Numbers 1 - Preparing for War

There isn't a whole lot of content in Numbers 1, but there is a definite shift in "tone." As I mentioned in my last post, Leviticus seems to be a great big "pep-talk" in which God is instructing His people on how to live and how to worship Him before allowing them to take Canaan from the Pagans. Then, in the first chapter of Numbers, suddenly the troops are being assembled! It is clear what is coming, and that is war. The people have the Law, they have a new covenant, and now the only thing left to do is march toward the Promised Land and claim what God has given them. It begins.

Concluding Thoughts on Leviticus

On this beautiful spring day, I have finished the Book of Leviticus. Quite unlike Genesis and Exodus, Leviticus is primarily concerned with one thing.... worship. Now that the children of Israel have been freed from slavery in Egypt, now that they have received a new covenant from God via Moses on Mount Sinai, and now that they are on the verge of being led into the Promised Land, the question is, how can they repay God? We do begin to see what exactly that repayment should look like in Exodus, but in Leviticus it is meticulously described. As is implied by the name of the book, the Levites are the focus of Leviticus -- how they should look, how they should act, how exactly they are to offer sacrifices to the Lord. Leviticus captures the essence of the Mosaic Law, that is, the form of divine worship. Now that the new covenant has been established, what will the sacrificial worship look like? We know from reading the Bible that people have been using sacrifice to worship God since virtually the beginning. There is a prayer in the Mass that captures this idea perfectly. As we ask God to accept our sacrifice, we pray: Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris; et accepta habere, sicuti accepta habere dignatus es munera pueri tui justi Abel, et sacrificium patriarchae nostri Abrahae, et quod tibi obtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech, sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam ("And this deign to regard with gracious and kindly attention and hold acceptable, as You deigned to accept the offerings of Abel, Your just servant, and the sacrifice of Abraham our patriarch, and that which Your chief priest Melchisedec offered to You, a holy sacrifice and a spotless victim"). In the words of Martin Mosebach, "Abel, the shepherd, had made a burnt offering of the firstlings of his flock and their fat on the altar of sacrifice; Abraham had been prepared to sacrifice his son and, then, sacrificed a ram in his place; Melchizedek, who was not of the race of Abraham, sacrificed bread and wine." Mosebach is here showing the "evolution" of worship from Adam's son until just before the Mosaic Covenant. Leviticus gives us the next stage of this "evolution." The divine sacrifice is now more lofty than ever, as there is now a permanent priesthood given to the Levites. There is now a tabernacle, an ark, a house of God. Aside from shifting the Divine Presence from the Tabernacle to the Temple, sacrificial worship would remain largely unchanged until Jesus Christ would come to establish Himself as the eternal sacrificial Victim. And that is why Leviticus is so important -- it establishes a foundation for Jewish worship that will set the stage for all the books of the Old Testament that follow.

Worship is the core of what we need to do here on earth. The Commandments begin by telling us to love God before moving on to how we should love our neighbor. Therefore, as worship is our primary vehicle for loving God, it should be rightly appreciated and understood. Continuing the "evolution" analogy, if the nature of worship began with Abel's primitive sacrifice, and then moved on to the Levitical sacrifices, we know that sacrificial worship will continue to advance closer to the perfection God envisions. Bernard O'Reilly writes that "God so ordained it that the Jewish ritual and worship should be a preparation for the Christian liturgy." I found this to be ever so true while reading Leviticus. So much of what is described in this section of the Pentateuch foreshadows the future sacrificial worship of Christians, with Christ as the sacrificial Victim. The concept of atonement, the blood, the incense, the vestments, the Holy of Holies, the veil, the Divine Presence, the bread, etc., all point towards Christian worship. Yet that is not the end. For the "evolution" will continue when this world no longer exists, and then we (if we are so fortunate) will see worship perfected in heaven. O'Reilly further writes, "what God commanded to be done on earth is only the shadow, the preparation, and the foretaste of what takes place in the Heavenly City above, in that divinest of sanctuaries, where He receives unceasingly the worship of Angels and Saints, and in return eternally pours out on them the flood of His blissful love." Worship here on earth, even the Holy Mass, cannot compare to what is waiting in heaven.

