Leviticus 19-22

When I started blogging through the Bible on January 1, 2014, I did not anticipate I would be including so many quotes from my former teacher, Richard Elliott Friedman. However, I find so much in his Commentary on the Torah, worth sharing. His comment on Leviticus 19:3 is no exception….

Why are parents and Sabbaths put together here? (They come next to each other in the Ten Commandments as well, in reverse order.) It reminds us of the enormous power of the Sabbath to bind a family together. My first Jewish memory in my life is the image of my mother lighting the Sabbath candles and giving my sister and me a kiss. Then my father would say the Kiddush over the wine and give us each a sip. In many families the parents say a blessing over each child: “May you be like Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel”; “May you be like Ephraim and Manasseh.” In many, the husband recites “A Woman of Valor” from the book of Proverbs to his wife. The potential for making something beautiful that will last through a person’s life is tremendous. Even more: when one grows up, recalls these things from childhood, and repeats them with one’s own children, one encounters the extraordinary feeling of being linked through generations: both generations past and those to come.[1]

Perhaps the most famous verse in Leviticus is 19:18, “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Of course, part of the reason why this verse is famous is because when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was he cited this one and the command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30)

Friedman says, “Note the progression: Love yourself. Love your neighbor. Love the alien. Love God (coming later, in Deut 6:5).” We cannot love anyone else unless we first love ourselves. Furthermore, I believe we cannot truly love ourselves until we receive God’s love for us. In 1 John 4:7-12 we read,

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

While the commands to love God and neighbor are universal and everlasting, there is much in Leviticus that is neither universal nor everlasting. We have already dealt with the command regarding male homosexual practice in Leviticus 18:22; this is repeated in Leviticus 20:13 and given the death penalty. We saw in yesterday’s blog post how the word “abomination” is a relative term. This act is not mentioned as something offensive to God, but rather to human beings. Such things that are offensive to human beings are not necessarily universally offensive. Likewise, the command in Leviticus 20:17 against sex with one’s sister is obviously not for all times. Abram takes his half-sister Sarai as his wife and Genesis sees nothing wrong with this. Another example is Leviticus 20:12 which says, “If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall be put to death; they have committed perversion, their blood is upon them.” However, as Friedman notes,

That is precisely what Judah (unknowingly) does with Tamar (knowingly) in Genesis 38. But she is not punished. On the contrary, Judah acknowledges that she is right; and their union maintains the family line, from which David and the royal family of Israel will be descended. What this law in Moses’ age establishes is that the Judah-and-Tamar event is no longer permissible, just as some other acts of the patriarchal days become forbidden in the laws given to Moses.[2]

Something that seems inappropriate to us from our modern day perspective is absolutely required in Leviticus, namely that the priests of the Tabernacle, and later the Temple, are required to be without any physical blemish. Friedman comments,

By present standards, most would judge it to be unkind and hurtful to exclude an injured person from the priesthood. The same standard applies in the biblical world in ethical matters: one must be considerate of persons who are handicapped (Lev 19:14). But in the ritual matter of the priesthood, physical conditions supersede such considerations.[3]

Personally, this makes me all the more grateful for Jesus who receives all of us in our weaknesses, our sins, and our imperfections. To use the phrase of Henri Nouwen, Jesus takes wounded people and turns them into wounded-healers.

[1] Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, 379

[2] Ibid, 386-387

[3] Ibid, 391

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