Leviticus 11 to 13: I got you under my skin...

Leviticus 11

God tells Moses what is edible and what ain't.

Verse 20-2: "All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you. Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth; Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind."

And ooh,germs, germs everywhere! OCD GOD?

Verse 32: "And upon whatsoever any of them, when they are dead, doth fall, it shall be unclean; whether it be any vessel of wood, or raiment, or skin, or sack, whatsoever vessel it be, wherein any work is done, it must be put into water, and it shall be unclean until the even; so it shall be cleansed."

Purity and Danger and all that Mary Douglas stuff...

Leviticus 12

Women are unclean for seven days after giving birth to a boy. After his circumcision-

What's that useless piece of skin at the end of a penis called?
A man...

she's unclean for another 33 days, and shall touch no halloed thing, nor come into the sanctuary.

Since females are obviously inherently yuckier and ickier, after giving birth to a “maid child”, a woman is unclean two weeks, and then a further 66 days.

In either case, burnt offerings are due the prie... sorry, the LORD

Leviticus 13

God does dermatology outpatients clinics...

Verse 2-4 “When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or a bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy; then he shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priests: And the priest shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh: and when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the plague in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague of leprosy: and the priest shall look on him, and pronounce him unclean. If the bright spot be white in the skin of his flesh, and in sight be not deeper than the skin, and the hair thereof be not turned white; then the priest shall shut up him that hath the plague seven days.”

Basically, if the priest thinks you've got leprosy,

Verse 21-25 "But if the priest look on it, and, behold, there be no white hairs therein, and if it be not lower than the skin, but be somewhat dark; then the priest shall shut him up seven days: And if it spread much abroad in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is a plague. But if the bright spot stay in his place, and spread not, it is a burning boil; and the priest shall pronounce him clean. Or if there be any flesh, in the skin whereof there is a hot burning, and the quick flesh that burneth have a white bright spot, somewhat reddish, or white; Then the priest shall look upon it: and, behold, if the hair in the bright spot be turned white, and it be in sight deeper than the skin; it is a leprosy broken out of the burning: wherefore the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is the plague of leprosy."

- and these versus remind me of an extremely crude diagnostic algorithm- then you'll be treated like an, er, leper.

Verse 45-6 “And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.”

But given how clothes are expensive and all, and a proper dry cleaner isn't to be had for a good 3400 years or so, then decontamination is important...

Verse 56-9 “And if the priest look, and, behold, the plague be somewhat dark after the washing of it; then he shall rend it out of the garment, or out of the skin, or out of the warp, or out of the woof: And if it appear still in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in any thing of skin; it is a spreading plague: thou shalt burn that wherein the plague is with fire. And the garment, either warp, or woof, or whatsoever thing of skin it be, which thou shalt wash, if the plague be departed from them, then it shall be washed the second time, and shall be clean. This is the law of the plague of leprosy in a garment of woollen or linen, either in the warp, or woof, or any thing of skins, to pronounce it clean, or to pronounce it unclean.”

And look, I've gone all this way without making ONE joke about failing driving tests/comments to prostitutes etc etc. You've got to hand it to me...

Leviticus 7 to 10: The calm before the storm

Leviticus 7

More rules about trespass and sin offerings and who gets the leftovers...

Verse 6 "Every male among the priests shall eat thereof: it shall be eaten in the holy place: it is most holy."

So there were female priests? But they weren't in the protein-grubbing gang...

Burn, sprinkle blood, tabernacles. Yawn.

Verse 26 "Moreover ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings."

Leviticus 8

God gives Moses some get-up instructions for Aaron. Gotta keep up appearances.

Verse 6-7 "And Moses brought Aaron and his sons, and washed them with water. And he put upon him the coat and girded him, with the girdle, and clothed him with the robe, and put the ephod upon him, and he girded him with the curious girdle of the ephod, and bound it unto him therewith. And he put the breastplate upon him: also he put in the breastplaste the Urim and the Thummim."

And they kill a bullock. Annoint, purity, yadder yadder yadder.

Verse 31 "And Moses said unto Aaron and to his sons. Boil the flesh at the door of the tabernacle of the congregationL and there eat it with the bread that is in the basket of consecrations, as I commanded, saying, Aaron and his sons shall eat it."

Leviticus 9

And Aaron sacrfices a bullock, goat and lamb, which the LORD torches

Verse 24 "And thre came a fire out form before th LORD, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat which when all the people saw, they shouted and fell on their faces."

Leviticus 10

Aaron's kids get torched by the LORD, and Moses consoles Aaron by saying 'that's how it goes, mate.'

