LEVITICUS IN THE ONGOING JEWISH TRADITION<\/p>\n
Because we have sinned, we and our forefathers, our city lies in ruin, and our Temple is desolate; our Glory has departed, and the Divine Presence has been withdrawn from our \u201cHouse of Life.\u201d<\/p>\n
We are, therefore, unable to fulfill our obligations in Your chosen \u201cHouse,\u201d in the great sacred Temple which bears Your name, because of the hand that has been cast against Your sanctuary.<\/p>\n
Modern students of ancient religions often find it difficult to identify with the pathos and the sense of deprivation conveyed by such statements as this one, taken from the Jewish liturgy. There is a tendency to regard such pronouncements as little more than disclaimers intended to absolve worshipers of those obligations imposed by the Torah but no longer possible to fulfill. Such a reading of Jewish liturgy would, however, misrepresent the mentality of the Jews of antiquity as well as of their successors, virtually to the modern period. To take such pronouncements less than seriously would be to miss the essence of religious experience itself.
\nAs regards the substance of Leviticus\u2014its laws and rituals\u2014the termination of sacrificial worship subsequent to the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. by the invading Romans ultimately rendered obsolete the basic system of sacrifice and purification upon which the priestly regimen of biblical religion rested. One cannot appreciate what became of this Levitical system without first exploring the transformation from sacrificial worship, which reflects the function of sacred space, to the alternative modes of worship and different religious institutions that became vital in later Judaism.
\nWe shall attempt to clarify how historical events, over which Jewish leadership had little control, interacted with internal policy decisions, over which that leadership exercised considerable control, to produce a new Judaism. The priesthood, so central to the Levitical system, ultimately retained only a vestigial role in historic Judaism. This brief treatment cannot presume to provide a comprehensive outline of later Jewish religious observance. The purpose is rather to analyze the methods that were applied to the restructuring of Judaism in late antiquity. In this way, the reader of the Commentary may catch a glimpse of continuity and change and focus attention on the lasting relevance of Leviticus. The reader will be referred to special studies on particular subjects and should consult appropriate religious authorities on questions of practice.<\/p>\n
From Sacrifice to Alternative Forms of Worship<\/p>\n
Some students of ancient Judaism maintain that what history decreed in the first century C.E. had, in fact, already been decided by the Jewish leadership. Prayers and blessings had all but replaced sacrifice, so the argument goes, even before the Romans made its continuation impossible. Although there is a degree of validity to this argument, it applies only to certain aspects of historical development in antiquity. Even in the pagan societies of late antiquity, there was opposition to sacrifice among those who had ceased believing in the mythological pantheons and who questioned the efficacy of elaborate cultic celebrations. Within ancient Jewry, alternative modes of worship\u2014all in a monotheistic framework\u2014had been developing for centuries prior to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, as successive restrictions were placed on the consecration of space. The Jewish leadership, as a result, was not entirely unprepared for the eventual loss of the central Temple in Jerusalem. But no amount of preparation could thoroughly cushion the shock of the Temple\u2019s destruction or lessen the challenge of accommodating to a new reality. Indeed, it would be a gross misjudgment of the religious attitudes of the first century, both in the Land of Israel and in the lands of the Diaspora, to suppose that most Jews no longer believed that sacrifice was essential to the fulfillment of Jewish religion. On the contrary, their feelings more accurately correlate with the words of the lamentation cited at the beginning of this essay. Sacrificial worship was for them exceedingly meaningful, an intense experience, not merely a formal activity. We should not be misled by the tone of the persistent criticisms of cultic religion that are found in biblical literature; all forms of worship can be genuinely meaningful for most people.
\nIn God-centered religions, the operative theory holds that a \u201cpresent\u201d God may be expected to be more responsive to human needs, more approachable than a deity perceived to be distant, in the far heavens. This very powerful perception dictates the main objective of worship: to create an environment conducive to establishing a relationship that allows humans, individually and collectively, to bring their needs to the attention of God, the source of power and blessings. This objective has not changed appreciably since earliest times, although the dynamics of worship in Judaism have changed radically.
\nAll that remained once the Temple was destroyed were words\u2014prayers, blessings, and readings from Scripture and the other canonical sources. The difference between sacrifice and prayer may be compared with the difference between actual service to God and saying that one is serving Him; between offering an actual gift to God, whom one loves, and saying that one loves God. A sacrifice represents an actual gift, offered to God in a sacred environment in which He is thought to reside and in which consecrated priests minister to Him in purity. Whenever humans and God shared a sacred meal a bond was acknowledged to exist between them: a veritable covenant. A \u201cpersonal\u201d basis was established and reinforced, one that allowed humans to petition God, to seek His help. Ever pressed by real needs, human communities find considerable security in the belief that God is near and attentive (Ps. 145:18).
\nCould Jewish religion continue to be effective, to answer the needs of its worshipers without the experience attendant upon the sacrificial worship of God? Could words compensate for gifts, and were there deeds or acts of a different sort that could produce something akin to the experience of sacrificial worship?
\nIt might be of interest to explore what other religious communities have done to meet the needs of their adherents. Christianity adopted the policy of sanctifying space, as Judaism had once done. Christian worship in the form of the traditional mass affords the devout an experience of sacrifice, of communion, and proclaims that God is present. The Christian church, then, is a temple. Islam, however, followed the example of Judaism in opting for nonsacral worship, thereby making of the mosque an institution more similar to the Jewish synagogue. But Islam operates with sacred space as well, most notably in Mecca, the focus of pilgrimage for all Muslims. Judaism, deprived of its unique, sacred space, the Temple of Jerusalem, has operated without sacrificial worship and without sacred space since late antiquity. This situation has necessarily undercut the intensity of religious experience. Jewish pilgrims, when they arrived in Jerusalem, saw only the scene of ancient ruins and retaining walls. They were afforded only sad memory and could experience only fierce hope.
\nNevertheless, human needs do not change appreciably, even over long periods of time, as regards religious experience: The need for perceptible demonstrations of God\u2019s nearness and Presence has not diminished among the devout, even to this day. In theory, despite the destruction of the Temple, Jewish religion never renounced sacrificial worship permanently\u2014at least not until modern times, when certain Jewish religious movements altered the traditional liturgy to avoid references to the restoration of sacrifice. Through the centuries since late antiquity, Jewish liturgy has expressed the hope for the reinstitution of sacrificial worship as part of the larger hope for the restoration of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. At the present time, when the Land of Israel has been rebuilt, renewed proximity to the locus of ancient worship has, indeed, awakened a deep sense of the sanctity of space and released feelings that were previously unexpressed. It is too soon to project the course of future developments in Judaism relevant to sacred space, but we should expect that the factor of space will play a greater role than it had during the long centuries of dispersion.<\/p>\n
The Centralized Cult<\/p>\n
The course of Jewish religion\u2014and the legacy of Leviticus\u2014in later periods was of course influenced by decisions made in the preexilic period of biblical history. We are thinking in particular of severe limitation of sacred space to a unique site. When that place\u2014the Temple in Jerusalem\u2014was no longer functional, sacrifice likewise became impossible. There had, after all, been other possibilities. In earlier periods Israelite religion had functioned with ubiquitous sacrificial worship in the Land of Israel; temples and cult sites had been manifold. But prior to the Babylonian exile of 586 B.C.E., young King Josiah of Judah, instructed by devout priests, sought to repurify the cult, which had been compromised by a predecessor, Manassch. Josiah centralized the cult in Jerusalem, requiring that henceforth all sacrificial worship of the God of Israel take place exclusively in the Temple. We now know that Josiah\u2019s edicts represented an advanced phase of a long, but delayed, movement toward cult centralization that had first emerged in the northern kingdom of Israel before its downfall in the late eighth century B.C.E..
\nWe are not entirely clear as to the underlying motivations of this movement. Undoubtedly, centralization was held out as a means of greater control, the better to purify the Israelite cult of pagan elements and other improper forms of worship. Experience had shown how vulnerable the cult was to pagan influence. The eighth-century prophets condemned the religious situation in the northern Israelite kingdom, with its temples and altars. They saw in them mere tools of royal policy, instruments of state religion, and envisioned in their stead a new temple at a site to be designated by God, where loyalty to God would be more important than loyalty to kings.
\nThough hardly obeyed promptly or consistently throughout the land, Josiah\u2019s \u201creforms,\u201d as they have come to be known, became definitive in the long term, the real test coming in the exilic period. With the destruction of the First Temple of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. by the invading Babylonians, large numbers of the populace were exiled, and a Jewish Diaspora emerged in Babylonia and other parts of the Near East. For a time, both those Judeans who remained in the land and the Jews in the Diaspora were left without a central temple in Jerusalem. When the restoration became a real possibility, pursuant to the edict of Cyrus the Great, issued in 538 B.C.E., the only acceptable program was the rebuilding of the Temple on its former site in Jerusalem, although the hiatus of the exilic period had given Jewish leadership pause to consider a new and crucial set of alternatives: Should the God of Israel be worshiped through sacrifice in the Diaspora? Should altars and temples be built for this purpose in Babylonia, for example? There were certainly plenty of priests available in Babylonia to officiate at sacrificial worship. In a sense, this option had been foreclosed earlier by Josiah\u2019s edict. If sacred space within the Land of Israel, itself, had been officially restricted to a single site, how much more unacceptable would sacrificial worship be in the impure lands of the gentiles, who worshiped idols.
\nNevertheless, we find allusions in the exilic biblical literature to an ongoing debate on the question of sacrificial worship in Babylonia. The Book of Ezekiel may well refer to this subject, although admittedly in cryptic fashion. In chapter 20 we read that elders of Israel approached the prophet Ezekiel with a certain inquiry and that he emphatically refused to sanction their proposal. The language is elusive, and we can infer the gist of the inquiry only from the prophet\u2019s response. He tells the elders that only when God restores His people to His holy mountain, in the Land of Israel, will it be possible for Jews to worship Him once again. Until then, God will demonstrate His Presence among His people by being \u201csomething of a sanctuary\u201d (mikdash me\u02bfat) in the lands of the exile (Ezek. 11:16\u201320). Ezekiel, who envisioned a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, would certainly have endorsed the edicts of Josiah. In the Commentary we maintain that the laws of Leviticus 17 regarding proper worship also reflect the principle of centralized sacrificial worship.
\nThere were some exceptions to this principle. The only \u201cJewish\u201d temple to be built elsewhere in the Land of Israel subsequent to the restoration was the Samaritan temple (now excavated) atop Mount Gerizim. The Samaritans, denied permission to participate in the establishment of the Jerusalem Temple, built one of their own. For the rest, it was to the Temple in Jerusalem that Jewish worshipers repaired to offer sacrifice. There were, in addition, a few Jewish temples in the Diaspora, especially in the Egyptian Diaspora, which began earlier than the Babylonian. The Jewish temple at Elephantine, in Upper Egypt, operated throughout most of the fifth century B.C.E. But such institutions did not speak for the main body of Jewry and seldom endured.
\nWith the rebuilt central Temple in Jerusalem sacrificial worship resumed under the aegis of a consecrated priesthood. During the period of the Second Temple, which lasted approximately six hundred years, the Levitical system was thus very much in evidence. But during that period the demography of the Jewish people had changed, the large majority living outside the Land of Israel. Thus, with sacrifice restricted to the only proper location and the population of Jews so dispersed, the bond between people and Temple became more attenuated, and those out of touch with the Temple required alternative modes of worship. There emerged the institution that came to be known as the synagogue (beit hakenesset, \u201chouse of assembly\u201d). But even so the mentality of Jews during the period of the Second Temple should not be misunderstood. For the most part, they did not regard sacrificial worship as pass\u00e9. Within its limited sphere, it was vital to the Jewish people. Even though they could not participate directly, Jews everywhere were concerned that the full regimen of sacrifices continue without interruption or interference in the Temple of Jerusalem. It was precisely during this period, through sequential imperial dominations and brief opportunities at autonomous rule, that the Temple of Jerusalem and its priesthood enjoyed considerable power and prominence. The priesthood of Jerusalem represented Judea to imperial authorities at various times and also exercised governance within the Land of Israel. In religious matters, it often spoke for world Jewry.
\nThis was a period when the torot of Leviticus were fully operative in Jerusalem. From the Books of Chronicles, a composition of the Persian period (538\u2013ca.330 B.C.E.), we learn of the elaborate organization of the priesthood into assigned tours of duty (mishmarot). See ond Temple literature and the writings of Josephus, for example, inform us of the role of the priesthood in Greco-Roman times. The Mishnah preserves evidence of Temple operations during its last phases. The overall impression is one of great activity in Jerusalem: of pilgrimages and delegations (ma\u02bfamadot) coming from all over the Diaspora, of financial support for the Temple establishment, and of written correspondence on matters of religious significance.
\nIt is interesting to note that during the Antiochan persecutions of the second century B.C.E., which provide the historical background of the Hanukkah episode, there was a very brief period during which the public cult of the Temple of Jerusalem was suspended. We are fortunate in having considerable documentation of that episode, which allows us to observe how great was the anxiety within the Jewish communities at the time. We must conclude that there is no cause to discount the significance of the sacrificial cult, even though its performance was centralized and restricted, and even though most Jews could not actually participate in it directly.<\/p>\n
Post-Temple Judaism<\/p>\n
What became of the substance of Leviticus in post-Temple Judaism? How was the eventual loss of sanctity compensated? Unprecedented until the destruction of the Second Temple was the need to rely exclusively on nonsacral worship. Public prayer had coexisted with the cult\u2014in the Temple precincts proper. Synagogues functioned in the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora. But these activities and these institutions did not have to be fully self-sufficient. There had always been the Temple.
\nA key to the answer lies in an analysis of the priestly components of the Torah. The two pillars of Leviticus are sanctity and purity. Between them, these two dimensions of law and ritual account not only for the content of Leviticus but also for the structure and organization of the book, as has already been shown. Jewish leadership in the post-Temple period saw an opportunity to compensate for the vacuum left by the cessation of sacrificial worship by placing a greater emphasis on purity. This process actually began long before the Roman destruction, as we now know from sectarian literature, such as the texts from Qumran.
\nPurity and sanctity had enjoyed a subtle relationship in ancient Israel. Viewed from the perspective of the cult, purity was a precondition: What was sacred had to be pure in the first instance; its purity had to be preserved and any defilement redressed. In the biblical period, purity legislation was stimulated primarily by the need for a pure sanctuary and a pure priesthood.
\nIn itself, however, the concept of purity, the essential notion that certain places, objects, and species of animals, for instance, were pure, whereas others were impure, had most probably emerged independently of the cult, to begin with. The priesthood, in effect, appropriated preexisting concepts of purity and applied them to the requirements of the cult. A good example is provided by the dietary legislation of Leviticus 11. Accepted criteria of pure and impure living creatures were adopted as a basis for determining which animals and fowl were suitable as sacrifices. These criteria also applied, however, to the diet of all Israelites.
\nSo long as Israelite, then Jewish, religion was oriented to sacred space, toward a Temple, purity remained primarily a function of the cult. It affected priests and all persons, in varying degrees, in their relations with the Temple as a sacred environment. It was relevant to determine whether a person was pure because it was necessary to know whether such a person might or might not approach the Temple. In an extended sense, it meant that impurity threatened the status of the Temple which existed in the community.
\nLater Judaism progressively restored the distinction between purity and sanctity. What was lost by way of sanctity could not be replaced in kind when the Temple no longer stood. The efforts undertaken to generate alternative modes of worship and celebration could not, for all of their intensity, produce a religious experience of the same order as that afforded by sacrificial worship. But those aspects of purity that had always pertained to noncultic areas of life could continue to function in post-Temple Judaism, even if sacrifice itself was no longer possible.
\nIn post-Temple Judaism, purity remained operative in three principal areas: priesthood, family, and diet, all of which derive in great measure from the specific provisions of Leviticus.
\nThe Purity of the Priest (Kohen) After the Second Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed, there remained little realistic need for priests. Furthermore, it became increasingly difficult to substantiate priestly lineage, which was hereditary, through the paternal line. After a time, priestly lineage became presumptive; it was merely a \u201cclaim\u201d (\u1e25azzakah) to priestly status. Serious attempts were made to keep family records, and for a time, priestly status served as a social register. But with recurring dislocations and the distancing of Jewish communities from the Land of Israel, it eventually became impossible to prove such lineage conclusively.
\nDespite the relative little that remained of priestly function, so central to the Levitical system, there persisted an attitude on the part of the kohanim themselves, as well as on the part of the community, that saw value in having priests continue to obey the biblical restrictions imposed on them and occupy a respected position in synagogue and community. A recent study of the priests of Sepphoris, a town in Lower Galilee, sheds light on the status and religious role of priests during the centuries following the destruction.
\nTwo kinds of priestly restrictions have persisted in the absence of the Temple, one in the area of marital regulations and the other regarding contact with the dead.
\nAccording to the provisions of Leviticus 21, priests, as consecrated persons, are forbidden to marry certain women: a divorc\u00e9e (gerushnh), a harlot (zonah), and a woman classified as \u201ca defiled woman\u201d (\u1e25alalah), namely, one born of a union that had been forbidden to priests initially.
\nSexual misconduct was regarded as a form of impurity and was the sole basis for divorce. According to the laws of Deuteronomy 24:1\u20134, a divorc\u00e9e was stigmatized, it being assumed that she had been unfaithful to her husband. Being impure, she could not be married to a priest. To be sure, later rabbinic law liberalized the grounds for divorce, but originally the restrictions on priestly marriage were a response to the strict letter of Mosaic law, as stated in Deuteronomy.
\nRabbinic legislation retained the restrictive categories imposed in Leviticus 21, at times redefining them. Two classes of women forbidden to the priest were added: (1) a woman who had not been born a Jew but who had converted to Judaism (giyyoret in Late Hebrew), and (2) a woman rejected from levirate marriage (\u1e25alutsah in Late Hebrew). The latter prohibition represents an extension of the principle operative in banning divorc\u00e9es: A woman rejected from levirate marriage (yibbum) was also viewed as stigmatized.
\nThe ban on priestly marriage to a converted woman was derived hermeneutically from the prohibition of priestly marriage to a harlot, reflecting an admittedly disparaging view of the sexual behavior of gentile women in the rabbinic period. It was thought that one born in a state of impurity should not marry a kohen, even though the woman in question had subsequently purified herself through conversion to Judaism. Religious conversion\u2014hardly envisioned in Leviticus\u2014represents a later development in Jewish religion.
\nNow, a priest who transgressed the law and actually married a woman forbidden to him solely because of his priestly status defiled himself as a kohen. This defilement extended to all children born of the forbidden union. Such priests and their sons could not officiate, and they and their dependents would not receive priestly emoluments. But the marriage itself was legal and binding, and the children born of such marriages were of acceptable status in other respects. Until modern times, those who are of priestly lineage by their own reckoning have usually observed the ancient restrictions on marriage and, in traditional families, continue to do so.
\nThe second area of priestly purity, namely, avoidance of contact with the dead, also derives from Leviticus 21, although the impurity itself and its regulation are addressed in Numbers 19.
\nIn fact, contact with the dead defiles everyone, but nonpriests are permitted to defile themselves in this way because of the importance attached to proper burial of the dead. Priests, however, may render themselves impure in this extreme way only in order to attend to the burial of close relatives\u2014a mother, father, son or daughter, and brother. Rabbinic law added one\u2019s wife to the exemption. The duty toward one\u2019s wife, implicit in biblical narratives, was never given a legal formulation in the Bible.
\nLooking back over the centuries, it is remarkable to what extent men of priestly families have continued to adhere to these purity restrictions, notwithstanding the presumptive nature of their priestly status. Since the destruction of the Second Temple, no effective method has been available for priests (or for any Jews, in fact) to be purified after contact with the dead. (Proximity to non-Jewish dead does not, according to rabbinic law, render a Jew impure.) Talmudic literature gives ample evidence of the anxiety experienced over the impurity of the dead, as it became more difficult to identify Jewish graves in the Land of Israel during Roman times.
\nBiblical religion regarded the dead as impure in the extreme and forbade priests from participating in funerary rites. In the Commentary it is maintained that this prohibition was aimed at preventing a cult of the dead from becoming part of Israelite worship. To the extent that a higher form of religious expression is served by avoiding a cult of the dead, the devotion of kohanim to the ancient purity restrictions has contributed significantly to this goal.
\nCertain priestly functions that survived in post-Temple Judaism, such as the redemption of first-born sons and the pronouncement of the priestly benediction, will be discussed in the section \u201cWorship and Celebration.\u201d
\nThe Purity of the Jewish Family Leviticus has a great deal to say about the definition of the family and about sexual behavior. As the primary statement of priestly law in the Torah, the book would logically tend to focus on such matters as incest and other forbidden sexual unions. The legalities of marriage and divorce and such problems as the misrepresentation of virginity in marriage are addressed elsewhere, but it is in Leviticus that the inner workings of family life are discussed.
\nThe law governing the immediate family, as it is projected in Leviticus 18 and 20, continued to operate in later periods of Jewish history. There were recurrent disagreements on the permissibility of marriage with first cousins and half sisters, for instance, but such matters hardly affected the basic incest system of the Torah. One notes that lesbian intercourse, not explicitly forbidden in Leviticus, was made so in rabbinic law, so that all forms of homosexuality were prohibited.
\nNew issues, unanticipated in Leviticus, began to affect the integrity of the Jewish family in later periods of Jewish history. Religious conversion to Judaism brought a new element to the family, and changing demographic and social conditions led to intermarriage. Eventually, the adoption of the matrilineal principle established the socioreligious identity of a child born out of an intermarriage as that of its mother, not its father. Significantly, the illegitimacy of children, a subject rarely elaborated in the laws of the Torah, continued to be defined in limited fashion, rather than broadly. Only the offspring of incest or adultery was a mamzer, \u201cbastard\u201d (Deut. 23:3)\u2014not one merely born out of wedlock, as was the case in some other legal systems. Only mamzerim were forbidden in marriage to Jews.
\nBut as a general rule, the provisions of Leviticus show more concern for sexuality per se than for legalities associated with it. There is great interest in the reproductive cycle of the female. The physiological processes involved in reproduction were defined as impure, and women undergoing such were distanced from the cult and Sanctuary. This function of impurity as a category of priestly law is explained in the Commentary. Though such impurity was relevant to the community because it could affect the Sanctuary, it was also relevant on the most intimate level to sexual relations within the family. That dimension of family purity survived and functioned vitally in post-Temple Judaism.
\nMenstruation, in particular, as well as the processes relevant to childbirth, were conditions that imposed restrictions on sexual intercourse between husband and wife and also required purification. In this area of behavior, purification had always affected personal life in other than cultic ways. These concerns are addressed in Leviticus 12 and 15. General prohibitions against having intercourse with a menstruating woman appear as well in Leviticus 18:19 and 20:18, in the context of family law.
\nLeviticus 15:19\u201323 (and cf. 12:1\u20138) deals with menstrual impurity. Intercourse is forbidden for seven days from the outset of the period. (Similar restrictions, but for longer periods, apply to a mother after childbirth). The law requires a woman to bathe at the conclusion of the seven days or following abnormal genital discharges that occur subsequently. Two factors are indispensable to the resumption of sexual intercourse: the passage of a fixed number of days and proper purification by bathing. The Torah does not, however, specify how bathing is to be carried out. Certain standards may be learned from a comparison with the purification of vessels, as delineated in Leviticus 11.
\nRabbinic law defined bathing, an act conveyed by the Hebrew verb ra\u1e25ats, as total immersion of the body. Rabbinic law also specified the necessary quantity of water and determined its purity. Natural bodies of running water were optimal but hardly accessible in most situations. It became necessary to utilize man-made structures and to set standards and dimensions for them. In postbiblical sources, the \u201cbath\u201d used by women (and by others) is called mikvah, \u201ca gathering, container of water.\u201d
\nThe masculine form, mikveh, occurs in biblical Hebrew and designates natural bodies of water (Gen. 1:10; Exod. 7:9). In Leviticus 11:26, mikveh mayim, \u201ca spring,\u201d is mentioned in connection with the purification of certain types of vessels. But it is in Isaiah 22:11 that the feminine form of the word, mikvah, appears, as synonymous with berekhah, \u201cpool.\u201d
\nMishnah Mikva\u02beot sets down the dimensions and specifications for a proper mikvah. The water (at least most of it beyond a certain minimum quantity) must be fresh; it may not be \u201cdrawn water\u201d (mayim she\u02beuvim), which is not sufficiently pure. The mikvah had to be large enough to allow for total immersion. Proper bathing meant that no substance could intervene between one\u2019s skin and the water. Such intervention was termed \u1e25atsitsah. Loose clothing could be worn, however.
\nArchaeological excavations have revealed actual examples of ancient mikva\u02beot at such sites as Masada. All through the centuries, Jewish communities maintained mikva\u02beot, and until recent times adherence to the rites of purification seems to have been widespread. Practice today is mostly limited to traditional families.
