okay.
• Don't mix materials in a garment.
• There goes poly-cotton.
• Verses 20-22 are devoted to the issue of sexual relations with someone else's slave girl.$ The punishment is not death and atonement is available.
• Verses 23-25 covers the all important question of "When can I eat the fruit from the trees I'm going to plant in the orchards I'll be acquiring through Manifest Destiny?"**
• If you're wondering, the first three years are off limits, the fourth year's crop goes to the Lord, and the fifth year is when you can take a bite.
• Don't eat blood.
• Don't mess with augury (omens and predictions and such) or witchcraft.
• Hmm, how about political polling?
• There are rules regarding haircuts and beards.
• No tattoos.
• In Verse 29 the Lord tells Moses that he looks unfavorably upon the practice of selling ones daughter into prostitution.
• Keep the sabbath. (See "Rituals")
• Another caution regarding wizards is in Verse 31.
• Verse 32 says, and I quote, "You shall rise before the aged, and defer to the old."
• A few of our nervous Democrats might want to cherry pick that one back into their own personal scriptures.
• Don't oppress resident aliens.
• A whole bunch of GOP folks seem to skip over this one.
• No cheating when it comes to weights and measures.

    And now, to answer the question "Oh yeah? What're You Gonna Do About It?" that might have been prompted by the Do's and especially the Don'ts in Chapters 18 and 19, let's go to Chapter 20, which is titled...

Penalties for Violations of Holiness

    How does it begin? All together now...

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying...

    Instead of going through this chapter verse by verse, I'm going to try to organize things according to punishment.

• Things That Will Get You Killed (Method of execution unspecified unless otherwise noted)
• Messing around with Molech. (Stoning)
• Cursing Mom or Dad
• Adultery with
• wife of neighbor
• father's wife
• daughter-in-law
• Seems a rather short list, but actually, I think it covers the vast majority of possibilities.
• Sex with
• Another man
• Ones wife and her mother (Burned to death)
• An animal (Animal must also die)
• This is one of those rare sex don'ts that includes the possibility of a woman being the guilty party.
• Things That Will Make You "Subject to Punishment"
• Sex with
• Sister 
• Not a nun. Or at least I don't think so.
• Step or half sister
• Sex with aunt
• Something That Will Get You Banished
• Sex with "a woman who is in her sickness"
• Something That Will Render You Unable to Have Children
• Sex with your sister-in-law

    God closes out the chapter in rather long-winded form, but it pretty much boils down to a couple of bullet points.

• Obey my laws or you'll be vomited out of town.
• I'm paying all of this attention to you folks because:
• "I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine."***
• "Oh, sorry, nearly forgot to let you know that in case you happen across any wizards or mediums, I want them stoned to death."

*A nice footbridge at Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior, AZ.

**The phrase Manifest Destiny may have been coined in 19th century America to try to toss the garment of legitimacy on the wholesale slaughter of Native Americans and the stealing of their lands, but the concept of "I'm taking your land because God told me he wants me to have it" is as ancient as mankind.

***Seems to me that a whole lot of the troubles this old world has experienced in the past umpteen thousand years stems from the inevitable friction that happens when one Chosen People encounters some other Chosen People and there is a tract of desirable land they are both eyeballing.

$ As I was reading and then typing this installment, a certain political figure kept coming to mind. The Israelites had their Golden Calf, it seems we have our Orange One.

Leviticus Part 4

 

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Atonement, Scapegoats,

Animal Slaughtering Tips

 and

Who Not to Have Sex With

The title of Chapter 16 is "The Day of Atonement", which sounded kind of hopeful to me. What's not to like about taking a day and figuring out where you went wrong and trying to make good? And according to my five minutes of research, this is where the Jewish faith came up with Yom Kippur, which you may have heard of but, like me, didn't really have any idea what it was all about. What Wikipedia tells us is that this most holy of the holy days in the Jewish calendar is a time when the faithful are to consider and repent of the wrongs they have done in the past year and "focus on one's goals and accomplishments and setting yearly intentions", although where the emphasis falls, repentance or making progress toward a more just and purposeful life, seems to depend on which branch of Judaism a person follows. Either way, it seems like a great idea we could all use a bit more of, especially folks like the Orange Blister who maintains he has never done anything for which he would need to repent and why try to improve when he is already perfect? That, to my mind, is a lousy, not to say dangerous, attitude.

    Sorry, but I'm afraid there is no way I will be able to leave out the occasional reference to what is happening in the world today. There may or may not be a God, but as history has shown us too many times to count, if we're going to get through this "unprecedented" time of ours we're going to have to handle it ourselves.

