Questions about Leviticus

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scapularkid8

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I’m on Leviticus in my personal Bible reading and what I can’t figure out is

1)Why there are soooo many rules the Israelites have to follow. (This book makes God sound like He has OCD!: “…whomever touches the person with the impurity must wash his clothes and himself and be unclean until evening…”)

2)What’s the big deal about leporasy? Why was that such a bad thing? How would that make someone ‘unclean’ and why is it their fault for catching a disease?

3)Why don’t Catholics, and every other Christian sect for that matter, have to follow these laws (i.e. kosher laws)? I thought Jesus came, but didn’t change the laws by His Teachings. But yet I see Him in many Gospel accounts touching lepers and not washing Himself! Did He change the rules, or are the Gentiles exempt?
 
  1. Remember, this society was several millennia away from sterilizations, disinfectants, antibiotics, refrigeration, etc. Many of these laws were extremely helpful in preventing contagious diseases or severe or even fatal illnesses. (Did you know that mandatory handwashing for doctors was not incorporated officially until the mid 19th century–and that once it was, the near 50% maternal mortality, which existed because doctors delivered with dirty and contaminated hands, dropped into the single digits?) Cleanliness was next to godliness.
  2. Leprosy (Hansen’s disease) was still feared less than 100 years ago, because it was quite contagious, and because of its ravages on the human body. Again, modes of disease transmission were not fully realized. Considering how contagious leprosy is, and how in the very early stages one might not even be able to ‘see’ the lesions, having a person with known leprosy isolate himself and give due warning was actually a kindness to the uninfected. And if you were infected, would you, again in a society which could do virtually nothing about the disease, want to expose your loved ones? And it was nobody’s ‘fault’. Jesus Himself mentions this in relation to death and disease in Scripture.
  3. Jesus did fulfill “The Law” and that hasn’t changed. The “kosher” law was meant not just to safeguard but also to accustom the people to be mindful of inward cleanliness. Once Jesus came and instituted Baptism, there was no longer a need for ‘kosher’ law to remind us when we had a sacrament to give us that cleanliness. St. Peter notes that the ‘kosher law’ also prefigures the ‘separation’ of Jew and Gentile, and the revelation that the gospel was to be open to Gentiles was proven when St. Peter had the vision in the dream to ‘take up and eat’ the ‘unclean’ meat.
Jesus (as he noted when He told the paralyzed man to ‘take up your mat and walk’) has the power to forgive sins. He showed us that while it might be necessary to ‘physical’ health to ‘isolate’ a leper, that a true love might involve moving above concern for physical health (by touching); that He himself could ‘heal all’, and that ‘physical isolation’ need not involve isolation from the body of Christ. And this is only a small sampling of the richness of Christ’s life and love.
 
  1. “If you love me keep my commandments” – the rules are so that they could show God they love Him.
  2. My hands are “unclean” if I do yard work. I need to wash them. Why do they make children with the flu stay home from school? Same reason.
  3. Read the Bible. Jesus said that the dietary laws did not need to be followed.
scapularkid8 said:
I’m on Leviticus in my personal Bible reading and what I can’t figure out is

1)Why there are soooo many rules the Israelites have to follow. (This book makes God sound like He has OCD!: “…whomever touches the person with the impurity must wash his clothes and himself and be unclean until evening…”)

2)What’s the big deal about leporasy? Why was that such a bad thing? How would that make someone ‘unclean’ and why is it their fault for catching a disease?

3)Why don’t Catholics, and every other Christian sect for that matter, have to follow these laws (i.e. kosher laws)? I thought Jesus came, but didn’t change the laws by His Teachings. But yet I see Him in many Gospel accounts touching lepers and not washing Himself! Did He change the rules, or are the Gentiles exempt?
Click to expand...
 
Those are signs of spiritual truths. For example, hanging around with immoral people may lead you to immorality (if you soak in manure you may come out stinking). The touching of an impure person symbolizes this.

Likewise, leprosy was a symbol of the spiritual wounds caused by our sin. Just as the leper had to show his wounds to the priest and the priest would offer the appropriate sacrifice, so do we in the confessional show our spiritual wounds to the priest, and then he applies the sacrifice of Christ to heal us. 👍

Likewise, the dietary laws are figures of greater spiritual truths more fully revealed by Jesus.
 
Genesis315 has it right. Leprosy was a symbol of sin, and hanging around sinful person most often infected you.

I’m not sure about the dietary laws, whether they had any symbolism and all, but they did help prevent sickness.

I think Tim Gray has a good article on this that you may find interesting. Here it is.
 
NotWorthy said:
Genesis315 has it right. Leprosy was a symbol of sin, and hanging around sinful person most often infected you.

