The book of Leviticus

Main theme

A holy God comes to dwell in the midst of his people: he gives them sacrifices to draw near to him, a priesthood to represent them and laws for holy living — “Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy” (19:2).

Outline

1. Leviticus 1-7 — The sacrifices

   Five sacrifices for worshiping God, thanking him and obtaining forgiveness.

2. Leviticus 8-10 — The priesthood inaugurated

   Aaron and his sons are consecrated; the glory and fire of God appear, to bless and to judge.

3. Leviticus 11-16 — Clean, unclean and atonement

   Purity laws for daily life, crowned by the great Day of Atonement.

4. Leviticus 17-27 — A holy life before God

   Holiness in morality, worship, the calendar and property, under the blessings and curses of the covenant.

Key points

• God speaks from the tent of meeting: the book explains how a sinful people can draw near to a holy God (1:1; 10:3).
• Five sacrifices frame life with God: burnt offering, grain offering, peace offering, sin offering and guilt offering (7:37).
• Nadab and Abihu, consumed for offering strange fire, show that we do not approach God in our own way (10:1-3).
• The laws of clean and unclean teach us to distinguish, because “I am holy” (11:44-45; 10:10).
• On the Day of Atonement, the goat for Azazel carries off into the wilderness the sins confessed over its head (16:21-22).
• Blood is given on the altar to make atonement, because life is in the blood (17:11).
• “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” comes from 19:18: holiness is social too (19:9-18, 34).
• The jubilee of the fiftieth year proclaims liberty and recalls that the land belongs to God (25:10, 23).

Jesus in Leviticus

Leviticus is “a shadow of good things to come” (Heb 10:1): each sacrifice without blemish foreshadows the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Jesus is the perfect high priest, who entered once for all into the most holy place with his own blood (Heb 9:7-12). Like the goat for Azazel, he bore our sins (2 Cor 5:21), and like the victims burned outside the camp (16:27), he suffered outside the gate (Heb 13:12).

Did you know?

• All of Leviticus fits into about one month: the tabernacle is set up on the first day of the first month of the second year (Exod 40:17), and the book of Numbers begins on the first day of the second month (Num 1:1).
• Despite its name, the book mentions the Levites in only one passage (25:32-34); it is concerned mainly with the priests, the sons of Aaron.
• Locusts were among the clean insects permitted (11:22): John the Baptist could therefore eat them (Matt 3:4). And it is the offering of the poor, two turtledoves or two young pigeons (12:8), that Mary and Joseph brought to the temple (Luke 2:24).