    Where were we?

    That's right, Leviticus, Chapter 16, the Day of Atonement. Like a lot of the chapters here, it begins with the words,

The Lord spoke to Moses

    When you look up "Who wrote the first five books of the Old Testament?" dollars to donuts the answer you're going to get is that Moses has a pretty solid claim on the copyright. So why, you might ask, doesn't it read,

The Lord spoke to me

    You'd have to ask Moses and he's not available to give interviews. Maybe he just wasn't comfortable writing in the first person. Or maybe he was like those athletes who for some reason always refer to themselves in the third person. Or maybe...it doesn't matter.

    What matters is that each of these chapters that begin with "The Lord spoke" are apparently to be taken pretty seriously because every word is to be understood to be coming straight from the Creator His Own Darn Self. But if you will remember back in the installment here titled ""A Word from the Committee" we learned that God's Word has been through a whole bunch of editorial committees over the last century or thirty and, to quote Mr. Bruce M. Metzger, "no translation of the Bible is perfect or is acceptable to all groups of readers", so there is that. What God tells Moses to pass on to Aaron in this particular edition doesn't read to me like any sort of prescription for the everyday person to use to perform an annual assessment and come up with a plan to improve. Mostly it reads as an instruction manual on what animals to slaughter and roast and what to wear while doing it. And when to wash up.

    

    But before God spells out what he wants done with the livestock, we are told that this one sided conversation took place directly after God had prematurely and without warning cremated Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu, which was back in Chapter 10. I'm still not sure what made him so mad at the boys. Here in Chapter 16 he does tell Moses to warn Aaron not to piss him off and, quite helpfully this time, spells out just what he happens to find irritating at the moment. Aaron, the Priest personally selected by God, not supposed to,

come just at any time into the sanctuary inside the curtain before the mercy seat, that is upon the ark, or he will die

    It is because,

for I appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat.

    Which I suppose is God's way of saying that he likes his personal space. By now we should know that God is not a big fan of a progressive sort of disciplinary plan, with verbal warning followed by written warning followed by possible suspension with or without pay, and subsequent violations resulting in loss of employment and bad references. God likes to keep things either you live or you die, or, chaotically, "Let's just keep you guessing and see whether or not I incinerate you, okay?"

    Later in this installment we'll learn about a slightly less extreme punishment God calls vomiting, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

    Let's summarize this chapter bullet point style. On the Day of Atonement Aaron is to:

• Bring a young bull and a ram to the Tabernacle
• Put on his priestly linen garments
• Bathe
• "take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering"
• Offer the bull as a sin offering in order to "make atonement for himself and his house." 
• Incense is to be brought inside the curtain. Yep, the same curtain Aaron has been warned, on pain of death, to stay the heck away from. And blood is to be sprinkled on the mercy seat. If I was Aaron I would want something in writing guaranteeing any mercy seat adjacent activities will not result in a fiery termination of employment.
• Cast lots for the two goats
• One will be assigned to the Lord (killed)
• The other will be assigned to Azazel. Like we're supposed to know what or who Azazel is. What we do learn later is that Aaron is to place a hand on the goat and psychically burden the beast with "all the iniquities of the people of Israel" and then send it into the wilderness. And that, my Dear Readers, is where we get the term scapegoat. Aren't you glad you've stuck around?
• Slaughter the goat that drew the Not A Scapegoat lotto ticket.
• Sprinkle more blood.
• Take off his linen kit and take another bath.
• Put on his vestments.
• Burn some fat.
• Aaron's assistants are also instructed to bathe.

    The chapter closes with instructions to repeat this ritual every year on the tenth day of the seventh month. Nobody, priest or lay person, pure blood Israelite or resident alien, is to do any work on that day. Everyone is to "deny" themselves, which is generally understood to mean fasting. God tells Moses that this Day of Atonement is to be,

 an everlasting statute for you to make atonement for the people of Israel once in the year for their sins.

    As far as I can tell, the no work and fasting rules are still in place, more or less depending on the individual and their congregation. The sacrifices and the scapegoat parts have fallen out of favor. Not sure what God thinks about it.

    I think we can sum up Chapter 17 pretty quickly. 

• Once again, "The Lord spoke to Moses."
• The Lord tells Moses that all of the sacrificing of animals is to be done where he can see it, in other words in the Tabernacle.
• Sacrifices performed without official sanctioning, outside the camp, will be regarded as suspicious and likely to be associated with "goat demons."
• No blood eating.
• Anyone who eats an animal that died of natural causes or was "torn by wild animals" must wash up and put their clothes in the laundry and wait until evening.

