Old Testament · 27 chapters

Leviticus

• No. 42 Leviticus 22:26-33

  Leviticus is the priests' handbook, chapter after chapter of rules for offerings and holiness. This passage sets conditions on which animals may be sacrificed, and two of them concern mothers and their young.

• No. 78 Leviticus 4:22-26

  Leviticus 4 works through the sin offering, the sacrifice for wrongs done unintentionally, and it goes down the social ladder one rung at a time. First the anointed priest, then the whole congregation, then...

• No. 80 Leviticus 4:27-35

  This is the last rung of the ladder in Leviticus 4. The chapter has given the sin offering for the anointed priest, for the whole community, and for a ruler. Now it reaches the ordinary person, one of the...

• No. 87 Leviticus 8:1-13

  Exodus gave the instructions for making priests. Leviticus 8 is the day it happens, and the whole community is assembled at the door of the tent to watch. This passage is the ordination of Aaron and his sons,...

• No. 99 Leviticus 18:21-30

  Leviticus 17 to 26 is called the Holiness Code, a block of law built on the refrain be holy, for I am holy. Chapter 18 is its list of forbidden sexual relations and practices, and this passage is its closing...

• No. 105 Leviticus 14:48-57

  Leviticus 13 and 14 deal at length with a condition the text calls tsaraath, usually translated leprosy but covering a range of skin conditions, and then, unexpectedly, the same word applied to fabrics and to...

• No. 157 Leviticus 21:13-24

  Leviticus 21 sets the rules for priests, and this passage is its hardest section. It restricts whom the high priest may marry, and then lists physical conditions that bar a descendant of Aaron from offering...

• No. 259 Leviticus 14:1-7

  This is the ceremony for a person who has been healed of a skin disease that made them unclean and shut them out of the community. It reads like arcane ritual, easy to skip, but the shape of what happens is...

• No. 266 Leviticus 6:24-30

  This is the law of the sin offering, the sacrifice brought to deal with a person's wrongdoing, and it reads like pure ritual technicality: who eats it, where, and what to do with the pot it was cooked in. But...

• No. 281 Leviticus 11:20-25

  This is a scrap of the dietary law, and it is about which insects an Israelite could eat. Most winged crawling insects, it says, are off-limits and detestable, but there is an exception, and the exception is...

• No. 286 Leviticus 22:14-25

  This is a stretch of law about what may be brought to God as an offering, and after some rules about eating holy food by mistake, it settles on one firm principle, repeated over and over. The animal you offer...

• No. 339 Leviticus 2:1-10

  This is the law of the grain offering, and it stands out among the sacrifices because it involves no animal and no blood. It is an offering of fine flour with oil and frankincense, or of baked cakes and...

• No. 359 Leviticus 27:22-27

  This is a technical passage about vows and dedicated things, the kind of legal detail that is easy to skip. Someone might dedicate a field to the LORD, and the priest assigns it a value; but if it was a field...

• No. 378 Leviticus 16:29-34

  This is the closing instruction for the Day of Atonement, the single most important day in Israel's year, the one day when atonement was made for all the sins of the whole people at once. God commands it as a...

• No. 410 Leviticus 7:1-6

  This is the law of the guilt offering, and to understand why it mattered you have to know what made it different from the other sacrifices. The guilt offering, sometimes called the trespass offering, was tied...

• No. 445 Leviticus 7:16-21

  This is a rule about the peace offering, and to appreciate it you have to know that the peace offering was unique among the sacrifices: it was the one the worshiper actually got to eat. Most offerings went up...

• No. 456 Leviticus 23:33-38

  This passage describes the Feast of Booths, the last and most joyful of Israel's yearly festivals, a seven-day celebration in the autumn when the people lived in temporary shelters and rejoiced before God over...

• No. 551 Leviticus 27:9-13

  This is a small piece of law about vows, about what happens when a person dedicates an animal to the LORD. And the rule is stricter than we might expect. Once an animal has been given to God, it is holy, and...

• No. 570 Leviticus 18:11-15

  This is a stretch of law that modern readers usually skim in embarrassment, a list of relatives a person must not have sexual relations with: a half-sister, an aunt, an uncle's wife, a daughter-in-law. It...

