At-Onement with YHWH and with Land—Leviticus 16–27

Abstract

THE GOAL OF Leviticus is that Israel should live out its Sinai-based vocation to be a “holy people” (Exod 19:6). Its many ritual prescriptions and regulations for ordering daily living, punctuated with just one narrative (Lev 8–10), are a social imaginary, a highly concrete way of conceiving how Israel might organize itself as a community capable of hosting in its midst the radical holiness of God. From the perspective of this book, God’s immediate presence to Israel is a daily reality, not just in the wilderness but for all time: “I will go about in the midst of you . . . ” (26:12). Living with YHWH in its midst is both opportunity and threat. This is the condition of Israel’s own holiness, yet it is a highly volatile condition that can turn, suddenly or gradually, in the direction of disaster. The core problem with which this book contends is the potential incompatibility between God and Israel, the incommensurability between divine holiness and Israel’s own capacity to overcome human frailty—be it unwitting error, deliberate sin, or the tendency toward death that is ever-present in our bodies—and enter fully into the holy life of God....