    You know how Chapter 18 begins, right? 

The Lord spoke to Moses

    Exactly.

    And what the Lord tells Moses is that he isn't going to tolerate any kinky sexual behaviors like those practiced by the Not Chosen Folks in Egypt or Canaan and if Moses isn't sure what the Lord is referring to, he's got a list of What, or rather (in most cases) Who, Not To Do. It should be noted that God is a bit timid here, choosing to use the euphemism "uncover the nakedness" instead of "do the nasty" or any other more explicit phrase, but it's still pretty easy to catch his drift.

    Here is the list of whose nakedness they should not, on pain of being "vomited" out of nice society, be uncovering:

• Next of kin
• Father
• Mother
• Father's wife
• Yep, bigamy/polygamy were acceptable, perhaps encouraged, lifestyle options
• Sister
• Father's daughter
• See polygamy note
• Mother's daughter
• See polygamy note
• Son's daughter
• EEEWW!
• Daughter's daughter
• Come on, folks! This should go without saying.
• Father's wife's daughter begotten by your father.
• For pity's sake.
• Aunt on your father's side
• Aunt on your mother's side
• This one I'm still puzzling over. See what you make of verse 14
• You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's brother (so far so clear) that is, you shall not approach his wife, she is your aunt.
• What?
• Daughter-in-law
• Do tell
• Brother's wife
• A woman and her daughter
• A woman's son's daughter or her daughter's daughter.
• The mind boggles.
• A woman as a rival to her sister
• Now I'm thinking he's just rambling, but there must be a reason he is including it.
• A menstruating woman
• Kinda shifting gears here, but okay.
• A kinsman's wife

    Then, just for a bit of variety I suppose, in verse 21 God tells Moses to tell his people not to

• Sacrifice their children to Molech
• Even though I'm already at my limit of five minutes of research, I had to check out this Molech. The answer turns out to be pretty simple. Molech was a god of some standing amongst the Canaanite population who favored his sacrifices on the young and tender side. I'm beginning to understand God's low opinion of the Canaanites. Not that he doesn't have some work to do himself.
• And then, in verse 22, we get the one that gets trotted out all the damn time by people who have a low opinion of anyone whose lifestyle they find icky.
• You shall not lie with a male as with a woman, it is an abomination.

    Up until then, most of what God had had to say about controlling ones urges seemed to make pretty good sense to me in a keep-peace-in-the-family and avoid-the-perils-of-inbreeding sort of way.  But verse 22 just comes out of the blue and it made me wonder if maybe, just maybe, this was Moses inserting a freelance, ghost writer bit of his own just because he had a personal issue with homosexuality. And even if it did come from the Mouth of God, let's all keep in mind that back in Chapter 11 the same Mouth told everyone not to eat shrimp.

    Oh, and this just occurred to me. All of this uncovering the nakedness forbidden territory is aimed at the guys. Does this mean women can do whatever they want? I doubt it. It probably just means women aren't important enough to even enter into the conversation here and what they need to keep in mind is they belong to a man and he'll be the one to tell them what they can and cannot do.

    Or, it could mean the God sees nothing wrong with a bit of sapphic activity. Might be.

    Everyone is warned off having sex with animals. I'm inclined to side with this one since sex really should be a consensual act.

    The final verses wrap things up with God reminding the Israelites that he's only bringing this sex (and Molech) thing up because he doesn't want them to become like the folks he's going to be tossing out of their homeland so the Israelites can move in. He doesn't threaten death if they disobey, but he does promise "the land will vomit you out for defiling it" and who wants to be barf?

    To close the chapter he uses his patented sign-off.

I am the Lord your God. And for the love of me please vote blue!**

*An American Kestrel

**I may be a bit off in my translation from the original Hebrew, but that's how it looks to me.

    

    

 

Leviticus Pt 3

 

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116 Verses All About Leprosy

and

Just 33 Verses about Bodily Discharges

I'm going to try to make this brief, mostly because it's all kinda gross.

    Chapters 13 and 14 are all about leprosy, which I guess was a pretty big deal back in the day, so I can understand why God wants Moses and Aaron to have the latest medical info in order to keep the troops safe. And honestly, I would be interested to know how all the godly advice presented here jibes with modern science. Not that I'm going to call an expert or Google it, because I've got other things I want to do today, like practice on my alto recorder. So for now let's just have a quick look at the material as presented in Leviticus.