• No. 592 Leviticus 20:11-15

  This is one of the hardest kinds of passage in the law: a list of sexual offenses that, under Israel's covenant, carried the death penalty, incest, adultery with a father's wife, relations with a...

• No. 656 Leviticus 24:10-16

  Leviticus is mostly law, chapter after chapter of instruction for priests and people. Now and then a story breaks into it, and this is one. In the middle of rules about the lamp and the bread of the sanctuary,...

• No. 746 Leviticus 6:8-13

  In the middle of Leviticus's instructions for the priests comes the law of the burnt offering, and its refrain is a single command about the altar fire: it shall not go out. The offering rests on the hearth...

• No. 769 Leviticus 16:23-28

  This is the tail end of the Day of Atonement, the one day a year the high priest entered the Most Holy Place to make atonement for the whole nation. The dramatic parts are over; what remains is the cleanup,...

• No. 791 Leviticus 16:1-5

  The chapter that gives Israel its Day of Atonement opens with a shadow over it. The LORD spoke to Moses, it says, after the death of the two sons of Aaron, who had come near before the LORD and died. Nadab and...

• No. 831 Leviticus 5:14-19

  Leviticus lays out an offering for a category of sin most of us would rather not think about: the wrong done without meaning to, or without even knowing. If anyone sins unintentionally regarding the LORD's...

• No. 929 Leviticus 25:13-17

  This is part of the law of Jubilee, the fiftieth year when debts were released and land returned to its original family. In these verses God regulates buying and selling in light of it: when you buy or sell...

• No. 959 Leviticus 24:1-9

  These verses describe two things kept perpetually in the sanctuary. First, the lamp: Aaron is to tend it with pure beaten olive oil, keeping it burning before the LORD from evening to morning, continually, a...

• No. 1068 Leviticus 19:19-25

  This part of the holiness code mixes several laws. Do not crossbreed animals, sow two kinds of seed, or wear cloth of two materials. There is a provision about a wronged slave woman and the trespass offering...

• No. 1121 Leviticus 26:21-26

  This is part of the covenant curses in Leviticus, God warning Israel of what will come if they persistently turn from him. The passage is structured as an escalation: if you walk contrary to me, I will bring...

• No. 1181 Leviticus 27:28-34

  The book of Leviticus closes with laws about things devoted to God. Something irrevocably devoted to the LORD cannot be sold or bought back; it is most holy to him. Then the tithe: all the tithe of the land,...

• No. 1190 Leviticus 25:18-22

  God gives Israel the law of the Sabbath year: every seventh year the land is to rest, no sowing, no reaping. Anticipating the obvious anxiety, God voices the question the people will ask: what shall we eat in...

• No. 1226 Leviticus 1:1-9

  The book of Leviticus opens with the laws of sacrifice, and the first is the burnt offering. A worshiper brings an unblemished male animal to the tabernacle door, lays his hand on its head, and it is accepted...

• No. 1228 Leviticus 25:29-34

  These are laws about redeeming property. A house in a walled city can be bought back within one year of its sale, but after that it belongs permanently to the buyer and is not released even in the Jubilee....

• No. 1264 Leviticus 2:11-16

  The law of the grain offering includes two rules about what may and may not be added. No yeast or honey is to be burned in an offering made by fire to the LORD; those things, associated with fermentation and...

• No. 1288 Leviticus 19:14-18

  This part of the holiness code fills the command to love your neighbor with concrete content. Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but fear your God. Do no injustice in judgment,...

• No. 1420 Leviticus 4:13-21

  This law addresses a particular case: what happens when the whole congregation of Israel sins unintentionally, doing something God had forbidden without realizing it, and the guilt is hidden from them until...

• No. 1461 Leviticus 11:9-19

  This passage is part of the law distinguishing clean from unclean creatures. Fish with fins and scales may be eaten; those without are to be detested. A long list of birds is forbidden, mostly birds of prey...

• No. 1463 Leviticus 7:7-15

  These are laws for the various offerings, including the peace offering brought in thanksgiving. When a person offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving, they are to bring it with cakes and wafers, and part goes to...

