Leviticus 25

The Law of Holiness (Leviticus 17-27).

The main section of the Book of Leviticus is constructed on a definite pattern. It commences with a description of the offerings and sacrifices of Israel (chapters 1-7), and ends with a description of the times and seasons as they are required of Israel (chapters 23-25). It continues with the establishment of the priesthood (chapters 8-10), which is balanced by the section on the maintenance of the holiness of the priesthood (chapters 21-22). This is then followed by the laws of uncleanness (chapters 11-15) which are balanced by the laws of holiness (chapters 17-20). And central to the whole is the Day of Atonement (chapter 16).

This second part of the book has been spoken of as ‘The Holiness Code’. We may balance this by calling chapters 1-15 ‘The Priestly Code’. The first part certainly has a priestly emphasis, for the priests control the offerings and sacrifices (chapters 1-7) and administer the laws of cleanness and uncleanness (chapters 11-15), and the second part a holiness emphasis. But this must not be over-emphasised. The whole book is mainly addressed to the people, it is for their benefit as God’s covenant people, and the maintenance of the holiness of the priests is just as important in the second half. It is to be seen as a whole.

We may thus analyse it as follows (note the chiasm):

1). THE PRIESTLY CODE (chapters 1-15).

a) Offerings and Sacrifices (chapters 1-7) b) Establishment of the Priesthood (chapters 8-10) c) The Laws of Cleanness and Uncleanness (chapters 11-15)

2) THE DAY OF ATONEMENT (Leviticus 16:0)

3) THE HOLINESS CODE (chapters 17-25)

c) The Laws of Holiness (chapters 17-19) b) Maintenance of the Holiness of the Priesthood (chapters 20-22) a) Times and Seasons (chapters 23-25).

As will be seen the Day of Atonement is central and pivotal, with the laws of cleanness and uncleanness and the laws of holiness on each side. This central section is then sandwiched between the establishment of the priesthood (chapters 10-12) and the maintenance of the holiness of the priesthood (chapters 20-22). And outside these are the requirements concerning offerings and sacrifices (chapters 1-7) and the requirements concerning times and seasons (chapters 23-25).

So the Holiness Code may be seen as a suitable description of this second half of the book as long as we do not assume by that that it was once a separate book. The description in fact most suitably applies to chapters 19-22. It describes what Israel is to be, as made holy to Yahweh.

It was as much a necessary part of the record as what has gone before. The Book would have been incomplete without it. The Book of Leviticus is, as it claims, the record of a whole collection of revelations made to Moses at various times, brought together in one book, and carefully constructed around the central pivot of the Day of Atonement. There is no good reason for doubting this, and there are possible indications of colophons to various original records which help to substantiate it. It was the necessary basis for the establishment of the religion of Yahweh for a conglomerate people.

So having in what we know of as the first sixteen chapters of the Book laid down the basis of offerings and sacrifices (chapters 1-7), the establishment of the Priesthood (chapters 8-10), the laws of cleanness and uncleanness (chapters 11-15), and the requirements of the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:0), the whole would have been greatly lacking had Moses not added some further detail of the holiness that God required of His people and of His priests.

The former is contained in Leviticus 17:1 to Leviticus 20:27. In this section Moses deals with the sacredness of all life (Leviticus 17:0), the sexual relationships which can defile (Leviticus 18:0), and the positive requirements for holiness in the covenant (Leviticus 19-20).

It is then followed by the further section dealing with the maintenance of the holiness of the priesthood (Leviticus 21:1 to Leviticus 22:16), with Leviticus 22:17-33 forming a transition from speaking to the priests to speaking to the people.

Chapters 23-25 then deal with sacred times and seasons, including the seven day Sabbath (Leviticus 23:1-3), the set feasts of Israel (Leviticus 23:4-44), the daily trimming of the lamps and the weekly offering of showbread (Leviticus 24:1-9), the Sabbatical year (Leviticus 25:1-7), and the year of Yubile (Leviticus 25:8-55). Included in this is a practical example of blasphemy against the Name (Leviticus 24:10-23), which parallels the practical example of priestly blasphemy in Leviticus 10:1-7. Thus practical examples of the blasphemy of both priests and people are included as warnings.

Leviticus 26:0 seals the book with the promises of blessings and cursings regular in covenants of this period, and closes with the words ‘these are the statutes and judgments and laws which Yahweh made between him and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses’ (Leviticus 26:46). Leviticus 27:0 is then a postscript on vows and how they can lawfully be withdrawn from, and closes with a reference to tithing, the sanctifying of a tenth of all their increase to Yahweh.