    There is a lot of "how to diagnose" material here and we won't go into anywhere near all of it, because like I said, it's kinda gross. A lot is what to look for in skin color, hair color, does a rash appear to go deep or is it kinda superficial, that sort of thing. The point here seems to be God wants Moses and Aaron to be able to tell the difference between leprosy and, let's say a bad case of carpet burn or a big hickey. 

    And it must be noted that God expects all of the leprosy diagnosis and treatment to be handled by the priests, aka Aaron and Sons, which makes me wonder if they would have signed up for the gig if they knew this was part of the job description. Of course, they probably didn't think being incinerated was part of the company disciplinary code until they saw what happened to Nadab and Abihu, so what's one more surprise?

    Anyway, if a itchy, rashy parishioner presents him or herself to the priest and is found to have hair in the diseased area that has turned white and the rash is "deeper than the skin of his body", or any of the other signs that God spells out that indicate a by golly case of leprosy or, even worse, spreading leprosy, he is to enforce a 14 day period of quarantine, which seems like a reasonable thing to me.

    There isn't much of anything offered up here beyond the diagnosis, quarantine, and some washing up advice. Absolutely nothing helpful regarding treatment, which to me is puzzling. I mean you'd figure that if anyone knows how to put together a good treatment regimen it's gotta be the Almighty, but I guess he just wants to see how long it's going to take his Finest Creation to come up with the multi-drug therapy of dapsone, rifampicin, and clofazimine on their own. Turns out it took about thirty-five centuries, give or take.

    There were a couple of verses that stood out to me so I'd like to share them here.

40 If anyone loses the hair from his head, he is bald but he is clean.

45 The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, "Unclean, unclean."

    Do with these verses as you will.

    The inspection process for garments is also covered in Chapter 13. Proper disposal of clothing deemed to be irredeemably unclean is by fire. No word on whether God finds the odor pleasing.

    Chapter 14 moves on to consider any dwellings that might have a leprosy germ or three hanging about and gives instructions on what the priests (these guys have a really wide ranging area of responsibilities that I hope is reflected in the compensation package.) need to do in first determining if said domicile is truly contaminated, and then what to do about it in the way of removing and disposing of any befouled materials. A lot of the recommendations seem pretty spot on, but God once again follows them up with the old flinging about of bird blood trick and I think we can agree that that part of the process has worn out its welcome here in the 21st century and thank goodness for that.

    Finally for today, we have Chapter 15, which is titled "Concerning Bodily Discharges" so you know a good time is to be had. 

    The first fifteen verses are concerned with unspecified discharges from a man's "member". As far as what the discharge itself is, I'm guessing we're talking about...oh, hell, I don't know what we're talking about, I'm not a urologist. STD's maybe? UTI's? Too much asparagus for dinner the previous evening? I have no idea. 

    What I did learn from this chapter is that there is a lot of cleaning with water to be done, and it's best to avoid everything that the discharging man has worn, touched, sat on, drunk out of, or rode on. And, no surprise, once an eight day ritual of laundry and bathing has been observed, a bird or two needs to have its head wrung off and blood flung about the room. You know, on second thought maybe we are missing something here in modern times, blinded by our own antipathy to the cleansing properties of bird blood.

    

    Or maybe not.

    Verses 16-18 are all about semen. For example:

18 If a man lies with a woman and has an emission of semen, both of them shall bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening.

    Sounds okay. Play a bit of hide the sausage, then splash around in the tub for a while. Once again "until the evening" is mentioned. That phrase is used what seems like dozens of times in reference to when you can consider yourself to be a socially presentable human being after having had sex or touched a dead weasel or sat on a chair that had been previously sat on by a dude having discharges (yuck) or any number of incidents requiring a sanitation reset.

    I guess I should look it up.....

    .....Okay, according to gotquestions.org, "Your questions, Biblical answers", the evening, or sunset, marked the end of the old day and beginning of the new day for the ancient Israelites. That's interesting, and I suppose a new day brings new beginnings, so we'll just leave it at that.

    The rest of this chapter deals with a woman's menstrual discharge. Consistent with the way women have been presented so far in the Bible, this is described as the time of her "impurity" and not only is the woman considered unclean, meaning she's not welcome at church services, but so is darned near everything she may have touched whilst going around being impure. And if she happens to do some serious canoodling with her husband or boyfriend during this time of impurity not only is he unclean for a week, so is the bed he sleeps on and the donkey he rode into town. Unclean. Wash up. Wait until...seven days has passed. A whole week of evenings/

    And just as I was wondering what sort of consequences might befall someone who dares darken the doorway of the tabernacle in a state of uncleanness, along comes verse 31.

31 Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, so that they do not die in the uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst.