Verse 1-3 "And Nadab and Abihu, he sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer and put fire therein and put incense thereon, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the LORD, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the LORD, and devoured them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said unto Aaron, This is tit that the LORD spake, saying I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace."

And the LORD gives some complicated rules for Moses' cronies to follow, which they muddle, and Moses chews out Aaron's kids. Aaron takes up their cause and Moses so 'oh, that's alright then'.

Ah, next chapter gets going with the strange rules Leviticus is known for...

Exodus 32-40: more bloodshed, more gold

OK, I'm even further behind now. Blame the evil three legged cat (I'm sure there must be something in this fat book about casting weird little yowly three-legged things like that out into the wilderness). He killed Marc's computer monitor by throwing up down the back of it, so we're now sharing a computer and on rationed blogging time.
Anyway.
Chapters 32 and 33 recount the tale of the making of the Golden Calf. As if to confirm all the stuff I've been talking about regarding the importance of ritual, the Israelites take a very short time indeed to start freaking out about the fact that Moses has vanished up to the top of Mount Sinai to commune with God, and demand that Aaron makes them something else to worship instead.
Collecting jewellery off them, Aaron takes very little persuading to make a statue of a bull calf, which immediately becomes the new God.
God, who has been showing himself to be a rather insecure and demanding character since at least the beginning of Exodus, and of course on occasions like ordering Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, gets understandably stroppy about this:

“Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them”
(Chapter 32 verse 10)

Moses manages to talk him down a bit, and back down at the bottom of the mountain seems to be happy to go along with some spectacular buck-passing by Aaron (I thought we had major legal precedents established that 'he told me to' was no excuse?):

“And Aaron said, let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief.
For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.”
(Chapter 32 verses 22-23)

Despite this, Aaron gets comprehensively forgiven and reinstated into his God-assigned role as the head of a lineage of priests, while in a typically Biblical bit of understated callousness 3,000 people apparently get butchered for this bit of cow-worship, but this only warrants one very short verse and no real explanation as to why. Bit like the massacre of the people of Shechem or various other non-Israelite groups, who, like the girl in the B movie whose function is just to scream and look terrified, just exist to get minced to show off Israelite power:

“And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.”
(Chapter 32 verse 28)

Yep, that's it.
Having generously forgiven the leadership of this rather hierarchical set-up, God now reinforces his position by ordering the destruction of any other gods who might be knocking around, and yet again all those commandments about rituals get repeated, just in case anyone had forgotten them.
Chapters 35-38 mainly recap in the actual performance the instructions delivered by God to Moses for the making of the Ark of the Covenant, involving lots of gold, silver, brass, shittim wood and purple, red and blue cloth. The level of detail entailed extends to listing the number of tenon joints needed to hold some of the boards together:

“One board had two tenons, equally distant from one another: thus did he make for all the boards of the tabernacle.
...
And forty sockets of silver he made under the twenty boards; two sockets under one board for his two tenons, and two sockets under another board for his two tenons.”
(Chapter 36 verses 22 and 24)

Collecting all the materials for this – all apparently accumulated from the existing wealth of the Israelite people (even though they've been enslaved in Egypt for several generations?), so at least it's recycled. I remember from archaeology classes at uni that one of the types of evidence considered to indicate that a society was hierarchical is the carrying out of large-scale construction projects (Stonehenge, for example), the presence of crafts specialisations (because people doing specialised crafts obviously need someone else to be growing/producing the goods to feed them, since they don't have time to do it themselves, so you need some kind of social system that supports this differentiation) and burials or other accumulations of wealth such as gold jewellery or ritual objects.
Giving little credence to hippy notions of co-operation, it is assumed that the presence of hierarchies and leaderships is necessary to get enough people together at the same time and for long enough to actually build anything of any significant size or value – and although this Ark isn't particularly huge in itself, it does involve major accumulation of wealth and of labour, with all the society's women apparently engaged in weaving the hangings, and its skilled craftsmen (rejoicing in the wonderful names Bezaleel and Aholiab) devoting their time to this effort.


We also get quite a bit about the priests' ephods, which is apparently a word of which there is controversy about the meaning of, but may be some kind of loincloth, or possibly a kind of ritual apron. In this case, they seem to be accompanied with 'curious girdles,' which also sound great but lack specifics as to why they are curious... this for me is one of the joys of the Old Testament and especially the King James Version, that we come up against some bizarre and in some cases totally incomprehensible words and phrases, their exact meanings lost in the mists of time, but their general resonance remaining.
And so the Book of Exodus ends, with the completion of this great creative and ritual work, a social bonding experience between the Israelites who donate their valuables and time to create a symbol of their belief and their identity as a people. And, armed with a growing conviction that they are God's one chosen people, and with a substantial list of laws as to the proper conduct of society, they're ready to head off to the land of Canaan:

“For the cloud of the LORD was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.”
(Chapter 40 verse 38)

Leviticus 5 to 6: The protein-grubbing priest class...