• No. 1465 Leviticus 23:39-44

  This passage describes the Feast of Tabernacles, kept for seven days after the harvest is gathered in. The people are to take branches of trees and rejoice before the LORD, and, most distinctively, to live in...

• No. 1473 Leviticus 1:10-17

  This passage continues the law of the burnt offering. One may bring an animal from the flock, a sheep or a goat without defect, offered whole on the altar as a pleasing aroma to the LORD. But then the law...

• No. 1555 Leviticus 13:24-28

  This law instructs the priest on examining a burn on the skin to determine whether it is the beginning of a serious disease or merely a healing scar. He is to look at the spot: if the hair in it has turned...

• No. 1567 Leviticus 15:24-33

  This chapter deals with various bodily discharges that rendered a person ceremonially unclean, natural conditions of the body, not sins, that nonetheless kept a person temporarily from the sanctuary. The law...

• No. 1661 Leviticus 19:31-37

  This part of the holiness code gathers a cluster of commands about how to treat others. Rise before the aged and honor the old. Do not wrong the foreigner who lives among you; rather, love him as yourself, for...

• No. 1670 Leviticus 26:1-5

  This chapter of blessings and warnings opens with first things. Make no idols, God says, no carved image or sacred pillar or figured stone to bow down to, for I am the LORD your God. Keep my Sabbaths and...

• No. 1709 Leviticus 23:1-8

  God gives Israel the calendar of his appointed feasts, the holy convocations that would order their year. First comes the Sabbath: six days for work, but the seventh a day of solemn rest, a holy assembly, on...

• No. 1740 Leviticus 19:9-13

  Among the commands of the holiness code comes one about harvest. When you reap your land, God says, do not reap to the very edges of your field, nor gather the gleanings; do not strip your vineyard bare or...

• No. 1757 Leviticus 13:18-23

  This part of the law gives the priest careful instructions for examining a skin condition, a spot or swelling where a boil has healed. The priest looks closely: if the mark is deeper than the skin and the hair...

• No. 1772 Leviticus 11:26-38

  This part of the law spells out, in careful detail, which animals are clean and which unclean, and how uncleanness is transmitted: touching a carcass, carrying it, the vessels it falls into. An earthen pot...

• No. 1777 Leviticus 13:45-52

  The law prescribes how the one with the dreaded skin disease must live: torn clothes, loosened hair, the upper lip covered, and the cry going before him, Unclean, unclean. As long as the disease is in him, he...

• No. 1781 Leviticus 26:14-20

  This part of Leviticus lays out the consequences of persistent disobedience, a series of hardships God warns will follow if the people reject his commandments and break his covenant: wasting disease, defeat...

• No. 1809 Leviticus 25:35-43

  The law makes provision for the brother who falls into poverty. If your brother becomes poor and cannot support himself, God says, you shall uphold him; let him live among you. Take no interest or profit from...

• No. 1834 Leviticus 25:1-7

  God gives Israel a striking command about the land. For six years you shall sow your fields and prune your vineyards and gather the harvest; but in the seventh year the land is to have a Sabbath of solemn...

• No. 1842 Leviticus 13:29-37

  The law gives the priest careful instructions for examining a sore on the head or beard. He looks closely; and if the case is uncertain, he does not rush to a verdict. He isolates the person seven days and...

• No. 1883 Leviticus 3:6-11

  Leviticus describes the peace offering, or fellowship offering, one of the sacrifices Israel could bring. The worshiper lays his hand on the animal, it is offered before the LORD, and its blood is sprinkled on...

• No. 1887 Leviticus 20:6-10

  Among the laws of holiness, God speaks against turning to mediums and those who consult the dead: the person who turns to mediums and wizards, to prostitute himself after them, I will set my face against, and...

• No. 1908 Leviticus 16:18-22

  On the Day of Atonement, after making atonement with blood for the Holy Place and the altar, Aaron presents the live goat. He lays both his hands on its head and confesses over it all the iniquities and...

• No. 1931 Leviticus 12:1-8

  The law gives instructions for a woman's purification after childbirth: a time of separation, and then an offering at the sanctuary, a lamb for a burnt offering and a bird for a sin offering. But then comes a...