    So there you have it. Just as failing to eat your goat meat** at the proper time can get you killed, so can showing up for services after a roll in the hay if you haven't washed up and waited until evening.

*I figured a pretty picture of a flower might take some of the "ick" factor out of today's subject matter.

**As we all found out in Leviticus Pt. 2

Leviticus Pt 2

 

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Rites of Ordination, 

the Priesthood is Downsized,

Don't Eat that Ostrich,

and

Mothers of the World, Atone!

I know we've been starting these installments lately with observations that are a bit on the peripheral side, but today we're going to get right down to it.

    The first seven chapters of Leviticus were all about offerings, but now we're going to branch out a bit. Don't worry though, there will still be flesh going up in smoke.

    Chapter 8 is all about the initiation ceremonies that will officially install Aaron and Sons as the Priests of the Tabernacle. I think the program can be summed up fairly well in a bulleted format.

• Aaron and the boys wash up.
• They put on their priest costumes.
• Oil gets distributed around the Tent of Meeting.
• They kill a bull.
• They kill a ram.
• They kill another ram.
• Aaron and Sons get familiar with the innards of the above animals.
• Blood and oil is sprinkled, dabbed, and smeared on Aaron and Sons in very specific ways.
• They have to stay in the tent for seven days. If they go outside God has promised to kill them, so even though they probably are anxious to take a nice shower after all of the sprinkling, dabbing, and handling of internal organs, they have sufficient motivation to stick it out.

    The eighth day is covered in Chapter 9 and it is a busy one.

• They kill a bull calf.
• They kill a ram.
• They kill a male goat.
• They kill a calf, a lamb, some yearlings (we're not told what the animals are, just that they are a year old), an ox, and another ram.
• For variety they offer up some choice grain and a tablespoon or so of nice oil.
• The fat, which as we recall belongs to God, is turned into smoke on the altar. 
• God makes an appearance in verses 23-24.
• "and the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people. Fire came out from the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat on the altar; and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces."
• I bet they did. I mean that must have been darned impressive not to mention scary as all get out.

    There is a bit of a hiccup in the ordination process in Chapter 10 when two of Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, take it upon themselves to deviate from the schedule by introducing a bit of incense burning the Lord had not signed off on.

    2 And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. 3 Then Moses said to Aaron, "This is what the Lord meant when he said,

'Through those who are near me

I will show myself holy,

and before all the people

I will be glorified.'"

    And Aaron was silent.

    I bet he was. The poor man was grieving for his sons and at the same time trying to figure out how the above quote from the Lord could have been understood to mean "don't mess with the incense until I tell you it's okay or else I'll hit you with the Lord's Own Flamethrower." And let's face it, somewhere in the back, or even front, of his mind he's got to be hoping the statute of limitations has run its course in regards to that whole golden calf snafu back in Exodus. But just to be clear, all we're told here is "And Aaron was silent." so the rest of it is just me speculating.

    Moses keeps his cool and has a couple of Nadab and Abihu's cousins haul their smoking bodies "to a place outside the camp" and that's the last we hear of them. Nadab and Abihu and the cousins that is.

    Aaron still has two other sons in Eleazar and Ithamar and, although you'd think it would go without saying, Moses makes sure he warns them against doing anything rash. Things are going smoothly again, at least for a while, but then Eleazar and Ithamar get the sequence of things turned around in the goat offering process by not eating the bits they were supposed to eat when they were supposed to eat them. Considering what just happened to their brothers I'll bet they thought it was their turn to be put under the broiler, but leniency prevails. All that happens is Moses gets stern with them, Aaron takes a bit of responsibility, and evidently the Lord realizes he can only downsize the workforce so much before productivity suffers.

    Next up in Chapter 11, the Lord tells Moses and Aaron that he has some dietary guidelines he wants them to pass on to the Israelites. I'll try to sum things up, once again in bulleted fashion.

• Good to eat: Animals with divided hoofs that are also cleft-footed and chew cud.
• So no camels. They don't have divided hoofs.
• No hares.
• No pigs. No cud chewing.
• Nothing with paws. I kinda like that one.
• Good to eat amongst the creatures of the sea: Anything with fins and/or scales.
• No fins? No scales? Keep it off the dinner menu.
• Good to eat amongst the birdies: He doesn't really say.
• However, these are the ones to steer clear of:
• Eagles
• Vultures
• Ospreys
• Buzzards
• Kites
• Ravens
• Ostriches 
• I shall notify the local attraction Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch and Petting Zoo that they must cease offering ostrich eggs and jerky post haste.
• Nighthawks
• Sea gulls
• Hawks
• Little owls (and great owls)
• Cormorants
• Water hens
• Carrion vultures
• Storks
• Herons
• Hoopoes
• and...bats (I know, not really a bird, but they're listed)

    I hope you're writing all this down.

