The rules vary from religion to religion. Those who work and live closest to a divine being are expected to abide by more stringent rules. People of most religions (past and present) have an understanding that there are ways that are appropriate and inappropriate when it comes to interacting with the divine. This wasn’t specific to the people of Israel. Is something aligned with the god we are approaching? Or is it unaligned? One way that the ancients understood holiness was in terms of whether something was “clean” or “unclean.” This isn’t the same as “good” or “bad.” It’s a sense of purity. God is holy, and his people need to be holy as well. Because God is so “other” from the world, the people associated with him must become “others” too.
He has now established his presence in the tabernacle, a portable holy place where God can dwell in the midst of his new nation.īut if people are going to live in the presence of God, some things will need to change. God has made Israel his people: a people that now represent him on earth. Although God has communicated with humans and in some cases even appeared to them privately (think Abraham’s visitors in Genesis 18), he has yet to publicly manifest his presence on earth since the garden of Eden.īut all this has changed.
Until this point in the Bible, God has been a long way off from the people of earth. God is holy: far greater in love, goodness, power, and justice than humans. “Holy” means “set apart”-but it’s a lot more involved than just being special. You can see a piece of art for each book of the Bible here. “Thus you are to be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy and I have set you apart from the peoples to be Mine.” (Le 20:26) I like to find a passage in each book of the Bible that sums up what that book is all about. In this book, Aaron is consecrated as the high priest, but this is also the book in which God kills Aaron’s sons. Leviticus’s narrative elements have a lot to do with Aaron. In Leviticus, Moses continues to list the ways Israel can stay pure enough to live alongside their God.Īaron-Moses’ older brother and the high priest of Israel, Aaron is a character to keep an eye on throughout the Pentateuch. At this point in the story, Moses has already passed along many, many laws to the people of Israel on God’s behalf. Moses-He led the Israelites from Egypt to Sinai. This whole book is about how the nation of Israel needs to live in order to survive living in the presence of such a powerful, holy being. You could sum up the book of Leviticus with God’s repeated command: “Be holy, as I am holy.” Important characters in Leviticus That’s why it’s a vital piece of the Torah, the foundation of the rest of Scripture. But specifically, it’s a book of rules that the ancient Israelites believed they had to follow in order to be close to their God. Leviticus is known as a book of rules (which it is).