Cover-to-Cover – Week 5

Animal Collective – In the Flowers

Leviticus.  What’s to say?

Weird.

Seriously weird.

So let’s keep this short and sweet.

The detailed instructions concerning the various sacrifices has God looking a bit OCD.

The laws concerning skin diseases, mildew, and “discharges” has Him looking like a germ-o-phob.

And then there is chapter 18 from today’s reading.  Once again… really?  They had to be told this stuff?  Baffling.

So what is going on?  There is tons one could say, but suffice it to say, “Leviticus is all about God’s holiness.”  It is stated outright in 11:44-45, and underscored by nearly every other verse in the book.  Everything about the book is saying that God is set apart.  Different.  Not common.

Even the chapters that seem to be about God’s “health plan” for the Israelites are really about contamination.  On the surface, it is about physical contamination.  But just below the surface is the idea of spiritual contamination as well.

How about all the sexual taboos?  They are preceded by injunctions against doing what people do in Egypt or in Canaan.  This too is all about “set-apart-ness”.

“Be holy, because I am holy.”

God is distinct, different from anything else in their experience.  They too are meant to be distinct and different.