\nMishnah Niddah deals with menstruation in great detail. The period of seven days is absolute regardless of how long the actual flow lasted. At the close of the seven days, after dark, a woman must bathe properly. Abnormal discharges (zivah in rabbinic Hebrew; zov in Leviticus) also rendered a woman impure. Rabbinic law provides for various contingencies, depending on how long the discharges lasted, and special provisions were made for pregnancy and childbirth.
\nA woman who has not bathed properly in order to purify herself subsequent to her last period remains sexually forbidden to her husband. Other restrictions were imposed in order to prevent the kind of physical intimacy that might lead to intercourse, but nothing was done to interrupt normal conditions of family life during menstruation. A woman is expected to examine herself and monitor her menstrual period and to be honest and forthcoming with her husband. The purity associated with menstruation has no direct bearing on the legitimacy of children.
\nIn antiquity it was assumed, and with good reason, that Jewish women would not engage in sex before marriage, which, in any event, usually occurred at a relatively young age. A young woman would therefore immerse herself for the first time before her marriage and continue to do so from then on.
\nThe communal mikvah may also be utilized for the purification of vessels. Men may also use mikva\u02beot. In this connection it is worthwhile to contrast the impurity of males with that of females in post-Temple Judaism. The impurity of the male suffering from genital discharges was quite severe, according to the requirements of Leviticus 15. Yet such impurity soon lost its relevance, precisely because it had been cult related. But menstruation, because it had other applications deriving from its relation to human reproduction, became a major focus of purity legislation in later Judaism.
\nThis is the most logical place to discuss circumcision, although it differs somewhat in its phenomenology. The only statement regarding this rite in Leviticus appears in 12:3, in the context of childbirth. The principal Torah source for the rite of circumcision is Genesis 17, where it is related to the life of the patriarch Abraham.
\nCircumcision must take place on the eighth day after birth. This requirement overrides all other religious considerations. If the eighth day falls on Sabbath or on the Day of Atonement, for that matter, circumcision is performed as scheduled. Medical or potentially life-threatening conditions provide the only basis for postponement. Hemophilia, for example, is discussed in rabbinic law; and there are situations in which circumcision may actually be forbidden for medical reasons.
\nRabbinic sources discuss fairly obvious considerations left unspecified in the Torah. The operation must be performed in specific ways, and there are personal and professional requirements as to who may perform this rite. The religious duty rests with the child\u2019s father. It is he who is commanded to circumcise his son, but as a practical matter, a professionally trained adult male Jew performs the operation on behalf of the father. Such a person is called mohel, \u201ccircumciser,\u201d and the rite itself is known as milah, \u201ccircumcising,\u201d or berit milah, \u201cthe covenant of circumcision.\u201d The circumcision is the physical mark, or \u201csign\u201d (\u02beot), of the covenant between God and Israel, first enacted between Abraham and his family and God.
\nCircumcising one\u2019s son is a religious duty commanded in the Torah, and it is therefore accompanied by blessings (berakhot) that express compliance with God\u2019s command. The mohel states that his act complies with the commandment \u201cconcerning circumcision\u201d (\u02bfal ha-milah), whereas the child\u2019s father states that God commanded us \u201cto initiate him in the covenant of Abraham, our patriarch\u201d (le-hakhnisso bi-verito shel \u02beavraham \u02beovinu). The traditional liturgy refers, of course, to the covenant sealed in the flesh of all male Jews. In turn, the theme of covenant evokes the promise of redemption for the Jewish people. Ultimately, this is what brought the prophet Elijah into the act. In the later tradition, based upon 1 Kings 19:10, 14, Elijah became an angel, the \u201cangel of the covenant\u201d (mal\u02beakh haberit), the herald of the redemption to come (Mal. 3:23), when all who are circumcised will be saved from damnation.
\nAs a rite of passage, one of a series of such rites that punctuate the life cycle, milah is linked thematically to other important moments. For this reason the liturgy of the berit milah expresses the hope that the child now being initiated into the covenant will, in due course, enter into the study of Torah (torah), into the marriage canopy (\u1e25uppah), and into a life of good acts (ma\u02bfasim tovim). Historically, circumcision has been the primary mark of Jewish identity. Those like the Roman emperor Hadrian, who sought to obliterate that identity, forbade circumcision. On the other hand, Hellenizing Jews of an earlier period, who had sought to conceal their Jewish identity completely, tried to alter the physical mark of their circumcision.
\nGenerally, Jews have been extremely loyal to the duty of milah. It should be borne in mind that more than a medical operation is required. The operation must be performed in such a way that it reflects the \u201cconscious intent\u201d (kavvanah) of the religious rite.
\nDietary Purity Leviticus 11 is the most elaborate text on the subject of the dietary laws, which, with some differences, are also presented in Deuteronomy 14. Both codes of law are addressed to the entire people of Israel, and not only to the priests, a fact that will prove to be significant in the ensuing discussion.
\nHistorically, kashrut, \u201cfitness,\u201d the name given to the overall dietary regimen, has proved to be an effective system of purity in post-Temple Judaism. It has lent to the Jewish home an atmosphere of purification. More than one midrash notes that the Hebrew word shul\u1e25an, \u201ctable,\u201d may also designate an altar. When the prophet Ezekiel beheld the altar of his visionary Temple he proclaimed: zek ha-shul\u1e25an \u02beasher lifnei YHVH, \u201cThis is the table that stands before the LORD\u201d (Ezek. 41:22).
\nPerhaps the clearest way of tracing what became of the dietary laws of Leviticus in later Judaism would be to list the principal features of biblical law and then review what became of each of them.
\n1. The Torah generically prohibits eating the meat or substance of certain living creatures and classifies them as impure. In some cases observable, physical criteria are stipulated, whereas in other instances, a list of forbidden creatures is provided (Lev. 11; Deut. 14).
\n2. It is forbidden to ingest the blood of any animal (including \u201cbeasts,\u201d such as deer) and of fowl. (Fish and insects are not included in this ban on blood.) It follows, therefore, that methods of slaughtering animals and fowl should allow for as much blood as possible to leave the body of the animal or bird. To remove residual blood, salted meat was left out to drain. The use of salt is mentioned in the context of sacrifice (Lev. 2:13). The Torah says nothing about the tools to be used for slaughter or about how slaughter is to be performed.
\nAkin to the prohibition against ingesting blood is that forbidding consumption of animal fat (\u1e25elev; Lev. 7:23\u201325). A specific statement in Genesis 32:31\u201332 prohibits eating the sciatic nerve (gid ha-nasheh), which could be plucked out by those expert in this task.
\n3. The Torah forbids eating the meat of the carcass (nevelah) of dead animals and fowl. It likewise prohibits eating meat from animals and fowl torn by beasts (terefah; Lev. 7:34; 17:15; 22:8). It is also forbidden to eat flesh from any creature while it is still alive (Gen. 9:4).
\n4. Leviticus 11 legislates detailed purity requirements for those vessels and utensils used to store, prepare, and serve food\u2014the purpose being to preserve food from contamination. Impurity was thought to be conducted from one substance to another by actual contact, as well as in other ways.
\n5. In three separate statements (none of which appears in Leviticus) the Torah forbids boiling a goat in its mother\u2019s milk (Exod. 23:19; 34:26; Deut. 14:2). These prohibitions were similar in spirit to the ban on sacrificing a mother animal and her offspring on the same day, or the offspring immediately after birth (Lev. 22:26\u201328). In the later religious traditions, these three statements became the basis for separating meat and dairy products from each other. Of a similar character is the prohibition of eating leaven during the Passover festival (Exod. 12, 13, etc.); in both cases, the prohibition is relational, not intrinsic.
\n6. Torah legislation, much of it in Leviticus, prohibits Israelites from partaking in or benefiting from various foodstuffs until these are desacralized. The operative principle is that the crop, or yield, is forbidden to humans until God receives His share or until God\u2019s prior claim is satisfied, at which time the rest of the lot becomes available for use.
\nA good example of this is grain set aside for the tithe (ma\u02bfaser) or for priestly levies (terumah). Until these dues were withheld, the crop could not be used or prepared as food. The same prohibition of use would affect the fruit of young trees (\u02bforlah) until after the fourth year, when it was to be devoted. First fruits (bikkurim) were to be devoted, and firstlings (bekhorot) of man and beast belonged to God. Unless fit for sacrifice, they were to be redeemed\u2014and could not be used until then. All that grows during the Sabbatical year, \u201cthe fruit of the seventh year\u201d (perot shevi\u02bfit in late Hebrew), may not be marketed.
\nThe upshot of all of these laws is that certain otherwise permissible foodstuffs were forbidden for consumption ephemerally.
\nWhat became of all these kinds of dietary restrictions in post-Temple Judaism?
\n1. The generic prohibitions have remained in force until the present day. At times, the pig has been regarded as the height of impurity. There is no basis for this distinction in religious law, but there are cultural and historical reasons for it. It has been necessary at times to decide the status of certain fowl unknown in the biblical period and to resolve ambiguities concerning certain species of fish. But by and large, the ancient system has persisted with remarkable precision.
\n2. The prohibition against ingesting blood interacted with the regulations governing nevelah and terefah to yield a method of slaughter and a system of inspection aimed at satisfying the cumulative requirements of biblical law.
\nIn Mishnah \u1e24ullin we find the basic regulations governing she\u1e25itah, \u201cslaughter.\u201d This term is a form of the same verb often used in the Torah, namely, sha\u1e25at, \u201cto slaughter.\u201d Rabbinic law defined this verb in practical terms by stipulating which tools may be employed in the process of she\u1e25itah.
\nThe verb sha\u1e25at is defined as a cutting, or slicing, action, whereby a blade is drawn over a certain area of the neck. Stabbing, or piercing, is unacceptable. Tools made of various materials may be used, so long as their form makes them suitable for accomplishing an uninterrupted cutting action. Such tools must be sharp and devoid of nicks. The objective is to cut open the esophagus (veshet) and the windpipe (kaneh) so that the blood gushes forth rapidly. Rabbinic law also stipulates who may perform she\u1e25itah, and relatively few restrictions are imposed. The slaughterer is not a cleric or consecrated person by any means, only a skilled person. The functional meanings of the terms nevelah and terefah underwent significant adaptation in the later tradition. Nevelah, for example, was defined as meat from any animal (beast) or fowl that had not met its death through proper she\u1e25itah.
\nThere is a rather subtle aspect to this definition because the Torah explicitly provides for hunting (e.g., Lev. 17:13\u201314; Deut. 12:15), and Leviticus 1:15 provides for snapping the nape of fowl offered as sacrifices. The blood of hunted animals and fowl need only be drained and buried, and the list of permitted animals in Deuteronomy 14:3\u20135 includes several types of deer, which were normally hunted. The rabbis were, of course, fully aware of the biblical sanction for alternative methods, but over time they standardized practice. It was a positive commandment (mitsvat \u02bfaseh) to slaughter all meat, to perform she\u1e25itah.
\n3. No meat may be eaten as food until the animal or bird from which it was taken has actually expired, a requirement based on Genesis 9:4. In rabbinic terminology, such forbidden meat is called \u02beever min ha-\u1e25ai, \u201ca limb from a living creature.\u201d
\nOf particular significance is the rabbinic definition of terefah. Using subtle hermeneutics, the rabbis defined terefah as the condition of a living creature (including a human being) that was expected to die or that was on the verge of death. This would include a severely diseased animal, for example. A kind of autopsy was performed immediately after she\u1e25itah in order to ascertain whether the animal or bird had been healthy at the time of slaughter. This entailed examination of the internal organs, with the lungs most often mentioned. This inspection is known as bedikah. If it was determined that the animal or bird had been about to die\u2014that is, it might have died on its own before she\u1e25itah\u2014that animal or fowl was declared terefah and could not be used as food.
\nThe prohibition against ingesting blood was addressed, in the first instance, by proper slaughter. Meat was then to be salted and the blood allowed to drain for a time so as to remove residual blood. Preparation over an open fire would also accomplish this objective.
\n4\u20135. We combine two features of biblical legislation that came to be associated with one another in later rabbinic law: the purity of vessels and the separation of meat and milk products from one another. This extremely complex aspect of law underwent considerable development in postbiblical times. Rabbinic law in this area, concentrated in Mishnah Kelim, defines the biblical term keli, \u201cvessel,\u201d in functional terms; and Mishnah Makhshirin deals with factors that \u201ccondition\u201d (makhshir) substances so that they are susceptible to impurity. Thus, water conditions grain and makes it susceptible to impurity, whereas dry grain does not become contaminated.
\nVessels manufactured of certain materials could be purified subsequent to defilement; others could not and had to be destroyed. Milk and meat were regarded as impure with respect to each other in their admixture, so that vessels used for one could not normally be used for the other. In a similar way, leaven (\u1e25amets) was functionally impure during the Passover festival, so that special cooking and eating vessels had to be used at that time. Heat is another factor that affects purity, since it is thought that porous materials absorb food when either the food or the vessel, or both, are heated. Biblical prohibitions are often stated in terms of boiling or cooking. After eating meat products, there was to be a waiting period before partaking of dairy products, and the two were not to be eaten together. Forbidden \u1e25elev, \u201cfat,\u201d was normally removed after slaughter and rarely reached the consumer. Where experts were available to pluck out the sciatic nerve, the sirloin portion could be used. Otherwise, it was disposed of entirely.
\nThe totality of later legislation yielded a highly systematic regimen of food preparation and of dining procedures: Only permitted foods could be eaten to start with, and the purity of these foods had to be preserved in specific ways.
\nQuite clearly, the regulations governing vesssels and utensils were aimed at achieving an effect similar to that of pure, sacrificial offerings. We read in talmudic literature of contemporary Jews who endeavored to attain a cultic standard of purity in their domestic diet. Down to modern times, kashrut has been practiced in Jewish communities all over the world, with some differences in custom.
\n6. For some time after the destruction of the Second Temple efforts were made to support priestly families and to refrain from benefiting from whatever the Torah had originally assigned to the priesthood and to the Temple. Eventually, such taxes as tithes, priestly levies, and firstlings of the herds and flocks were discontinued, as such, and payments were collected by communal agencies for philanthropic purposes and other necessary functions. To a considerable extent, the practice of tzedakah, \u201cphilanthropy,\u201d replaced cultic donations. This redirection of communal energy and religious commitment is actually a fascinating process, which has been studied in considerable depth in recent years, but it goes far beyond the subject of dietary restrictions.
\nOpinions differ even today\u2014with the Land of Israel once again settled and yielding seasonal harvests\u2014as to whether such regulations as tithing and setting aside the produce of the Sabbatical year are in force, given the fact that no Temple is currently operative. In the market places of Israel one can observe signs informing the consumer that tithes and priestly levies have been duly set aside or that the produce being marketed was not grown in the land during the Sabbatical year, known as the year of shemitah. It is still customary to cast a fistful of dough into the oven when baking, a practice known as hafrashat \u1e25allah, \u201cthe setting aside of hallah,\u201d which commemorates the \u02beazkarah, \u201ctaken portion of the grain offering\u201d (Lev. 2:2), and also most probably the todah, which is the thanksgiving offering ordained in Leviticus 7:12\u201313.
\nThere are a few additional dietary regulations not mentioned in the above survey. It is forbidden for Jews to drink wine used in pagan libations because to do so would constitute participation in idolatrous rites, at least indirectly so. This prohibition is derived from Deuteronomy 32:38, where those who drink pagan libations are condemned alongside those who partake of idolatrous sacrifices. The rabbinic system tended to maximize this prohibition, with the result that all wine produced by gentiles, or, in the opinion of some, even handled by them, was suspect and regarded as yein nesekh, \u201cwine of libations.\u201d From the New Testament and other early sources, we learn that a debate ensued in Christendom on the subject of partaking of pagan sacrifices, whereas in Judaism this question was emphatically settled by a continuing commitment to the dietary regimen prescribed in the Torah.
\nThe subject of wine produced by gentiles raises a problem of persistent concern, namely, policy regarding foodstuffs processed by gentiles or prepared under unsupervised conditions. This situation concerns such foods as cheeses, for example. All such considerations are still being addressed by religious authorities. Kashrut emerges as a dynamic system in religious life, not a static one.
\nIn summary, post-Temple Judaism was enriched by efforts to redirect purity from Temple and cult to home and community. The area of kaskrut owes a lot to Leviticus, specifically, because it is here that the factor of purity predominates, a purity that extends as well to vessels and utensils. The social and spiritual ramifications of kashrut continue to be important, strengthening the identity of Jewish families and communities, an objective basic to the biblical system itself.<\/p>\n
Worship and Celebration<\/p>\n
A good deal has already been said about the loss of sanctity sustained by the Jewish people with the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem and the demise of the sacrificial cult. A system of nonsacral worship was progressively introduced, one designed to enable Jews everywhere to worship God meaningfully. This process had already commenced during the period of the Second Temple\u2014prayers and psalms were associated with Temple worship, and the Books of Chronicles and Ezra and Nehemiah tell of Levites who were singers (meshorerim). But subsequently the process took on new urgency when the main event, sacrificial worship, was no longer possible and there was no longer a role for the consecrated priesthood. What changed pursuant to the destruction of the Second Temple was that henceforth there would be sole reliance on words: blessings, prayers, and readings from Scripture and from other canonical sources, such as the rabbinic texts. In this way an attempt was made to compensate for the experience that had been provided by sacrificial worship in earlier times.
\nLiturgy This approach to worship is epitomized in many midrashic interpretations, including the following: A clause in the second paragraph of the Shema, originating in Deuteronomy 11:13b, was interpreted to mean that prayer was a proper form of worship in its own right. The Israelites, addressed in the second person, are commanded to obey God\u2019s mitsvot: ule-\u02bfovdo be-khol levavkhem, \u201cand to serve [= worship] Him with all your heart.\u201d The sages comment that \u02bfavodah ba-lev, \u201cworship in the heart,\u201d is tefillah, \u201cprayer.\u201d The institution within which public prayer worship developed was the synagogue, or beit ha-kenesset, \u201chouse of assembly.\u201d Virtually everything about the synagogue is antithetical to what the Temple represented. The space of a synagogue structure was not consecrated. In fact, prayer, in contrast to sacrifice, could take place anywhere, at a moment\u2019s notice, and no structure at all is necessary for its performance. No consecrated clergy is needed to officiate at public prayer worship. If kohanim are present, they bless the congregation in the words of the priestly benediction. It is customary to show kohanim respect by calling them first to the reading of the Torah. But if no priests are present, or if the priests excuse themselves, prayer proceeds all the same.
\nFor a time, attempts were made to preserve a degree of purity in the synagogue. Males, who were impure due to seminal emissions and abnormal discharges from the genitals (the subject of Lev. 15), were initially required to undergo purification prior to entry. In earlier times, the impurity of discharges had been classified as quite severe, but it quickly lost its relevance to the synagogue, as we read in talmudic sources. It did not take long to divorce the synagogue from all rites of purification. Contrary to popular opinion, which is often uninformed, menstrual impurity, a major category of domestic religious law, hardly figured in synagogue worship. Men and women occupied separate parts of the synagogue to be sure, but there is no indication that this practice was based on menstrual impurity. The synagogue was most assuredly not a Temple, and it had no claim to the kind of sanctity that is legislated in Leviticus or addressed in priestly law generally.
\nWhat, then, would remain of the legacy of Leviticus in the synagogue and in the religious life of individual Jews and their families and their communities?
\nIn the first instance, public prayer was scheduled and structured in ways that paralleled the schedule of public sacrifices in the Temple. Once we reconstruct a composite of public worship as it operated in the Second Temple, it should become evident just how this parallelism was generated in post-Temple Judaism. As it happens, Leviticus has relatively little to say about daily sacrifice, except for the daily incense offering of the High Priest (6:12\u201316) and the lamp kindled by the High Priest every day (24:2\u20134.). It is Numbers 28\u201329 that provide the detailed information about daily, public sacrifice. When we add to this information that is provided in certain tractates of the Mishnah, such as Tamid, we can describe what occurred in the Temple in the last period of its existence. There is also considerable information available from other sources.
\nEvery morning after dawn, a regimen of sacrificial offerings was presented at the altar. This time frame was known as sha\u1e25arit, \u201cin the morning.\u201d In the afternoon, a series of sacrifices known as min\u1e25ah was offered. This total structure of worship was called tamid, \u201cregular, daily worship.\u201d All day long the altar was laden with other offerings: votives, expiatory sacrifices, and so on. This daily regimen continued on an uninterrupted basis. On Sabbaths and other sacred occasions of a seasonal nature, an additional regimen of offerings known as musaf, \u201cadditional offerings,\u201d was presented at the altar. These occasions are enumerated in Leviticus 23, which is a liturgical calendar; and what is missing there appears in Numbers 28\u201329. The occasions scheduled for additional sacrifices are Sabbaths, New Moons, the three annual festivals (the seven days of Passover, Shavuot, the seven days of Sukkot, and Shemini Atzeret [the assembly of the eighth day], immediately following Sukkot), the New Moon of the seventh month, Tishrei (which was later referred to as Rosh Hashanah), and Yom Kippur, on the tenth day of the month. The sacrifices ordained in Leviticus 23:10\u201314 for the day on which the first sheaf of new grain (the \u02bfomer) was to be presented were regarded in the later tradition as private worship, although certain Jewish sects seem to have considered this day as a public celebration.
\nIn all cases the main event occurred in the morning. There were no public sacrifices after nightfall. In the Second Temple period the paschal sacrifice, which occurred once a year, was performed in the afternoon, before evening. Now, if we transfer this schedule to synagogue worship, we emerge with daily prayers: morning (sha\u1e25arit) and afternoon or early evening (min\u1e25ah), before nightfall. We find additional prayers designated for the same sacred occasions as just listed. Evening prayers (\u02bfarvit) were introduced on an optional basis, and even though they have come to be perceived as a requirement of religious life, they never attained the same official status as the morning and afternoon prayers precisely because there was no nocturnal sacrifice in the Second Temple.
\nOn the first level, therefore, the Synagogue worshiper would sense that he was following a specific schedule modeled after the cult of the Temple. This awareness was reinforced by the actual content of the prayer services themselves.
\nThe components of prayer were several. The rubric, or framework, of prayer was normally provided by berakhot, \u201cblessings.\u201d Formally, a berakhah is a statement addressed to God or one that speaks of God; it usually contains the formula barukh \u02beattah YHVH, \u201cYou are blessed, O LORD.\u201d This formula has more than one nuance, however: It may convey the wish that God \u201cbe blessed,\u201d or it may represent a normative statement that God ought to be blessed, that blessings are due Him.
\nThere is no end to the variety of subjects addressed in the berakhot. In some cases, they are formulated so as to convey compliance with God\u2019s commandments (mitsvot): \u02beasher kiddeshanu be-mitsvotav ve-tsivvanu \u2026, \u201cwho has sanctified us by His commandments, and has commanded us.\u2026\u201d This formulation is significant because it expresses the notion that fulfillment of God\u2019s mitsvot generates sanctity, that God has provided us with effective ways of attaining holiness. Even if so many sacred acts commanded in the Torah had become impossible to fulfill, others may be performed. By so doing, it may be possible to attain a degree of sanctity. The berakhot function as a means of increasing awareness and thereby enhancing the meaningfulness of religious activity. They also tell of God\u2019s acts\u2014as Creator of the world and of mankind, as the redeemer of Israel, as guarantor of the necessities of life, and as a protector.
\nThe major collection of berakhot included in the regular prayer liturgy is known as Amidah, the prayer that is said \u201cstanding.\u201d The daily Amidah contains nineteen berakhot. On Sabbaths and sacred occasions, another Amidah is recited as well as an additional (Musaf) one.
\nIn addition to berakhot, Jewish liturgy incorporates readings from Scripture and from rabbinic sources, such as the Mishnah. These canonical selections serve an important function: They associate prayer with sacrifice, as it was performed in the Temple. Thus, the sha\u1e25arit prayers include readings from the Torah and the Mishnah that describe the daily sacrifices once offered in the Temple. Normally, citations from Numbers 28\u201329 are preferred over Leviticus because of their greater detail. The Amidah actually includes a blessing that petitions God to restore the cult of sacrifice and, as a corollary, to accept the prayers of His people, Israel. The additional blessings for special occasions even more noticeably feature citations from the Torah relevant to the particular sacrifices ordained for those occasions, as if to say: What we are saying here is in place of what was enacted in the Temple on Sabbaths, festivals, and other occasions.
\nBut readings from canonical sources served yet another purpose in post-Temple Judaism: the study of God\u2019s words. Here was a mitsvah that could be fulfilled always, without recourse to the Temple or sacrifice. By reciting relevant passages from Scripture, especially, one would ipso facto fulfill the duty of studying the Torah, all in the course of worship. The entire Torah was read sequentially as part of public worship in the synagogue, on Sabbaths and other occasions, including Mondays and Thursdays, the customary market days. Such practices indicated the growing emphasis on education in later Judaism.
