Before we get onto the subjects of the title, God instructs Moses to command the Israelites to bring oil so that the lamps outside the Tent of Meeting can always be kept lit. The people must provide the oil, but it falls to the priests to ensure that the lamps burn from morning until evening – everyone must play their part. No explicit reason is given for this practice, but maybe it was so that the Tent of Meeting was always clearly visible, presumably so that it could always be found and always be used. Our churches can always be found, but can they always be used? It makes me sad whenever I see a church locked up during the week. I know there are practical difficulties to keeping them open all the time, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could be?
God also instructs the people to bring twelve loaves every Sabbath. I believe this is the Bread of the Presence, referred to in a previous post, but here its greatest significance seems to be that it belongs to the priests as their food. If the people don’t obey, the priests don’t eat. Our actions impact on others and we must not forget that.
Now we see the Law in action for the first time. A fight breaks out, and in the course of it, one of the men blasphemes God’s name with a curse. The people put the man in custody until “the will of the Lord should be made clear to them”. God speaks to Moses and tells him that the blasphemer must be taken out of the camp and stoned to death, which is exactly what the people do. When I first read this, a phrase from previous chapters came back to me - "His blood will be on his own head". In other words, the man knew before he acted that blasphemy was wrong, and he knew that he would be punished for it, so he was responsible for his own fate and it's no good blaming God. The only problem is, that view requires unquestioning acceptance of the Law as it is, and I've tried but I just can't do it. I wrote yesterday that no one deserves to die for a sin for which they have already been forgiven by God, but the truth is that no one has ever deserved to die like that. When I read of women stoned to death for adultery, I do not object on the grounds that under the new covenant it is no longer a legal requirement, I weep because it is barbaric and inhuman. And when I read of this blasphemer killed by his community for what was probably a heat-of-the-moment slip of the tongue, something in me revolts in the same way.
To say "The Law said so" is not enough, even if it is supposedly God's Law. I have to question it because I feel instinctively and passionately that it's wrong. And how do I reconcile such brutal laws with "the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness" (Exodus 34:6) who through His Son later taught mercy and forgiveness? I can see only three possibilities. Either these laws were written by men and ascribed to God in an attempt to justify their own cruelty, or the men who wrote the laws down genuinely believed they were right but misunderstood God's purposes, or the laws really did come from God and there was another aspect to His character that we would rather ignore. I don't have the answer, but my gut tells me it must be one of the first two - in my experience, it is people that have proven themselves to be cruel and fallible, not God - in which case the whole Law is called into question and we must work out with God what is from Him and what is not. However, if it is God's word we must accept it, not as a Law for us now but at least as true in its own time. But accepting something to be true does not mean agreeing with it. I will never like it or think it right. But then, God doesn't need me to agree with Him - as He kept reminding the Israelites, He's God.
Moving on for the moment, we now get to the Year of Jubilee. First, God tells Moses that every seventh year is to be a sabbath year, a year of rest for the land. The people must not plant or harvest, but may eat whatever the land provides. He then tells Moses to count off seven sabbath years, and the following year - the fiftieth year - is to be consecrated as a jubilee. Trumpets will proclaim liberty for the people, and everyone will return to his family property and his own clan. It's like hitting the reset button. All property sold since the last jubilee is to be returned to its original owner, meaning those who have fallen on hard times will be able to reclaim their wealth and get the chance to start again. It also means that anyone who has accumulated wealth by buying up other people's property will have to return it and so their wealth will be diminished. Further to that, no one may charge interest on a loan to a person unable to support themselves. Charity is not to profited from. I think this is all fantastic. It's a safety net for the poor, and a reminder to the rich that earthly wealth is only temporary. It gives people a second chance and it stops the gap between rich and poor growing too wide. I think this may go in my manifesto.
But it wasn't just property that could be bought and sold. People could be too. As I seem to recall touching on in a previous post, if an Israelite fell into poverty, he could sell himself. But he was not to be treated as a slave - his master was to treat him as a hired worker and release him at the next Year of Jubilee. Again we see the original welfare system in action. Things get a little less liberal after that though, as God says that the Israelites may take slaves from the nations around them, and that they may be willed to their heirs as inheritance. I guess the standard justification of this passage would run along the lines of "the Israelites could make slaves of other nations because back then they were God's chosen ones, but now that we are all equal in God's eyes slavery is no longer allowed", but I can't accept that it was ever okay. And so I find myself asking the same questions as before. Did men make it up or get it wrong? Or did God really say this? I think these are questions we need to keep asking rather than blindly accepting or struggling to justify something we believe deep down to be wrong.
Now God tells the people that if they follow His commands, He will bring them peace and prosperity, and He will walk among them. Conversely, if they fail to obey Him, He will cause all sorts of terrible things to happen to them, though He will never abandon them completely. Maybe here we find the root of the prosperity gospel so popular in certain churches. The implication is that you can measure the strength of your relationship with God by how well your life is going. That sort of thinking is dangerous because it can lead to a feeling of abandonment in the hard times, and it can make us complacent and smug in the good times. Experience tells me that there is some correlation between my relationship with God and my personal happiness - the closer I walk with God, the more of His peace and joy and strength I know, and the better I cope with whatever life throws at me - but I don't believe for a second that God chooses to reward or punish me depending on how well-behaved I am. Maybe He never did. Isn't it possible that the people noticed a similar correlation and misunderstood it? Or maybe when things went badly they presumed it was because God was angry with them, instead of recognising that sometimes bad stuff just happens?
Leviticus concludes with some rules about vows dedicating land, property, animals or people to God. Even after doing some reading, I'm still not sure I totally understand this passage. It's not clear why the people would make such dedications, and there are so many conditions they make my head swim. Two things are clear, however. Firstly, if anyone wished to dedicate a person to God by giving an equivalent amount of money, a set amount was to be given based on the person's age and gender, ranging from fifty shekels for a man between the ages of sixty and twenty to three shekels for a girl under the age of five. Attaching price tags to people may seem dehumanising, and the values themselves may seem ageist and sexist, but they were only for the purposes of this dedication and it seems that they were based purely on the value of the person as a labourer. Young men were valued so highly because theoretically they would have been in peak physical condition, whereas the old and the very young were ill-suited to labour and young women would have had pregnancies and childcare to contend with. This does not mean that any group was considered more important than any other in a more general sense. Secondly, nothing could be redeemed once it had been dedicated to God. Once we give a gift we cannot ask for it back, and so we should not make vows lightly.
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