REL 199 Notes Week 6

Leviticus 11

Land Animals

Any animal that has a split hoof that is completely divided AND that chews the cud are allowed for consumption.

The following animals are NOT allowed for consumption:

• Camels
  
  • Chews cud, but does not have a split hoof
    
  • Ceremonially unclean
    
• Coneys (rock badger)
  
  • Chews cud, but does not have a split hoof
    
  • Unclean
    
• Rabbits
  
  • Chews cud, but does not have a split hoof
    
  • Unclean
    
• Pigs
  
  • Has split hoof completely divided, but does not chew cud
    
  • Do not eat the meat
    
  • Do not touch the carcass
    
  • Unclean
    

Birds and Flying Creatures

The following are deemed ‘detestable’ and should not be eaten

• Eagles
  
• Vultures
  
• Black Vultures
  
• Red Kites
  
• Any kind of Black Kite
  
• Any kind of Raven
  
• Horned Owls
  
• Screech Owls
  
• Gulls
  
• Any kind of Hawk
  
• Little Owls
  
• Cormorants
  
• Great Owls
  
• White Owls
  
• Desert Owls
  
• Ospreys
  
• Storks
  
• Herons
  
• Hoopoes
  
• Bats

Flying Insects

“All flying insects that walk on all fours are detestable to you” (Lev. 11:20). I thought they had six legs… but I digress…

SOME are edible, though, such as ones that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. Here are specific examples from the chapter:

• Any kind of Locust
  
• Any kind of Katydid
  
• Any kind of Cricket
  
• Any kind of Grasshopper
  

Ground Animals (rodents and reptiles)

The following CANNOT be eaten:

• Weasels
  
• Rats
  
• Any kind of great Lizard
  
• Geckos
  
• Wall Lizards
  
• Skinks
  
• Chameleons
  

Additional Animal Laws

• Whoever touches an unclean split hoof or cud chewing creature’s carcass is unclean until the evening. This also pertains to animals that that walk on all fours and those that walk on their paws. Furthermore, clothes must also be washed.
  
• Whoever touches ground animals whilst dead are unclean until evening. Furthermore, if such animal dies and falls on something, the object is unclean. If the object is wood, cloth, hide, or sackcloth, it must be put in water until evening, then it will be clean. If the object is a clay pot, the pot and everything in it is unclean and the pot must be broken. Food and drink in the pots are unclean. Exceptions, however, are granted to springs and cisterns used for collecting water remain clean.
  

Leviticus 12

Childbirth (son)

• Woman is ceremonially unclean for 7 days
  
• Boy is to be circumcised on 8^th day
  
• Woman must wait 33 days to be purified
  
• Must not touch anything sacred or go to sanctuary until purification is complete
  

Childbirth (daughter)

• Woman is ceremonially unclean for 14 days
  
• Woman must wait 66 days to be purified
  
• Must not touch anything sacred or go to sanctuary until purification is complete
  

Extra Info

• Mother is to bring year old lamb to Tent of Meeting for burnt offering
  
• Also, a young pigeon or dove for a sin offering
  

Leviticus 15

Male Discharges

• Any bed a man with a discharge lies on is unclean
  
• Anything a man sits on is unclean
  
• Whoever touches a man with a discharge is unclean
  
• Whoever is spit on by a man with a discharge is unclean
  
• Anything the man sits on while riding is unclean
  
• Anyone the man with a discharge touches without rinsing his hands are unclean
  

All of the procedures for the above are the same… person is unclean until even and must wash their clothes and bathe. The exception is with clay pots, those have to be destroyed!

Once cleansed from the discharge, the man must wait 7 days for the ceremonial cleansing, then wash clothing and bathe. On the eighth day, two doves or two young pigeons must be taken to the priest for sacrifice, one for a sin offering, the other for a sacrificial offering.

Much of the same themes apply when a man emits semen, with the addition of both the man and woman being unclean until evening.

Female Discharges

Much of the same applies to women that do men, with the exception that some durations of being unclean last for 7 days rather than one. Such exceptions include when a woman is having her period and a man who has sex with a woman while she is having her period. There’s one extra tidbit as well in 15:25. “When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days at a time other than her monthly period or has a discharge that continues beyond her period, she will be unclean as long as she has the discharge, just as in the days of her period.”

Leviticus 16

Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur

VERY brief summary with verses

• Forbidden to enter holy place within the vail (16:2)
  
• Bathing and dressing (16:4)
  
• Sin offering for self (16:6)
  
• Sin offering for people (16:5)
  
• Cast lots for two goats – one sacrificed and one released (16:5-8)
  
• Sacrificed the bullock (16:11)
  
• Holy place within the vail with censer and incense (16:12-13)
  
• Return to Holy of Holies with bullock’s blood (16:14)
  
• Came out into court and killed the goat (16:15)
  
• Return to Holy of Holies with goat’s blood (16:15)
  
• Purified tabernacle (16:16-17)
  
• Blood placed on horns of the altar (16:18-19)
  
• Remaining goat released (16:20-22)
  
• Bathed again and changed his clothes (16:23)
  
• Sacrificed two rams (16:24-25)
  
• He that released the scapegoat shall wash (16:26)
  
• Remainder of sin offerings burned without the camp (16:27-28)
  
• Everlasting statute (16:29-34)
  

Leviticus 17

Leviticus 17 covers the laws on eating the blood of animals and animal sacrifice. If an animal is sacrificed anywhere in our outside of the camp except for the Tent of Meeting is considered guilty of bloodshed and is banished from the community. This is done so that the Israelites bring the sacrifices they are making to YHWH. The offering must be taken to the priest, where he sprinkles the blood against the altar and burns the fat. The law of banishment also applies to aliens and to aliens and Israelites that consume blood. Any animal that can be eaten that is hunted must have its blood completely drained, otherwise, they too, are cut off from the community.

