Bible 101: Lesson 4

Leviticus

This book gets its title from the name of the tribe of Israel that was set aside to be priests to God – the tribe of Levi. They became known as Levites, and the book describes their duties in detail.

Leviticus contains laws dealing with every facet of the new society Israel is to form. There are civil, sanitary, ceremonial, moral and religious laws spelled out in detail, including the system of offering sacrifices. Each type of offering is commanded to teach God’s way to this new nation. Each law is written to ensure that not just the priests, but the whole nation will pursue a high degree of personal holiness.

It is interesting to note how advanced the sanitary laws recorded in Leviticus are. Historians and archaeologists have discovered how completely unlike the practices of the surrounding dominant nations these laws were. The discovery of germs was made by a doctor who noticed the commands in the book of Leviticus and decided to require the same procedures of his medical students. Up until that time, death during childbirth was astronomically high, because students would go directly from dissecting corpses to delivering babies without washing the blood from their hands.

The main purpose of this book is to show that God is holy and man is sinful. Though all have sinned, God will accept a substitute for the death of the sinner. The role of sacrifice in God’s plan is clearly spelled out, a shadow of things to come when the final sacrifice of Jesus takes away the sin of the whole human race. There are no direct messianic prophecies in this book, but the need for Jesus Christ to die in our place is most clearly understood by reading it.

Contains no messianic prophecies.