\nPerhaps the best-known collection of Torah passages included in Jewish liturgy is keri\u02beat shema\u02bf, \u201cthe readings of the Shema,\u201d a collection of three Torah paragraphs (Deut. 6:4\u20139; 11:13\u201321; Num. 15:37\u201341). In the first paragraph, we find a proclamation of God\u2019s uniqueness and unity. We read of the duty to worship God sincerely and to obey His commandments by teaching them to one\u2019s children and speaking of them continually. The second paragraph is an admonition, promising a reward for the love of God and obedience for his mitsvot and punishment for disobedience. The final paragraph enjoins Israelites to affix fringes to their garments as visible reminders of God\u2019s commandments, the fulfillment of which will enable Israel to become a holy people.
\nOnce again, we note that those Torah passages selected for inclusion in the liturgy of prayer emphasize the connection between mitsvot and holiness. We can say with assurance that the fulfillment of the mitsvot represented a system of acts, not merely of words, that in post-Temple Judaism helped to compensate for the loss of sacrificial worship.
\nThe three paragraphs of the Shema have yielded three symbolic objects functional in Jewish religion to the present time: the mezzuzah, placed on the doorpost of one\u2019s home; the tefillin (phylacteries), worn by adult Jewish males, primarily during weekday prayer; and the tsitsit (fringes), worn during the daylight hours, and at some prayer services as a tallit (prayer shawl).
\nNone of the above derives specifically from Leviticus, which, in fact, refers to only two kinds of prayers\u2014to the confessional and to the priestly benediction, the text of which actually appears in Numbers 6:22\u201326. And yet, the spirit, if not the letter, of Leviticus is preserved in Jewish liturgy. Certain themes emanating primarily from Leviticus have found expression in later blessings and prayers.
\nExpiation of sins was one of the basic objectives of sacrificial worship. In terms of human needs, little could compare with the urge to secure God\u2019s forgiveness. Individuals and communities needed to be assured that they were acceptable in God\u2019s sight as well as in the sight of man. The loss of the altar of expiation (mizba\u1e25 kapparah) was a major deprivation. The principal expiatory sacrifices (most notably the \u1e25atta\u02bet, \u201csin offering\u201d) and their disposition are prescribed in Leviticus 6\u20137. The rites of Yom Kippur, the annual climax of public expiatory activity, are set forth in chapter 16, which is actually read in the synagogue on Yom Kippur along with sections of the Mishnah taken from the tractate Yoma. These and other readings are collected in a part of the Yom Kippur service appropriately named the Avodah, \u201csacrificial worship.\u201d In the later tradition, the New Moon was also associated with expiation.
\nA petition for forgiveness is included in the daily Amidah. The prayers of the \u02bfarvit service, recited after nightfall, seem to emphasize the theme of sin and forgiveness, and there are reasons for this. In the ancient Near East, nocturnal rituals often expressed the theme of penitence, perhaps a reflex of the fears that are strongest at night.
\nThe Epilogue to the Holiness Code (Lev. 26:3\u201346), known in the later tradition as the tokhe\u1e25ah, \u201cadmonition,\u201d is read quietly in the synagogue when the relevant portion of the Torah comes due. Like its counterpart in Deuteronomy 28\u201330, it focuses on the themes of sin, guilt, confession, and repentance, in historic perspective.
\nHoliness, still another theme prominent in Leviticus, virtually pervades Jewish liturgy. The Holiness Code, which encompasses Leviticus 17\u201327 and comprises the second division of the book, is so called because it emphasizes the duty of the Israelite people to pursue holiness. One of the opening blessings of the Amidah is known as kedushat ha-shem, \u201cthe sanctity of God\u2019s name\u201d (or, perhaps, \u201cthe sanctification of God\u2019s name\u201d). It includes a choral recitation on the theme of sanctity. Other berakhot also speak of God\u2019s holiness. Leviticus is undoubtedly the major Torah source on the theme of holiness, although this subject is also addressed elsewhere.
\nAlthough, as we see, the legacy of Leviticus lives on in the liturgy of Jewish worship, it is in the realm of celebration that Levitical themes are most prominent in post-Temple Judaism. There were always two discrete dimensions to the celebration of sacred occasions: the public dimension, realized in the Temple, and the domestic and communal dimension, centered around the home and the family.
\nIt is the latter dimension that became especially relevant after the destruction of the Temple. In priestly statements within the Torah itself, this domestic-communal dimension is occasionally emphasized. We encounter the formula: be-khol moshepoteikhem, literally \u201cin all your areas of settlement.\u201d The requirement of eating matsot on the Passover festival contains this provision, indicating that it was not a practice limited to public celebration (Exod. 12:20). In fact, the paschal sacrifice provides a unique example of a domestic sacrificial rite, originally intended to take place in proximity to one\u2019s home and to be performed by the family or clan as a unit. At a later period, when all sacrifice was centralized at the Temple in Jerusalem, the venue of the paschal sacrifice shifted, but even subsequent to that time it was performed by families who assembled at the Temple mount.
\nThe prohibition against kindling fire on the Sabbath (Exod. 35:3) similarly contains a reference to all of the Israelite habitations. What is most significant for the present discussion is the fact that in Leviticus 23, we find the formula be-khol moshevoteikhem repeated most often: in verse 3, with reference to the Sabbath; in verse 14, regarding the presentation of the first sheaf (\u02bfomer); in verse 21, for Shavuot, the festival of first fruits; and in verse 31, with respect to the prohibition against performing assigned tasks (mela\u02bekhah) on Yom Kippur.
\nWhen the demographic pattern of Jewry began to change after the first destruction and continued to become more diffuse throughout the period of the Second Temple, the importance of religious activity undertaken in the home and community understandably grew. When the Second Temple was destroyed, this dimension of religious celebration assumed even greater importance.
\nThe Sabbath In its influence on the calendars of other cultures, the Sabbath is perhaps the most remarkable contribution of Judaism to world civilization in late antiquity. In post-Temple Judaism, the Sabbath was of paramount significance. One begins to read statements on its importance in biblical literature of the exilic and near-exilic periods, in the writings of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Deutero-Isaiah. The marked emphasis on ritual which one observes in later, postexilic prophecy is a reflection of the changing conditions of communal life. Postexilic biblical literature expresses considerable interest in the Sabbath. In the late fifth century B.C.E., Nehemiah takes special measures to assure observance of the Sabbath in rebuilt Jerusalem. And later on, in the Qumran sect, observance of the Sabbath was strictly enforced. In other words, the domestic and communal dimensions of Sabbath observance were already steadily developing before the public cult of Jerusalem terminated.
\nIt is precisely in the Holiness Code of Leviticus that the significance of the Sabbath is most prominent. The Sabbath day generated the week, as we know it. In the Holiness Code we observe how the Sabbath, and the week ending on the Sabbath day, became the basis of computing the time between the Passover festival and Shavuot, as well as the Sabbatical year and the Jubilee year, every half century. Nowhere is the thematic function of the Sabbath more evident than in Leviticus, except perhaps for the association of the Sabbath with Creation and with the liberation from Egyptian bondage, stated elsewhere.
\nIt was recognized that the laws governing activity on the Sabbath were like \u201cmountains hanging by a hair\u201d: an abundance of legal hermeneutics (midrash) and a paucity of explicit laws and commandments in the Torah itself. The principal function of later tradition was to define what is meant by mela\u02bekhah in the biblical injunctions. The Torah only singles out a few types of prohibited labor\u2014gathering wood and the use of fire. Prophecy adds transporting goods outside one\u2019s house (Jer. 17) and, in rather vague language, prohibits attention to one\u2019s daily affairs (Isa. 58:13).
\nAs is well known and clearly stated in Mishnah Shabbat 7, thirty-nine (forty minus one) specific actions are forbidden on the Sabbath: These were defined as mela\u02bekhah. The rabbinic sages, and perhaps others who had preceded them, categorized the specific actions required for the performance of the sanctuary cult and then determined that these same labors would be forbidden everywhere outside the Sanctuary. Thus, if it was necessary to cut in the act of slaughtering a sacrificial animal, then cutting was prohibited anywhere outside the Temple. The same would apply to other actions such as cooking, baking, sewing, weaving, writing, and hammering. A statement on the observance of the Sabbath immediately follows, in Exodus 31:12\u201317, the precise prescriptions on the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus 25:1\u201331:11. This sequence was regarded as meaningful, as implying a topical connection between the Tabernacle project and Sabbath observance.
\nIt is in Leviticus, however, that we find the most detailed descriptions of the precise actions involved in preparing sacrifices, primarily in chapters 1\u20137. In a real sense, therefore, the list of prohibited actions derives, in some measure, from the torot of Leviticus.
\nIn summary, the prohibitive aspect of Sabbath observance, as it was systematized in rabbinic Judaism, ultimately owes much to the detail of sacrificial performance found in Leviticus. On the positive side, the key themes of the Sabbath are common to Torah literature: the commandment to remember and keep the Sabbath and to sanctify it, a notion conveyed by the verb kiddesh. These themes receive elaboration in later Judaism, and specific berakhot are formulated to dramatize compliance with, or fulfillment of, the biblical injunctions. Best known is the blessing called Kiddush, \u201csanctification,\u201d which is recited before the Sabbath evening meal. It is not necessary to go into detail about the various domestic observances traditional for the Sabbath. Pleasure (\u02bfoneg) is mentioned in some biblical statements on the Sabbath. This was interpreted in various ways, including sexual intercourse, which was encouraged on the Sabbath between husband and wife.
\nThe Sabbath of post-Temple Judaism, in its domestic-communal dimension, covered a minimum twenty-four hour period, lasting from evening to evening. Shops were closed, Jews flocked to the synagogue for public worship, and, in the context of home and family, there was celebration around the dining table. Candles were lit before the onset of the Sabbath, and appropriate blessings were recited. Food was prepared in advance, of course, since no cooking was permissible on the Sabbath. Study of the Torah was encouraged on the Sabbath\u2014a day off that afforded time for such important activity. In all, rabbinic legislation was highly effective in preserving those aspects of the Sabbath that allowed of fulfillment after the Temple was destroyed.
\nOther Sacred Occasions Leviticus has relatively less to say about the Passover festival than does Exodus, for example. It also says little about Shavuot, although the period between the two festivals is most explicitly addressed in Leviticus 23. We shall return to these festivals presently.
\nAs regards Sukkot, it is Leviticus that, more than any other Torah source, provides the basis for the observance of this festival in later Judaism. Leviticus 23 is the only source in the Torah that specifically ordains that Israelites dwell in booths (sukkot) during the seven days of the festival and that explains this requirement in historical and commemorative terms. In this same chapter, the use of fruit and greenery was specified for the Sukkot celebration. The fruit was later determined to be a citron (\u02beetrog), and the greenery consisted of palm branches and willows, as explicitly mandated in the biblical text, and myrtle, as defined by tradition. It is in Leviticus that Shemini Atzeret (the assembly of the eighth day) is first ordained.
\nWhen the public, cultic dimension of Sukkot could no longer be celebrated and when the pilgrimage (\u1e25ag)\u2014which had been the major pilgrimage of the year\u2014was no longer a reality, it was still possible to construct booths and celebrate the festival symbolically. It was still possible to rejoice on Sukkot, a theme expressed particularly in Leviticus 23. In later periods of Jewish history, when the cycle of Torah portions read in the synagogue reached its conclusion in the autumn of the year, as was customary in many Jewish communities, the \u201crejoicing\u201d of Sukkot was directed toward the Torah. The assembly of the eighth day celebrated the Torah itself, and was known as Sim\u1e25at Torah.
\nBut let us return to Passover and Shavuot, in the spring of the year. The Passover festival, the essential character of which is revealed in Exodus and Deuteronomy rather than in Leviticus, included from its inception dimensions that could be realized apart from its cultic celebration. Matsot were to be eaten and leaven avoided. As has been noted, the paschal sacrifice itself was originally conceived as a domestic rite, and it never fully lost that character. The Passover Seder is a remarkable liturgical creation, which dramatizes through symbol and recitation the meaning of the occasion.
\nThe prohibitionary aspect of the Passover observance could function in post-Temple Judaism, of course. We see that the prohibitions of the Torah regarding leaven underwent a process similar to other aspects of the dietary laws. The Jewish home was searched for \u1e25amets, \u201cleaven,\u201d which was to be removed before the outset of the festival, in compliance with biblical law. Other measures were taken to assure that the home and property of Jews were free of leaven for the duration of the festival.
\nThe commemorative character of Passover could most certainly be expressed quite apart from reliance on sacrificial worship. Excursus 8 explains that whereas Shavuot and Sukkot were truly seasonal festivals, linked to the agricultural economy of biblical Israel, Passover, from its inception, was a commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt, an occasion expressive of historical memory. Perhaps for this reason, so much of its ancient character could remain functional in post-Temple Judaism.
\nThis historical association brings us directly to Shavuot, originally a festival of first fruits (bikkurim), but in later Judaism, conceived as the occasion of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. Like Passover, it had a historical dimension: its association with events subsequent to the Exodus. The Ten Commandments are read in the synagogue on Shavuot. We know that there was a rabbinic chronology of the early history of Israel, which may be reconstructed from midrash and commentary, in which specific dates were assigned to important events, such as the giving of the Torah and the birth and death of leading figures. At some time, it became the practice to read certain of the biblical megillot on the three festivals: Song of Songs on Passover because it speaks of springtime, after the rains have passed; Ruth on Shavuot because its story takes place at the time of the wheat harvest; and Ecclesiastes on Sukkot because autumn turns one\u2019s thoughts to the cessation of life. The period of counting (sefirah) between Passover and Shavuot, a time highlighted in Leviticus 23, received attention in post-Temple Judaism and came to be associated with later historical events.
\nBeginning in the period of the Babylonian exile, we perceive a heightened sense of penitence and increased expression of individual as well as collective guilt. The early-postexilic prophet Zechariah (7:5) speaks of two annual fast days, one in the fifth month, Ab, commemorating the destruction of the Temple, and the other in the seventh month, namely, Yom Kippur. Isaiah (58:3\u20134) also speaks of the solemn character of Yom Kippur. We read in Ezra and Nehemiah of fasting and public confession. Although such practices in themselves are very ancient, interest in them seems to have peaked in the exilic period, in the wake of national tragedy. What happened after the first destruction recurred after the Second Temple was destroyed; only this time, the tragic effects were permanent.
\nUndoubtedly, the ascendance of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and of the ten-day period between them that characterizes later Judaism is attributable, in large part, to the continuing need for expiation and forgiveness, in the absence of the Temple and its \u201caltar of expiation.\u201d
\nThe New Moon of the seventh month became the New Year (Rosh Hashanah). The calendar had shifted to an autumnal inception of the year, and Yom Kippur became the major occasion for communal penitence. Leviticus 16 already gives evidence of a development in this direction in that the last part of the chapter (vv. 29\u201334) redirects emphasis from the Sanctuary to the people and speaks of self-denial and fasting. This need was sufficiently strong to make Yom Kippur the most solemn day of the year. The celebration of the New Moon survived in post-Temple Judaism, along with accompanying rites relevant to the birth and phases of the moon, but this complex does not derive specifically from Leviticus.
\nIn summary, Jewish religion has effectively preserved\u2014in the absence of a Temple and without the realistic possibility of pilgrimages\u2014as much as could be preserved of the annual festivals and of the weekly Sabbath. Much of the ancient character of the festivals is revealed in Leviticus. That is, even without the cult, Jews everywhere could rest from work on all festivals and sacred occasions.
\nThe Daily Experience of Religion We have already discussed the daily regimen of worship in the synagogue. We now proceed to characterize the daily practice of religion, with reference to the background of Leviticus, in the life of the individual and his family and of the community outside the synagogue.
\nCircumcision, a family rite, has already been discussed in the context of purification, where some mention was made of the life cycle of the individual Jew. There has also been reference to the distancing of funerary rites from the Temple because of considerations of purity and the prohibition against the participation of the priests (kohanim) in the burial of the dead.
\nAnother family obligation that has survived to the present time is the redemption of the first-born son (bekhor), known traditionally as pidyon ha-ben, \u201cthe redemption of the son.\u201d The Torah commands Israelites to hand over to God the first-born of man and beast (Exod. 13:2ff.; 22:28; 34:20; Deut. 15:19ff.). It is from Leviticus 27:2ff., however, that we learn how one was to redeem his first-born son, for that was the intent of the law. Leviticus establishes a system of evaluations, or equivalents (Late Hebrew \u02bfarakhin). An Israelite would redeem his first-born son through the good offices of the priest at the rate established for the age group of thirty days to five years. This amounted to five shekels by the sanctuary weight. (A child was considered viable at the age of thirty days.)
\nTraditionally, a kohen is invited to the home, and the redemption is dramatized. The five shekels (or other current units of money) are often returned to the father or donated as tzedakah, since, technically, the kohen may not keep them because his status is only presumptive. Blessings are recited; these state that the duty to redeem one\u2019s first-born son is a mitsvah of the Torah. This ritual, which is extraordinary in its occurrence (that is, it occurs only after the birth of the first issue of the womb if that issue is a male child) relates to an enduring theme in post-Temple Judaism: desacralization, which has already been mentioned in the discussion of dietary purity.
\nDesacralization requires that before humans may derive benefit from any of God\u2019s creation, God\u2019s prior claim to His creation must be satisfied. This principle is epitomized in the statement: \u201cThe earth is the LORD\u2019s and all that it holds\u201d (Ps. 24:1). The theme of desacralization underlies a complex of berakhot known as birkhot ha-nehenin, \u201cthe blessings of the beneficiaries.\u201d (In Late Hebrew, the participle nehenin means \u201cderiving benefit.\u201d) A variegated list of berakhot covers most of the daily experience of a human being but relates especially to eating food for sustenance. Before partaking of food, a Jew is required to express thanksgiving to God for allowing His creatures to derive benefit from His creation. The Grace after Meals (birkat ha-mazon) is a collection of berakhot recited upon the completion of a meal, in compliance with the commandment of Deuteronomy 8:10: \u201cWhen you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/p>\n
It is hardly possible in this limited space to do justice to all of the themes expressed in Leviticus or to trace their later applications in post-Temple Judaism. The intent was merely to show how a system of worship and purification that was essential to religious life in antiquity was restructured and redefined so as to enable Jews everywhere to worship the God of Israel meaningfully and to realize a degree of sanctity in their lives.
\nAlong with purity and sanctity, Leviticus also held forth the vision of redemption and freedom. Speaking in the context of economic freedom, Leviticus 25 proclaims the Jubilee year as a time when deror, \u201crelease,\u201d will be granted to all those Israelites who are bound by debt and indenture and when ge\u02beullah, \u201credemption,\u201d will be realized for land that had been lost to its owners.
\nThese themes, which are given legal expression in Leviticus, are conceived as national redemption in the words of an exilic prophet, who foresaw God restoring the captives of Israel to the Land of Israel. Leviticus 25:10, conventionally translated, \u201cProclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof,\u201d is inscribed on the Liberty Bell, enshrined in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Leviticus 25:24b, ge\u02beullah tittenu la-\u02bearets, \u201cYou must provide for the redemption of the land,\u201d became the byword of the Jewish National Fund, whose goal is the reclamation of the soil of the Land of Israel. \u201cLove your neighbor as yourself\u201d (Lev. 19:18) is the embodiment of God\u2019s will for humankind, and according to Rabbi Akiba, \u201ca cardinal principle in the Torah.\u201d<\/p>\n
EXCURSUSES<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 1<\/p>\n
That Person Shall Be Cut Off (chap. 7)<\/p>\n
We encounter, for the first time in Leviticus, explicit references to the penalty of being \u201ccut off\u201d in chapter 7 (vv. 20\u201321, 25\u201327). This penalty is usually formulated as follows: ve-nikhretah ha-nefesh ha-hi\u02be me-\u02beameihah, \u201cThat person shall be cut off from his kin,\u201d or similar wording. As a penalty specified for a variety of religious offenses, it is distinctive to the priestly texts. In rabbinic literature the penalty is called karet, \u201ccutting off.\u201d
\nTo understand its priestly function, the nonlegal background of the penalty of karet must first be investigated. On the most elemental level, \u201ccutting\u201d a person off is a metaphor borrowed from the felling of trees and other forms of vegetation. Such actions are often conveyed by the verb k-r-t. A metaphor of this type is preserved in the words attributed to Jeremiah\u2019s enemies, who plotted against his life: \u201cLet us destroy the tree with its sap,\/Let us cut him off (nikhretennu) from the land of the living.\/That his name be remembered no more!\u201d In a similar way, Isaiah of the exile used the metaphor of the tree in reassuring those foreigners and eunuchs who had attached themselves to the people of Israel that they would be redeemed along with the Judean exiles: \u201cLet not the foreigner say, \u2026 \u2018The LORD will keep me apart from His people\u2019;\/And let not the eunuch say,\/\u2018I am a withered tree.\u2019\/For thus said the LORD: \u2018\u2026 \/I will give them, in My house and within My walls,\/A monument and a name\/Better than sons and daughters.\/I will give them an everlasting name\/Which [literally] shall not be cut off (\u02beasher lo\u02be yikkaret).\u2019 \u201d
\nJob provides an interesting variation on this theme. He contrasts the fate of a tree with that of a person: \u201cThere is hope for a tree;\/If it is cut down (\u02beim yikkaret) it will renew itself;\/Its shoots will not cease.\/If its roots are old in the earth,\/And its stump dies in the ground,\/At the scent of water it will bud\/And produce branches like a sapling.\/But mortals languish and die;\/Man expires; where is he?\u201d Job\u2019s depressing contrast hardly invalidates the graphic sight of a tree cut down and left as a decaying stump. The point is that, once felled, most trees do not grow again, certainly not to their earlier stature.
\nIn priestly literature, the penalty of karet was understood to include a series of related punishments at the hand of God, ranging from the immediate death of an offender, as in 20:17, to his premature death at a later time, and even to the death of his descendants. In Mishnah Sanhedrin 9:6 and Mishnah Keritot 1:2, this penalty is characterized as mitah bi-ydei shamayim, \u201cdeath at the hands of heaven.\u201d Since in 20:21 karet is mentioned in the same context as childlessness (\u02bfariri), there is the implication that it took that course as well.
\nSome have pointed to the curse pronounced over the house of Eli, the priest of Shiloh, whose sons offended God. In 1 Samuel 2:33 God decrees that although Eli\u2019s descendants will not be \u201ccut off\u201d from the priestly office altogether, none of them will reach old age. The statement is best rendered, \u201call the increase in your house shall die while still in their prime.\u201d
\nThis introduces another possible aspect of the penalty of karet: being \u201ccut off\u201d from a particular office or status. Thus, in 1 Kings 2:45, David is assured that literally \u201cno person of your line shall be \u2018cut off\u2019 from the throne of Israel,\u201d It has also been suggested that at times karet took the form of banishment or ostracism. In the ancient Near East, especially in sparsely inhabited areas, banishment would often have resulted in death, or at least in the extinction of a family or clan as a social unit. Hagar and her son Ishmael almost died after their banishment, as we read in Genesis 21:16f., and they were only spared by God\u2019s intervention. The wilderness is known in Leviticus 16:22 as the land \u201ccut off\u201d (\u02beerets gezerah) from the living, which expresses the same theme in other words.
\nAn interesting case of the effects of ostracism may be seen in the aftermath of the internecine war between the league of Israelite tribes and the tribe of Benjamin, as told in Judges 20. After avenging a Benjamite atrocity, the other tribes swore not to allow their sons to marry Benjamite women. Later, they experienced remorse, fearing that if this ban continued for very long, a whole tribe would be \u201cmissing,\u201d \u201ccut off\u201d (nigda\u02bf), or \u201cwiped out.\u201d
\nAgainst the background of metaphor and social reality, we may now focus on the more distinctly priestly applications of the penalty of karet. The priestly conception of God was pervaded by an awareness that He punishes offenders severely for violations of religious law. Priestly writers appropriated widespread notions of death at the hand of God and saw this process at work in specific situations. Uzzah was struck down for merely touching the ark, according to 2 Samuel 6:5\u20138. Two of Aaron\u2019s sons, Nadab and Abihu, were blasted by God\u2019s fire because they offered \u201chateful\u201d incense, recounted in the episode of Leviticus 10:1f. Korah and his band were suddenly destroyed for attempting to usurp the priesthood from Aaron\u2019s clan, as we read in Numbers 16\u201317.