Finally, the text mentions another cleanliness rule pertaining to eating animals found dead or slightly consumed by other animals. Again, they must wash their clothes and bathe in water, and they will be unclean.

Leviticus 18

Leviticus 18 opens with YHWH telling Moses not to follow the same practices in Egypt, where they came from, or Canaan, where they are being brought. Here are the rules (18:6-30)

• No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD.
  
• Do not dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother; do not have relations with her.
  
• Do not have sexual relations with your father’s wife; that would dishonor your father.
  
• Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere.
  
• Do not have sexual relations with your son’s daughter or your daughter’s daughter; that would dishonor you.
  
• Do not have sexual relations with the daughter of your father’s wife, born to your father; she is your sister.
  
• Do not have sexual relations with your father’s sister; she is your father’s close relative.
  
• Do not have sexual relations with your mother’s sister, because she is your mother’s close relative.
  
• Do not dishonor your father’s brother by approaching his wife to have sexual relations; she is your aunt.
  
• Do not have sexual relations with your daughter-in-law. She is your son’s wife; do not have relations with her.
  
• Do not have sexual relations with your brother’s wife; that would dishonor your brother.
  
• Do not have sexual relations with both a woman and her daughter. Do not have sexual relations with either her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter; they are her close relatives. That is wickedness.
  
• Do not take your wife’s sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living.
  
• Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period.
  
• Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor’s wife and defile yourself with her.
  
• Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.
  
• Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.
  
• Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.
  
• Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the aliens living among you must not do any of these detestable things, for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.
  
• Everyone who does any of these detestable things—such persons must be cut off from their people. Keep my requirements and do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came and do not defile yourselves with them. I am the LORD your God.
  

Leviticus 19

Leviticus 19 is a collection of various laws

• Each of you must respect his mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God.
  
• Do not turn to idols or make gods of cast metal for yourselves. I am the LORD your God.
  
• When you sacrifice a fellowship offering to the LORD, sacrifice it in such a way that it will be accepted on your behalf. It shall be eaten on the day you sacrifice it or on the next day; anything left over until the third day must be burned up. If any of it is eaten on the third day, it is impure and will not be accepted. Whoever eats it will be held responsible because he has desecrated what is holy to the LORD; that person must be cut off from his people.
  
• When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.
  
• Do not steal.
  
• Do not lie.
  
• Do not deceive one another.
  
• Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.
  
• Do not defraud your neighbor or rob him.
  
• Do not hold back the wages of a hired man overnight.
  
• Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD.
  
• Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.
  
• Do not go about spreading slander among your people.
  
• Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the LORD.
  
• Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt.
  
• Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.
  
• Keep my decrees.
  
• Do not mate different kinds of animals.
  
• Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.
  
• Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
  
• If a man sleeps with a woman who is a slave girl promised to another man but who has not been ransomed or given her freedom, there must be due punishment. Yet they are not to be put to death, because she had not been freed. The man, however, must bring a ram to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting for a guilt offering to the LORD. With the ram of the guilt offering the priest is to make atonement for him before the LORD for the sin he has committed, and his sin will be forgiven.
  
• When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering of praise to the LORD. But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the LORD your God.
  
• Do not eat any meat with the blood still in it.
  
• Do not practice divination or sorcery.
  
• Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.
  
• Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.
  
• Do not degrade your daughter by making her a prostitute, or the land will turn to prostitution and be filled with wickedness.
  
• Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am the LORD.
  
• Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God.
  
• Rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the LORD.
  
• When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
  
• Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight or quantity. Use honest scales and honest weights, an honest ephah* and an honest hin**. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt.
  

*dry measure
**liquid measure

Leviticus 20

Punishments for Sin (and more laws)

• Any Israelite or alien living in Israel that gives (Heb. Alternative: to be passed through the fire) their children to Molech must be put to death by stoning. If the community doesn’t acknowledge it, the same rules apply.
  
• If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother, and his blood will be on his own head.
  
• If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.
  
• If a man sleeps with his father’s wife, he has dishonored his father. Both the man and the woman must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
  
• If a man sleeps with his daughter-in-law, both of them must be put to death. What they have done is a perversion; their blood will be on their own heads.
  
• If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
  
• If a man marries both a woman and her mother, it is wicked. Both he and they must be burned in the fire, so that no wickedness will be among you.
  
• If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he must be put to death, and you must kill the animal.
  
• If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
  
• If a man marries his sister, the daughter of either his father or his mother, and they have sexual relations, it is a disgrace. They must be cut off before the eyes of their people. He has dishonored his sister and will be held responsible.
  
• If a man lies with a woman during her monthly period and has sexual relations with her, he has exposed the source of her flow, and she has also uncovered it. Both of them must be cut off from their people.
  
• Do not have sexual relations with the sister of either your mother or your father, for that would dishonor a close relative; both of you would be held responsible.
  
• If a man sleeps with his aunt, he has dishonored his uncle. They will be held responsible; they will die childless.
  
• If a man marries his brother’s wife, it is an act of impurity; he has dishonored his brother. They will be childless.
  
• Do not live like the nations that are being driven out of the land
  
• Make a distinction between clean and unclean animals
  
• A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist must be put to death by stoning.