Leviticus 5

And now comes some of the arcane ritual cleansing/purification stuff that Leviticus is (in)famous for.

Verse 2 “Of if a soul touch any unclean thing, whether it be a carcase of an unclean beast, or a carcase of unclean cattle, or the carcase of unclean creeping things, and if it be hidden from him, he also shall be unclean, and guilty.”

So, guilty until proven innocent, and proving yourself innocent isn't easy.

But you can atone for your sins, which is quite Indulgent of the Lord. There's even a sliding scale, and not just for touching the sleeping snake...

Verse 7 “And if he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass, which he hath committed, two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, unto the LORD: one for a sing offering, and the other for a burnt offering.”

And the priest will sprinkle and sort out absolution.

Verse 11 “But if be not able to bring two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, then he that sinned shall bring for his offering the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering he shall put no oil upon it, neither shall he put any frankincense thereon: for it is a sin offering.”

Got that?

The priest did-

Verse 13 “... and the remnant shall be the priest's, as a meat offering.”

And there's more sin extortion. It's a nice little protection racket, is this...

Chapter 6

And the LORD has more rules about lying and so on.

And instructions to Aaron about how to dress up for the burnt offering show. And how to get the altar just so...

Verse 13 “The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar: it shall never go out.”

Won't somebody think of the carbon emissions??

Ah, here we go...

Verse 14 "And this is the law of the meat offering: the sons of Aaron shall offer it before the LORD, before the altar. And he shall take of it his handful, of the flour of the meat offering, and of the oil thereof, and all the frankincense which is upon the meat offering, and shall burn it upon the altar for a sweet savour even the memorial of it, unto the LORD.”

And if any is left over, it's given to the widows and orphans, right?

You. Haven't. Been. Paying. Attention. Have you? Hmm? Have you? Admit it.

Verse 16 “And the remainder thereof shall Aaron and his sons eat: with unleavened bread shall it be eaten in the holy place: in the court of the tabernacle of the congregation they shall eat it.”

As Marge Piercy had one of her characters say in the extraordinary novel “Vida”- “Keep naming the enemies. Put faces on where the money goes.” Or in this case, the protein...

Oh, and funny how the LORD locks in this...

Verse 18 “And the males among the children of Aaron shall eat of it. It shall be a statute for ever in your generations concerning the offerings of the LORD made by fire...”

You'd never know it was the priest class writing and regurgitating this shit would you? Nothing self -serving in it at all...

Chapter closes out with more recipes. Jamie Fernly-Ramsay has nothing on this guy.

Oh, and no bloody in the bloody tabernacle, owright?:

Verse 30 “And no sin offering, whereof any of the blood is brought into the tabernacle of the congregation to reconcile withal in the holy place, shall be eaten: it shall be burnt in the fire.”

Leviticus 1 to 4: Sexing the Pigeon

Leviticus1

And the LORD gives Moses some fairly exact(ing) instructions for how (burnt) offerings are to be made to him. Bullocks and sheep must be blemishless males.

The gender-restriction more relaxed for turtledoves and pigeons, possibly cos it's not quite so easy to tell...

Verse 17 “And he shall cleave it with the wings thereof, but shall not divide it asunder: and the priest shall burn it upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire: it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD.”

Leviticus 2: Priests snaffle God's leftovers, taxing protein...

And goes on to explain how to get their meat out, and that Aaron and his sons get the left-overs.

(Crafty protein source, as Marvin Harris would point out. Protein. Important stuff, amino disrespect to the notion of offering meat to Bearded Skymen, nosiree...)

Leviticus 3

Verse 2 “And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his offering, and kill it at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and Aaron's sons the priests shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar round about.”

Won't someone think of the health and safety implications??

Oh, and how to sacrifice this and that. It really gets my goat.

And here's the kosher kicker:

Verse 17 “It shall be a perpetual statue for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood.”

Leviticus 4

Repetitive instructions on how to kill bullocks to attone for individual and collective sins from positions of ignorance.

And there seems to be a sliding scale for rulers who sin and common folk.

Not much fun being a lamb, I'd say.

Verse 35 “And he shall take away all the fat thereof, as the fat of the lamb is taken away from the sacrifice of the peace offerings: and the priest shall burn there upon the altar, according to the offerings made by fire unto the LORD: and the priest shall make an atonement for his sin that he hath committed, and it shall be forgiven him.”

As befits an oral tradition, there's a lot of repetition in these four books. We skim it so YOU don't have to...