Lastly, though I've focused on worship, Leviticus contains a lot of moral precepts as well. It is very instructional. I get the sense that it is a (pardon my lack of reverence) pep-talk given by God to His people before allowing them to lay claim to the Promised Land. In Numbers we see the people resume their journey toward Canaan. In Leviticus there is almost no forward movement, no narrative. It is simply didactic. What good would it have been to allow the people to inhabit the Promised Land with no instruction on how they are to live? In Leviticus God lays it all out there, putting extra emphasis on how His people are to live distinctly different lives from the pagan nations around them. I move on next to the Book of Numbers.

Leviticus 26 - "I Will Make Your Sanctuaries Desolate"

This was quite a prophetic chapter! God reveals all the ways He will reward those who follow His Commands. And He also reveals the ways He will punish the transgressors. It was the latter that really struck me. The descriptions of the nature of these punishments goes on for over twenty verses, and they seem to be all things that have since come to pass. Leviticus 26:17 says, "I will set my face against you, and you shall fall down before your enemies, and shall be made subject to them that hate you." This very thing has happened to the Jewish people numerous times, most notably in our own modern period. Leviticus 26:25 says, "I will bring in upon you the sword that shall avenge my covenant. And when you shall flee into the cities, I will send the pestilence in the midst of you, and you shall be delivered into the hands of your enemies." Many believe these prophecies were fulfilled during the Babylonian Captivity, but I don't see any reason why they couldn't have been broad prophecies pointing towards events beyond the captivity. In fact, what was the Diaspora but a great exodus by the Jewish people "into the hands of [their] enemies"? It is said further, "I will destroy your high places, and break your idols" (Leviticus 26:30). This prophecy was most definitely fulfilled when the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. This is followed by even more foreshadowing of the Jewish Diaspora and even the eventual natural transformation of the Holy land: "I will scatter you among the Gentiles, and I will draw out the sword after you, and your land shall be desert, and your cities destroyed" (Leviticus 26:33). It is well known that the Promised Land is described as a land "flowing with milk and honey" in the Old Testament. But, as we all know, it is now a land mostly stripped of its fertility. And just to strike the point home, God declares with finality, "You shall perish among the Gentiles, and an enemy's land shall consume you" (Leviticus 26:38). The Jews will be cast out of the Holy Land and the land will be given its Sabbath, the Sabbath the Jewish people didn't give it. It will lie fallow as it was meant to be every seventh year, a law the Jews did not faithfully follow.

Another thing that came to mind while reading this chapter is that the language isn't as harsh as it appears on the surface. The list of God's punishments is frightening to fathom for sure, but no punishment is set forth without a reason. In Leviticus 26:27-28, God says, "If you will not for all this hearken to me, but will walk against me: / I will also go against you with opposite fury, and I will chastise you with seven plagues for your sins." All that is being said here is that God will respond to us in the same manner we respond to Him. If we love and adore Him, we can be confidant He will do the likewise to us. If we walk against Him, He will walk against us. And thus I am always puzzled when people react to, for example, natural disasters with the attitude of "how could a loving God do this?!" Look at how we as a collective people treat God. We deny Him, we blaspheme Him, we persecute Him.... we walk against Him. And so He has gone against us with the same fury we have gone against Him!

Leviticus 24-25: Just Price and the Jubilee

It is written: "When thou shalt sell any thing to thy neighbor, or shalt buy of him, grieve not thy brother." (Leviticus 25:14)

"Grieve" here can be translated "deceive not." Therefore, God is telling His people, "when you buy and sell with each other, do not deceive each other." Chapter 25 of Leviticus is almost entirely about the seventh year Sabbath and the fiftieth year jubilee. But throughout the chapter is also a reminder of the charity we are to show one another in imitation of the love God has toward us. It's really a beautiful chapter of the Bible. God's Mercy exists in each of its words.

