The Holiness Code, Part 1

Leviticus 18-19

            Scholars have named Leviticus 17-26 “the holiness code,” largely because over half of the uses of the word “holy” in this book are in these 10 chapters. The principle is enunciated in 19:2, “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.”

            Notice that in these two chapters, we read, “I am the Lord,” twenty times! Israel’s holiness is a reflection and an extension of the Lord’s own holiness. This quote is from The Bible Project, an online series of videos trying to explain the Bible. I haven’t used it much, but what I’ve seen seems solid.

 

Holiness is about more than being good and morally upstanding. When referring to the holiness of God, the definition takes on a much richer meaning. God's holiness is his defining characteristic. It's a term used in the Bible to describe both his goodness and his power. It is completely unique and utterly all-powerful, radiating from God like an energy. In fact, God's holiness is so overwhelming that it can actually be dangerous to approach (See it here).

 

I like the description of God’s holiness as His complete uniqueness, frankly, His complete otherness. Only God is so devoid of sin; only God is so completely good. But Israel (and the Church!) is called to reflect and live in holiness, to avoid sinfulness, which dishonors both the Lord and our neighbor, and to seek goodness. Israel’s life and Christian lives flow from the Lord and redound back to Him.

            As far as the laws themselves, chapter 18 is filled with laws about sexual conduct and forbidden relations and I think most of us would say, “Well, duh. These prohibitions just make sense.” Of course, in our day, the concern is for consanguinity, that is, the danger of genetic problems when genetically similar people have children. In Leviticus, it’s tied more to dishonor for the Lord and for other people. Perhaps a thing that we moderns could learn is that sex is never merely biological; there are emotional, social, and spiritual elements to it. When we reduce sex to a mere biological impulse, it’s hard to understand why we shouldn’t just do it with whomever we want, but when we see the way that it ties us together emotionally, socially, and spiritually, it becomes a much more complex phenomenon that deserves to be handled with more respect than our society would suggest.

            Other of the laws also make sense. Respect, mutual care, compassion—these don’t seem to need a lot of justification. There’s the occasional weird one: 19:19, for example. What’s wrong with mating two different kinds of animals (that’s where mules come from), or mixing crops (in some gardens that’s considered best practice), or materials in clothing (half of my wardrobe is blends of some sort)? Probably we should see this as a manifestation of Israel’s purity, that she is not to be mixed up in idolatry or with idolatrous people. We might ask the same question about not shaving the side of one’s beard, and it’s probably just best to answer at a generic level and say, “It marked Israel as unique from her pagan neighbors.” One that may bother a lot of contemporary readers is the prohibition on tattoos in 19:28. Chad Bird, an Old Testament scholar with a Lutheran background has an interesting video about this (check it out here). He suggests that it was some sort of pagan ritual to connect the living with the dead. (Honestly, if the verse is really about grieving practices, I can think of a half dozen applications to the modern day, but that would take us down a very deep rabbit hole. I have a series of videos here that document my thoughts on the matter.)