I’m not sure about the dietary laws, whether they had any symbolism and all, but they did help prevent sickness.

I think Tim Gray has a good article on this that you may find interesting. Here it is.
Click to expand...
True… and then there were the Pharisee’s who looked to the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law and had fits if people didn’t wash. The Jews became very obsessed with cleanliness as a way to avoid disease and prolong life. If you look at even the rules Jews follow today, you will see this. Pork is a no-no… and we find more disease causing organisms in it than any other meat… Eating meat with milk products slows down digestion by coating the stomach and neutralizing the stomach acids…
 
Tantum_ergo said:
  1. Leprosy (Hansen’s disease) was still feared less than 100 years ago, because it was quite contagious, and because of its ravages on the human body. Again, modes of disease transmission were not fully realized. Considering how contagious leprosy is, and how in the very early stages one might not even be able to ‘see’ the lesions, having a person with known leprosy isolate himself and give due warning was actually a kindness to the uninfected. And if you were infected, would you, again in a society which could do virtually nothing about the disease, want to expose your loved ones? And it was nobody’s ‘fault’. Jesus Himself mentions this in relation to death and disease in Scripture.
Click to expand...
Just totally random tidbit, but modern-day leprosy, which IS Hansen’s disease, and the leprosy of Biblical times aren’t the same. Biblical leprosy encompased a wide spectrum of skin diseases, some of which were very contagious, some of which weren’t (not that they knew of germ theory, anyway). Hansen’s disease isn’t nearly as contagious as previously thought, but due to its Biblical-leprosy ties, carried with it a heavy social stigma.

The book, “The Colony”, by John Tayman is an excellent book on the subject of the leper colony in Hawaii, and includes some truly inspiring accounts of Blessed Damien Joseph de Veuster of Moloka’i, the priest who went to live, and eventually die among, the lepers in the colony.

C
 
scapularkid8 said:
1)Why there are soooo many rules the Israelites have to follow. (This book makes God sound like He has OCD!: “…whomever touches the person with the impurity must wash his clothes and himself and be unclean until evening…”)
Click to expand...
Leviticus 20:22-26:

" 'Keep all my decrees and laws and follow them, so that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them. But I said to you, “You will possess their land; I will give it to you as an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey.” I am the LORD your God, who has set you apart from the nations.
" 'You must therefore make a distinction between clean and unclean animals and between unclean and clean birds. Do not defile yourselves by any animal or bird or anything that moves along the ground—those which I have set apart as unclean for you. You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.
Click to expand...
An explanation physically and spiritually. A thorough reading of the Bible itself provides many answers.
 
scapularkid8 said:
I’m on Leviticus in my personal Bible reading and what I can’t figure out is

1)Why there are soooo many rules the Israelites have to follow. (This book makes God sound like He has OCD!: “…whomever touches the person with the impurity must wash his clothes and himself and be unclean until evening…”)

2)What’s the big deal about leporasy? Why was that such a bad thing? How would that make someone ‘unclean’ and why is it their fault for catching a disease?

3)Why don’t Catholics, and every other Christian sect for that matter, have to follow these laws (i.e. kosher laws)? I thought Jesus came, but didn’t change the laws by His Teachings. But yet I see Him in many Gospel accounts touching lepers and not washing Himself! Did He change the rules, or are the Gentiles exempt?
Click to expand...
It is important to distinguish the laws that God gave to the people as reprimands and training from those that He gave as organic parts of the permanent life of the Church. If you consider the sequence of events concerning the two apostasies of Israel, the temporary, remedial nature of many of the details of the Old Law can be seen.

First with the Golden Calf, while Moses was being given the Decalogue, and then later, after the 40 years of penitential wandering in the desert, with the Baal of Peor, Israel worshiped other gods. Because of this, the twice-daily sacrifice of animals (the very animals which were worshiped as gods Egypt) was ordered as a constant renewal of their commitment to the True God and a disavowal of idolatry.

Once Jesus came, the period of training and penitential laws was complete; however, the core of the law, which Moses would have proclaimed with the Decalogue, remained in full force, because it was neither penal nor temporary. If you focus on the two apostasies, these relationships and, as Dei Verbum puts it, the “pedagogic” nature of the Old Testament becomes easier to see.

For a systematic consideration of these issues, Dr. Scott Hahn’s on-line course in biblical history is easy and instructive. It is free of charge (but requests registration) at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. Specifically this issue is discussed at salvationhistory.com/online/beginner/class1_lesson4_3.cfm

Once this progression and these events are considered, it is much easier to see the progression from the Decalogue to the completion of the Law in Christ, and to understand why some laws remain prominently in force and the application of others ended, once their purpose was fulfilled.

Pax Christi tecum.

John Hiner
 
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