\nIn priestly law, the certainty of God\u2019s punitive wrath was institutionalized in the penalty of karet. It was stipulated for the following offenses: (1) violation of the Sabbath and improper observance of festivals and holy days; (2) violations of certain laws of purity; (3) certain prohibited sexual unions, also regarded as a form of impurity; (4) cultic offenses, such as eating blood and fat and mishandling sacrificial substances; (5) failure to circumcise one\u2019s male children at the age of eight days, as ordained in Genesis 17:14 and Leviticus 12:3.
\nIn the Sabbath law of Exodus 31:14\u201315, we observe a curious interaction of human and divine punishment that helps to clarify the penalty known as karet. We are told twice that one who desecrates the Sabbath \u201cshall be put to death\u201d by human agency, which is what the Hebrew formula mot yummat means. In Numbers 15:32\u201333 we actually read about one Israelite who was apprehended gathering wood on the Sabbath and was put to death by the congregation, on explicit instructions from God to Moses. How is it, then, that Exodus 31:14\u201315 stipulates karet as the punishment for violating the Sabbath? The accepted explanation is that if the community failed to punish the offender or failed to uncover the offense, God would mete out punishment in His own way and in His own good time.
\nThe policy that a person, family, or tribe would be \u201ccut off\u201d and banished from the larger community because of an offense on the human level translated itself into the perception that God would similarly \u201ccut off\u201d those who had offended Him, if human agencies had allowed such offenses to go unpunished.<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 2<\/p>\n
The Meaning of the Dietary Laws (chap. 11)<\/p>\n
By classifying certain living creatures as tame\u02be, \u201cimpure,\u201d the laws of Leviticus 11 and of Deuteronomy 14 place them in a broad \u201cavoidance category,\u201d thereby helping to ensure that they would not be used as food. These laws became part of an elaborate system of purity and impurity affecting the sanctuary and the priesthood as well as the lives of individual Israelites, their families, and the community as a whole. Avoidance of the impure is a prerequisite for the attainment of holiness. Conversely, impurity is incompatible with holiness: It detracts from the special relationship between God and the people of Israel and threatens Israel\u2019s claim to the land. This is stated most clearly in 20:22\u201326:<\/p>\n
22 You shall faithfully observe all My laws and all My regulations, lest the land to which I bring you to settle in spew you out.\u2026<\/p>\n
24b I the LORD am your God who has set you apart from other peoples. 25 So you shall set apart the clean beast from the unclean, the unclean bird from the clean. 25b You shall not draw abomination upon yourselves through beast or bird or anything with which the ground is alive, which I have set apart for you to treat as unclean.\u2026<\/p>\n
26 You shall be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy, and I have set you apart from other peoples to be Mine.<\/p>\n
These statements express several interrelated themes, all basic to the meaning of the dietary laws. On the basis of these and other similar statements, including verses 44\u201346 of chapter 11 and Deuteronomy 14:21, the rabbis classified the impurity associated with forbidden foods as tum\u02beat kodesh, \u201cimpurity pertaining to holiness.\u201d In the rabbinic law, the same category included the major sexual offenses set down in Leviticus 18 and 20. Maimonides likewise included both of these categories\u2014forbidden foods and forbidden sexual unions\u2014in Sefer Kedushah (The Book of Holiness), one of the fourteen sections of his Mishneh Torah.
\nFrom the biblical point of view, there is a third category of transgressions that is also linked conceptually and legally to the dietary restrictions and the sexual prohibitions, namely, pagan worship. The nexus of all three categories is epitomized in the concept of to\u02bfevah, \u201cabomination,\u201d closely identified with impurity. In the introduction to the dietary laws of Deuteronomy (14:3) we read: \u201cYou shall not eat anything abhorrent (to\u02bfevah).\u201d The chapter continues with a list of forbidden living creatures, classifying them as tame\u02be, \u201cimpure.\u201d Leviticus 18:24\u201330, in the concluding verses of the sexual code, warns that forbidden sexual unions are to\u02bfevah and at the same time tame\u02be, \u201cimpure.\u201d Pagan worship is to\u02bfevah, a theme dramatized in Deuteronomy 7 and elsewhere in the Torah. It constitutes a major source of defilement.
\nA triad of religious sins emerges\u2014dietary, cultic, and sexual\u2014all associated with impurity and all linked to the destiny of the Israelites as a people distinguished from other nations. The prophet Ezekiel (33:25\u201326), in one of his severe condemnations of the people who are in exile, alludes to the same three categories, adding the charge of murder and violence: \u201cThus said the Lord GOD: You eat [meat] with the blood, you raise your eyes to your fetishes, and you shed blood\u2014yet you expect to possess the land! You have relied on your sword, you have committed abominations (to\u02bfevah), you have all defiled other men\u2019s wives\u2014yet you expect to possess the land!\u201d In a positive sense, then, the laws of the Torah make the observance of a dietary regimen essential to the achievement of the collective humaneness of the people of Israel. They offer a means by which individual Israelites and their families\u2014the nonpriests\u2014may contribute to the attainment of holiness.
\nUnderlying all the dietary regulations is a broad social objective: maintaining a distance between the Israelites and their neighbors, so that the former do not go astray after pagan religions. The introductory Comment to chapter 18 notes that biblical perceptions of the sexual habits of the Egyptians and Canaanites may have been imprecise in certain respects; the same is true of biblical characterizations of pagan religions. This reality does not, however, alter the stated intent of any of these laws. They condemn what they perceive to be the abominable ways of others, especially the Canaanite peoples of the land. This attitude is basic to the interpretation of the dietary laws.
\nA variation on this theme is the notion that the \u201clands\u201d of exile are impure, that is, that the peoples of these lands follow an impure way of life. As a consequence, in the land of their exile Israelites will eat impure foods, just as they will be compelled to worship false gods. Prophetic utterances regard this as a form of divine retribution: Those who transgress against the laws of purity in their own land, where they may choose between obedience to God\u2019s laws or perverseness, must eventually, inevitably, commit the same sins in the lands of their enemies. This recalls the theme that Israel will retain its hold on the promised land only so long as the land remains pure. As far as the legislation of the Torah is concerned, this definitely includes observance of the dietary laws.
\nThus far, we have considered the expressed intent of the dietary laws. The question now arises as to what lies behind those laws. How were the particular prohibitions set forth in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 arrived at? Is there a common denominator, or organizing principle, that can account for the designation of certain living creatures as pure and others as impure? There is an extensive literature on this question, extending from antiquity to the present. In modern times this subject has been of particular interest to anthropologists and historians of religion, who have noted that the Torah\u2019s detailed classifications of the dietary laws are virtually unreflected in the rest of biblical literature. This absence is in itself a major problem of biblical interpretation. Only in two late passages of Deutero- (or Trito-) Isaiah do we find statements condemning the sacrifice of dogs, mice, and swine. Ezekiel (4:14) once protested his innocence by insisting that he had never partaken of meat torn by beasts (terefah), carcasses (nevelah), or spoiled sacrificial flesh (piggul). In Judges 13:4\u20137 Manoah\u2019s wife is admonished against eating anything impure (tame\u02be) or drinking intoxicants prior to the birth of her son, Samson. The reference there is to the ritual status of foods generally, not to any particular kind of forbidden food. In the literature of a later era, we read that, while in Babylon, Daniel and his three friends refused to defile themselves by eating the usual food allotted to courtiers; and 1 Maccabees 1:12\u201363 relates that, during the persecutions of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the pious suffered death rather than eat the flesh of swine. These few references to dietary restrictions are both late and limited in scope; they do not provide us with historical evidence that the dietary laws of the Torah were practiced in earlier periods.
\nIn the text of the Torah, a generic distinction between pure and impure animals first occurs in Genesis, in one of the versions of the Flood story. There are several versions of the story, and critical scholarship considers the Jahwistic (J) version of Genesis 7:2\u20133 to be the oldest. It is there that we read about seven pairs of pure animals and birds being taken into the ark by Noah, but only two pairs of impure animals. There, too, Noah offers only pure species as sacrifice to God after the Flood. In the priestly version of the Flood story, as preserved in Genesis 6:19\u201322, no such distinctions are drawn; it simply states that two pairs of every species are taken into the ark.
\nThere are probable reasons why the priestly version, which we would logically expect to be concerned with purity, fails to distinguish between pure and impure species in this context. It seems to be the priestly view that the regulations governing purity were particular to the Israelite people and were first ordained at Sinai. For purposes of our discussion, it is important to note that an early biblical tradition, not specifically linked to the priesthood, knows of a distinction between pure and impure species, although it does not specify which animals and birds are pure and which are impure. The laws of Deuteronomy and Leviticus serve to elaborate the specifics of the earlier, accepted distinction.
\nIt is the priestly tradition, nonetheless, that affords us an insight into the meaning of the dietary system in the context of the Flood stories of Genesis. This clue is to be found in the dispensation stated in Genesis 9:2\u20133, allowing humans to use living creatures as food: \u201cThe fear and the dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky\u2014everything with which the earth is astir\u2014and upon all the fish of the sea.\u2026 Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you all these.\u201d This etiological statement explains how humans came to hunt and kill living creatures for food. In the aftermath of the Deluge the primeval relationship between humankind and the natural world was altered, placing human beings on a higher order. This status is already presaged in the priestly version of Creation, Genesis 1:28\u201329, according to which humankind is given dominion over all living creatures as well as over the earth itself. Indeed this priestly statement goes even farther: It grants humans a dispensation to subdue other living creatures. According to this tradition, the human response to the divine dispensation\u2014the functional application of \u201cthe fear and the dread\u201d\u2014is the domestication of animals, fowl, and fish. In other words, God would make other living creatures submissive to man.
\nAnalysis of the lists of permitted living creatures reveals certain common features. James Frazer observed that even those undomesticated land animals that may be used as food, such as deer, exhibit the same physical features as permitted domesticated cattle and sheep; they have split hoofs and chew their cud. It is likely, therefore, that these two criteria were not the initial basis for the distinction between pure and impure animals but were, rather, a pair of observable physical features common to animals in an already established category. The initial basis for the various classifications of living creatures as pure and impure should be sought elsewhere.
\nLike many other ancient peoples, the Israelites personified the animal world, projecting onto it their own preferences and dislikes. The traditions of Genesis relate that \u201call flesh\u201d had corrupted its ways. Even in the postdiluvian dispensation, beasts are still held accountable for the murder of humans. God\u2019s covenantal promise never again to bring total destruction upon the world is phrased in terms of the sins of every living creature, not only those of humankind. Certain laws of the Torah also address this issue. According to Exodus 21:29\u201332, the goring ox is to be judged and executed in the manner of a human murderer. Certain laws of war require that livestock captured from Israel\u2019s sworn enemies must be destroyed and may not be used as food or even offered as sacrifices. This is, to some extent, because such were closely associated in the minds of the people with the enemies themselves. And in the story of Jonah not only does the citizenry of Nineveh fast and repent of their wickedness, but herds and flocks as well.
\nEach of these instances indicates a mentality that regarded domesticated livestock as members of the community; even wild beasts were held accountable for their actions. It follows that habits and behavior of animals, birds, and even fish had religious significance. In particular, the food that animals and birds themselves ate and how they obtained it were factors in determining their classification as pure or impure. This is readily evident in the list of prohibited birds: Almost all of them are birds of prey, by day or by night, who feed on carrion and tear the flesh of other living creatures in their pursuit of food. As such they were considered unfit as food for a people forbidden to eat blood and commanded to avoid flesh that had been torn by preying creatures. By contrast, those birds considered pure (identified by process of elimination), such as hens, doves and pigeons, quail, and certain types of geese, feed on grain and spend more time on the ground in proximity to human beings, to whom they are more submissive. In the early version of the Flood the raven, an impure bird, provides a contrast to the dove, a pure bird. Once released, the raven never returned to the ark, but the dove thrice returned! Elsewhere in the Torah, God brings the quail, a pure bird, to the Israelite settlements in Sinai to provide food for his people.
\nCertain living creatures are not mentioned at all in the dietary laws of the Torah simply because they were not part of the diet. Dogs, horses, mules, and donkeys were not used as food, whereas certain reptiles, rodents, and insects were. Mary Douglas is correct in stressing the prominence of borderline cases in the formulation of the dietary laws. Certain impure animals could be confused with pure species. Each of the four land animals singled out as being forbidden\u2014the camel, the daman, the hare, and the pig\u2014exhibits one, but not both, of the requisite criteria for purity. Pigs, for example, were raised extensively in the biblical environment, as we now know from archaeological evidence.
\nTwo features predominate in determining an animal\u2019s purity or impurity: digestion and locomotion. Ruminants met the criterion of proper digestion. As regards locomotion, paws were considered bestial, whereas the two \u201ctoes\u201d common to animals with fully cleft hoofs were not repulsive.
\nIn modern discussions of the dietary laws certain theories have predominated. One is the notion that the dietary laws are based on cultic norms: that what was suitable in the first instance for sacrifices was pure. It would seem, however, that the reverse is true: that sacrificial animals were selected from larger groups of animals and birds already considered to be pure. The generic distinction between pure and impure living creatures may well have antedated the specific laws of sacrifice.
\nAnother notion is that the dietary laws constitute a taboo system. Thus William Robertson Smith, the nineteenth-century student of comparative religion, claimed that impure animals were really sacred creatures to be revered and sacrificed only under unusual and extreme conditions. Israelites were forbidden to use them as food precisely because they were reserved for special cultic utilization. The evidence for this theory is exceedingly questionable, however. Smith calls attention to Ezekiel 8:10\u201311, where the prophet describes what he saw in a room of the Jerusalem Temple: \u201cI entered and looked, and there all detestable forms of creeping things and beasts and all the fetishes of the House of Israel were depicted over the entire wall. Before them stood seventy men, elders of the House of Israel.\u2026 Everyone had a censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense smoke ascended.\u201d
\nWhat Ezekiel saw, in fact, was the defilement of the sacrificial cult. Like the fetishes, the depictions of beasts and creeping creatures were features of pagan cults imitated by the heterodox Israelites. If the dietary laws had indeed constituted a taboo, one would have expected the sacrifice of the prohibited living creatures\u2014forbidden as food\u2014to figure in the priestly system. As an example of a genuine taboo, one may cite the prohibition against eating blood. Blood served several functions in sacrifice and purification, and was strictly reserved for these sacred purposes.
\nThe case of the kid goat (sa\u02bfir) is also instructive, but in a different way. We know that there was once a cult of goat worship in ancient Israel and in nearby areas, since this reality is referred to in 17:7: \u201cthat they may offer their sacrifices no more to the goat-demons (se\u02bfirim) after whom they stray.\u201d Quite clearly, the ritual of the scapegoat relates to this cult, as does the fact that kid goats are frequently designated as sin offerings. And yet, there is no prohibition against consuming the flesh of goats! What we observe is not a taboo system, in which the \u201csacred\u201d goat is normally prohibited and reserved for special offerings, but rather a sympathetic magical system, in which the good goat combats the demonic evil goat associated with sinfulness.
\nOn this question of a taboo system, therefore, the dietary laws give no evidence of a pattern wherein prohibited animals were ever revered or offered as sacrifice. Nor is there evidence of the opposite phenomenon, that any animal or bird suitable for sacrifice was ever prohibited as food. In the case of the kid goat, an animal formerly revered was retained as particularly suitable for sin offerings and riddance rituals, such as the dispatch of the scapegoat, but it was considered a pure animal in the diet.
\nStill another notion characteristic of modern discussions of the dietary laws is the disproportionate amount of attention given to the pig as a prohibited animal. There is no biblical evidence that there was a demonic mythology about the pig, in particular, although we must allow for the possibility that such a theme might have been suppressed. Comparativists point to Egyptian myths in which the pig figures prominently. In the story of Horus and Seth, the antagonist is a pig who wounds Horus. According to Herodotus, the pig was sacrificed in Egypt on the full moon because the moon was identified with Horus.
\nIn Canaan, the pig was simply part of the domestic economy during biblical times. Along with other animals, it was used by the Canaanites for sacrifice. Israelites had to be admonished not to eat it and to regard it as impure. Mesopotamian records often list pigs as sacrificial animals to be delivered to the temples. In Ugaritic literature, \u1e25nzr (Heb. \u1e25azir), \u201cpig,\u201d is the eponym of a clan, in the same way that animals often served as personal names, and still do.
\nThe special attention given by scholars to the pig may be a result of the relatively abundant evidence about it available from comparative sources. It is also likely that since the pig later became a test of loyalty to Judaism, as it was during the Antiochan persecutions of the second century B.C.E., it was anachronistically assumed that in earlier biblical times it also had unique significance as the impure animal par excellence. There is, however, nothing in the dietary codes or in biblical literature to indicate that that was so. Rather, the pig was singled out for mention because it was a borderline case, the only domesticated land animal in the biblical diet that has a fully cleft hoof, yet does not chew its cud.
\nThe dietary laws of the Torah institutionalize the basic distinction between pure and impure living creatures. A practical system of food selection emerges, in which several factors interact, (1) There is a clear preference for domesticated land animals and birds, and this perception may even carry over to fish. (2) Within this larger framework, concern is shown for the diet and digestive processes of living creatures, as if to ensure that nothing forbidden to the Israelites as food had been eaten by the living creatures themselves. If it was, there was concern that such food had been digested as thoroughly as possible or, at the very least, could be separated from the creature after slaughter. The permitted animals are herbivorous ruminants, whereas virtually all forbidden birds are carnivorous creatures of prey. The torn flesh of a land animal (terefah), the evidence of violent preying, is strictly forbidden, just as humans may not eat flesh that they have torn from a living creature. (3) Empirical evidence shows a correlation between methods of locomotion and patterns of feeding and digestion: In most cases, herbivorous ruminants have a cleft hoof. On this basis, creatures with truly cleft hoofs, two \u201ctoes,\u201d were considered domesticated, thus permitted; living creatures with paws were undoubtedly regarded as bestial and, hence, forbidden. (4) As regards fish, the biblical inventory is extremely limited. Preference for undulatory locomotion with fins probably correlated with observable feeding behavior. Crustaceans, for example, were perceived as scavengers.
\nMeasured against current scientific knowledge, these classifications may appear imprecise and rudimentary, but they undoubtedly reflect the honest observations of ancient man. An equation emerges: Pure creatures are (with respect to the totality of possible diet) to impure creatures as the Israelites are to the other nations. A pure people eats pure creatures in a pure state. A carcass is forbidden because the dead are impure, as we read in Deuteronomy 14:21: \u201cYou shall not eat anything that has died a natural death; give it to the stranger in your community to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner. For you are people consecrated to the LORD your God.\u201d
\nA socioreligious intent clearly underlies the dietary classification system. Ideally, humankind should be sustained by the produce of the earth. When, instead, other living creatures are used as food, as is permitted, such use should be restricted to living creatures that sustain themselves with what grows on the earth and that do not prey on other living creatures or attack man. In eating the substance of other living creatures, care must be taken not to eat their \u201clife,\u201d which is to say \u201ctheir blood.\u201d To do so would be a form of murder. The equation of human \u201clife\u201d with the \u201clife\u201d of other living creatures is unmistakable in the postdiluvian dispensation of Genesis, as well as in Ezekiel\u2019s condemnation of the Judean exiles. Eating blood is like shedding blood.
\nThe Israelites must adhere to this ideal way of life although other nations do not. Required along with avoidance of improper sexual unions, which would corrupt the family of Israel, and avoidance of pagan worship, which would alienate Israel from God, is the avoidance of unfit food. By such avoidance, Israelites are kept from bestiality; their humaneness is enhanced. Such a pure people deserves to live in its own land, unmolested.
\nFinally, there have always been those who have sought a hygienic, or health-related, explanation for the dietary selectivity evident in the laws of the Torah. The survival instinct usually affects the acquired feeding habits of human groups. Aversion to certain food sources may, at times, reflect the observation that certain foods were demonstrably unhealthy, especially under particular conditions of preservation and preparation. There is no evidence, however, of a broad nutritional or health-related basis for the specific dietary classifications of the Torah. It is more reasonable to assume a socioreligious basis for them, as has been set forth in this discussion.<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 3<\/p>\n
The New Mother (chap. 12)<\/p>\n
The provisions of chapter 12 have long been a subject of intense discussion by modern scholars. It is difficult to explain why a new mother, after the awaited event of childbirth, should be considered impure, especially for such extended periods of time. There is also sex differentiation, whereby the birth of a male child obligates the mother to a less extended period of impurity than does the birth of a female.
\nRecent insights into the meaning of ritual make it possible to place the provisions of chapter 12 in proper perspective. The rituals prescribed in the Torah regularly utilize the category of impurity for dealing with conditions that are life threatening. In ancient usage, \u201cpure\u201d and \u201cimpure\u201d correspond to what in modern health care would be referred to as immune and susceptible, respectively. Although the new mother was a source of joy to the community, and her new child a blessing, she generated anxiety\u2014as did all aspects of fertility and reproduction in ancient society. The childbearing mother was particularly vulnerable, and her child was in danger too, since infant mortality was widespread in premodern societies. By declaring the new mother impure, susceptible, the community sought to protect and shelter her.
\nIn ancient times, concern for the welfare of the mother and child was most often expressed as the fear of destructive, demonic, or antilife forces. This fear is evident in other ancient Near Eastern texts contemporaneous with the biblical period; they are replete with incantations and spells against demons and witches who were thought to kill newborn children and afflict their mothers. It is reasonable to assume that similar anxieties were current among the ancient Israelites as well. And although biblical religion certainly did not permit magical spells and the like as the proper means for overcoming these perceived threats to life, it did provide ritual means, as well as practical methods, to accomplish for the Israelite mother and her community what magic was supposed to accomplish for a pagan mother.
\nThus, chapter 12 presents a seemingly paradoxical situation: new life but also a new threat to life. Going beyond the protection of mother and child, the legislation also aimed at safeguarding the purity of the sanctuary and the surrounding community from defilement. To this end, the new mother was barred from the sanctuary and from contact with sacred things, out of the apprehension that the antilife forces, which prey upon the newborn and the mother in her state of vulnerability, would be carried with her into the sanctuary. That, in turn, would cause divine displeasure in the same way that it was aroused by any other carrier of \u201cimpurity.\u201d
\nIn this connection, it is interesting to note the comment of the Sifra on 12:2: \u201c \u2018When a woman at childbirth bears a male.\u2019 What are you to conclude from this verse? Since it is stated (Lev. 15:31): \u2018You shall put the Israelites on guard against [literally] their impurity, lest they die through [literally] their impurity by defiling My Tabernacle which is among them\u2019\u2014I understand that the Tabernacle might be defiled not only from the inside, but also by contact with its outer side. You are to learn therefore: \u2018She shall not enter the sanctuary.\u2019 Only through actual entry into the sanctuary does one defile it.\u201d Although this statement seeks to limit the effects of the law, it expresses an awareness on the part of the rabbis that defilement involved a risk of death through divine wrath. The God of Israel, provoked by the proximity of impurity, punishes the community as a result.
\nThis interpretation may provide a clue to the systematic distinction drawn between male and female children. Ramban tried to rationalize this distinction by referring to notions, current in his day, about bodily emissions. He insisted that the birth of a female caused a mother to sustain discharges for a longer period of time. It is more likely that the doubling of the initial period of impurity and the waiting period for a female had a different basis.
\nIt may have reflected apprehension and anticipation regarding the infant daughter\u2019s potential fertility, the expectation that she herself would someday become a new mother.
\nThe regulations governing a new mother may also represent a strong response to the emphasis on fertility in ancient Near Eastern polytheism. By contrast, there could be no place in the Israelite sanctuary for the celebration of birth because such would promote a mythological attitude toward God Himself. We know from the literature of other ancient Near Eastern societies that, within the pagan temples, birth dramas were enacted and myths of birth were recited. Both dramatized the birth of gods and goddesses and their sexual union in celebrations that expressed the human drive for fertility. The biblical restrictions, which excluded the new mother from religious life until she and her child had survived childbirth, created a distance between the event of birth and the worship of God, for God rules over nature and grants the blessing of new life, but He is not, of course, subject to the natural processes of procreation.<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 4<\/p>\n
The Scapegoat Ritual (chap. 16)<\/p>\n
James Frazer devoted an entire volume of his monumental study of religion and folklore, The Golden Bough, to the subject of the scapegoat. He was able to document similar practices in diverse societies all over the world, in many periods of human history. The transfer of sins or other forms of impurity to an animal (or to a person or object) by means of procedures calculated to destroy it or prevent its return clearly reflects the magical objectives of demonology and exorcism. This observation raises a crucial question for our understanding of biblical religion. Is there a place for magic in a monotheistic religion that is based on the proposition that one God rules the universe by His supreme will? In other words, are not magic and monotheism, as understood in biblical theology, mutually exclusive?