• If insects are a part of your complete and balanced breakfast, please restrict yourself to those with "jointed legs above their feet with which to leap on the ground." In other words...
• Locusts
• Crickets
• Grasshoppers

    Chapter 11 wraps things up with a bunch of warnings about carcasses and gives us a listing of the sorts of dead animals you want to steer clear of. Once again, bullet points.

• Weasels
• Mice
• Big lizards
• Regular sized lizards
• Sand lizards (I have no idea)
• Crocodiles (somebody tell the folks in Louisiana and Florida)
• Geckos (too cute, I guess)
• Chameleons

    Oh, and don't touch anything that has come in contact with a dead reptile. If you do you'll be persona non grata until the evening. The "until evening" thing is repeated a number of times in Leviticus when it comes to dealing with unclean situations. The sun going down seems to have a cleansing effect.

    Oh, I almost forgot, don't eat any snakes or centipedes. I hope I got that info to you in time.

    We will wrap up today's installment with Chapter 12, where the Lord spells out the rules and regulations that apply to women who have just given birth. Brand new mommies! They need to keep in mind that for a period of time after the birth they are, unfortunately, unclean. Even if they've had a nice shower or two. The length of time they are unclean and therefore ineligible to drop by the tabernacle and show off the newest member of the family depends on the gender of the infant.

• Just have a baby boy? Mom, you are ceremonially unclean for seven days and you need to wait thirty-three days for your blood to purify.
• But if the blessed arrival is a girl, the Lord would appreciate it if you would double both of those time periods. Just 'cause.

    In either case, the final step before mom is cleared to rejoin the Ladies Bible Study Coffee Club involves bringing a lamb along with a pigeon or a turtledove for the priest to offer to the Lord for atonement. What she's atoning for isn't mentioned. 

*The photo is of the White Tower at the Tower of London. Originally built by order of William the Conqueror in 1066 it has had a number of This Old House episodes over the centuries resulting in the striking edifice you can see today. It has been used as a royal residence, a storage facility, a chapel, and, of course, a place the king or queen could stash persons he or she wanted out of the way for a period of time.

    

You Want Rules? Leviticus Is The Place To Be

 

  *

How To Sacrifice

Welcome to Leviticus, which is chock-full of everything you need to know if you want to run a smooth and effective tabernacle, are interested in just how to identify leprosy, and have always wondered how to make sure a semen emission doesn't spoil your day. In this third book of the Old Testament you will also find information about when you need to ask for time off work to celebrate the mandatory festivals, and what to look for on a garment label when shopping at Kohl's. 

    In this episode we will review, in brief, the first seven chapters of Leviticus, which cover the all important subject of how to make good with God by killing animals and making toast.

    But first, I'd like to share a little bonanza that came my way a couple of days ago. Our neighborhood, like so many across the nation and the globe, has a cute little unattended Take a Book, Share a Book Library, where people can put books that no longer fit on their nightstand or bookshelves or in their lifestyle so others might have the opportunity of taking them home and broadening their horizons with reading material they might not otherwise be inclined to spend actual money on. Our little library is often heavy with thrillers and romances and self-help and sixteen page kiddie books, but sometimes a truly remarkable volume makes an appearance, prompting a person to wonder just what happened to make the original owner decide to edit it out of their life. The book pictured above made an appearance a couple of weeks ago and try as I might to resist, when I saw it was still there this Tuesday I just had to tuck it under my arm and bring it home. I mean, how could I resist a Bible that promises Adventure? One that has such fun cover art (we're talking kids in a Jeep and a rolled up treasure map and a tiger, I mean come on!) and one that claims to have been created specifically for "Ages 6-10" by a publishing house called Zonderkidz. I may be well past age ten, but as a novice Bible reader myself this edition was bound to give me some easy to understand insights. Right? 

    Of course there was also the distinct possibility that some of the, shall we say, racier bits we have already discovered and which I am fairly confident we shall come across again and again as we make our way through the Old Testament especially, were bound to be either skipped over or bowdlerized in the extreme in order not to offend young sensibilities. I am happy to report that, so far anyway, I have not found that to be the case. For instance, in Genesis, Chapter Nine, Noah still gets drunk and passes out in his tent sans robe or undies. In Chapter 20 they don't skip over the part where Abraham passes his wife Sarah off as his sister and the local head honcho Abimelech "sent for Sarah and took her." I also cross-checked a couple of "what to do with bodily fluids" rules that are covered a bit later here in Leviticus and by golly, the six to ten year old readers of the NIrV Adventure Bible for Early Readers are going to be well prepared when they have to deal with the inevitable times when they need to counsel older folks on what to do if semen touches a man and a woman whilst they are making love. This is something every first through fourth grader should know and I for one am grateful the information is available to them in easy to understand and adventurous terms.