Chapters 11-15 dealt with the uncleannesses of Israel, leading up to the Day when all uncleannesses were atoned for (Leviticus 16:0). But the Day of Atonement covered far more than those. It covered every way in which the covenant had been broken. It also covers the direct transgressions of Israel. Leviticus 17:0 onwards therefore deals further with the basis of the covenant against which they ‘transgressed’ and for which they also needed atonement. Chapters 11-15 dealt with practical matters considering what was ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ as they faced daily life, these chapters from 17 onwards now deal with the basis on which they should live their lives as Yahweh’s holy people, and the attitudes that they should have. They deal with prospective sin and disobedience. The former were more within the cultic section up to Leviticus 16:0, but the latter are firmly directed at the people’s moral response, so that their responsibilities under the covenant might be made clear directly to them. The distinction must not be overpressed. They are all still, of course, cultic, but the latter from a less direct viewpoint. They do not have so much to do with priestly oversight. They come more under the jurisdiction of the elders.

There is, however, no change of direction in overall thought. The whole of Leviticus emphasises holiness from start to finish. There is not a change of emphasis only a change of presentation because God is now directly involving the people.

It must, however, be firmly asserted that, as we shall see in the commentary, there is nothing in what follows that requires a date after the time of Moses. Having been given by God control of a conglomerate people (Exodus 12:38), with a nucleus made up of descendants from the family and family servants of the patriarchs (Exodus 1:0 - ‘households’), he had to fashion them into a covenant keeping nation under Yahweh and provide the basis on which they could be one nation and kept in full relationship with their Overlord. It was precisely because the disparate peoples believed that his words came from God that they were willing mainly to turn their backs on their past usages and customs and become one nation under Yahweh, culminating in them all being circumcised into the covenant when they entered the land (Joshua 5:0).

And with such a conglomeration of people with their differing religious ideas, customs and traditions, it is clear that this could only have been successfully achieved by putting together a complete religious system which was a revelation from Yahweh, which would both keep them together as one people and would ensure that when they reached Canaan they would have no excuse for taking part in the Canaanite religious practises such as he knew of from his time of administration in Egypt and from his time with the Priest of Midian. Had they arrived in Canaan without a single binding system, they would soon have fallen prey (as they almost did anyway) to the attractions of Canaanite religion. It was only the firm foundation that Moses had laid (combined with God’s own powerful activities) that finally resulted in their rising above their backslidings, and in their constantly turning back to Yahwism, because Moses had rooted it so deeply within them. And this finally enabled the establishing of the nation under Samuel and David after times of great turmoil.

This system did not come all at once. He had to begin instructing them soon after the crossing of the Reed Sea (Exodus 15:26), and a system gradually grew up (Exodus 17:13-16) as they went along, based as we learn later on a tent of meeting set outside the camp (Exodus 33:7-11), until at Sinai the book of the covenant (Exodus 20:1 to Exodus 23:33) was written down as a result of God’s words to the people and to Moses. Then in his time in the Mount this was expanded on. But it would continue to be expanded on in the days to come, until the time came when Moses knew that he had to accumulate in one record all the regulations concerning sacrifices, priesthood and the multitude of requirements that went along with them. By this time he had much material to draw on.

For leaders from different groups had no doubt been constantly coming to him for direction and leadership (Exodus 16:22), and especially for those who were not firmly established in the customs of Israel he no doubt had to deal with a wide number of diversified queries, and seek God’s will about them. This explains why sometimes the collections may not always seem as having been put together in as logical order as they might have been. They partly depended on what questions he had been asked, and what particular problems had arisen, and what particular issues were important at the time. But it was on the basis of all this activity that we have the Book of Leviticus as a part of the wider Pentateuch.

Our Times Are To Be In His Hands (Leviticus 23:1 to Leviticus 25:55 ).

We now come to the final section of the book before the listing of the blessings and cursings, which deals with different aspects of how Israel should celebrate and regulate the passing of time. In the make-up of the book this parallels the section dealing with offerings and sacrifices (chapters 1-7). All their lives were to be an offering to God.

Leviticus 23:0 covers the Sabbath and the religious festivals which were to be celebrated at different times in the year throughout the years (a year of twelve moon periods, with an extra intercalary moon period added when necessary in order to keep the seasons in line), chapter 24 covers the daily and weekly indicators of the passage of time in the tabernacle, and Leviticus 25:0 looks at the longer outlook and includes instructions concerning the sabbatical year, which was to come every seven years, and the year of jubile which was to come every fifty years. The whole of their lives in both the short and the long term were to be seen as regulated by, and under the control of, Yahweh.

Chapter 25 Their Future Is In Yahweh’s Hands And In It They Must Honour Him As They Continually Enjoy The Land That Belongs to Him Which He Is Giving Them. A Foretaste of Heaven.

