The Book of

LEVITICUS

Gordon J. Wenham

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan

© 1979 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

255 Jefferson Ave. S.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bible. O.T. Leviticus. Wenham, 1979.
The Book of Leviticus.

(The New International Commentary on the Old Testament: v. 3)

Includes index.

1. Bible. O.T. Leviticus—Commentaries.

I. Wenham, Gordon J. H. Title. III. Series.

BS1253 1979 222´.13´077 79–99

ISBN 0-8028-2522-2

TO LYNNE

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Leviticus used to be the first book that Jewish children studied in the synagogue. In the modern Church it tends to be the last part of the Bible anyone looks at seriously. This neglect is understandable, since Leviticus is largely concerned with subjects that seem incomprehensible and irrelevant to contemporary man. Rituals for sacrifice and regulations concerning uncleanness appear to have nothing to say to men living in the closing years of the twentieth century. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18) is the only memorable maxim in what is to many an otherwise dull book. In practice then, though not of course in theory, Leviticus is treated as though it does not really belong to the canon of sacred Scripture.

This attitude is reflected in some modern commentaries, which view Leviticus as little more than a record of one stage in Israel’s religious development without any permanent spiritual value. Other commentators have gone to the opposite extreme in an attempt to christianize Leviticus. By means of allegorical interpretation every detail of the law is made to prefigure some aspect of Christ’s work and ministry. Though this approach is less popular today than it was in the early church, it still has its adherents.

The approach favored in this commentary takes with equal seriousness both the plain original meaning of the text and its abiding theological value. The primary duty of every commentator is to elucidate what the author of the book meant and to recover what the earliest readers understood it to mean. But Christian commentators are bound to go further and say what the sacred text has to teach the church today, remembering Paul’s words that “whatever was written in former times was written for our learning” (Rom. 15:4). I am tempted to describe this approach as the classic Protestant approach, since one of the best early commentaries along these lines is John Calvin’s Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses. But in more recent times the Catholic writer R. North in his study of Lev. 25 has provided the finest example of an attempt to expound the plain historical meaning of Leviticus and its enduring theological message.1

The process of biblical interpretation is never ending. Every commentator builds on the insights of his predecessors, sometimes endorsing, sometimes correcting their views. But alongside the ordinary commentaries I have found great value in three other ...