Hebrews talks a good deal about the priesthood, sacrifices and offerings. Speaking about Leviticus, Dr. Michael S. Heiser says that, “In the first ten chapters we find out that the basic function of the priesthood is really to officiate over the system as it’s outlined and also to be on the alert to matters of purity…often in Leviticus ‘purity’ means ‘ritual purity.’ Ritual purity dictated whether or not someone was fit to occupy sacred space. Oftentimes in the Old Testament law, the solution for a certain sin is the death penalty, not a sacrifice. There’s a fundamental disconnect with what we think of as solutions for sin and what we see in Leviticus…In chapters 18—20 are the community laws. These chapters discuss sexual prohibitions, though they are not the only emphasis of these chapters. There are other laws which also concern community, religious, and social behavior. These laws deal with the status of the person being able to occupy sacred space. We will also read about the issue of moral uncleanness and principles of morality. Principles of ritual fitness are distinct from principles of morality. We today tend to link both of those things, but Israelite law and the practice of it did not…Leviticus is concerned with what goes on in Yahweh’s territory (i.e., his inheritance)…The emphasis in Leviticus and, largely, all of the sacrifices (at least the ones that are “sin and guilt offerings”), is not to apply the blood to the individual person who committed the wrong and extend forgiveness to them on some moral basis. The blood is never applied to the sinner, the one who is bringing the offering. Rather, the blood is applied to the sanctuary to purge it of pollution. The priesthood in Leviticus is really about purifying sacred space that has been polluted and making it fit for Yahweh’s presence again after it has been violated. It’s a fundamental idea that will come up repeatedly, and we need to make sure we understand this to get it right. Leviticus is going to sound quite different from what you may have heard about it before with respect to sacrifices…The Old Testament is quite clear that idolatry, the worship of other deities, polluted the land and, in so doing, polluted Yahweh’s territory…They must not be worshiped. If they are worshiped, then, by definition, this is both a moral and a (potentially) ritual violation of not only the sanctuary but the entire land. Infecting holy ground was the fundamental concern with the Levitical system. That’s an important idea…These laws about sacred space inform us that violations of the sanctuary were, primarily, not thought of in terms of moral sins like committing an unvirtuous act. If you did commit certain sins it could lead to the violation of sacred space, but holiness laws generally are concerned with becoming literally infected and put the sanctuary in peril of being violated. We have to think in terms of the place and space as opposed to the person. Doing so will help us keep our bearings in Leviticus…Sacrifice was about correcting violations of sacred space. It wasn’t so much to cover a moral flaw or sin. It was about making people fit to occupy sacred space. Again, this was only for unintentional violations. Intentional sins were a different matter. Didn’t the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement atone for everybody’s sins all at the same time?…I’m actually of the opinion that the Day of Atonement was not about atoning for individual moral failures. Even that ritual was still about cleansing the sanctuary because the only time that the blood is ever mentioned as being applied anywhere in Leviticus 16 is in the sanctuary, on the sacred objects, and not on the people…I hope you’re already seeing that what was done at the cross is much better than this system. It is, and that’s the whole point of the book of Hebrews. The blood of bulls and goats could not accomplish certain things whereas the blood of Christ could. There’s an inherent superiority with what happened at the cross as opposed to Leviticus, and I think that distinction is blurred with the way evangelicals in particular talk about Leviticus (if they ever talk about it at all)…when certain people are excluded from holy ground or sacred space because they touched a carcass or because a woman is having her menstrual cycle, that person is ritually unclean. It has nothing to do with morality or with some sort of good or bad behavior. That woman, for example, is ritually unclean because of her flow of blood. She’s not allowed on sacred space. However, in a moral sense, she is no farther away from God than someone who is allowed to step onto holy ground. Ritual impurity has nothing to do with someone’s walk with God or their spiritual life…Moral impurity was basically permanent in Old Testament law. What were the solutions? The solution to adultery was the death penalty. The solution to murder was the death penalty. There were no sacrifices for these things. There were some laws that didn’t result in the death penalty. If one Israelite stole something from another, Old Testament law said the thief must give back what was stolen and then give more beyond that. There were a whole host of things in Old Testament law that you couldn’t cure by performing a sacrifice because the sacrifice was not about moral impurity. The sacrificial system was all about taking care of ritual impurity…ritual impurities had procedural cures. but moral impurities did not. The guilty were punished for moral impurities. Even victims of morally impure acts (e.g., rape) were, unfortunately, permanently debased. They were never going to be what they were before. They even have a lesser social status. There was a stigma to it as a victim, and especially with something like rape…The same goes for the land when we talk about individual victims. According to Leviticus 18, for instance, the ultimate result of unchecked moral pollution is that the land is polluted and cannot be fixed. The ultimate way that you would have to deal with this is to exile the people, and, at some point, the land would have to be supernaturally made new. What we see in biblical theology is that will happen only one time, and will be on the Day of the Lord. Certain sins were so serious that, if left unchecked, Leviticus says God will drive the people out because the land would be polluted, and God himself is the only one who can make it new again. That’s eschatological language, and you can’t simply reverse that. So polluting the land was to be taken seriously…Holiness really relates to making some object or person fit enough to occupy sacred space. It has nothing to do with someone’s relationship with God in a spiritual or emotional sense.” 1Notes on Leviticus: from the Naked Bible Podcast Kindle Edition available on Amazon. by Michael S. Heiser
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