The prime principle in mind here is that all the future also belongs to God. The seventh day Sabbath, the seven day feasts, the seven sevens feast, all stressed God’s control over their life and service over the whole year, with the number seven bringing out their sacredness and their glory, now we have here expressed the larger vision, the seven year Sabbath, and the seven sevens year of yubile which express the same control over their life and service into the longer term, and the same divine perfection of what their future was intended to be.

In this chapter we are given provisions both for a sabbatical year for the land every seven years (compare Exodus 23:10-11), and a year of ‘yubile’ (possibly ‘blowing of rams’ horns’ or ‘year of release’) after every seven sevens of years, that is every forty nine years, once the promised land was Israel’s. These were to make clear to Israel that the land was really Yahweh’s and that they were His tenants with their land ‘given’ by Yahweh (Leviticus 25:23; compare Exodus 6:4; Deuteronomy 5:16). The whole of their lives should be lived in this light, and their practical behaviour towards each other in terms of what He had given them determined by it.

The provisions were based on the ideal that Israel would conquer the land, expel its inhabitants and within a certain period control the whole land, which would then be divided up among them, each receiving his share. Each family would have received its share and that share was to be theirs permanently. No one could permanently take it away from them, because at the end of forty nine years it would always be restored to them.

The basis behind this was that the land belonged to Yahweh, that no one should build up vast amounts of land in perpetuity but His people would always share among themselves and that no Israelite should be permanently in bondage in the land. The land was His and after forty nine years there would be a year of Grand Release, of Yubile, when all would revert to its original owner-tenants, and all Israelite bondmen would be freed. His people were all provided for in perpetuity, for each forty nine years all would be restored to what it was in the beginning. It was symbolic of the everlasting Kingdom.

The sevens would not cease, for at the end of each forty nine years they would commence again, just as after the Sabbath a new period of seven days began. It was tied to no calendar. It was directly in the hands of God. The future was secure.

But it never came fully into being, according to Judges because of disobedience and failure to obey God and trust in Him, and once the monarchy took hold and began to behave like the monarchies of other nations it was even more unlikely to continue to be carried through because man and greed took over. Man seized what was God’s. But it was intended to be the godly principle behind Israel’s existence, His whole people going forward together as one.

Later writers (e.g. Judges) make clear that due to disobedience the ideal situation never arose as first envisaged. Due to disobedience the land never quite belonged to Israel in the way anticipated. But that is not to say that no attempt was made to carry out these provisions. The sabbatical year could be applied from the start as each sub-tribe received its land and divided it up, and may well have been so. And the year of Yubile, while more difficult, may well have been practised in many areas. The latter required an idealistic and optimistic environment in which to be welcomed, and settled conditions under benevolent authority for it to be carried out.

The very conception of this on a nationwide scale fits well to its being promulgated at this time of optimism and expectation, when such a situation could be envisaged, but with the right conditions never being fully achieved, or possibly only achieved in the early unrecorded years in the parts then in subjection. The fact that the etymology of ‘yobel’ has never been satisfactorily explained favours a very early date for the provisions, while its occasional mention in other passages confirms that some at least saw themselves as living in an environment where they expected it to be carried out (Leviticus 27:18; Leviticus 27:21; Numbers 36:4 see also Isaiah 5:7-10; Isaiah 61:1-2). There is therefore no real reason to doubt that the idea was conveyed through Moses. It was certainly a grand idea, a basis for God’s final future deliverance.

That it finally failed comes out in the laments of the prophets, but in their laments we see a reflection of the ideas behind it (Isaiah 5:8 which gains in strength against this background; compare Amos 2:6), of a divine ideal which men had finally rejected. But this ideal was the equivalent of the city of gold in Revelation 21:0. It was of God’s glorious future for His people.

That the idea was not carried through as it was intended to be carried through was the consequence of disobedience and failure by men Israel to carry through God’s commands. But it conveyed ideas and attitudes about the land and about relationships as regards to debts, that were intended to influence general behaviour and which could be put into practise, and which we should still consider today. It concerned the maintenance of fairness for all.

The very purpose of yubile would to curb the ambitions of those who looked to the long term and were greedy, and its principle would have an influence for good on men’s minds. And it may well have affected prices of redemption to the good both for property and people. It also clearly indicated to future generations what the nation had missed out on due to sin. It was a pointer to the ideal future that could have been theirs, and, at least theoretically, still could be.

Later the Chronicler would certainly point to the exile as caused by the failure of the land to observe its sabbaths (2 Chronicles 36:21). And this was in accord with what Leviticus 26:34 warned would happen if they were disobedient to the covenant, while Daniel would use the idea of the year of Yubile as a means of emphasising that the fulfilment of God’s final deliverance and release for His people would actually take ten times that long as anticipated (Daniel 9:0). In Daniel’s terms the year of Yubile pointed forward to the coming of the Messiah and the Messianic Kingdom.