    Here at Book by Book we will still be using the New Standard Revised Version, but it's nice to know I have a quick and inoffensively child-friendly reference to which I can turn when the need arises.

    Now let us dive into what Leviticus has to tell us about how and what to sacrifice to God, where to distribute the blood, and who gets the fat parts.

    The book opens with God calling Moses and telling him to listen up because he's going to tell him how he likes his burnt offerings. For instance, God wants the animal involved to be "without blemish", so right away I'm picturing the cattle and sheep and goats and turtledoves and pigeons (these are the official sacrificial animals) looking around for razor blades and tattoo parlors in order to dodge the draft, as it were. Good luck to them.

    These opening chapters are broken down by the type and purpose of the offering in question, like Burnt or Grain, or Sin, or something called Well-Being, although once we get into Chapters 6 and 7 the borders get a bit sketchier, so once again we're looking at the fact that a really good editorial intervention would have been welcome, but I suppose we should just accept that things are going to be a bit higgledy-piggledy and enjoy things as they are.

    Chapter One is titled "Burnt Offering", and in it we learn how to kill a male from the herd or the flock. Well, actually that is not the case. What we do learn is a bit about the pre-kill ritual and then what to do with the post-kill bits and pieces and bodily fluids. The author avoids including any useful tips regarding how one should go about the actual act of dispatching the creature in question--which in this first example is a bull--we're simply told it must be brought to the entrance of the tent of meeting (aka tabernacle), a hand must be placed on its head, and once those simple requirements are fulfilled the assassination should proceed. Whether that's done with a sharp object, a blunt instrument, or tickling the beast to death the author doesn't say. We do learn that once the beast is dead access to its blood will be necessary because dashing said blood against all sides of the altar is an unskippable part of the process. Spoiler alert,  this blood dashing is a part of all of the sacrifices that follow here, with the exception of the ones involving grain. Not much blood to be gotten from a sheaf of wheat I suppose, but those do require oil and frankincense, so there's still going to be a bit of cleanup involved afterward.

   After the blood is spattered about in the designated compass points, firewood must be arranged properly on the altar, the various body parts distributed on the wood, with special attention being paid to the head and suet, and the priest is then instructed to "turn the whole into smoke on the altar as a burnt offering, an offering by fire of pleasing odor to the Lord." 

    The instructions for the destruction of a goat or sheep are pretty much the same as for a bull. There is a bit of variation introduced if pigeons or turtledoves are involved, including the "how to" portion when it comes to the method of execution which is missing from the bull, goat and sheep paperwork.

15 The priest shall bring it to the altar and wring off its head 

    After the bird has been beheaded there is the usual pouring of blood around the altar. Once that is accomplished the crop is to be removed and the priest is to "throw it at the east side of the altar, in the place for ashes", after which the wings are spread, the whole thing roasted to a fare thee well, and the result is guaranteed to be a "pleasing odor to the Lord" which is the ultimate goal as God is big into olfactory stimulation. For any of you who are fans, as I am, of the television show "Ghosts" this may bring a nod of recognition.

    Chapter 2 covers the less messy Grain Offerings. The important things here are the ingredients required, which are choice flour, nice quality oil, frankincense, and salt, and the fact that only a portion of it gets burned up to create the pleasing odor while the remainder goes into the pantry for Aaron and Sons to enjoy on their lunch breaks. Oh, and very important is the no leavening rule. God doesn't like yeast or baking powder. Or honey; no honey allowed. Don't know why.

    Side note here. Neither the Burnt nor the Grain Offering instructions indicate exactly what benefit(s) the population can expect from these sacrifices of valuable nutritional resources. I'm guessing it was one of those "We'll give you (meaning God) some of what we have and in return we think you'll make sure we have lots and lots more when we need it." sort of thing, but like I said, it isn't spelled out. Kind of like modern day prosperity preachers don't really spell out any concrete, contractually binding benefits one can expect in return for becoming a sustaining member in their private jet and forty-three room, seventeen car garage personal compound fund.

    Side note number two. As a nomadic people, I'm wondering where the choice flour is coming from. It's not like anything has been mentioned about the wandering Israelites settling down for a few years at a time so they can plant crops, but maybe that's what happened. Or maybe they just stop by Whole Foods as they're circling around the desert, waiting for forty years to elapse.

