Leviticus had to be the least read book of the bible, I thought. After all, it’s a book of regulations aimed at citizens of Israel, with detailed rules about how to diagnose infections such as skin diseases and the different types of sacrifices.
Modern Christians don’t have to bother with that sort of stuff – we can go to a dermatologist, we don’t need to do animal or grain sacrifices under Christianity and no one worries about us being ritually unclean (although the congregation at my church do tend to use antibacterial hand cleanser after The Peace – a legacy of Covid-19).
But it turns out that I was wrong. A January 2018 poll by Crossway found that Leviticus is more likely to have been read in the previous month than a number of the minor prophets, including Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, even Jonah (!), Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai and Zachariah.
Sure, Leviticus was no where near the top of the league: Christians much prefer reading the New Testament, the Psalms, Proverbs and Genesis. But, still, followers of Jesus do dip into it.
The way I see it is reminiscent of how people in Yorkshire see Christmas cake. They pair it with a slice of Wensleydale. Yes, they literally take a slice of iced fruit cake, put a slice of cheese on top and then take a bite. Sounds horrific, but since being introduced to this combination by someone from Hull, I can confirm that it’s the perfect match.
Leviticus really needs to be paired with Hebrews because what is occurring is a progressive revelation. Hebrews takes all this Mosaic law about sacrifices in the tabernacle in Leviticus that seems supremely weird to 21st century Western eyes, but didn’t seem weird in the past, and explains how they merely represent something much bigger.
Hebrews, in fact, says that that the tabernacle Moses created in Leviticus was merely “a copy and shadow of what is in heaven”, effectively a preview of what was to come. On its own, without God’s bigger plan at work, the Mosiac law was “weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect)”.
N.T. Wright explains that:
The blood of the sacrificial animals, through which the first covenant made through Moses came into being, was somehow a representation of the self-giving love of God. He emphasises that everything to do with that first covenant – the book itself in which it was written, the people with whom it was made, the tabernacle where the sacrifices would would thereafter take place … everything had to be sprinkled with the blood. The blood of the animals was saying, in relation to every possible aspect of the Israelites’ regular relationship with God, ‘All this happens because I love you enough to give my own self, my own life, for you.’ The animals are not just, it seems representing the people who come to worship; they stand as a gift from God to his people, with their death (symbolised by the poured-out lifeblood) as a sign of God’s own self-sacrificial love.
As such, the interplay between the Hebrews and the Leviticus really does make the latter a useful book to study for an in-depth understanding of the meaning of the cross.