\nSome insight into this question can be gained from a more detailed differentiation of the various kinds of magic. The Torah and the rest of the Bible voice vigorous opposition to almost all forms of divination, to the use of omens and incantations, and to necromancy and sorcery. At the same time, there is no explicit objection to certain forms of therapeutic magic, such as might be employed in the healing process or in protecting against infection and illness. This omission allows us to propose that therapeutic magic may well have been permitted. Nevertheless, afflictions had to be treated by a proper Israelite priest and in the prescribed manner. In fact, the rites of the scapegoat have frequently been compared with those prescribed for the treatment of certain ailments and infections. Thus, an individual afflicted with the symptoms of tsara\u02bfat, a skin disease, was to be purified by means of a complex ritual involving two birds, one to be slaughtered and the other to be sent forth into the open sky after being dipped in the blood of the first.
\nThe release of the bird, like the dispatch of the scapegoat, expresses the phenomenology of riddance, the elimination of what is to be avoided. Such ritual procedures were accompanied by other measures of a practical nature\u2014quarantine, diagnosis and observation, shaving of body hair, and so forth. All of these measures clearly indicate that a real danger was perceived. Therefore these rites were not merely symbolic but were related to the existence of injurious forces or demons.
\nWould it be entirely accurate, however, to equate such procedures\u2014in the domain of private ritual and involving illness and infection\u2014with the ritual of the scapegoat, which was part of the public cult and which represented a unique instance of such presumably magical rites in the sanctuary cult?
\nIn the case of the former category, the laws of Leviticus subsume all diseases and infections under the broad category of tum\u02beah, \u201cimpurity.\u201d The actual metsora\u02bf, one whose skin disease was diagnosed as permanent and who was consequently banished, was declared tame\u02be, \u201cimpure.\u201d Hence it would be correct to conclude that at least some forms of impurity were perceived as being dangerous, since both illness and sinfulness were forms of impurity. And in effect most of the \u201csins\u201d of the priesthood and of the people, those very sins that were to be expiated on Yom Kippur, consisted of violations of the laws of purity. There was, therefore, a common denominator that linked disease and illness to sinfulness. This link is expressed in the concept of tum\u02beah, which bridges the gap between actual illness and ritual impurity. In this sense, one may argue for the magical character of the ritual of the scapegoat and for the claim that sinfulness, when left unexpiated, constituted a real danger. The priestly ideology was thus based on an awareness that, even in a world ruled by God, evil forces were at work\u2014forces that had to be destroyed if God\u2019s earthly home, His sanctuary, was not to be defiled.
\nAnother dimension of the ritual of the scapegoat further suggests its magical character: the destination of the scapegoat. In comparing the details of this chapter with the dispatch of a bird in chapter 14, we observe a significant difference. The bird is released into the open sky, carrying with it the impurity of disease, but no specific destination is mentioned. Its dispatch dramatized the fervent wish that illness and infection would never return. By contrast, the scapegoat was driven into the wilderness\u2014to Azazel. As noted in the Comment to verse 8, Azazel is most likely the name of a wilderness demon, a goat-demon, similar to the se\u02bfirim, \u201cgoat-demons,\u201d mentioned in 17:7 and once worshiped by Israelites.
\nThe identification of Azazel as the demonic ruler of the wilderness enjoyed some currency in late antiquity. In the apocryphal Book of 1 Enoch 6\u201313, \u02bfAza\u02beel (also written \u02bfAzaz\u02beel) was one of the deposed angels who had cohabited with human women (as recounted in Genesis 6:1\u20134), the archangel who was given jurisdiction over sorcery, acts of war, and harlotry\u2014all exemplifications of evil. Cast into the wilderness by the archangel Raphael, Azazel was confined under jagged rocks to live there in darkness until Judgment Day. In this manner, he came to rule the wilderness. Although this myth is a transparent attempt to identify Azazel by utilizing an angelology foreign to the original, priestly conception, it nevertheless points to the image of the wilderness as a place of sinfulness and evil, itself a very ancient belief.
\nAll of the foregoing is relevant to the evident association of he-goats with the theme of sinfulness. Many sin offerings, including the one supplied by the people on Yom Kippur, consisted of he-goats. This association would seem to be predicated on the notion of the wilderness as the domain of impurity and sinfulness and of the goat as personification of the wilderness (just as the bird is the personification of the sky). The connection between the scapegoat and the cult of se\u02bfirim referred to in 17:7 was, in fact, perceived by Ibn Ezra, who, in a cryptic comment on 16:8, stated: \u201cIf you are able to understand the mystery of the word \u2018Azazel\u2019 you will comprehend both its mystery and the mystery of its name, for it has analogues in Scripture. And I will disclose to you a bit of the mystery: When you understand thirty-three, you will know it.\u201d Now, 17:7, which refers to the ancient cult of the se\u02bfirim, is the thirty-third verse after 16:8, where the name Azazel is first mentioned in our chapter.
\nRamban provides a lengthy comment on 16:8, in which he elaborates on the legendary identity of Azazel: \u201cThere were worshipers of other deities, that is, of the angels, who offered sacrifices to them.\u2026 But the Torah utterly forbade the acknowledgment of their divinity, or any worship of them.\u2026 Rather, the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded that on Yom Kippur we dispatch a he-goat into the wilderness to the prince who rules over the areas of destruction.\u2026 And the intention with respect to the he-goat that is dispatched is not that it be a sacrifice from us to him (i.e., Azazel), God forbid, but rather that our intention be to do the will of our Creator who so commanded us.\u201d Ramban was aware of the traditions that portrayed Azazel as an angel or prince (sar) who ruled the wilderness. More significant is that he sensed the difficulty posed by the Azazel ritual of Yom Kippur, for he openly acknowledged its affinities to polytheism. His resolution of the problem, though stated somewhat cryptically as \u201cto do the will of our Creator who so commanded us,\u201d reveals an understanding of the transformation that had occurred in biblical religion. The dynamics of the ritual, although changed, still retained a real function; and the imagery and associations with the premonotheistic experience of the people were still expressed. To be specific: Chapter 16 mirrors in official Israelite religion the ancient rites forbidden in the law of 17:7! Chapter 16 transforms the sacrificial worship of demons into a set of rites that coerce and subjugate the sinful and evil forces identified with the demon. The High Priest, acting in accordance with the command of the God of Israel, forced the iniquities of the people back on Azazel. When the he-goat returned to the wilderness, a return that the demonic prince of the wilderness was powerless to prevent, a boomerang effect was produced: Evil returned to its point of departure, to the wilderness!
\nThis entire complex of rituals seems to be predicated on magical perceptions. The High Priest subdues Azazel by sending against him another goat\u2014an application of the principle of sympathetic magic, by which similar powers are pitted against each other. The underlying theory is that danger must be countered in kind. The best biblical example of this phenomenology is the utilization of a copper serpent as an antidote to snake bites. In Numbers 21:6\u20139, we read that the Lord had dispatched snakes to bite the Israelites as a punishment for their lack of faith in Him. To alleviate the suffering of the people, Moses was instructed to mount a copper serpent atop a standard. All who gazed at the copper serpent would be healed of their snake bites, as if, in effect, the good serpent had defeated the evil serpent. At a later period Hezekiah, king of Judah in the late seventh century B.C.E., broke the copper serpent into pieces because it had become a focus of sacrifice, as recounted in 2 Kings 18:4. In chapter 16, similarly, the good goat defeats the evil goat.
\nThe above interpretation of the ritual of the scapegoat is unacceptable to many modern students of the Bible, as it was to certain traditional schools. It is regarded as straining the limits and consistency of the monotheistic idea central to biblical religion and, most assuredly, fundamental to the priestly writings of the Torah. To some, the rites of riddance, ordained in connection with the scapegoat, were merely symbolic in significance. They were carry-overs from premonotheistic practice that, even prior to their incorporation into the Torah, had already lost their original magical character. According to this view, such rites were retained for their dramatic effect, not because it was actually believed that demonic forces had to be eliminated or subjugated before purification could be achieved.
\nWhatever its origin or ancient significance, the ritual of the scapegoat continued to function for centuries as an essential component of the Temple cult in Jerusalem. Talmudic sources provide detailed accounts of its enactment on Yom Kippur. To this day, both the biblical and the more elaborate talmudic descriptions remain part of the traditional liturgy of Yom Kippur.<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 5<\/p>\n
Family Structures in Biblical Israel (chap. 18)<\/p>\n
In order to establish the family structures prevalent among the Israelites it is necessary to compare the provisions of chapters 18 and 20 with other information available to us from the Bible. Some of the regulations governing marriage, as set forth in chapter 18, contradict what we know about the marriages of the patriarchs, the clan of Moses, and the Judean royal family in the generation of David.
\nThe major differences are the following: All Torah legislation forbids marriage with half sisters. This is explicitly stated in Leviticus 18:9 and 20:17 and in Deuteronomy 27:22. Yet, according to Genesis 20:12, Abram claimed that Sarai, his wife, was his half sister\u2014his father\u2019s daughter from another wife. In 2 Samuel 13:13 we read of Tamar\u2019s appeal to her half brother, Amnon, not to rape her. She insists that David, their father, would not deny her to him as a wife, perhaps indicating that a father might have permitted such a marriage at certain periods of biblical history. In effect, the above biblical sources know of no prohibition against marriage with half sisters of the same father.
\nBoth Leviticus 18:12\u201314 and 20:19\u201320 forbid marriage with any of a man\u2019s three possible aunts. Yet Exodus 6:20 records, as part of a priestly genealogy, that Amram married his aunt Jochebed, who bore him Moses and Aaron.
\nFinally, Leviticus 18:18 forbids marriage to the sister of one\u2019s wife while that wife is alive. Yet Genesis 29:21\u201330 relates that Jacob married Leah and Rachel, who were sisters.
\nIt is likely, therefore, that the rules governing incest underwent considerable development. In the earlier periods of Israelite history it was permissible to marry a half sister with whom one shared a common father. (There is no explicit evidence to allow for marriage with a half sister from the same mother.) Similarly, one must conclude that the prohibition against marriage with a woman and her sisters is a later development, as is the injunction against marrying aunts (at least of the kind Jochebed was to Amram). Absent from the Torah legislation is any prohibition against marrying cousins; indeed, marriage between patrilineal cousins or between a man and the daughter of his patrilineal cousin was a preferred arrangement. Rebekah was the granddaughter of Isaac\u2019s uncle, Nahor, according to Genesis 22:22\u201323 and 24:24. Jacob\u2019s relationship to Laban, his father-in-law (and, of course, to his wives) was even more complex: Laban was Jacob\u2019s patrilineal relative, descended from Nahor, but he was also a matrilineal relative\u2014the brother of Jacob\u2019s mother, Rebekah. Marriages with cousins and their children within the patrilineal clan produced other such cross-generational situations as well. Genesis 28:9 recounts that Esau, in an effort to please his father, Isaac, married his uncle Ishmael\u2019s daughter, Mahalath, in other words, his patrilineal first cousin. According to 2 Chronicles 11:20, King Rehoboam of Judah married Maacah, the daughter of his paternal uncle Absalom, again, a first cousin.
\nMarriages within the extended clan, called the mishpa\u1e25ah, were encouraged, and there was a tendency toward endogamy, that is, marrying within one\u2019s own group. Such marriages helped to insure the retention of the ancestral estate within the clan. This explains the dispensation to marry the widow of one\u2019s brother, stated in Deuteronomy 25:5\u201310, in cases where the deceased brother had left no male heir. The heir produced by levirate marriage would carry on the estate. The story of Ruth illustrates the desirability of finding a man of the same clan. Such a one, in marrying the widow of his deceased relative, would then redeem the estate of a deceased relative and keep it within the clan. The episode of Zelophehad\u2019s daughters, in Numbers 36, also indicates the importance of keeping an inheritance within the same clan. Because there were no sons, these daughters were granted the right to inherit their father\u2019s estate but were required to marry men of their father\u2019s clan. Since the estate would come into the possession of their husbands upon marriage, it was imperative that they not marry outside the clan.
\nAlthough all of these complex cases differ from each other in important respects, they have in common the perception that desirable marriages are those that keep the patrilineage intact down through the generations. Seen in the context of a society that was organized according to patrilineal clans that owned the land, the incest laws of the Torah can be understood as an attempt to prevent too much inbreeding within families that were otherwise bound together as socioeconomic units. The laws of ancient Israel kept certain channels open, while shutting others.
\nThe prohibition of incest reflects the almost universal, natural feelings of a person toward those with whom he has been reared and toward those with whom his closest relatives have had sexual relations. What is perhaps most significant is that by their negations, the Torah laws provide a definition of the nuclear family. The sum of this data is tabulated and displayed in two charts (p. 255). In these charts the male head of the family, the individual addressed in the laws and commandments, is designated \u201cEGO.\u201d His relationships to other members of the family are indicated by dotted lines, leading from him to his relatives. Arrows indicate how the prohibitions based on \u201cflesh\u201d relationships and affinal relationships were generated.<\/p>\n
FIGURE 1: PROHIBITIONS GENERATED BY \u201cFLESH\u201d RELATIVES<\/p>\n
FIGURE 2: PROHIBITIONS OF MARRIAGE GENERATED BY THE AFFINAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A MAN AND HIS WIFE<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 6<\/p>\n
Biblical Concepts of Holiness (chap. 19)<\/p>\n
Holiness is difficult to define or to describe; it is a mysterious quality. Of what does holiness consist? In the simplest terms, the \u201choly\u201d is different from the profane or the ordinary. It is \u201cother,\u201d as the phenomenologists define it. The \u201choly\u201d is also powerful or numinous. The presence of holiness may inspire awe, or strike fear, evoke amazement. The holy may be perceived as dangerous, yet it is urgently desired because it affords blessing, power, and protection.
\nThe Sifra conveys the concept of \u201cotherness\u201d in its comment to 19:2: You shall be holy\u2014\u201cYou shall be distinct (perushim tiheyu),\u201d meaning that the people of Israel, in becoming a holy nation, must preserve its distinctiveness from other peoples. It must pursue a way of life different from that practiced by other peoples. This objective is epitomized in the statement of Exodus 19:6: \u201cyou shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (goy kadosh).\u201d (A better rendering might be: \u201cYou shall be My Kingdom of priests and My holy nation.\u201d) This statement also conveys the idea, basic to biblical religion, that holiness cannot be achieved by individuals alone, no matter how elevated, pure, or righteous. It can be realized only through the life of the community, acting together.
\nThe words of Leviticus 19:2 pose a serious theological problem, especially the second part of the statement: \u201cFor I, the LORD your God, am holy.\u201d Does this mean that holiness is part of the nature of God? Does it mean that holiness originates from Him? In the Jewish tradition, the predominant view has been that this statement was not intended to describe God\u2019s essential nature, but, rather, His manifest, or \u201cactive,\u201d attributes. To say that God is \u201choly\u201d is similar to saying that He is great, powerful, merciful, just, wise, and so forth. These attributes are associated with God on the basis of His observable actions: the ways in which He relates to man and to the universe. The statement that God is holy means, in effect, that He acts in holy ways: He is just and righteous. Although this interpretation derives from later Jewish tradition, it seems to approximate both the priestly and the prophetic biblical conceptions of holiness.
\nIn biblical literature there is a curious interaction between the human and the divine with respect to holiness. Thus, in Exodus 20:8, the Israelites are commanded to sanctify the Sabbath and to make it holy; and yet verse 11 of the same commandment states that it was God who declared the Sabbath day holy. Similarly, God declared that Israel had been selected to become His holy people; but this declaration was hardly sufficient to make Israel holy. In order to achieve a holiness of the kind associated with God and His acts, Israel would have to observe His laws and commandments. The way to holiness, in other words, was for Israelites, individually and collectively, to emulate God\u2019s attributes. In theological terms this principle is known as imitatio dei, \u201cthe imitation of God.\u201d The same interaction is evident, therefore, in the commandment to sanctify the Sabbath, with God and the Israelite people acting in tandem so as to realize the holiness of this occasion. God shows the way and Israel follows.
\nThe biblical term for holiness is kodesh. Though the noun is abstract, it is likely that the perception of holiness was not thoroughly abstract. In fact, kodesh had several meanings, including \u201csacred place, sanctuary, sacred offering.\u201d In addition, in certain syntactic positions, Hebrew nouns function as adjectives. Hebrew shem kodsho, for example, does not mean \u201cthe name of His holiness\u201d but, rather, \u201cHis holy name.\u201d This leads to the conclusion that in the biblical conception holiness is not so much an idea as it is a quality, identified both with what is real and perceptible on earth and with God. Indeed, the only context in which a somewhat abstract notion of \u201choliness\u201d is expressed relates to God\u2019s holiness. God is said to swear by His holiness, just as He swears by His life, His faithfulness, and His power. When speaking of God, it is recognized that holiness is inextricable from His Being; it is a constant, divine attribute.
\nThe overall content of chapter 19, with its diverse categories of laws and commandments, outlines what the Israelites must do in order to become a holy people. It includes many matters of religious concern, as we understand the term: proper worship, observance of the Sabbath, and also the avoidance of actions that are taboo, such as mixed planting and consumption of fruit from trees during the first three years after planting. What is less expected in ritual legislation is the emphasis on human relations: respect for parents, concern for the poor and the stranger, prompt payment of wages, justice in all dealings, and honest conduct of business. Even proper attitudes toward others are commanded.
\nIn this latter respect, chapter 19 accords with prophetic attitudes indicating that the priesthood was highly receptive to the social message of the Israelite prophets. Holiness, an essentially cultic concept, could not be achieved through purity and proper worship alone; it had an important place in the realm of societal experience. Like the Ten Commandments and other major statements on the duties of man toward God, this chapter exemplifies the heightened ethical concern characteristic of ancient Israel.
\nHoliness, as a quality, knows no boundaries of religion or culture. Very often, the reactions it generates are perceived by all, regardless of what they believe. Similarly, places and objects as well as persons considered to be holy by one group may be perceived in the same way by those of other groups. There is something generic about holiness, because all humans share many of the same hopes and fears, and the need for health and well-being. A site regarded as holy by pagans might continue to be regarded as such by monotheists; indeed, some of the most important sacred sites in ancient Israel are known to have had a prior history of sanctity in Canaanite times, although the Bible ignores the pagan antecedents and explains their holiness solely in terms of Israelite history and belief.
\nDespite many differences between Israelite monotheism and the other religions of the ancient Near East, the processes through which holiness was attributed to persons, places, objects, and special times did not differ fundamentally. Through ritual, prayer, and formal declaration sanctification took effect. In biblical Hebrew, these processes are usually expressed by forms of the verb k-d-sh, especially the Piel stem kiddesh, \u201cto devote, sanctify, declare holy.\u201d
\nThe gulf between the sacred and the profane was not meant to be permanent. The command to achieve holiness, to become holy, envisions a time when life would be consecrated in its fullness and when all nations would worship God in holiness. What began as a process of separating the sacred from the profane was to end as the unification of human experience, the harmonizing of man with his universe, and of man with God.<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 7<\/p>\n
The Cult of Molech in Biblical Israel (chap. 20)<\/p>\n
Few subjects have aroused as much controversy among biblical scholars and historians of ancient religions as the references in the Hebrew Bible to the cult of Molech (Moloch). This is attributable to a number of factors. First of all, there is abundant evidence for the practice of child sacrifice; and much of it has been known to modern scholars for quite some time, both from the writings of ancient historians and from archaeological excavations at such sites as Carthage. In recent years, renewed work at Carthage and other sites of the western, Punic commercial empire, such as Sardinia, have added significantly to the cumulative evidence available on child sacrifice in antiquity.
\nThen, too, the subject of child sacrifice, and of human sacrifice generally, is intrinsically provocative. References to the cult of Molech in the Hebrew Bible raise the specter of cruel religious practices among the Israelites, practices abhorrent to the biblical way of life. Some assume an apologetic posture in claiming that such practices were not actually extant at all. By way of contrast, others make overly harsh assessments as to the extent of child sacrifice. Neither point of view is accurate.
\nThe first reference to the cult of Molech in the Torah occurs in Leviticus 18:21, and it is soon followed by the statements in 20:1\u20135. The verbs used in these statements, natan, \u201cto give, devote,\u201d and he\u02bfevir, \u201cto hand over,\u201d do not inform us precisely how Molech worship was carried out. Deuteronomy 18:10, however, forbids one to sacrifice children by literally \u201cpassing\u201d them through fire (ma\u02bfavir \u2026 ba-\u02beesh). This idiom is also used in the most explicit historical reference to the cult of Molech in the Bible, namely, 2 Kings 23:10. That passage recounts the actions of King Josiah of Judah, who, in his zeal for the purification of the Israelite cult, attempted to put an end to child sacrifice: \u201cHe also defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of Ben-hinnom, so that no one might consign his son or daughter to the fire of Molech.\u201d
\nIt is quite clear that Deuteronomy 18:10 refers to the same phenomenon, notwith-standing the absence of specific reference to Molech. In 2 Kings 16:3, we read that King Ahaz of Judah (living about a century earlier than Josiah) burned (saraf) his own son in fire, in imitation of the abominations of the gentiles. The same verb, saraf, is used in Deuteronomy 12:31 in reference to the abominations of other nations.
\nMention of the pagan cult site called Topheth, located in the environs of Jerusalem, recalls Isaiah 30:33, which is part of an oracle predicting the utter defeat of Israel\u2019s enemies. The prophet pictures the destruction of the enemy in a firepit, in the same way that human sacrifices were consumed in the fire of Topheth: \u201cThe Topheth has long been ready for him;\/He, too, is destined for Molech\u2014\/His firepit has been made both wide and deep.\u2026\u201d
\nThe two idioms he\u02bfevir ba-\u02beesh and saraf ba-\u02beesh are virtually equivalent in meaning, as has been demonstrated by Morton Smith. They both mean \u201cto burn in fire.\u201d This is proved by Numbers 31:22\u201323, the only passage in the Bible, in fact, where \u201cpassing through fire\u201d does not refer to human sacrifice! There we read that spoils of war had to be purified before they could be used by the Israelites: \u201cGold and silver, copper, iron, tin, and lead\u2014any article that can withstand fire\u2014these you shall pass through fire and they shall be pure \u2026 and anything that cannot withstand fire you must pass through water.\u201d This statement demonstrates that when something was \u201cpassed through\u201d (he\u02bfevir be-) it was submerged, or immersed, in either fire or water, as the case may be. Now, it is true that metals could be removed from the fire after they had been purified, whereas the children \u201cpassed through\u201d fire could not. Ezekiel 23:37\u201339 is particularly instructive regarding idiom and usage; as the following translation demonstrates: \u201cAnd their sons which they bore Me they have given over to be consumed (he\u02bfeviru le-\u02beokhlak).\u2026 On the very day that they came to My temple, they slaughtered their children to their abominations.\u201d
\nIt has been necessary to dwell at length on the specific language used in the various biblical statements on the cult of Molech in order to make an important point. The ambiguity of such verbs as natan, \u201cto offer, devote,\u201d and he\u02bfevir, \u201cto hand over, pass through,\u201d cannot be construed to mean that child sacrifice was not the target of the Levitical prohibitions of chapters 18 and 20. Historically, the denunciations of human sacrifice by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel may, in the spirit of tirade, have overstated the extent of the cult of Molech; but these prophets hardly invented the fact of royal sponsorship of this cult during the reign of Manasseh and Amon, kings of Judah, who ruled in the seventh century B.C.E., just prior to Josiah. On the other hand, we don\u2019t know how to evaluate the reference in 2 Kings 16:3 to such practices on the part of Ahaz, king of Judah, in the eighth century B.C.E., since there is no other evidence of the cult of Molech at that period, at least not in Judah. It is possible that it existed in the northern Israelite kingdom at that time.
\nIn order to shed light on the history of the cult of Molech in biblical times we must, first of all, understand the phenomenon in religious terms. Did some Israelites believe that the God of Israel desired the sacrifice of children? Was the cult of Molech their way of worshiping the God of Israel? Or, were the injunctions against child sacrifice instead really part of the prohibition of pagan worship\u2014of idolatry and the worship of other gods? Some, pointing to Deuteronomy 12:21, argue that Israelites and their kings had to be admonished against worshiping the God of Israel in such abhorrent ways. The same may be suggested by Micah 6:6\u20137: \u201cWith what shall I approach the LORD \u2026 \/Shall I approach him with burnt offerings \u2026 \/Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,\/The fruit of my body for my sins?\u201d The story of the binding of Isaac, in Genesis 22, could be taken in the same way. God\u2019s demand for the sacrifice of Abraham\u2019s son, as a test of obedience and faith, is incomprehensible unless Abraham is presumed to have thought that God might desire such a sacrifice. When, however, God Himself provides a ram as a substitute, the point is unequivocal that Abraham\u2019s initial perception was wrong.
