Introduction

The third book of the Pentateuch, called in the Hebrew text, like other parts of the Pentateuch, by its first word “Vaikra” (vaikra – “and he called”), in Jewish tradition is named, according to its content, “Torat-kohanim” – “the law of the priests”, or “Torat-qorbanot” – the law of sacrifices. Similarly, the Greek name (in the LXX) of the book Λευιτικὸν, Latin Leviticus, Slavonic-Russian “Levit” indicate that the content of the book consists of the duties pertaining to the sacred tribe of Levi in the observance of the Old Testament worship: sacrifices, religious and ceremonial purifications, feasts, theocratic tithes, and the like. The Book of Leviticus has an almost exclusively legislative content, being almost entirely deprived of narrative-historical element: throughout its entire length only two facts are reported, moreover not having essential connection with the whole content of the entire book (the death of Nadab and Abihu after the consecration of the high priest and priests, ch. Lev 10:1-3, and the execution of a blasphemer, Lev 24:10-23); all the rest of the content of the book forms the detailed development and direct continuation of the statutes and ordinances of the law set forth in the 2nd part of the book of Exodus; everywhere the legislation of the Book of Leviticus appears as the development and completion of the revelation declared from Sinai (Lev 25:1). The chief idea or purpose of the book (expressed with particular clarity in Lev 26:11-12) consists in forming from Israel a people of the Lord, which would stand in close gracious and moral fellowship with Jehovah. To this purpose serve the ordinances found in the Book of Leviticus:

1. concerning sacrifices (Lev 1-7);

2. concerning the consecration of the ministers of worship (Lev 8-10);

3. concerning the clean and the unclean (Lev 11-16);

4. concerning the personal holiness of members of the people of the Lord in family and social life (Lev 17-20);

5. concerning the holiness and proper order of all the observances of worship, the cult, the sacred times, and so forth (Lev 21-27).

Thus the idea of holiness and sanctification – the governing idea of the Book of Leviticus, pervading all the outlined sections, connected as they are both historically or chronologically and logically by the development of one and the same principle.

Apart from the immediate task – the sanctification of members of the people of God in all the observances of religious and everyday life – the laws of the Book of Leviticus were by excellence “the shadow and image of good things to come” (Heb 10:1) of the New Testament.