Genesis 1 is a record of God’s establishing Order – distinction, distinctness, definition, form, law, boundaries, limits, hierarchies, authority. Genesis 2 is a microcosm of Genesis 1. And then the rest of Gen is a record of how that Order falls apart. It’s a story of the world unraveling. Genesis starts at the high point of Order, Godliness, and Communion with God, and then descends into Chaos, Ungodliness, and Separation from God. Israel finally finds itself down in Egypt, the geographical Pit of Death.
Death is the ultimate loss of definition, form, boundaries, etc. In Death, what God joined (body and soul) are separated: the soul returning to God, the body disintegrating back into the earth. The borders of the body are violated, and it ceases to be. The borders God made are transgressed. Transgression is Chaos; Transgression is Death. The Israelites in Egypt are in danger of completely dissolving into the Egyptians. God calls them out of their Idolatry, Transgression, and Death in Exodus. Exodus, then, is an Ascent back up to the Mountain of God, back to definition, law, form – Order. The Israelite body politic is saved from Death. It is reconstituted from the dust of the earth, brought up out of the waters just like Creation, especially the Land, in Gen 1 and 2. It receives a Law.
The building blocks of that Law go right back to, you guessed it: Genesis 1 and 2. At the end of Exodus, the people have been raised up from Egyptian Death to Jehovah’s Life and Order. And that leads to the Priestly book of Leviticus. The book of Leviticus is the book on how to maintain the Life and Order of God. Actually, the Torah as a whole is that. Leviticus stands at the heart of this maintenance of Order. Genesis and Exodus both anticipate Leviticus, and Numbers and Deuteronomy both recapitulate it. They are all working together to teach the Israelites – and us – how to maintain the Order of the World.
This is perhaps why these books, especially Leviticus, appear so strange to us. We don’t ordinarily feel the need of maintaining the great Order of the World. We’re shielded from this necessity by our technologically advanced society and the immense power of the modern State. Our technologies allow us to treat Time and Distance as if they are non-existent, or at least trivial obstacles. Other givens of nature, like basic facts of biology, are likewise negated. Cf. The Pill or sex reassignment surgery. Technology allows us to brute force our will on Nature. The State is able to impose an Order without respect to our will, approval, or action. It can minutely control territories, markets, and institutions. Which is to say life in a technologically advanced State is not “natural.” It is only possible because of a huge power at work.
The State is simply human power, but it feels like it’s the natural order, “the Way Things Are.” That’s not the case. And the Israelites knew that. The Israelites had neither the technology nor the modern State. They understood how easy it would be to slip back into Chaos. The Torah was how God taught them to maintain His Order. The laws God gave to the newly revived Israel were for keeping things in their places, according to their kinds, definite, ordered, distinct, rightly divided according to the Word. The hierarchies and grants of authority are not given arbitrarily, but rather insofar as they preserve the World-Order. This is why obedience to the Law would yield Blessing and Life, but disobedience Curse and Death. Curse and Death just are the wages of tearing down the hierarchies, overturning the authorities, and transgressing the limits and boundaries set by God. You can’t pull down hierarchies without descending into Death.
There is, therefore, an abiding importance for understanding Leviticus, indeed the whole Torah, and for keeping the substance of the Law. The remainder of the Old Testament writings is a record of this Order either being Glorified, as in aspects of David and Solomon’s reigns, or being allowed to devolve back to Chaos, as in the Exile. The Scriptures reach a fullness in Christ, who is this Law made Flesh. While He frees his people from the multiplicity of ceremonial and symbolic forms and rites the Law required, He does not remove our obligation to obey its substance. We are called now to preserve the Order of the World in Christ, not to send the world spiraling back into Chaos. Our Christ is a God of Order, not confusion. It’s in the light of the Torah, especially Leviticus, that we are to read our New Testament rites and laws. Obedience, Authority, Baptism, Eucharist, Submission, Patience, Forgiveness, Faith, Repentance – Love. These and more are instruments for maintaining God’s Presence with us, and hence the Order of our World, Life, and Glory.
A Pilgrim's Missives 