• No. 2013 Leviticus 16:6-10

  On the Day of Atonement, Aaron is to take two goats and cast lots over them: one lot for the LORD, the other for the scapegoat. The goat for the LORD is offered as a sin offering. But the other, the scapegoat,...

• No. 2021 Leviticus 4:1-12

  The law now turns to a particular kind of sin: if anyone sins unintentionally, in any of the things the LORD has commanded not to be done, and does one of them. For such sins, committed without intending them,...

• No. 2058 Leviticus 17:1-7

  God gives Israel a command about their sacrifices: they must be brought to the door of the tent of meeting and offered to the LORD there, not slaughtered in the open field. And the reason is given plainly at...

• No. 2090 Leviticus 19:1-8

  God gives Moses a command that stands at the heart of the law's call to a distinct life: you shall be holy, for I, the LORD your God, am holy. What follows are specific instructions, to respect father and...

• No. 2180 Leviticus 8:14-29

  In the ceremony consecrating Aaron and his sons as priests, Moses does something striking with the blood of the ram of consecration. He puts some of it on the tip of Aaron's right ear, on the thumb of his...

• No. 2187 Leviticus 15:19-23

  Among the laws of ceremonial purity is a provision about a woman's monthly discharge of blood, which rendered her ceremonially unclean, and anyone who touched her or what she had touched became unclean too....

• No. 2209 Leviticus 21:1-6

  God gives special instructions for the priests, holding them to a standard of holiness higher than others, because of who they were and what they did. They were to keep themselves from certain defilements, to...

• No. 2419 Leviticus 11:1-8

  Leviticus begins its long list of clean and unclean animals, sorting creatures by hoof and cud, permitting some for the table and forbidding others. To modern ears the details feel remote, and for Christians...

• No. 2443 Leviticus 17:8-16

  In the middle of laws about blood, Leviticus states a principle that reaches far beyond the sacrificial system: the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement...

• No. 2458 Leviticus 10:6-11

  This comes right after the death of Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu, who offered unauthorized fire before the LORD. In the aftermath, God speaks to Aaron directly with a charge for the priests: do not drink wine...

• No. 2491 Leviticus 20:1-5

  Leviticus turns to one of the darkest practices of the surrounding nations: giving children to the god Molech, child sacrifice. The penalty is death, and God says he will set his face against anyone who does...

• No. 2501 Leviticus 16:11-17

  On the Day of Atonement, before the high priest can do anything for the people, he must deal with himself. Aaron presents a bull as a sin offering for himself and his household, sprinkles its blood on the...

• No. 2522 Leviticus 22:9-13

  Leviticus sets rules about who may eat the holy offerings reserved for the priests. An outsider or a hired hand may not, but those who belong to the priest's household may: the slaves he has bought, those born...

• No. 2545 Leviticus 14:43-47

  Leviticus gives a strange law about a house infected with a spreading mildew. First the priest tries lesser measures: remove the affected stones, scrape the walls, replaster. But if the plague breaks out again...

• No. 2553 Leviticus 5:7-13

  Leviticus makes a striking provision for the poor. The standard sin offering was a lamb, but if a person could not afford a lamb, they could bring two birds; and if they could not afford even the birds, they...

• No. 2703 Leviticus 27:14-21

  Leviticus closes with the law of vows, and this stretch handles what happens when a person dedicates a house or a field to the Lord. The priest sets a value. If the owner wants it back, he redeems it by paying...

• No. 2711 Leviticus 19:26-30

  These commands sit in the Holiness Code, just after "love your neighbor as yourself." They read at first like a jumble: do not eat blood, do not practice divination or sorcery, do not cut the hair of your head...

• No. 2725 Leviticus 18:1-5

  Before Leviticus 18 begins its hard list of forbidden relationships, it lays down the frame that governs every line of it: I am the LORD your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you...

• No. 2734 Leviticus 7:28-38

  This is the law of the peace offering, and it settles a practical question: what does the priest get? The breast is lifted and waved before the Lord and then given to Aaron and his sons; the right thigh is set...

• No. 2747 Leviticus 20:21-27

  These verses come near the end of the holiness laws, with their severe penalties, and the frame around them is the key. Keep my statutes, God says, so the land does not spit you out. Do not follow the customs...