\nCertainly, child sacrifice was part of the ethos in ancient Canaan, to be used in extreme circumstances. For example, 2 Kings 3:27 relates that a Moabite king sacrificed his son and successor in the heat of battle and was subsequently granted victory. The story of Jephthah\u2019s daughter, recounted in Judges 11, is admittedly cryptic, but it, too, implies that Jephthah eventually sacrificed his daughter in fulfillment of a vow, again in the context of military victory. The curse pronounced in Joshua 6:26 against anyone who would rebuild Jericho\u2014that it would be at the cost of his sons\u2019 lives\u2014is reminiscent of similar execrations known from elsewhere in Near Eastern literature. This curse, fulfilled in 1 Kings 16:34, recalls one of the oldest forms of human sacrifice, the foundation burial. Usually, a child was buried in the foundation of a newly built or restored city to assure its future prosperity. And so, a case could be made that Israelites perceived child sacrifice as a valid way of worshiping the God of Israel and that prohibitions and denunciations of it were intended to correct that mistaken notion.
\nIt is more likely, however, that the Torah laws, and biblical statements generally, are aimed at the worship of other gods rather than at religious syncretism, which is the blending of religious rites of diverse origins in a ritual composite. The God of Israel was the only deity to be worshiped, and no others were to be worshiped alongside Him! The situation under attack is described in 2 Kings 17:41. The foreigners who settled in Samaria after its fall at the hands of the Assyrians in 722 B.C.E. are characterized as follows: \u201cThose nations worshiped the LORD, but they also served their idols. To this day their children and their children\u2019s children do as their ancestors did.\u201d This is the very thing said of the Sepharvites, one of the deported peoples, some verses earlier: \u201cand the Sepharvites burned their children [as offerings] to Adrammelekh and Anammelekh, the gods of Sepharvaim.\u201d These Sepharvites most likely came from a locality in Syria, in the vicinity of Hamath. They were known to burn their children as offerings to gods whose names included melekh, \u201cking,\u201d as a component, such as Adrammelekh, which is a misspelling of Addadmelekh, \u201cAddad-is-King!\u201d
\nIt has been suggested, given the clear reference to the burning of children in Syria in the late eighth century B.C.E., that the cult of Molech described in biblical literature and condemned in the law codes of the Torah was linked historically to the Syro-Assyrian cults that flourished among the Arameans of Syria during a good part of the monarchic period in biblical Israel. Like Syrian art and architecture, Syrian religious practices, including the burning of children, may have been imitated by the kings of Israel and Judah. This historical reconstruction would support the conclusion that the name Molech is a conscious misvocalization of melekh, \u201cking,\u201d intended to convey antipathy.
\nAlthough this reconstruction accords with the times and places reflected in the biblical references to the cult of Molech, it does not exhaust the historical possibilities. It is, of course, more persuasive than the traditional attribution of this cult to ancient Phoenicia. But two other factors should be taken into account. It is likely that more than one cult in the ancient Near East included the burning and sacrificing of children. Then, too, gods with the same names may have been worshiped in different ways, in different places, and at different times. Recently attention has been drawn to Egyptian reliefs from the period of the New Kingdom that depict children being burned and hurled from the walls of besieged cities in Syria and Canaan. An attempt has been made to correlate these reliefs with Ugaritic literary descriptions of sacrifice that date from about the same period; this would suggest that the Ugaritic texts are actually describing the burning or killing of children. This correlation is highly questionable, however, and it is more likely that the Ugaritic texts in question are describing the sacrifice of animals and other usual foodstuffs. So, we lack clear evidence of this cult at Ugarit.
\nIn conclusion, then, definitive judgments concerning the extent of the cult of Molech in biblical Israel will have to await further evidence. For now, it can be reliably stated that this cult was sponsored by Manasseh and Amon, kings of Judah during the seventh century B.C.E., and that it involved the burning of children as sacrifices. How long these practices persisted and how widespread they were are not presently known.<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 8<\/p>\n
The Development of the Biblical Festivals (chap. 23)<\/p>\n
The Sabbath and the annual festivals have played a major role in the religious civilization of the Jewish people since antiquity. They were a factor in defining the social structure of Israelite society in biblical times and, in later centuries, in determining the organization of the dispersed Jewish communities that flourished around the world. The Sabbath and festivals have served to foster close family ties and provide meaningful religious experience. These occasions are the sancta, the religious celebrations that lend to any community its distinctive character and that reinforce its sense of unity and common purpose. They keep the memory of the past alive and enhance the awareness of a common destiny.
\nThe first general observation to be made about religious festivals is that everything about them is significant\u2014including the names by which they are called, the dates scheduled for their observance, and the manner of their celebration. All of these aspects underwent change in ancient Israel, and various biblical sources offer differing conceptions of the Sabbath and festivals, reflecting differences of time and place. The religious worshiper tends to accept traditional forms as they have come down from the past. The historian of religions, on the other hand, must insist on discovering, to the extent possible, how these forms have changed.<\/p>\n
The Sabbath<\/p>\n
So far as is currently known, the Sabbath is an original Israelite institution. The proposed identification of the biblical Sabbath with other ancient Near Eastern sacred days, such as the Mesopotamian shapattu, a day associated with the phases of the moon, is highly doubtful. To the contrary, the biblical Sabbath has nothing to do with the lunar cycle. It has been shown that the division of time into regular weeks that end in the Sabbath day represents a departure from the system of lunar \u201cmonths\u201d that predominated in the ancient Near East. The Sabbath is to be seen as innovative, even within Israelite society itself.
\nThe Sabbath is attested outside of Torah literature in fairly early biblical texts, although it seems to have gained in importance late in the seventh century B.C.E., during the period preceding the Babylonian exile. It is mentioned by the prophets Isaiah (1:13) and Amos (5:8) in the eighth century B.C.E. Hosea\u2019s reference to the Sabbath (2:13) is even more significant historically because the first three chapters of Hosea may date from the ninth century B.C.E.
\nThe commandment to observe the Sabbath by desisting from mela\u02bekhah, \u201cassigned tasks,\u201d is found in the oldest collection of laws in the Torah, the Book of the Covenant, in Exodus 23:12. Both versions of the Decalogue, in Exodus 20:5f. and in Deuteronomy 5:12f., also command this observance, and it is emphasized repeatedly in priestly laws. As is true of all sacred days, observance of the Sabbath incorporated both cultic and more personal dimensions. In the sanctuary (or sanctuaries) priests celebrated the Sabbath with sacrifice and prayer, attended by the populace; and in the Israelite settlements and towns, the family observed the day by rejoicing and desisting from daily work.
\nThe particular formulation of the Sabbath law in Leviticus 23 most closely resembles that of Exodus 31:12\u201317 and 35:1\u20133, as noted in the Commentary. All of these priestly statements seem to be modeled, in turn, after the Exodus version of the Decalogue, the most emphatic affirmation of the aspect of sanctity. The Deuteronomic version of the Decalogue, while stating, of course, that the Sabbath is to be observed as a sacred occasion, stresses the ethical aspects of the Sabbath as a day of rest from labor. Consequently, rather than regarding the Sabbath as a reminder that the Creator had rested on the Sabbath of Creation, Deuteronomy links Sabbath rest to the Exodus: Sabbath rest is the expression of freedom and the negation of bondage. The emphasis on sanctity, to be expected in priestly legislation, is epitomized in the term mikra\u02be kodesh, \u201ca sacred assembly,\u201d a term that probably originates in the Holiness Code (Lev. 17\u201326). It occurs no fewer than ten times in chapter 23, in various connections. Even the term shabbaton, also an innovation of priestly literature, echoes this theme. Sacred occasions are \u201cSabbath-like,\u201d and the characteristics of the Sabbath day serve as a paradigm for the festivals, as well.
\nThe provisions of chapter 23 and of the Holiness Code, generally, with their strong emphasis on sanctity, seem to correlate with Jeremiah 17, Ezekiel 20 and 22, and the words of the exilic prophet\u2014Deutero-Isaiah\u2014on the subject of the Sabbath\u2019s holiness. In Ezekiel 44:24 and 46:1\u201311 we read that the future prince of the restored Israelites will officiate at special rites in the Temple of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. In the late fifth century B.C.E., Nehemiah, leader of the restored community, expresses concern over the proper observance of the Sabbath as a sacred day in Jerusalem and its environs. No doubt the cruel experience of the exile made it more difficult, yet more vital than ever, to observe the Sabbath.
\nThe primary regulation governing the Sabbath is the prohibition of mela\u02bekhah, \u201cassigned tasks.\u201d Exodus 35:3 expressly forbids use of fire; and the gathering of wood for that purpose is presupposed as forbidden in the narrative of Numbers 15:32f. From Exodus 16:5f., a narrative about the manna, which served the Israelites as food in the Sinai wilderness, we may infer that the gathering of food as well as cooking and baking were forbidden on the Sabbath day. Jeremiah (17:21) objected to transporting goods outside one\u2019s house, which may represent his understanding of the Decalogue\u2019s rule against using work animals on the Sabbath. These regulations further correlate with the admonitions of the exilic prophet, in Isaiah 58:13, against pursuing one\u2019s affairs on the Sabbath day.
\nThe elaborate laws governing forbidden tasks, characteristic of later Judaism, developed through the hermeneutic interpretation of biblical pronouncements. They also relate to the Temple cult, in that those tasks necessary for the performance of the cult\u2014carried out even on the Sabbath\u2014became a model for defining the very tasks generally forbidden to Israelites. For example, slaughter, prerequisite to the act of sacrifice, is forbidden on the Sabbath.
\nJust as festivals are occasions for rejoicing, so is the Sabbath. Special sacrifices were offered in celebration. Each Sabbath the bread of display (le\u1e25em ha-panim) was set before God in the sanctuary, to be left until the following Sabbath. From 2 Kings 16:18 we learn that during the period of the Judean monarchy, kings had a role in the celebration of the Sabbath in the Temple of Jerusalem. Ahaz, who reigned in the eighth century B.C.E., installed a passageway leading from his palace to the Temple, so that he could enter it conveniently on the Sabbath. From 2 Kings 11:5\u20137 we learn that priestly tours of duty lasted from one Sabbath to the next.
\nPsalm 92, entitled \u201cA psalm. A song; for the sabbath day,\u201d speaks of praising God with music and of proclaiming His sovereignty. The emphasis on God the Creator echoes the Exodus version of the Decalogue, whereas in the victory of righteousness over wickedness, where God is the triumphant warrior, we hear an echo of the Exodus saga, the liberation from Egypt.
\nThe exilic author of Isaiah 66:23 foresees a time when all the peoples of the earth will worship the God of Israel in the Temple of Jerusalem, on Sabbaths and New Moons.<\/p>\n
The Annual Festivals<\/p>\n
A reconstruction of the development of the biblical festivals has by and large eluded modern scholarship primarily because the priestly laws of the Torah, which provide most of the detailed information on festival observance, cannot be dated precisely. Put differently, we are not certain of the chronological relationship of the Torah and its laws to the historical books of the Bible and the writings of the prophets.
\nIn particular, there has been uncertainty about the origin and date of Deuteronomy in relation to the priestly laws of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Deuteronomy is pivotal because its provisions call for a basic change in religious celebration. The three annual festivals are called \u1e25ag, \u201cpilgrimage,\u201d in the earliest laws of the Torah, preserved in Exodus 23:15f. This meant that an Israelite wishing to celebrate the festival fully was obliged to undertake a pilgrimage to a cult center or to a temple. According to the early law of Exodus 20:24, God may be worshiped at any properly constructed altar at which worship is conducted in the correct manner. There were cult centers throughout the Land of Israel suitable for such festival celebrations.
\nDeuteronomy 12 and 16 invalidate this pattern. All sacrifices, including, of course, those for festival celebrations, were to be carried out at one, unique, central Temple, to be designated by God. In practical terms, this meant that the duty of pilgrimage could no longer be fulfilled at local and regional cult centers, but exclusively at the central Temple. As we shall see, this restriction altered the character of the annual festivals in basic ways, affecting their scheduling, duration, and manner of observance.
\nIn a recent study, H. L. Ginsberg has shed new light on the origins and promulgation of the Deuteronomic doctrine of a centralized cult and its effects on Israelite religion and later Judaism. He traces the derivation of the core of Deuteronomy, where the new legislation is found, and addresses the question of whether or not the priestly laws of the Torah reflect Deuteronomic teachings.
\nIn Ginsberg\u2019s view, the core of Deuteronomy comes from the northern kingdom of Israel and was first formulated in the mid to late eighth century B.C.E. The original intent of Deuteronomy was to advocate the establishment of a new, central Temple in northern Israel, where all proper worship of the God of Israel would be centralized. This doctrine was a response to the heterodoxy rampant at the time and is presaged by Hosea, who finally conceded that not only were the smaller, local shrines of northern Israel abominable, but even Bethel, as well.
\nAfter the downfall of northern Israel, annexed by the Assyrians in 722 B.C.E., the core of the Book of Deuteronomy found its way to Jerusalem. It was the Deuteronomic doctrine that impelled Hezekiah, king of Judea, to attempt the centralization of the cult. That attempt failed for a number of reasons, since Hezekiah\u2019s reign was followed by the long reign of the heterodox king, Manassch. The doctrine of cult centralization survived underground, kept alive in certain circles. When Josiah, a young monarch instructed by devout priests, ascended the Judean throne, he revived the idea of purging the cult of its heterodoxy by limiting sacrificial worship to the Temple of Jerusalem. He may have learned this doctrine from a version of Deuteronomy found in the Temple. Thus, Hezekiah and Josiah effectively translated the Deuteronomic idea of a central temple, perhaps intended originally to be located on Mount Gerizim in Shechem, into the doctrine that the Temple of Jerusalem was that central Temple, the exclusive site of proper worship.
\nGinsberg compares and contrasts the earliest pre-Deuteronomic laws on the celebration of the festivals with the priestly laws of Leviticus and Numbers. In the earliest laws preserved in Exodus 21\u201323, we find the following information: three festivals are called \u1e25ag, \u201cpilgrimage\u201d: (1) matsot, the festival of unleavened bread, (2) katsir, \u201creaping,\u201d a spring harvest festival, and (3) \u02beasif, \u201cingathering,\u201d an autumn festival.
\nThe pilgrimage festival of matsot, \u201cunleavened bread,\u201d precedes the ripening of the grain in the spring of the year. By its very nature it is an historical commemoration, not an agricultural festival at all, as is stated in Exodus 23:15: \u201cYou shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread\u2014eating unleavened bread for seven days as I have commanded you\u2014at the advent of the new moon of the season of soft-seeded grain ears. For it was then that you went forth from Egypt; and none shall appear before Me empty-handed.\u201d To explain the translation, it should be realized that the Hebrew word \u1e25odesh, which is the normal term for \u201cmonth,\u201d is taken here to mean the \u201cnew moon.\u201d In this verse, the clause \u201cas I have commanded you\u201d refers to Exodus 13:4\u20139, which contains the same essential provisions, except that it specifies the exact time of the pilgrimage itself. The pilgrimage is to take place on the seventh day after the New Moon, as a finale to the festival celebration.
\nAccording to Exodus 12:21\u201328, the paschal sacrifice that initiates the festival is to be offered by Israelite families near their homes. They are to slaughter sheep or goats and smear some of the blood on the lintels and doorposts of their homes. This rite is to be performed sometime in the evening, and no person is to leave his house subsequent to it, until morning.
\nExodus 23:18 states the primary relationship between the matsot festival and the paschal sacrifice: \u201cYou shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with anything leavened.\u201d This means, in effect, that the festival opens with the paschal sacrifice, at which time the prohibition against eating leaven also begins.
\nExodus 12:1\u201320, a priestly passage that may contain ancient material, ordains that the paschal sacrifice be roasted whole over an open fire, with no bones broken and no sectioning of the animal. This differed from the practice in altar sacrifices. In fact, no altar was used at all. Bitter herbs were to be eaten together with matsot. The sacrifice was to be offered in the early evening (bein ha-\u02bfarbayim).
\nThe two agricultural pilgrimage festivals were katsir, \u201creaping,\u201d and \u02beasif, \u201cingathering.\u201d The year was perceived as being divided into two primary seasons, degan, \u201cgrain,\u201d and tirosh, \u201cwine\u201d (sometimes yitshar, \u201coil\u201d). Thus, we read in Exodus 23:16f., in the continuation of the early festival law: \u201cAnd the Pilgrimage Feast of the Harvest, of the first fruits of your work, of what you sow in the field; and the Pilgrimage Feast of the Ingathering, at the outset of the year, when you gather in the results of your work from the field.\u201d No date is given for the spring grain harvest festival, although it was clearly intended to celebrate the reaping of barley, the first grain of the spring. The autumn festival was scheduled for \u201cthe outset of the year.\u201d Its time can be fixed on the basis of the ancient Gezer calendar, in which the agricultural year began in autumn. That calendar mentions a two-month-long season called \u02beasif, \u201cingathering,\u201d the same as the name of the festival. We can fix the season of autumn ingathering as Tishrei-Heshvan, our September\u2013October. Working ahead in time from autumn to spring, we can fix \u201cthe month of reaping (yr\u1e25 qtsr in the Gezer calendar) as Iyyar, our month of May. Most likely, each farmer would present his first fruits on a date of his own choosing. The pilgrimage festival called \u02beasif occurred, therefore, at the outset of this two-month period. One might have expected it to fall on the New Moon of Tishrei, but we are informed that the actual pilgrimage was to occur at the full moon, at the middle of the month.
\nTo summarize what we know of the three pilgrimage festivals, based on laws that clearly antedate Deuteronomy, we can state the following: (1) The matsot festival began on the New Moon of the month just preceding the hardening of the barley (Nisan-April). It lasted seven days, and on the seventh day the pilgrimage took place. A sacrifice was to be offered outside one\u2019s home on the eve of the first day of the festival. Matsot were to be eaten and leaven avoided for all seven days. (2) The barley harvest festival (katsir) occurred when reaping started, at the beginning of the month of reaping, namely, sometime near the beginning of lyyar-May. The pilgrimage lasted one day. (3) The festival of ingathering (\u02beasif) occurred on the full moon of the former two-month season of the month of ingathering (Tishrei-September). The pilgrimage lasted one day.
\nGinsberg in his analysis then addresses the question of how Deuteronomy\u2019s doctrine of cult centralization altered this system. A careful reading of Deuteronomy 16 reveals that, first of all, the spring barley harvest festival was deferred seven weeks and its name was changed from \u1e25ag ha-katsir, \u201cthe Pilgrimage Festival of Reaping,\u201d to \u1e25ag shavu\u02bfot, \u201ca Pilgrimage Festival of Weeks.\u201d This occasion could no longer appropriately be called katsir because it was not to be celebrated at the beginning of the grain harvest.
\nThe reason for the postponement was practical. When pilgrimage had been only a short trip to a nearby cult center a farmer could manage the brief absence from his fields at the beginning of the grain harvest. Once a longer journey to a central Temple was involved, leaving the fields became virtually impossible; the spring harvest festival was necessarily postponed. One counted seven weeks from \u201cwhen the sickle is first put to the standing grain\u201d (Deut. 16:9) and then celebrated the pilgrimage festival\u2014at a time when absence from the fields was possible.
\nDeuteronomy deals in much the same way with the Festival of Ingathering. In Deuteronomy 16:13\u201317 we read of a seven-day pilgrimage festival. It is not called \u02beasif, \u201cingathering,\u201d but rather \u1e25ag ha-sukkot, \u201cthe Pilgrimage Festival of Booths.\u201d No longer celebrated when produce was first brought in from the field, it was delayed until after the produce had been processed on the threshing floor and the vat. Once the spring harvest festival had been postponed for practical reasons, it became necessary to postpone the autumn pilgrimage as well, so that they would not occur in too close a succession. We do not have the precise date during the year of the Deuteronomic Sukkot festival, but its new name is readily understandable. Once the festival was extended to seven days to be celebrated in the religious capital, it became necessary to provide temporary housing for pilgrims in and around the city. Huts were erected for this purpose. Nehemiah 8:13\u201318 provides a description of such a Sukkot celebration in postexilic times.
\nThe most thorny problem created by Deuteronomy\u2019s restriction of sacrificial worship to one central Temple concerned the paschal offering and the matsot festival. The paschal sacrifice could no longer be offered near one\u2019s home. Not only rescheduling, but restructuring the entire celebration was called for. Israelites would have to arrive at the religious capital before the eve of the matsot festival and then remain there, in most cases, until the seventh day of the festival, when the pilgrimage was celebrated. They might not have time to get home and back in a period of six or seven days. It was therefore ordained in Deuteronomy 16:1\u20138 that the paschal sacrifice be offered later in the evening: ba-\u02bferev ke-vo\u02be ha-shemesh, \u201cin the evening when the sun sets.\u201d In this way, the paschal sacrifice could also serve as the sacrifice of the first day of the matsot festival. This explains why, according to Deuteronomy 16:8, matsot must be eaten for six days, not for seven, as in earlier laws. The paschal sacrifice counted as part of the pilgrimage, which now occurred on the first, not the seventh, day of the festival, thus leaving only six remaining days. The morning after the paschal sacrifice an Israelite returned \u201cto his tent.\u201d He was required to eat matsot until after the seventh day of the festival and to observe the seventh day as an \u02bfatseret, \u201cconcluding assembly,\u201d a day on which labor was forbidden. This \u02bfatseret was a remembrance of the \u1e25ag that had formerly occurred on that day.
\nIn effect, Deuteronomy transformed the paschal sacrifice into the pilgrimage sacrifice, and in so doing, prescribed the same mode of sacrifice as obtained for a normal zeva\u1e25, \u201csacred feast\u201d: It was to be boiled in pots and might consist of large or small cattle. The paschal sacrifice did double duty in commemorating the Exodus, as before, but also in representing the offering required on the pilgrimage day. Deuteronomy 16:1 even declared the moment of the Exodus to have been at night, so that technically it could be commemorated on the first day of the festival, not on the eve of the festival. The unusual fact that the initial sacrifice had been set for the eve of the festival was utilized in its restructuring. This remarkable accommodation is subtly expressed in Exodus 34:25, a paraphrase of Exodus 23:18 with Deuteronomic overtones:<\/p>\n
Exodus 23:18
\nExodus 34:25<\/p>\n
You shall not offer (tizba\u1e25) the blood of My sacred feast (ziv\u1e25i) together with anything leavened; nor shall the fat of My pilgrimage offering (\u1e25aggai) be left until morning.
\nYou shall not slaughter (tish\u1e25at) the blood of My sacred feast (ziv\u1e25i) together with anything leavened; nor shall the sacred feast of the pesa\u1e25 pilgrimage festival (zeva\u1e25 \u1e25ag ha-pesa\u1e25) be left until morning.<\/p>\n
Whereas Exodus 23:18 speaks of two separate sacrifices\u2014the paschal sacrifice and the pilgrimage sacrifice, which were to occur on two successive days\u2014Exodus 34:25 produces a synonymous parallelism, whereby both parts of the verse refer to one and the same sacrifice!
\nThis reconstruction helps explain the terms of Josiah\u2019s edict of 622 B.C.E., recorded in 2 Kings 23:21\u201323. The king commanded that the paschal sacrifice be offered in the Temple of Jerusalem, thus discontinuing the customary domestic sacrifice. This had never occurred before and was clearly in accord with the provisions of Deuteronomy 16:1\u20138. In Josiah\u2019s edict there is no mention of the pilgrimage because that was not problematic. The pilgrimage of the matsot festival had always brought Israelites to the Temple of Jerusalem and to other cult centers, but the paschal sacrifice had not.
\nAgainst the background of the Deuteronomic laws, which sought to accommodate earlier practice to the centralization of the cult, we can proceed to place the priestly laws governing the festivals in historical perspective. The primary priestly source is this chapter. The Holiness Code, which includes Leviticus 23, accepts Deuteronomy\u2019s seven-week postponement of the spring pilgrimage festival. Thus 23:15f. restates the duty to count seven weeks, here calculated from the offering of the first sheaf of grain. Consonant with the emphasis of the Holiness Code on the importance of the Sabbath, seven Sabbatical weeks (weeks ending on the Sabbath) are to be counted, in Hebrew sbabbatot, not shavu\u02bfot. This postponement is understandable only as a response to Deuteronomy\u2019s deferral of the spring harvest festival.
\nActually, chapter 23 has only two pilgrimage festivals, instead of three: matsot and sukkot. The \u1e25ag called shavu\u02bfot in Deuteronomy 16:10 was henceforth to be celebrated in the sanctuary and in the Israelite settlements (\u201cfrom your settlements\u2014mi-moshevoteikhem\u201d). Loaves of leavened bread, made of semolina wheat flour (solet), were delivered to the sanctuary and there offered to God. In 23:15f., the spring harvest festival is not designated \u1e25ag\u2014there was no pilgrimage!
