Wednesday, Oct. 23
Leviticus 6:1-30 Read it here
Chapter 6 begins with some refreshingly straightforward rules: it’s bad to deceive people.
The penalty for cheating a neighbor is in two parts: First, restitution to the victim is required, with a penalty. If you deprive someone of their property by deception, Leviticus requires that the loss be made good, and a 20% penalty be added.
The second part is ritual, requiring a guilt offering to be sacrificed by the priest.
This recognizes that a sin against a person is also a sin against God. Restoring wholeness to the injured party is not enough.
The required sacrifice acknowledges the sin against God. It also helps restore the person who committed the sin. Having repaid the debt and given a sacrifice provides reassurance that the incident is now closed and that right relationship is restored both with the injured party and with God.
As the passage turns to the details of sacrifice, we find a question I’ve been asked before, and still haven’t found a completely satisfactory answer to: why do some sacrifices, like the Passover meal, have to avoid yeast?
In exploring this, I’ve found several potential explanations.
One is what I call the “Because I said so” explanation: That God simply requires sacrifices to be made in a certain way because the act of obedience is itself important. While there’s nothing wrong with this possibility, it strikes me as more arbitrary than it needs to be.
Another is that avoiding yeast in sacrifices necessarily serves as a reminder of Passover, God’s greatest act of salvation until the later coming of Jesus. Again, it’s a reasonable explanation.
Another explanation is that yeast (and also honey, mentioned elsewhere), were often used in pagan sacrifices. This would correspond with concerns we see elsewhere that pagan practices not be allowed to creep in to the worship of God.
Another is simply that bread without yeast doesn’t spoil as quickly, and that sacrifices should not be corrupted. This would also explain the rejection of honey, but the inclusion of salt, which is a preservative. It would also explain why fermented wine is allowable, but fermented bread is not.
This would also correspond with the way Jesus symbolically uses yeast in Matthew 16 to refer to the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees; it is something that introduces corruption.
Whichever explanation is correct, or if it’s something completely different, we are reminded that both obedience to God’s commands and the purity of what is offered matter.