• No. 2776 Leviticus 26:36-46

  Leviticus ends on a bleak stretch: the terror of exile spelled out in advance. Hearts so faint that the sound of a driven leaf sends them fleeing, people wasting away in enemy lands under the weight of their...

• No. 2911 Leviticus 18:6-10

  This begins the list of forbidden sexual relations within the family, and it should be read soberly. None of you, God says, shall approach a close relative to uncover their nakedness. Then the relations are...

• No. 2928 Leviticus 18:16-20

  This continues the list of forbidden relations, and it should be read soberly. It fences off relations with a brother's wife, with a woman and her daughter, with a wife's sister taken as a rival, and, plainly,...

• No. 2931 Leviticus 3:1-5

  This is the law of the peace offering. The worshiper brings an animal without defect, lays his hand on its head, and it is killed at the entrance of the tent; the priests sprinkle the blood on the altar and...

• No. 2982 Leviticus 24:17-23

  This is the law of proportional retribution. Whoever strikes a person dead is put to death; whoever kills an animal makes it good, life for life; an injury is repaid in kind, fracture for fracture, eye for...

• No. 3025 Leviticus 26:6-13

  God lays out the blessings of the covenant for a people who walk with him: peace in the land, sleep without fear, safety from wild beasts and the sword, victory over enemies, fruitfulness and plenty. And then...

• No. 3032 Leviticus 15:12-18

  These are laws about ritual uncleanness arising from ordinary bodily discharges, and the path back to cleanness: washing, waiting a set number of days, and on the eighth day two birds offered, one for a sin...

• No. 3052 Leviticus 25:8-12

  Every fiftieth year is to be a Jubilee. On the Day of Atonement the trumpet sounds throughout the land, and liberty is proclaimed to all its inhabitants: each person returns to his own property, and each to...

• No. 3132 Leviticus 15:7-11

  These laws describe how ceremonial uncleanness spreads by contact: whoever touches the one with a discharge, or what he has sat on, or is touched by him, becomes unclean until evening and must wash. It taught...

• No. 3237 Leviticus 6:19-23

  This gives the rule for the daily grain offering of the anointed priest: a tenth of an ephah of fine flour, half offered in the morning and half in the evening, baked with oil, and wholly burned to the LORD....

• No. 3252 Leviticus 23:9-14

  The law of firstfruits sets an order for gratitude. When Israel comes into the land and reaps its harvest, they are to bring the first sheaf to the priest to wave before the LORD, with a lamb and grain and...

• No. 3312 Leviticus 23:22-32

  Two commands sit side by side in the calendar of Israel's worship. First, the harvest law: when you reap, do not reap to the very corners of your field or gather the gleanings, but leave them for the poor and...

• No. 3315 Leviticus 15:1-6

  This law deals with bodily discharges and the ritual uncleanness they spread, so that the bed a person lies on and the seat he sits on become unclean, and anyone who touches them must wash and wait until...

• No. 3338 Leviticus 13:38-44

  This law asks the priest to make careful distinctions. A person with bright spots on the skin must be examined: if the spots are only a dull white, it is a harmless rash, and the person is clean. Baldness by...

• No. 3397 Leviticus 21:7-12

  These laws set the priests, and especially the high priest, apart by a stricter standard of holiness, because they represented God to the people and the people to God. The high priest, marked by the anointing...

• No. 3410 Leviticus 14:19-31

  This ritual restores a healed leper to the community through atonement, with blood and oil placed on the ear, the thumb, and the toe, consecrating the whole person again to God. But notice the mercy woven into...

• No. 3440 Leviticus 5:1-6

  This law deals with sins a person may commit almost unawares: failing to speak up as a witness, touching something unclean without realizing it, swearing a rash oath, and then coming to recognize the guilt...

• No. 3533 Leviticus 9:1-7

  On the eighth day, the newly ordained Aaron approaches the altar for the first time to offer sacrifice, and Moses tells him something wonderful: today the LORD will appear to you. The purpose of all the...

• No. 3562 Leviticus 25:23-28

  This law rests on a striking declaration: the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; you are strangers and sojourners with me. The Israelites did not ultimately own the land; God did, and...

