Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Today we enter a section of laws that pertain to cleanness and uncleanness, which, if you recall, is one of the areas God told the priests to be mindful of. We'll be in this section today and a little bit of tomorrow.
Today starts with God giving instructions on what to eat and what not to eat. If you felt like this had echoes of Eden in it, you can eat this, but don't eat that, you're spot on. God is recreating all of this space. There are lots of theories on why specific animals are forbidden. Hygiene, deviation from the norm, affiliation with Canaanite culture, but we don't really know.
Keeping these food laws is one part of what is referred to in Jewish culture as keeping kosher. There are lots of other aspects to this, but dietary law is a big one. And the saddest part of today's reading was here in 11:7: no bacon. In fact, one of the ways modern archaeologists can tell when and where ancient Jews lived in Israel is because there are no pig bones in that layer of soil. Pigs were wildly popular food among the Canaanites, whom I've never felt such a kinship with until now.
So there are pig bones all over pagan country, but not where God's people lived. They're also not allowed to eat anything that dies on its own. It has to be killed. Likely because if it dies on its own, it might have a disease. By the way, the word detestable that we see repeated here only appears twice outside of the book of Leviticus. And one of those times is in reference to idols. So there seems to be a correlation here with turning away from God. In chapter 12, there are laws for women who give birth and how they go about being clean afterward.
I can't give you a definitive answer as to why having a female child makes a woman unclean for twice as long as a male child, but it's probably because she was giving birth to someone else who would also bleed and give birth. One thing of note in this chapter, maybe you caught it, is that God does that thing where he makes the sacrifice more affordable for the poor. And guess who was poor? Jesus' parents, Mary and Joseph.
How do we know? Because in Luke 2, as they aimed to keep this law after Jesus was born, they didn't bring a lamb. They brought the bird offering for the poor, two turtle doves and two pigeons.
Then we hit a section you did not love if you have a weak stomach. I'm right there with you. Leviticus 13 is probably my least favorite chapter to read every year, but I did it and I didn't even pass out. I hope you can say the same. As far as I'm concerned, the whole rest of the Bible is a breeze compared to this chapter, even the little bit of this that we have to touch on again tomorrow.
I both love and don't love how detailed God gets here. The reason I kind of love it is because Moses was a shepherd, not a doctor. So he needed God to share all these nuanced specifics with him in order to care for the people well. God helped him out with all the variables of skin disease and leprosy.
By the way, leprosy as we know it today likely didn't exist back then. The word leprosy in scripture is kind of used as a blanket term for a variety of skin conditions. When someone has any of these conditions, they're considered unclean. And again, that does not equate to sin. They go live outside the camp until they're clean so as to avoid spreading it and so that they don't defile the holiness of God's tabernacle. This doesn't mean they're condemned or shamed or unloved.
And all the while, God's mediator, the priest, is keeping an eye on them. In doing this, the priest is serving God by keeping things holy. He's serving the healthy people by protecting them. And he's serving the unclean people by keeping a watch on them and making sure they follow God's prescribed rules. You know how patients love to disregard the doctor's orders? Side note, I'm glad baldness isn't considered unclean, or else we'd have a much smaller pool for action heroes in our movies. Have you ever noticed that most of them are bald?
Meanwhile, back at the Bible and its boils, I'm looking for my God shot. What was yours? Mine was when God tells them that all these laws are a part of what it means to obey Him. In 1144, He says, I am the Lord your God. He starts with relationship. Then He continues, consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy for I am holy.
He repeats this almost verbatim in the following verse, and God's repetition should always catch our attention. One interesting aspect of the word consecrate, which we've said means to set apart for sacred use, is that it's kind of the verb form of the adjective holy. In Hebrew, consecrate is kadash, and holy is kadosh. So God is basically repeating himself with this one statement, even before he repeats it again in the next verse.
It's like he's saying, set yourselves apart for sacred use. Be set apart as I am set apart. God tells them to imitate his character. He has initiated this process by showing us who he is. We don't have to become something he hasn't first shown us and been to us. If being set apart means being set apart with him, then I want to get my consecration on because he's where the joy is. ♪
The Trinity is one of the most foundational truths of our faith. It can be really confusing though, and if we aren't careful, we end up putting the three persons of the Trinity in a blender and mixing them all up together as though they're the same. While God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit are one, and they are unified in their will and purpose, they're also distinct in their roles.
We built out a PDF that talks more about the roles of the persons of the Trinity using examples and scriptures, and we'd love to share that with you. If you want to get this PDF for free, all you have to do is go to thebiblerecap.com forward slash Trinity and submit your email address. That's thebiblerecap.com forward slash Trinity.