the two foci of the narrative (exodus and Sinai) and also within the latter focus there have intervened challenges to the promise (the ‘murmurings’; the golden calf). These challenges have temporarily put the promise under threat, but have issued in closer definition of the nature of the relationship. As for the book of Leviticus, its function, within the scheme of the promise and its fulfilments, is to spell out in detail the means by which the relationship now established is to be maintained. The