There were many standout verses, but verse 15 really struck me, mainly because it seemed to indicate an early version of Christian Just Price Doctrine and the concept of Distributism. Just Price Doctrine was, until very recently, something unknown to me. Growing up in a "celebrated" Capitalist system, it had never occurred to me that there could be anything unethical about, for example, selling something for more than it's worth, or buying something for less than it's worth. But that seems to be what God is saying in Leviticus 25:14! We are not to deceive our brother when buying or selling with him. If we have a car that is officially valued at, say, $4,000, and we find some sucker who buys it from us for $6,000, we have effectively stolen $2,000 from him! For this to be the case, the buyer must be completely unaware of the car's actual worth -- he must think he is paying a fair price. That is Just Price Doctrine, and I had no idea it can be traced back to the Torah!

An even worse abuse of Just Price is when a seller takes advantage of a buyer's situation to maximize his profits. For example, at an outdoor event it is over one hundred degrees and only one person is selling bottled water. The seller knows that people will pay almost anything to keep from dehydrating, so he charges $5 for water that is valued at $1.50. This is an abuse that is rampant in a capitalist society. Capitalists see it as smart business, but God sees it as thievery. The just thing to do would be to charge each person $1.50, the fair and agreed-upon value of the water.

The other side of the coin is when a buyer gets a "great deal" on some item. Perhaps a seller is trying to get rid of an old vinyl album. The seller may not know the actual worth of the album and so he sells it for a measly $2. But if the buyer knows the actual worth to be, say, $50, and buys it for $2 without telling the seller (then brags to all his friends about the "steal" he got), that buyer has stolen from the seller! It amazes me that American society doesn't acknowledge these things as offenses. They are deceptions. They are not examples of "loving your neighbor."

All that aside, I found the whole concept of the jubilee and the seventh year Sabbath to be profoundly wonderful and a prime example of God's Mercy -- specifically the idea of releasing all slaves every fiftieth year, and forgiving all debts. What a brilliant way of preventing man from ever getting too haughty! The jubilee shows man who is really in charge. In case any man may think he owns another man, God sets in straight on the jubilee, and the servant is released and the slave owner is reminded of God's authority. No wonder the jubilee has been poorly observed among some of the more worldly Jews throughout history -- to the power-hungry and greedy it is a nuisance!

The same goes for the Law that states that on the seventh year Sabbath all fields shall lie fallow. This requirement does two things. On the one hand, it forces the people to rest on the seventh year -- no tilling the fields, no harvesting or reaping. People are forced to turn their minds to God instead of their work, which God desires. Secondly, and more importantly, it is a test. Leaving all the fields fallow on the seventh year requires a great deal of faith in God. It forces the people to trust in God's Providence, to believe that He will provide food for them during the Sabbath year.

I am almost done with the Book of Leviticus, and after such a careful reading, I can say I never knew the Law would be so intricately rich!

Leviticus 21-23: Holy Days

It was comforting to read about the many holy feasts the Jews were instructed to keep. God obviously desires certain days to be kept holy, for Moses makes special mention of this in Leviticus 23. The feast days encompass the whole year, from the Passover of the spring to the Atonement of the fall. These holy days are the precursors of the Christian feast days that have been a part of western culture for two millennia. Just as the earth experiences a natural cycle of seasons, the feast days provide humans a refreshing cycle of regeneration. These holy days are gifts from God -- they provide us with rest and nourishment, and they can be quite invigorating, both spiritually and physically. They also help us to remember what is ultimately important. It is far too easy to let our daily lives start to seem like the focus of our lives, but when an important holy day comes around, we are forced to put our daily lives on hold and contemplate God, an activity that, if left to our own devices, we would perform far too infrequently. I for one enjoy the feast days immensely, and I am very grateful for them. I know those ancient Jews, wandering through the harsh desert, had to have been overjoyed at the institution of these special days. It is one more instance of God's never-ending Mercy.


(In keeping with the theme of this post, I'd like to make mention of today's Christian feast day in commemoration of Saint Roderick. Roderick was a priest who lived in Spain in the 9th century at a time when Christians were severely persecuted by the Muslims. His own brother converted to Islam and betrayed Roderick by violently attacking him and dragging him through the streets. Roderick was imprisoned because of his Christian faith and endured much suffering at the hands of the Muslim rulers. He was eventually beheaded along with other captured Christians. Today I pay homage to St. Roderick for his bravery and immovable faith.)