\nThe matsot festival of Leviticus 23 accords with Deuteronomy in some respects and differs in others. The paschal sacrifice is to be offered in the sanctuary, as Deuteronomy insists. It is clear, therefore, that in this regard Leviticus 23 is dependent on Deuteronomy 16. Nevertheless, Leviticus 23 reverts to the practice of offering the paschal sacrifice in the late afternoon, rather than after sunset. Furthermore, the date of the festival had been changed to the fifteenth day of the month, to the time of the full moon, placing the paschal sacrifice late in the afternoon of the fourteenth day. The pilgrimage lasted for seven days, and the first and seventh days were sacred assemblies, on which labor was prohibited.
\nIt is not entirely clear why the Holiness Code reverts to this older pattern. Perhaps there was a realistic sense that pilgrims would not flock to Jerusalem for the matsot festival, in any event. From Numbers 9:4\u201315 we learn that impure persons, or those very distant from the sanctuary, could offer the paschal sacrifice in the second month, instead of the first month. This dispensation betrays Deuteronomic influence, because it is only comprehensible once sacrifice was restricted to one, central Temple.
\nThe Deuteronomic Sukkot festival is adopted in Leviticus 23, but its postponement had become unnecessary. Its earlier date, on the full moon of the seventh month, was therefore restored, and once again, in Leviticus 23:39 we read of ingathering of produce from the field, not of its processing. The Deuteronomic requirement of a seven-day pilgrimage is, however, retained and understood historically as a commemoration of the Sinai wanderings.
\nHow shall we explain the unusual \u02bfatseret, \u201cconcluding assembly,\u201d of the eighth day, ordained in Leviticus 23:36? Deuteronomy 16 gives no date for Sukkot, but it is probable that in the Deuteronomic schedule Sukkot occurred during the last seven days of the year, as it was then reckoned, in the Hebrew of Exodus 34:22: tekufat ha-shanah, literally \u201cthe turn of the year.\u201d This means that the day following the festival was the New Year, or the New Moon of the first month, according to the calendar then in use. When the Holiness Code restored the festival to its earlier date, so that it no longer occurred at the end of the year, it merely took the Deuteronomic New Year along and called it \u02bfatseret. It was a vestige of the old New Moon of what had been the first month of the year.
\nAll of these changes in schedule are enumerated by a new scribal system, in which months are listed ordinally, \u201cthe first month,\u201d \u201cthe seventh month,\u201d and so forth. This system came into vogue in the near-exilic period, beginning in the late seventh century B.C.E. It is used in Jeremiah, in 2 Kings 25:1, 25, and in contemporary epigraphy. It occurs from level six in the Arad ostraca, dated to the years just prior to the Babylonian destruction of the early sixth century B.C.E.
\nIn addition to festivals known from nonpriestly sources, Leviticus 23 ordains two additional occasions in the seventh month. The first day of the seventh month is a time for blasting the shofar and is designated \u201ca sacred assembly\u201d when labor is prohibited. The Holiness Code probably took its cue from Psalms 81:4: \u201cBlow the horn on the new moon.\u201d This was the New Moon preceding the principal pilgrimage festival of the seventh month, \u1e25ag ha-sukkot. The Day of Atonement, which falls on the tenth day of the seventh month, is prescribed as a day of complete rest. The date of Yom Kippur is first indicated in Leviticus 16:29\u201334, an addendum to chapter 16, which is the primary source of information on the purification rites of Yom Kippur. In fact, Leviticus 23 may well be the source of Leviticus 16:29\u201334. The timing of the annual purification of the sanctuary is suggestive. Before the major, annual pilgrimage on the Sukkot festival it was appropriate to purify the sanctuary. Many worshipers would already have arrived a few days in advance of the festival.
\nThe further development of the festivals may be traced through the laws of Numbers 28\u201329, but that would carry us beyond Leviticus.<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 9<\/p>\n
Retaliation and Compensation in Biblical Criminal Law (chap. 24)<\/p>\n
Chapter 24 (vv. 17\u201322) figures prominently in the talmudic discussion of the law of retaliation, or lex talionis, as it is known in Roman jurisprudence. The sages insisted that the original intent of the Torah was to allow compensation for bodily injuries, even when intentionally inflicted, and not to inflict the same injury on the offender. The only exception was murder, since Numbers 35:31 expressly prohibits compensation and demands the life of the murderer. The broad scope of the talmudic discussion in Bava Kamma 83bf. reflects an intense polemical effort on the part of the rabbis to demonstrate the milder intent of biblical law. Because this law is so often the subject of conflicting assessments of the humaneness of biblical law, or its harshness, it might be well to review the talmudic discussion in detail.
\nOn the hermeneutic level, verses 17\u201322 of our chapter suggested to the rabbis an analogy between damage to property involved in the killing of another\u2019s animal and injury to persons. Verse 18 speaks of compensating for an animal one has killed, referring to such payment as nefesh ta\u1e25at nefesh, \u201clife for life.\u201d In the biblical context, this undoubtedly meant that the guilty party was expected to provide either an animal in place of the one he killed or its equivalent value. The talmudic sages make the comparison with the same formula, x ta\u1e25at x, that is stipulated for bodily injuries in humans, as in \u201can eye for an eye,\u201d and so forth. They reason that if x ta\u1e25at x meant compensation in the case of animals it would mean the same in the case of injuries inflicted on humans. Their case seemed to be reinforced by the fact that in verse 21 the law repeated the principle of compensation or the replacement of destroyed animals.
\nHowever, this hermeneutic interpretation is problematic in that it compares humans with animals. The interpretation is finally sustained on the basis of an analogy drawn between chapter 24 and Deuteronomy 22:29. There it is stated that if one rapes a virgin he must pay her father an amount of silver in compensation ta\u1e25at \u02beasher \u02bfinnah, literally \u201cin lieu of having forced her.\u201d Just as ta\u1e25at in that instance indicates compensation, so in our law, ta\u1e25at would indicate compensation. Both laws deal with humans, after all.
\nModern scholars have for the most part reacted against these arguments, which they regard as an apologetic line of interpretation: they insist that the original laws of the Torah are to be understood literally. Some comparativists, on the other hand, endorse traditional interpretation on the grounds that in other, even older Near Eastern legal systems, the principle of compensation in the case of humans was recognized. It would not be unprecedented if the Torah laws incorporated the principle of compensation, as well.
\nThe matter to be ascertained is whether the biblical criminal system is best understood as having literal intent where bodily mutilation is the stated penalty. Both capital and corporal punishment were operative in the biblical system. Deuteronomy 25:12 ordains that the hand of a woman be severed in the event she seized the genitals of a man who was fighting with her husband. Surely, this punishment must be understood literally as a form of retribution. Numbers 16:14 provides a taunting reference to plucking out one\u2019s eyes as a punishment. This probably also reflects reality and implies that doing so was a well-known form of punishment, although we find few actual references to it.
\nIn a curious way, the talmudic discussion of lex talionis betrays a realization that\u2014in a legal system that elsewhere provides for corporal and capital punishment\u2014only by hermeneutic argument can it be demonstrated that the original intent was to impose compensation, not to inflict mutilation on the offender. Let us review that discussion: There is, first of all, an appeal to equity. The Torah states mishpat \u02bee\u1e25ad yibyek lakhem, \u201cone standard shall apply to you.\u201d This the sages interpret to mean mishpat ha-shaveh le-khulkhem, \u201cjustice that is equitable to all of you\u201d; and they point to cases where imposition of bodily injury as a punishment would not be equitable. In the case of a criminal already blind in one eye, plucking out his remaining eye would disable him more than his own act disabled the victim, who had two good eyes at the outset. This argument, however, is refuted in the talmud in several ways. Most interesting, perhaps, is the observation that since similar inequities did not invalidate capital punishment as an institution they should not invalidate the principle of mutilation.
\nThere is also an objection registered against the criterion of feasibility. Merely because the literal penalty cannot always be imposed does not invalidate the principle; for example, in the case of a man already blind who blinded another in one eye, retaliatory punishment cannot be imposed on the offender. The rabbis observe, in this regard, that although a murderer may die naturally before the capital sentence is carried out, one would not suggest doing away with capital punishment altogether. Clearly, when the sentence can be carried out, it is; and when this is not possible, obviously, it is not. Intent, likewise, is not a consistently valid criterion. Legal penalties are not totally discarded because in certain circumstances their implementation may overstep the intent of the law. Flogging is retained as a means of punishment even though the criminal being so punished may die under the lash. In such cases, the court is not liable for his death.
\nCompensation is a very ancient alternative to mutilation in Near Eastern law. The Code of Hammurabi ordains bodily mutilation in some cases and legislates compensation in still others. The Code of Eshnunna frequently allows for compensation in cases of bodily injury. The same is true in the Hittite laws. According to the Middle Assyrian laws, one who strikes the daughter of one who shares his rank and thereby causes a miscarriage may compensate, but if the injured woman is another man\u2019s wife, even of his own rank, he must pay with his life. In these other codes there are several variables that determine the type of penalty imposed. Often the criterion is social status. Injuries inflicted on slaves seldom require retaliatory punishment. A form of stratification also figures in biblical law. Exodus 21:26\u201327 stipulates that one who struck out the eye of his slave must give him his freedom, which is a form of compensation.
\nThe point is that in a system that recognizes both retaliation and compensation and employs both modes of punishment selectively, which kind of penalty applies is a matter to be determined case by case. Thus, if an injury to a slave may be punished by compensation, we may deduce that a similar injury to a free Israelite could not be compensated or else the text would clearly state as much. It is reasonable to conclude that the law of the Torah was severe in the area of bodily injuries inflicted intentionally by one Israelite upon another. Later Jewish authorities thought that mutilation was unconscionable as a punishment. This testifies to their own sensibilities; they resorted to hermeneutic interpretation in a humane cause. This does not, however, alter the realities of biblical law in its original context, the realities of which the talmudic sages may well have been aware.<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 10<\/p>\n
The Inalienable Right to the Land of Israel (chap. 25)<\/p>\n
Leviticus 25 is the only collection of laws preserved in the Torah that defines the legal status of land held by clans and individuals in ancient Israel. The procedures it establishes for the sale and transfer of land guarantee the rights of owners. The chapter also deals with the use of land as security for debts and with the system of indenture whereby debtors repay their indebtedness with their own labor and with that of members of their families.
\nUnderlying this legislation is a theory of land tenure that may be formulated quite simply: The God of Israel, to whom all land ultimately belongs, has granted the Land of Israel to His people, Israel, as an everlasting \u02bea\u1e25uzzah, \u201cholding.\u201d In so doing, he has imposed on them certain conditions of tenure. Foremost among these is denial of the right to alienate land through its permanent conveyance to a purchaser\u2014a right that is usually considered an intrinsic element of ownership.
\nLeviticus 25 represents a valuable source of knowledge, encompassing both theory and practice, relating to a central concern: the right of the people of Israel to its land. It is surprising how little the Hebrew Bible has to say on the subject of land ownership. Neither the Book of the Covenant (Exod. 21\u201323) nor the laws of Deuteronomy deal with this subject in detail. Deuteronomy 19:14\u201315 prohibits encroaching on another\u2019s property by altering established boundary limits. This law resembles many similar provisions in ancient treaties that forbid removal of boundary stones. Numbers 27, whose provisions are presupposed in Numbers 36, sets down rules of inheritance governing family property. In addition, prophets condemn the tendency of the rich and powerful to foreclose on the land of the poor: \u201cAh,\/Those who add house to house,\/And join field to field.\u201d And the story of Naboth of Jezreel, preserved in 1 Kings 21, confirms that even a king of northern Israel, ruling in the ninth century B.C.E., could not legally compel one of his subjects to sell any part of his family estate.
\nThe diverse contents of chapter 25 should be studied against the background of several biblical institutions that bear on the role of arable land in an agricultural economy. First among these is the law of the seventh year, called the sabbatical year in chapter 25. There are three basic statements in the Torah relating to the seventh year: Exodus 23:10\u201311; Deuteronomy 15:1\u20136; and in this chapter, verses 1\u201324. The Exodus passage, which is the earliest, speaks of agrarian pursuits. All Israelites are to let their fields lie fallow every seventh year. During that year sowing the fields and tending the vineyards and groves are expressly forbidden; and the needy among the people must have free access to all that grows on its own. The key verb in the passage is shamat, \u201cto let go, release.\u201d The provisions of Deuteronomy 15:1\u20136 say nothing about agriculture or land per se. In the view of some modern scholars, these verses do not provide for an agricultural release of the land at all, but are concerned only with indebtedness, ordaining a moratorium on debts every seventh year. From the verb shamat, \u201cto release,\u201d applied in Exodus 23 to fallow land, Deuteronomy derives the noun shemitah, \u201crelease\u201d\u2014that is, from indebtedness.
\nTalmudic law regarding Exodus 23:10\u201311 and Deuteronomy 15:1\u20136 views them as complementary, calling the requirement of Exodus, shemitat karka\u02bfot, \u201crelease of lands,\u201d and of Deuteronomy, shemitat kesafim, \u201crelease of monetary claims.\u201d The talmudic sages were correct in making this association. It is decidedly more reasonable to see Deuteronomy 15 as continuing the legislation of Exodus 23 by extending it to the matter of indebtedness. We therefore translate Deuteronomy 15:1ff. as follows: \u201cEvery seventh year you shall execute a release. The following shall [also] be the subject of the release:Every owner shall release the pledge that he claims from his neighbor.\u201d In agrarian economies, virtually all indebtedness was linked to the soil. It often became necessary to borrow seasonally in order to secure seeds for sowing, implements, work animals, and the means to pay workers. The vicissitudes and uncertainties of agriculture\u2014poor crop yields, drought, blight, and crippling taxation\u2014were the factors that most often drove farmers into longterm debt and, subsequently, to indenture, when all other means failed to alleviate indebtedness.
\nThe alignment of the legal statements of the Torah on the subject of indebtedness and indenture, on the one hand, and the release of the land, on the other, raises a basic question. Is the law of Deuteronomy 15:1\u20136, which imposes a moratorium on debts every seventh year, linked to the statute that limits the duration of indenture in verses 12\u201318 of the same chapter? That is, was indenture to last only until the next scheduled year of release from indebtedness, or was it to last a full six years\u2014unrelated to the release of the land? This question has been studied by Nahum M. Sarna on the basis of the evidence in Jeremiah 34. Sarna explains that the prophet understands the law of the Torah to mean that the release of indentured servants is to occur every seventh year, regardless of when indenture had begun. As recounted in Jeremiah, with the Chaldeans at the gates of Jerusalem, King Zedekiah ordered the immediate release of all indentured servants, much in the manner of a Babylonian king issuing an edict of mesharum, \u201cequity.\u201d His motive was probably to provide fighting men to defend Jerusalem; and the edict of release was, in reality, a form of conscription. When the crisis eased, many of the indentured servants were summarily repossessed by their creditors. Jeremiah (34:14), denouncing this procedure, states that the Torah commands that literally \u201cevery seventh year\u201d (mi-kets shepa\u02bf shanim) indentured servants are to be permanently released.
\nThis prophetic statement represents a meaningful interpretation. Although in Deuteronomy 15:1 the formula \u201cevery seventh year\u201d pertains to monetary claims, not indentured servants, Jeremiah 34:14 applies it to indentured servants, which is the subject of Deuteronomy 15:12\u201318. For the prophet, the fact that the two Deuteronomic laws are separated in the text does not mean that they are legally unrelated. He explains indenture as being limited to the interval between the scheduled years of release. In fact, the same is probably true of the laws of Exodus 21, 23. The law of indenture is found in Exodus 21:1f., whereas the agricultural release is ordained in Exodus 23:10\u201311. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that from earliest times the limit on indenture was a function, or feature, of the seventh year, not an absolute statute of limitations.
\nOnce a law requiring cessation from agricultural pursuits every seventh year was in force, certain economic problems ensued. Landowners, having no need for indentured servants during the seventh year because they were not at work, would not provide them with room and board. Such needy persons would have to sustain themselves on gleanings, indeed, exactly the situation reflected in the words of Exodus 23:11. The needy among the people must be allowed free access to what grows on its own in the seventh year. In similar circumstances, Deuteronomy 15:7f. uses the term \u02beevyon, \u201cneedy person,\u201d the same characterization that occurs in Exodus 23. It would have been the height of cruelty were creditors to reimpose indenture on such needy persons after the seventh year. Those unable to repay debts in times of normal agricultural activity could hardly have done so after a year of unemployment. The result would have been serfdom, a condition of permanent disenfranchisement from the land. Deuteronomy 15 actually reinforces the linkage of indebtedness and indenture to the seven-year agricultural cycle. In commanding the liberation of all Israelites every seventh year, it even abolishes the ancient distinction (retained in Exod. 21) between male and female servants.
\nThe practice of allowing arable land to lie fallow periodically was a necessary aspect of ancient agriculture, especially where extensive irrigation was utilized. It served to reduce the quantity of alkalines, sodium and calcium, deposited in the soil by irrigation waters. In modern times, with the use of fertilizers, the soil is replenished through crop rotation. So, although the scheduled release of land every seventh year may smack of artificiality, expressing the cyclic thinking of the ancient Israelites, the agricultural advantages were real.
\nIn this regard, we know that one of the major causes for the decline of the once prosperous Neo-Sumerian economy of Mesopotamia early in the second millennium B.C.E. was the high alkaline content of the soil in areas of the Diyala River region, where irrigation was extensively utilized. Crop yields fell drastically, and the economy failed. There is also evidence that Near Eastern farmers in more recent periods have left different plots of land fallow each season, so that over the course of a period of years all of their fields underwent replenishment.
\nNotwithstanding its long-term benefits, periodic cessation of agricultural cultivation created severe economic problems, not unlike those resulting from drought or crop failure. A glimpse of this reality comes from Genesis 47, where we read that Joseph, viceroy of Egypt, planned for the anticipated lean years by storing huge quantities of grain in royal granaries. During the crisis, when the Egyptians had no more silver to buy grain, they were compelled to hand over their livestock as payment. When that source was exhausted, the people cried out: \u201cnothing is left at my lord\u2019s disposal save our persons and our farmland\u201d (Gen. 47:18). In this way\u2014by forfeiting their land and indenturing themselves\u2014the Egyptian people were disenfranchised.
\nIn Leviticus 25 we observe, curiously enough, a similar process. Release from indebtedness and indenture every seventh year is nowhere mentioned, the only exception being 25:47f., which exhorts Israelites of the same clan to redeem relatives who have become indentured to gentiles. Otherwise, an Israelite indentured to another, who is bereft of means or of concerned relatives, must await the Jubilee year. And this in a system that retains the requirement to let arable land lie fallow every seventh year! We find exhortations to treat indentured fellow Israelites kindly, to come to the aid of distressed clan relatives, to redeem mortgaged or sold land, and to lend funds to fellow Israelites without interest. But there is no legal obligation to release debts or indenture every seventh year.
\nIn sharp contrast to its neglect of the distressed individual, chapter 25, building on the ancient law guaranteeing ownership of ancestral land, nullifies and voids the actual alienation of agricultural land. Legally speaking, all lands sold or mortgaged are merely leased to others for a period never to exceed fifty years, until the next Jubilee year. At that time, such lands as had not been redeemed would revert to their former owners. Indenture would also cease, and all Israelites would \u201creturn\u201d to their homes.
\nHow this system operated may be learned from Nehemiah 5, which pertains to the late fifth century B.C.E., or even later, when Jerusalem and Judea were under Persian domination. Nehemiah, a Jew and the Persian governor of Judea, heeds the outcry of the people, who complain that they are unable to feed their large families. Their fields and vineyards, which they had mortgaged to their debts, are being lost to their creditors. They cannot pay the royal tax, the middah (Akk. mandattu), and have no grain in time of famine. Their sons and daughters have been indentured, with little or no hope of release. They bewail the deplorable irony that, after redeeming fellow Judeans indentured to gentiles (a duty stated in Lev. 25:47f), they now find their own sons and daughters remaining in servitude to other Judeans.
\nNehemiah immediately cancels all indenture and all monetary claims; land holdings are restored to their original owners. In effect, he proclaims a \u201crelease,\u201d although the term deror, used in Leviticus 25, does not appear. In essence, Nehemiah attempts to remedy a situation that had developed at least over the twelve-year period of his administration as governor and that may well have existed even prior to that time. His apologia for his own policies is also revealing. In contrast to earlier Persian governors he had never demanded \u201cthe Pe\u1e25a\u2019s bread\u201d (the governor\u2019s food allowance), which is a way of saying that he had not imposed additional taxes on the people. He had also subsidized construction out of his own resources and had provided for the needs of the bureaucracy. All of this he had done out of \u201cfear of the Lord\u201d and because the people were already so pressed. Reference to the \u201cfear of the Lord\u201d recalls the exhortation repeatedly emphasized in Leviticus 25 and in the Holiness Code, generally, that all laws are to be obeyed out of \u201cfear of the Lord.\u201d Whereas the language of Nehemiah 5 shows some Deuteronomic features, for the most part it is based on the specific legislation of Leviticus 25.
\nThe first verse of chapter 25, as well as its closing statements in verse 46 (cf. 27:34), recalls that the laws contained therein were communicated by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, before the Israelites entered their land. Modern scholarship regards such statements as traditional, not historical, and continues to search for the historical setting reflected in the laws themselves. At the present time, two views predominate as to the historical order of the biblical collections of laws dealing with the seventh year. One view arranges the codes of law as follows, in accordance with the canonical order of the books of the Torah: (1) Exodus 21, 23, (2) Leviticus 25 (and 27), and (3) Deuteronomy 15. Another view arranges the relevant law codes differently: (1) Exodus 21, 23, (2) Deuteronomy 15, and (3) Leviticus 25 (and 27). Following this sequence, would not the legislation of Leviticus be retrograde, undoing the benefits extended by Deuteronomy? According to the interpretation presented in the Commentary, Deuteronomy not only endorses the agricultural year of release, but adds to the economic relief afforded to the needy. Leviticus 25 effectively withdraws the benefits of release every seventh year. Some argue that it must, therefore, precede Deuteronomy.
\nNevertheless, based on a variety of interacting factors, it seems preferable to regard Leviticus 25 as coming at the end of the sequence, namely, subsequent to Deuteronomy 15. Rather than regarding the provisions of Leviticus 25 as retrograde and arguing for the relative antiquity of the chapter, as some scholars do, we should perhaps see in it an attempt to deal with a radically new situation. The legislation enacted in response to this new situation sought, as its paramount objective, to prevent the loss of land by Israelites and their families. The close parallels with Nehemiah 5, discussed above, suggest a common, historical setting for both sources: the situation of the Judean community under Persian domination. Leviticus 25:45f. recalls the complaints of the citizenry in Nehemiah 5 and betrays the probability that both reflect the life of the postexilic community. Leviticus 25 speaks of Israelites indentured to non-Israelites, suggesting a mixed population. The prohibition against the permanent alienation of family land may also have been motivated by the fear of the loss of land to gentiles and foreigners to whom Israelites were indebted. As bad as conditions may have been under the Judean monarchy, there was little danger that foreigners or gentiles would gain possession of family lands or that Israelites would be indentured to non-Israelites. The only economic factor missing in Leviticus 25, but which figures in Nehemiah 5, is that of taxation. But, then, Torah legislation never refers to governmental taxation. Its laws are presented as a program revealed to the Israelites before they entered Canaan; and it never goes beyond envisioning the likelihood of a monarchy.
\nHistorically, the returning Judean exiles were repatriates allowed to resettle in their ancestral land and to rebuild their Temple in Jerusalem. These terms were granted by the edict of Cyrus the Great, issued in 538 B.C.E., after the Persians had assumed hegemony over the territories of the Neo-Babylonian empire. But that edict did not guarantee that Judeans would recover their former lands or take possession of other lands within their new areas of settlement, although that occurred in some cases. Benjamin Mazar has shown, for example, that some prominent Judean families returned to the areas of their preexilic habitation. It is even likely that some Judeans remained in the land and retained uninterrupted possession of their estates throughout the political changes that came in the wake of the Babylonian and Persian conquests. Nevertheless, it was undoubtedly necessary in many cases to repurchase land from non-Judeans, and there was probably conflict over rights of ownership. In Ezra, we read of disputes related to the Temple and the city of Jerusalem and of the intervention of Persian imperial agencies. We are warranted in supposing that similar disputes arose over the ownership of family estates.
\nThe priestly leaders of the repatriated Judean community formulated a theory to legitimize their situation: God had granted the Land of Israel to his people as an everlasting \u02bea\u1e25uzzah, \u201cholding.\u201d His people were His tenants and were granted the right to work the land and enjoy its fruits. They were, however, denied the right usually considered a sine qua non of ownership, the right to alienate what one owns. Following this line of reasoning, the edict of Cyrus was translated into a divine land grant. In the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah it is stated explicitly that the God of Israel commissioned Cyrus to restore His people. It was hoped that the returning exiles, some of whom were impoverished when they arrived, would be helped by their coreligionists in Babylonia and that they would band together, clan by clan, to help each other. Relatives were to redeem threatened lands. The goal was to regain control over the land. The institution of ge\u02beullah, \u201credemption,\u201d first encountered in Jeremiah 32, and the theme of ge\u02beullah, accentuated by Deutero-Isaiah during the exile, assumed new meaning for the Judean community. Leaders like Nehemiah were needed to restrain the usual greed for land and wealth, so that these worthy goals could be achieved.