• No. 3564 Leviticus 27:1-8

  This law sets values for vows in which someone dedicated a person to the LORD, and to modern eyes the schedule of prices can feel strange. But notice the provision that comes at the end: if a man is too poor...

• No. 3667 Leviticus 3:12-17

  In the peace offering, the fat, the prized portion, is burned on the altar to God, and the law states the principle plainly: all the fat is the LORD's. The prime portion belongs to God. And the people are...

• No. 3692 Leviticus 13:1-8

  This law lays out the careful process by which a priest examined a suspected case of leprosy, isolating the person, watching over several days, re-examining, in order to distinguish a serious, spreading...

• No. 3750 Leviticus 25:44-55

  This passage sits within the laws about servitude in ancient Israel, laws we read soberly across a great distance of time and culture, and not as an endorsement of slavery. Yet even here God builds in...

• No. 3779 Leviticus 11:39-47

  This passage closes the laws distinguishing clean from unclean animals, and it gives the reason behind all these distinctions in a single, weighty command: be holy, for I am holy. The dietary rules were not...

• No. 3802 Leviticus 10:12-20

  Just after the sudden death of two of Aaron's sons, Moses discovers that the sin offering was burned rather than eaten as the law required, and he confronts Aaron's remaining sons in anger. But Aaron answers...

• No. 3809 Leviticus 6:1-7

  This law deals with sins against a neighbor, cheating, robbery, keeping something entrusted or found, lying under oath. And it lays down a striking requirement: before the guilty person brings his offering to...

• No. 3847 Leviticus 10:1-5

  At the height of Israel's joy over the newly consecrated tabernacle, tragedy strikes. Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron and priests, offer strange fire before the LORD, something he had not commanded, and fire...

• No. 3852 Leviticus 7:22-27

  This law reserves two things for God alone: the fat and the blood of the sacrificial animals were not to be eaten by the people. The fat, regarded as the rich, prime part, was to be offered to God; and the...

• No. 3991 Leviticus 26:27-35

  This is a hard section of the covenant warnings, a sober description of the desolation that would come if Israel persisted in rebellion, ending in exile from the land. We do not dwell on its harrowing images,...

• No. 4012 Leviticus 13:9-17

  These laws about diagnosing skin disease required something significant: the affected person had to be brought to the priest and examined openly. There was no hiding it, no self-diagnosis, no pretending the...

• No. 4025 Leviticus 20:16-20

  This passage sits within a section of laws setting boundaries around family and sexual relationships, laws we read across a great distance of time and culture, and whose ancient penalties are severe. We do not...

• No. 4031 Leviticus 14:8-18

  This passage describes the elaborate ceremony by which a person healed of leprosy was cleansed and restored to the community. There is deep grace in the very existence of this ritual. The leper had been an...

• No. 4076 Leviticus 23:15-21

  This passage describes the Feast of Weeks, or Firstfruits, a celebration held at the wheat harvest, when the people were to bring an offering of new bread and grain to the LORD as firstfruits. The heart of the...

• No. 4121 Leviticus 22:1-8

  God gives instructions that the priests must not approach or eat the holy things while they are unclean; they must be cleansed first, or be cut off from his presence. The holy offerings, dedicated to God,...

• No. 4177 Leviticus 8:30-36

  This passage describes the consecration of Aaron and his sons for the priesthood, a process that was not completed in a moment. They were anointed with oil and sprinkled with blood, and then commanded to...

• No. 4222 Leviticus 6:14-18

  In the law of the grain offering, the priest takes a handful of the fine flour, oil, and frankincense and burns it on the altar as a memorial portion, a pleasant aroma to the LORD, while the rest is eaten by...

• No. 4258 Leviticus 9:8-24

  After the long preparations and the careful offering of the sacrifices, the day of Aaron's first service as priest reaches its climax. Moses and Aaron bless the people, and then it happens: the glory of the...

• No. 4306 Leviticus 14:32-42

  This law concerns a spreading contamination, a kind of mildew or plague, found in the walls of a house. The priest's response is careful but decisive: he inspects the house, and if the plague is spreading in...

• No. 4312 Leviticus 13:53-59

  This law concerns a garment infected with a spreading mildew. The priest is to have it washed and examined again; and if the contamination remains after washing, the garment, however valuable, is to be burned....