    Chapter 3 is titled "Offering of Well-Being" and this is where I had to use my five minutes of research time to figure out just what's going on here. Actually, it only took a minute or so to find a nice article by Rabbi Andrea Goldstein where she explains things thusly,

"The offerer brings a gift, yet asks nothing of God in return, motivated only by what Naphtali Herz Weisel calls “an abundance of joy, of gratitude to God.” 

    In other words, when life is good and you want to say thank you to the Creator, what better way than to bring a member of the herd (or flock) to Aaron and Sons so they can dash its blood against the altar?

    The instructions regarding the various body parts and internal organs of the critter are even more detailed than in the Burnt Offering section, but if you want those details you'll need to crack open the book yourself, they make me a bit queasy. I will share that this bit in verse 16 got my attention.

All fat is the Lord's

    Good to know.

    In Chapter 4 we get into the Offerings Made Because You Screwed Up variety, otherwise known as Sin Offerings. A curious thing about these sins is that they must have been done unintentionally. The offerings here will only be effective if you didn't know you were doing something wrong while, or before, you did it. So, if you yelled at your mom and dad, or coveted your neighbor's house, or murdered somebody and you didn't realize until the next morning that maybe you should have made a better choice, Chapter 4 is the place to go. Although it must be noted that a whole lot more space is given over to the process of the sacrifice than the specific sins you can make disappear.

    What kind of animal that needs to be killed depends on who did the sinning.

    Anointed priest?  Kill a bull. See detailed instructions and do not neglect the part about taking "11) the skin, all its flesh, as well as its head, its legs, its entrail, and its dung--12) all the rest of the bull--he shall carry out to a clean placed outside the camp, to the ash heap, and shall burn it on a wood fire; at the ash heap it shall be burned."

    The whole congregation?  Kill a bull. Turn the fat into smoke, it smells good.

    A ruler?  Kill a male goat. Follow all instructions regarding where the blood should go.

    An ordinary person? Kill a female goat. The blood distribution is the same. Also worth noting here is that a female sheep may be substituted if such is more convenient than the goat.

    

    In all cases the Tabernacle janitorial team is going to be pulling some overtime cleaning up around the altar and let's not forget that the fat belongs to God.

    A variety of sins is covered in Chapter 5, including failure to testify if you have knowledge of what happened, touching unclean things, or uttering "aloud a rash oath", and in all of these cases you can make it all better by bringing a goat or sheep to the tabernacle to have its blood dashed against the altar. If a goat or sheep happens to be too pricey you can substitute two turtledoves or pigeons, and if that doesn't fit the family budget one tenth of an ephah of choice flour (mixed with a bit of oil and frankincense) will do the trick.

    Nice to know the sliding scale gets some recognition here.

    Verse 14 shifts gears a bit and talks about "the holy things of the Lord" by which I'm guessing is meant the Ten Commandments, but don't hold me to that. Anyway, if your offense fits this category the animal required is a ram, and mention is made of money being part of what's required, with no sliding scale in sight. Although I can't say as I quite understand what "convertible into silver by the sanctuary shekel" means.

    On to Chapter 6, in which we learn that if you commit fraud or participate in a robbery, or find something that doesn't belong to you and you don't return it to its rightful owner, you really ought to not only make it good, but add twenty percent for the other person's troubles.

    Also, a ram needs to be killed.

    Chapter 6 also mentions what the priests are supposed to wear, and not wear, while performing these admittedly messy tasks. Nothing about PPE, which is curious.

    We wrap up this section with Chapter 7 and Guilt Offerings. And yes, I had to Google it to see what the difference is between Sin and Guilt because it doesn't say here in the Book With All the Answers to Everything. Here is what I learned:

    I learned that nobody seems to really know and they generally use as their excuse the fact that "Things Were Different Then." The closest I could find to any sort of clearcut answer came from Google's AI, which tells us a guilt offering is required for the following...

•  Forgetting or making a mistake when fulfilling a vow
• Accidentally eating food reserved for the priests

    So if you sneak a bit of pita out of Aaron and Sons breadbox, you'd better be prepared to haul your favorite goat into the tabernacle to be turned into a pleasing odor.

    * The back cover of the NIrV Adventure Bible for Early Readers promises to take its readers "on a fun, exciting journey through God's Word. Along the way you'll meet all types of people, see all sorts of places, and learn all kinds of things about the Bible."

    Which is pretty much what I'm trying to do here in my own humble way.