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Long Description |
Leviticus The Book of Boundaries
The Book of Leviticus is a foreboding book for most readers. The first seven chapters deal with five sacrifices, none of which survived beyond the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70. Why should the modern reader immerse himself in all that detail? Other parts of the book are filled with laws of cleanliness. Then there are the incredibly detailed dietary laws. Are all these laws still binding or not? Most churches think not.
Then of what relevance is this difficult book? The church has long answered: "Not much." So, it has remained a closed book for most Christians.
This is a mistake. The Book of Leviticus is the third book of the Pentateuch, the book of the moral law. It is also the book of the holy land, i.e., private property. The Book of Leviticus sets forth the fundamental economic principle of ownership: God first, then those to whom He has delegated subordinate ownership.
For example, consider Leviticus 19:15. "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor." This verse provides God's people with two crucial principles, one economic and one judicial.
The economic principle affirms the legitimacy of inequality. The judicial principle affirms the local court system. These two principles-inequality and judicial locialism-are fundamental for the creation of a free society. Modern socialism and its supposed replacement, the much-heralded bureaucratic New World Order, are equally hostile to such a view of civil law.
Or consider the jubilee law (Lev. 25). All rural land was supposed to be returned to the original families twice each century. Does this law legitimize a system of government-mandated wealth redistribution? Liberation theologians say it does. Does it authorize a government-mandated debt repudiation law in order to head off another Great Depression? A lot of conservative Christians say it does. Are both sides rights? Or neither?
The economic law of Leviticus are neglected at our peril. But which ones? Not all of them are still in force. Leviticus: An Economic Commentary identifies which ones are, and provides a principle of biblical interpretation to prove it.
We cannot understand ancient Israel if we do not understand how the Book of Leviticus applied-or was supposed to apply-under the Mosaic economy. We cannot fully understand the inheritance God has provided the church (Matt. 21:43) if we do not understand Leviticus.
It is time for Christians to take Leviticus seriously. But they must understand it first. Leviticus: An Economic Commentary recovers may long-forgotten and long-ignored portions of this, the most closed book of the Bible.
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Inside Flap |
"So high, you can't get over it. So low, you can't get under it. So wide, you can't get around it."
This pretty well describes most Christians' view of the Book of Leviticus. But they forget the last verse: "So, hear the word of the Lord." It is as if Leviticus were not part of the Bible. But it is. It's there for a reason-a lot reasons.
Not many preachers have devoted Sunday morning to a series of sermons on Leviticus. Not even one popular devotional book is based on the Book of Leviticus. The only Hollywood Bible spectacular ever even remotely connected to Leviticus was Ben Hur: the scenes in the lepers' camp.
The book of Leviticus remains the closed book of the church. Yet inside that closed book are the legal foundations of the free society. The trouble is, they are hidden beneath a pile of thorny questions.
For example, what about the Levitical dietary laws? Can Christians lawfully eat pork? What about catfish? How about horse meat? If not, why not?
Have you ever heard about sacrificial Christian service? Leviticus shows you why God has placed distinct limits on all such service-why no institution can lawfully demand from its members "the whole of their lives." Only God can. Do you know where to find this passage?
Have you ever heard about something called full-time Christian service? Leviticus shows why every honest occupation before God is full-time Christian service. But you have to know where to look it up. Do you?
Then there is the debate over representative civil government. Does God delegate political authority to the rulers directly, or does He delegate it through the people? Leviticus answers this important political question, but you have to know where to find it. Not many people do.
Leviticus has recently become the center of a debate over homosexuality, for it is in Leviticus that the prohibition against homosexuality appears. So does the prohibition against bestiality. If the former law has been annulled, what about the latter?
If every Mosaic law was automatically annulled by the New Testament, and therefore must be reaffirmed in the New Testament in order for it to be valid, what about bestiality? The New Testament does not mention it. If the anti-bestiality law was automatically annulled by the New Testament, on what explicitly biblical basis can society legislate against the practice?
Then there is the question of slavery. The Bible clearly affirms the legitimacy of the purchase of slaves and the permanent intergenerational inheritance of these slaves. But where does it say this? In Leviticus.
On the other hand, if we can discover a New Testament principle of interpretation that annuls this passage-one inherent in Leviticus from the beginning-then we can find in the Bible the world's first religious affirmation of abolitionism. Was Jesus the first major abolitionist? Or was he a defender of slavery? This book provides the answer.
What about the gleaning? Didn't government require land owners to allow poor people into the fields after the harvest one year in seven? Wasn't this a welfare system? Liberals think so. On the other hand, is "workface" God's way out of poverty? Liberals don't think so, while conservatives just aren't sure.
So, Leviticus offers a lot of problems for Christian expositors. And how do the expositors deal with these problems? Usually, by ignoring them.
What students of the Bible need is a hermeneutic: a biblical principle of interpretation that enables them to sort out the continuing laws from the annulled laws. Leviticus, coupled with the Epistle to the Hebrews, supplies the largest part of this hermeneutic, but not many expositors recognize this.
These and many other issues are discussed in detail in Leviticus: An Economic Commentary, the fifth volume in the economic commentary series known as The Dominion Covenant. |
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Catalog Description |
This is a 750-page Reader's Digest-like condensed version of Boundaries and Dominion: The Economics of Leviticus, which is twice as long and which is available only on computer disk to those who have bought the printed commentary. This commentary includes detailed analyses of the passages in Leviticus dealing with economics, including the often misinterpreted 25th chapter on jubilee laws. It presents a biblical hermeneutic (principle of interpretation) that enables students of the Bible separate those Mosaic laws that are still in force from those that are not. It shows why the Mosaic law's seed laws, which included the clothing laws, the food laws, and the land laws were fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ and are no longer valid. This applies also to the permanent slave law. (Lev. 25:44-46). |
