Month: March 2021

What just happened:
Leviticus opens with several laws of sacrifice and the details therein which are, let’s be honest, alarming for anyone who either likes pigeons or believes blood should be dashed on the wall rarely if at all.

And I thought to myself, Leviticus, your reputation precedes you. Because that’s pretty much what I know of this third book — that it’s a set of rules, rules and more rules, associated with the Levites.

For the first few pages of this section, I thought there wasn’t much in the way of a picture idea that I could glean. The pigeon thing threw me. And it was interesting to learn we aren’t supposed to eat fat. (Clearly no one told my grandma Lilly that because: schmaltz.)

But I didn’t see how I could use the above in my day to day. Then, pulling back, I did in fact glean a few things that perhaps I was taking for granted on first skim.

Of note:

• First off, there’s the embedded message that everyone sins — priests, nations, individuals — we all sin.
• Happily, there is also a path to forgiveness. It’s possible to make up for our sins. To take action — to do something to right our wrongs. The key might be acknowledging the mistake, and marking that acknowledgement with care and an odor that God finds pleasing. Hard to argue with that.
• And it turns out, ignorance doesn’t get you off the hook. If you later realize you did wrong, you still need to make amends.

These are ideas that feel pretty widely accepted today. Sin is universal. But with conscious thought and effort we can move forward.

It’s easy to align these ideas with confession, for example.

I wonder though if they were that widely accepted at the time. As a novel notion, they would be revolutionary.

What just happened:
The tabernacle is built and the Lord makes an appearance, as we finish Exodus. What’s a tabernacle, you ask? Wikipedia defines it thusly:

According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tabernacle, also known as the Tent of the Congregation, was the portable earthly dwelling place of Yahweh used by the Israelites from the Exodus until the conquest of Canaan.

And Wikimedia Commons offers this lovely image from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations:

Of note:

• My co-readers had a wonderful reflection about this being the first great work of former slaves who had helped build Egypt. Now they build for themselves.
• Meanwhile, I ruminated on the (let’s be honest) bizarre amount of detail this week’s portion was serving up. I’m just saying, you have to be confident that you have your audience locked in if you’re going to dive this deep. Melville did it. Pynchon does it repeatedly. Nice to see the Torah was written by confident folks, with no fear that they would lose their crowd in details of acacia wood, gold, copper, crimson yarns, linen, dolphin skins, lapis lazuli, spices, oil, flesh hooks, goat’s hair, cups shaped like almond-blossoms, and the extraordinary tabernacling skills of Bezalel, son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah.
• Adversity creates community. As can a shared past. Building something massive and mighty also bonds people with a sense of a common purpose, the common good, an appreciation for the moment and a stake in the future.
• Looking at the image above, it’s clear that the tabernacle is more than an extravagant tent or gold-covered arc. It’s a mobile town. A place you can carry with you. No surprise that it would be so precious to this wandering people in search of a home.