Comments on Excerpts from Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy

Comments on Leviticus 10:1-3; 16:1-34; 25:8-17; Numbers 21: 4-9; 22:22-25; Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Biblical Literacy, pages 67-74

The screening of the movie “for the Bible tells me so” at Heights Christian Church last week raised issues that apply just as well to these texts of the Torah. The main issue—that has meant life or death for many people—is whether you can allow yourself to interpret the Scriptures: to say, this is what it meant then; and this is what it might mean now.

There is a powerful scene in the movie. A mother climbs into the pulpit of a church on Sunday and proclaims to the congregation words to this effect: “Because of how the church interpreted Scripture, my daughter is dead!” Some watchers will undoubtedly cry “unfair!” Everyone is responsible for his/her own actions! Yet, the culture, the actions and the opinions of those around us are so weighty, so moving, that resisting the culture is like trying to stand still when a crowd is rushing toward the exits.

Added to that is the difficulty of trying to put ourselves into the culture of a past generation. Ritual purity—doing things with precise attention to details, to the rules; wearing the right clothes; saying the right words; being prepared with washing, prayer and fasting; offering the rituals at just the right times—was a matter of life and death in that long ago culture. If you didn’t comply; if you were unclean, you could be excluded from the community or even executed. The writer of Leviticus found it important to include the story of poor Aaron’s sons. Few details are given—only that their offering was “unholy,” and so the young men were burned to death by the Lord.

The awe and majesty and unapproachable power of God were so important to the people in those times. Only the purified priests, or the chosen ones like Moses and Aaron and occasionally the elders, could get close. Can you imagine the sights and sounds and smell of the Day of Atonement as described in Leviticus? --All that blood, animal cries, violent thrusts of knives, the smell of entrails; and all of it pleasing to God.

And then there was the scapegoat. The French writer, Rene Girard, has built a philosophy on the concept of scapegoating. Jesus has been designated as ours: “Behold the lamb of God,” the one who bears the sins of the world. It would be an interesting exercise to discuss what sins we’d put on the head of that creature before he was led out into the wilderness. Would we only lay our personal sins on him? Or would we also lay the greed and violence that we in our society cannot seem to restrain and to which we give different names so that they are acceptable to our whole culture?

We’re back to culture. Is it true, as one cynic recently said, that the only motivators for change are greed and fear of violence? Is that why we need to be threatened with this God of the Torah, who will condemn us to fire because of our unholiness?

Or is it that an historical perspective can teach us that humans CAN evolve to a more peaceable kingdom? --That a day of atonement, and especially a year of Jubilee (although NISB states there is no historical evidence that the stipulations surrounding the year of Jubilee were ever followed) can point us in the right direction?

Can we at last be led to love, and to the concept of a loving God? Can we promote a culture of kindness and peace? We close our study of the Pentateuch with the Shema Israel: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…” (Dt. 6:4).