\nThere is much more that could be said about the historical setting of Leviticus 25. Only further research will determine whether the reconstruction proposed here is historically accurate.<\/p>\n
EXCURSUS 11<\/p>\n
A Priestly Statement on the Destiny of Israel (26:3\u201346)<\/p>\n
The Epilogue to the Holiness Code is patterned after other biblical blessings and curses and after other similar ancient Near Eastern compositions. Its position is the key to its function in the text. It comes directly after a collection of laws and commandments. All three Torah collections of laws are followed by admonitions, and the same is true in the rest of ancient Near Eastern literature generally. The Code of Hammurabi concludes with an Execration, and curses follow the provisions of boundary stones and royal decrees. The Egyptian \u201cexecration texts\u201d are so called because they contain curses. Execrations were pronounced over towns and provinces that failed to pay tribute to the Pharaohs or were disloyal in other ways. One cannot be punished without being first admonished.
\nWell-being, peace, and prosperity, in short all the blessings individuals and nations seek to secure from divine powers, are contingent on obedience to laws, treaties, oaths, and royal edicts. Divine wrath is the misfortune of the disobedient. Our Epilogue presents particular priestly notions of the meaning of the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. The most awful punishment threatened for violation of the covenant is exile because it brings with it the danger of extinction in hostile lands.
\nIn the Commentary, the Epilogue is treated as a unified composition. Literary analysis shows, however, that Leviticus 26:3\u201346 is actually a composite document, including a primary Epilogue and several significant additions. The primary section, which will be identified in the outline that follows, ends on a note of doom with the destruction of the land and the dispersal of the people into exile, like the conventional ending of an ancient Near Eastern execration. The additional sections, however, express perceptions that emerge from the actual experience of exile, most poignantly, the hope for God\u2019s forgiveness and the prospect of restoration. Historically, the primary Epilogue could have been written, at the very earliest, right before the exile, which came in stages during the ten or so years prior to 586 B.C.E., the date of the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. It could have been written considerably later, however, because predictions of doom may actually convey the thinking of those who have already experienced it. In any event, the additions to the primary Epilogue postdate the deportations and may even reflect the thinking of biblical writers at the end of the exile.
\nAs presented, the Epilogue is addressed to the Israelites, who are about to enter the promised land. It informs them of the conditions of their sovereignty over the land and of the circumstances that might bring about the loss of the land. Modern scholarship respects this traditional frame of reference; at the same time, it seeks to identify the historical frame of reference reflected in the Epilogue\u2014by means of an analysis of language and diction and by comparisons with other biblical works pertaining to the themes of exile and divine punishment. This methodology allows us to come to some understanding of how biblical writers interpreted important historical events.
\nH. L. Ginsberg has proposed an outline of the Epilogue that is enlightening in terms of its literary-historical analysis. It is followed here, with only slight variation, and is supplemented in order to cover the entire Epilogue: (1) The primary Epilogue (vv. 3\u201333a, 37b\u201338); (2) the first \u201cpostcatastrophe\u201d addition (vv. 39\u201340b, 44\u201345); (3) later additions: (a) the theme of desolation and the fears engendered by exile (vv. 33b\u201337a) and (b) more about desolation, Israel\u2019s submission to God, the atonement of both people and land personified, and the theme of the patriarchal covenant (vv. 40b\u201343).
\nThe structure of the primary Epilogue reveals a symmetry of contrasts, as between the promise of reward and the threat of punishment. The land will be fertile (vv. 4\u20135, 10)\u2014the land will be utterly unproductive (vv. 16, 19\u201320, 26). God will turn with favor toward His people (v. 9)\u2014God will set His face against them (v. 17). Israel will repulse its enemies (v. 9)\u2014Israel will be battered by its enemies (vv. 17, 25). The land will be rid of wild beasts (v. 6)\u2014wild beasts will devour people (v. 25). No sword will traverse the land (v. 6)\u2014a sword will bring destruction (v. 25). Obedience brings secure settlement (v. 5)\u2014disobedience brings exile (v. 33a). It is also possible that Hebrew tekumah, literally \u201cthe ability to stand up,\u201d in verse 37b at the end of the curses may be a subtle reflection of komamiyyut) \u201cat full stature,\u201d in verse 15 at the conclusion of the blessing. Instead of remaining free as Israel was when it left Egypt, after the bars of its yoke had been broken, it will be bent over, captive in exile.
\nAs noted in the Commentary, the punishments of the primary Epilogue escalate in magnitude; if one set fails to secure Israel\u2019s obedience, worse will follow. This escalation is emphasized by periodic refrains, which may be outlined as follows: Israel\u2019s failure to obey results in sevenfold punishment (v. 18); Israel\u2019s coldness to God, in addition to its failure to obey, results in sevenfold punishment (v. 21); Israel\u2019s failure to be chastised, in addition to Israel\u2019s coldness to God, results in God\u2019s coldness toward Israel and sevenfold punishment (vv. 23\u201324); Israel\u2019s failure to obey, in addition to Israel\u2019s coldness to God, results in God\u2019s coldness and sevenfold punishment (vv. 27\u201328).
\nThe effect of the escalation\u2014which virtually tabulates a process of action and response, of mutual hardening of attitudes between Israel and God\u2014is both disheartening and, in a curious way, consoling. God, for His part, will not relent and will respond to disobedience with increasing severity, to the point of exiling His people as He has threatened. On the other hand, the conditional formulation of the curses leaves an opening for Israel\u2014at any of several stages\u2014to renounce its disobedience, at which time the punishments would cease. One is immediately reminded of the saga of the ten plagues in Egypt, recounted in the Book of Exodus. Unfortunately for the victims, in both instances, submission came too late!
\nThe overall structure of the primary Epilogue is reminiscent of an oracle preserved in Amos 4:6\u201311, according to which God punished the Israelites repeatedly, but at no time did they return to Him.<\/p>\n
I, on My part, have given you
\nCleanness of teeth in all your towns \u2026
\nYet you did not turn back to Me
\n\u2014declares the LORD<\/p>\n
I therefore withheld the rain from you
\nThree months before harvesttime \u2026
\nYet you did not turn back to Me
\n\u2014declares the LORD.<\/p>\n
I scourged you with blight and mildew;
\nRepeatedly your gardens and vineyards \u2026
\nYet you did not turn back to Me
\n\u2014declares the LORD.<\/p>\n
I sent against you pestilence
\nIn the manner of Egypt \u2026
\nYet you did not turn back to Me
\n\u2014declares the LORD.<\/p>\n
I have wrought destruction upon you
\nAs when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah \u2026
\nYet you have not turned back to Me
\n\u2014declares the LORD.<\/p>\n
The primary Epilogue is stated in stark terms, without the exhortations that we find in some other biblical admonitions, such as Deuteronomy 11:13\u201328. There we read that God urges the people to beware of the temptation to go astray and urges upon them the life-affirming choice of obedience, as against disobedience. Here we have only the presentation of cold, matter-of-fact alternatives: to obey or to disobey.
\nOur Epilogue resembles Deuteronomy 28:1\u201348 in terms of literary composition, although as regards diction and forms of expression the two texts have little in common. The same sort of mitigations observable in the additions to our primary Epilogue are also evident in Deuteronomy, as has been noted. Thus Deuteronomy 30:1\u201310, part of the conclusion of the Book of Deuteronomy, states that Israel will be restored to its land if it returns to the Lord sincerely. The same thought is expressed in Deuteronomy 4:25\u201331f., part of the introduction to the book. In both Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the classic curse, which ends in doom, is amended to allow for survival.
\nDeuteronomy 28:1\u201348 and our Epilogue resemble in their composition the epilogue to the Code of Hammurabi. King Hammurabi adjures his successors to uphold the laws he has promulgated, to honor his name, and so on. He poses the same alternatives as we find in the Epilogues of the Torah: \u201cIf that man (i.e., the king who shall be raised up in the land) has heeded my words, which I have inscribed on my monument, has not made light of my commandments \u2026 may Shamash enlarge that man\u2019s empire like mine, the just king, and may he lead his people in justice. If that man has not heeded my words, which I have inscribed on my monument \u2026 may the great god, Anum, father of the gods, deprive that man \u2026 of royal splendor, break his scepter, curse his destiny.\u2026\u201d There are, of course, basic differences between our Epilogue and that of the Code of Hammurabi, but the similarities are nonetheless striking.
\nHaving placed the Epilogue to the Holiness Code into a wider context of blessings and curses, we can now move on to other considerations. Diction, for example, pertains to the precise manner in which an author expresses ideas. It concerns phrases and idioms and the choice of words, and is often the key to historical setting. This is especially true of our Epilogue, in which diction both broadens our perspective and focuses our sights. To the extent that our Epilogue reveals conventional diction, we are able to understand its general literary origins. But in those instances where its diction is linked to specific biblical sources, and to no others, we can identify precise periods of Israelite history and particular schools of biblical writers.
\nThe most obvious parallel to our Epilogue is found in Deuteronomy 28; and Deuteronomy 27 is relevant to our comparisons as well. Both Deuteronomic chapters use berakhah and the adjective barukh to express blessing and forms such as \u02bearur, \u201caccursed,\u201d to express the opposite. These terms are absent from our Epilogue, although, to be sure, it deals with these same realities and simply expresses themes differently, most notably by the verb shama\u02bf, \u201cto heed, obey,\u201d which also occurs in Deuteronomy 28. On the other hand, our Epilogue emphasizes the idea of berit, \u201ccovenant,\u201d a term absent from Deuteronomy 28:1\u201348.
\nThere are several clich\u00e9s that are common to our Epilogue and to Deuteronomy 28. Both mention the same pair of diseases, kada\u1e25at and sha\u1e25efet (Lev. 26:16; Deut. 28:22). Both refer to skies of iron and soil of bronze (Lev. 26:19; Deut. 28:33) and to eating the flesh of children (Lev. 26:29; Deut. 28:33). Both curses speak of being battered by enemies, using the verb niggaf (Lev. 26:17; Deut. 28:7, 25). Both refer to exhausted eyes and languishing bodies (Lev. 26:16; Deut. 28:65). Both contain references to rains in their season (Lev. 26:3; Deut. 28:12). Finally, the term mitsvah, \u201ccommandment,\u201d is found in both compositions.
\nWhat is common to both Epilogues is conventional, not only within biblical literature, but throughout the ancient Near East. Thus, eating one\u2019s children is depicted in a number of other biblical sources having to do with war and destruction and is, in fact, also projected in the vassal treaty of Esarhaddon, the Assyrian king of the seventh century B.C.E. In that treaty drought is depicted as iron soil and bronze heavens, an inversion of the very clich\u00e9 we find both in our Epilogue and Deuteronomy.
\nRecent discoveries have provided additional parallels that show how intimately biblical and other ancient Near Eastern curses are related in their diction. Perhaps the most recent of these discoveries is a bilingual statuary inscription, written in Aramaic and Akkadian, from Tell Fekherye in northeast Syria near Tell Halaf (biblical Gozan). It probably dates from the ninth century B.C.E. Like all such royal inscriptions, this text includes a section of curses. In line 22 of the Aramaic version we read: \u201cMay one hundred women bake bread in a single oven, but let them not fill it!\u201d The Akkadian is a bit more poignant: \u201cMay one hundred baking women not even fill a single oven!\u201d These statements recall Leviticus 26:26: \u201cWhen I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven.\u201d In the vassal treaty of Esarhaddon, mentioned above, we find similar imagery: \u201cMay your fingertips not dip in the dough; may the dough be lacking from your kneading troughs.\u201d The Assyrian curse recalls Deuteronomy 28:5, 17, where blessing means that the kneading troughs of those who obey God will contain abundant dough.
\nDepicting exile as the \u201cscattering\u201d of a people is also common in ancient Near Eastern diction. The Hebrew verb zerah, \u201cto scatter, disperse,\u201d used in verse 33 of our Epilogue, is paralleled by a statement in the epilogue to the Code of Hammurabi, which speaks of na-\u00e1s-pu-\u00fa\u1e25 ni-\u0161\u00ee-\u0161u, \u201cthe scattering of his people.\u201d The image of defeat as the inability to \u201cstand up\u201d before enemies, conveyed in our Epilogue by the noun tekumah in verse 37, is paralleled in the vassal treaty of Esarhaddon by the statement: \u201cMay you not stand (la, ta-za-za-a-ni) before your enemies!\u201d
\nThe threat in verse 31 of our Epilogue that God will not accept the sweet savor of Israel\u2019s sacrifices is also a typical theme. In the aforementioned bilingual inscription from Tell Fekherye, we find a similar idea. The king who erected and dedicated the statue warns his people: \u201cWhoever would remove my name from the vessels of the temple of Hadad, my lord, may my lord Hadad not accept his food and water offerings from his hand!\u201d A thorough investigation would turn up many more similar parallels. It is clear, even from this sample, that our Epilogue represents a genre of ancient Near Eastern literature, quite apart from its special significance within the Bible.
\nIt is now appropriate to explore the other side of the coin, the value of diction in enabling us to pinpoint how our Epilogue fits into the treatment of the themes of exile and restoration in biblical literature. Ginsberg has provided a reliable point of departure for a discussion of diction as the key to identifying historical setting. He observes that in the first postcatastrophe addition to the primary Epilogue (in vv. 39\u201340a, 44\u201345) we find a theme clearly expressed in Ezekiel 20.
\nIn the year 591 B.C.E., after the first deportations by the Babylonians, the prophet Ezekiel reviews the history of Israel\u2019s covenantal relationship to God. He perceives a chain of disloyal acts on Israel\u2019s part. At several critical junctures of Israel\u2019s history, God was all but ready to nullify the covenant He had enacted at the Exodus, on the grounds that Israel had violated its terms by failing to obey His laws and commandments. Each time, He stopped short of doing this out of concern for His \u201cName.\u201d Since He had sworn to uphold the covenant \u201cin the sight of the nations\u201d (le-\u02bfeinei ha-goyim), to nullify it would lead to the desecration of His Name. This is expressed in Ezekiel 20:8\u20139, 17, 21\u201323 and is repeatedly emphasized in that chapter. Finally, God executed His threats: He exiled His people and allowed the land to be devastated. But all is not lost, Ezekiel tells us, for God will again restore at least part of His people.
\nNow, the Hebrew phrase le-\u02bfeinei ha-goyim, \u201cin the sight of the nations,\u201d appears exclusively in our Epilogue (v. 45); in Ezekiel, who employs it in several oracles; and in Isaiah 52:10, in an oracle of restoration, where we find le-\u02bfeinei kol ha-goyim, \u201cin the sight of all the nations.\u201d The prophet of the beautiful oracle of restoration of Isaiah 52:7\u201310, composed at the end of the exile, echoes Ezekiel 20. Ginsberg further calls attention to another item of Ezekiel\u2019s diction, his use of the rare verb m-k-k, \u201cto melt, waste away.\u201d In verse 39, part of the first addition to the primary Epilogue, we read: \u201cThose of you who survive shall be heartsick over their iniquity (yimmakku ba-\u02bfavonam).\u201d Only our Epilogue and Ezekiel know of this idiom. In terms of literary-historical analysis, the dependence of the first additions to the Epilogue on Ezekiel means that we are well into the sixth century, the period of the exile. If this is so, the additions in Leviticus 26, in verses 33b\u201337a and 40b\u201343, must be regarded as being even later. Indeed, we are fortunate in having a clue to this effect.
\nIn verses 34\u201335, and again in verse 43 of the later additions, we find a usage that is elsewhere attested only in Isaiah 40:2, an oracle written near or at the end of the Babylonian exile. The idiom is ratsah \u02bfavon, \u201cto atone for, expiate a sin.\u201d \u201cComfort, oh comfort My people,\/Says your God.\/Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,\/And declare to her\/That her term of service is over,\/That her iniquity is expiated (ki nirtsah \u02bfavonah).\u201d In verse 43 of our Epilogue both the land and the people atone for their sins:the people, through submission to God after the prolonged sufferings of the exile; and the land, by compensating for its neglected sabbatical years. The sabbatical theme, so prominent in chapters 23 and 25 of the Holiness Code, is here expressed with cruel irony: Because the land was not allowed to lie fallow every seventh year while the Israelites lived in it, it will now lie desolate involuntarily, bereft of its inhabitants. This diction leads us to Isaiah of the exile. Of interest, too, is the echo of our Epilogue in 2 Chronicles 36:20\u201321: \u201cThose who survived the sword he exiled to Babylon \u2026 in fulfillment of the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, until the land paid back its sabbaths; as long as it lay desolate it kept sabbath, till seventy years were completed.\u201d
\nIn another connection Ginsberg again uses diction to clarify the literary-historical analysis of the later additions to the Epilogue. Verse 42 speaks of a covenant with the patriarchs, most probably an exilic idea. Preexilic biblical sources know only of the conditional Sinaitic covenant, which depended on Israel\u2019s loyalty; the advent of exile was a sign, in religious terms, that God had abrogated it. The covenant with the patriarchs is first expressed in Exodus 6:2\u20139, part of priestly literature. There, the three patriarchs\u2014Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob\u2014are mentioned in the usual order. Verse 42 of our Epilogue reverses the order, beginning with Jacob. This suggests an adaptation of the original version. The unconditional covenant with the patriarchs\u2014in contrast to the severed Sinaitic covenant\u2014was to last forever; for those living in exile, it held forth hope of a restoration to the land. It seems, therefore, that the two dominant themes of the later additions to the Epilogue, those subsequent even to the first postcatastrophe additions, express exilic ideas. We may speak of three stages in the composition of the Epilogue as we have it: the primary Epilogue, the first postcatastrophe addition, and the later additions. At the earliest, the completed Epilogue takes us to the end of the exile, possibly to the first period of return after the edict of Cyrus the Great, issued in 538 B.C.E. It is quite probable that the same criteria that endorse an exilic setting for the additions to the primary Epilogue suggest as well the influence of Ezekiel\u2019s diction since Ezekiel went into exile. There is evidence of themes received from the prophecies of Ezekiel and, also, from Jeremiah.
\nThe author of the primary Epilogue probably appropriated the idiom ga\u02bfal nefesh, \u201cto spurn,\u201d from Jeremiah 14:19f.: \u201cHave You, then, rejected (ha-ma\u02beos ma\u02beastah) Judah?\/Have You spurned (ga\u02bfalah nafshekha) Zion?\u201d For Jeremiah, the verb ga\u02bfal, \u201cto spurn,\u201d marks the critical juncture at which God determined that there is no return, that matters have gone too far to avert destruction and exile. Jeremiah is making a last appeal, for, in the ensuing oracle of chapter 15, he announces God\u2019s refusal to reconsider, and the exile is finally decreed. In similar fashion, the author of the primary Epilogue also uses this verb to mark critical junctures. The process begins in verse 11, where Israel is assured that if God\u2019s laws and commandments are obeyed, God will not spurn (ga\u02bfal) Israel. In verses 14\u201315 the first punishments are introduced, precisely when Israel \u201cspurns\u201d His laws and statutes. The punishments escalate until, in verse 30, God \u201cspurns\u201d Israel, at which point no opportunity remains for averting the final disaster. The conclusion to the primary Epilogue, verses 31\u201333a, project destruction and exile.
\nThe author of the first postcatastrophe addition adopted the same code word, the verb ga\u02bfal. In verses 44\u201345, he states that redemption is possible because God had not ever actually \u201cspurned\u201d Israel; for this would have led to their extinction in exile, which had not occurred. If God had spurned Israel, His reputation would have been damaged in the sight of the nations. Thus, after Israel shows remorse and confesses its sins, God will reaffirm the covenant enacted at Sinai. Again, the dynamics of the first addition revolve around the verb ga\u02bfal, \u201cto spurn.\u201d Even the authors of the later additions, who hold a different concept of the covenant, knew and used the code word ga\u02bfal. The exile had endured and expiation was delayed because Israel had persisted in \u201cspurning\u201d God\u2019s laws and statutes.
\nThe hypothesis that the author of the primary Epilogue and those authors who came after him drew on Ezekiel\u2019s themes is strengthened by still other similarities of diction. Note the following examples: (1) The verb zerah, \u201cto scatter,\u201d is used to characterize exile in verse 33a of our Epilogue. Ultimately, this usage can be traced back to Jeremiah (31:10; 49:32; 51:2). Ezekiel then elaborates on the theme (Ezek. 5:10; 6:5, 8; 12:14\u201315; 20:2, 23; 22:15; 29:12; 30:26). (2) In verse 19, our author speaks of \u201cyour powerful glory\u201d (ge\u02beon \u02bfuzkhem), his way of referring to the land, for he goes on to speak of drought and the failure of the soil to yield its produce. This locution is known elsewhere only in Ezekiel\u2014in 7:24; 30:6, 18; and 33:28, in various connections. (3) Only Ezekiel and our author know of the idiom herik \u1e25erev\u02bea\u1e25arei, literally \u201cto unsheath the sword after.\u201d Our author uses it in verse 33a, as does Ezekiel in 5:2 and 12:14. Only our author, in verse 6, and Ezekiel 14:17 know of the combination \u1e25erev \u02bfavar, \u201cthe sword traverses.\u201d Only our author, in verse 25, and Ezekiel (5:11; 6:3; 11:8; 14:17; 29:8; 33:2) know the idiom hevi\u02be \u1e25erev \u02bfal, \u201cto brandish the sword over.\u201d (4) On the theme of sustenance, both our Epilogue (v. 26) and Ezekiel (4:16; 5:16; 14:13) use the idiom matteh le\u1e25em, \u201cstaff of bread.\u201d Elsewhere it is found only in the late Psalms 105:16. In Isaiah 3:11 the idiom is mish\u02bfan le\u1e25em, \u201csupport of bread.\u201d (5) It has been noted in the Commentary that verses 3\u201313 of our Epilogue bear remarkable similarities to Ezekiel 34:25\u201328; the same is true of the similarities between Ezekiel 6 and verses 30\u201331 of our Epilogue.
\nGiven the situation outlined here, we are warranted in attributing much of what the author of the primary Epilogue says to the influence of prophecy and, more precisely, to that of Ezekiel and, to a lesser extent, Jeremiah. We are not dealing with isolated parallels, but with major, pervasive themes that are expressed in precisely the same ways.
\nIt is impossible to say exactly when each of the three strata of the Epilogue was composed. The differentiation of the final composition into three strata is, however, important for understanding how the ideas it expresses emerged in stages. The author of the primary Epilogue, stunned by the initial shock of the exile, thought all was lost. His curses end in doom; the people of Israel are pursued into the lands of their captors, unable to stand up before them. The author of the first addition to the primary Epilogue introduces two variables into the equation: God, for His part, will yet uphold the Sinaitic covenant for the sake of His Name because He swore to uphold it in the sight of the nations. Israel, for its part, will confess its sins and respond contritely to the sufferings of exile. Those who survive will then be restored. The authors of the still later additions sought to explain the delay in realizing this restoration. The prolongation of exile was explained in two ways. First, the expiation of the people and the land would of necessity take a long time, for the sins of the people, as they affected the land, had lasted for many generations. Redemption would require patience. Second, a new understanding of the covenant was needed to replace the conditional, Sinaitic covenant that had been annulled by God when He exiled His people.
\nThe author of the first postcatastrophe addition to the Epilogue still believed that the original Sinaitic covenant would assure restoration, if only Israel confessed its sins. But the authors of the later additions no longer held to this view. The sins of Israel had been too grievous, their breach of the covenant too damaging. Only the unconditional covenant with the patriarchs could be invoked so late in the exile. Any hope for restoration derived from God\u2019s promise to the patriarchs to grant their descendants the land of Canaan, a promise that was not made contingent on any merit on Israel\u2019s part.
\nOur Epilogue contains the only biblical reference to God\u2019s remembrance of a personified land in verse 42. This unique reference expresses a great love for the Land of Israel and a yearning for it.
\nThe Epilogue to the Holiness Code grapples with the question of the destiny of the people of Israel in the face of the cataclysmic destruction of Jerusalem and Judea. It reflects the influence of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel on the thinking of the Israelite priesthood, in exile and during the early period of return. New hope was engendered through new understandings of covenant and new responses to disaster and exile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LEVITICUS IN THE ONGOING JEWISH TRADITION Because we have sinned, we and our forefathers, our city lies in ruin, and our Temple is desolate; our Glory has departed, and the Divine Presence has been withdrawn from our \u201cHouse of Life.\u201d We are, therefore, unable to fulfill our obligations in Your chosen \u201cHouse,\u201d in the great … <\/p>\n