Archive for the ‘Parsha 25 – Tzav’ Category

Tzav 5770 – For Love of God and Man

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

Tony Robinson pointed out some interesting facts about the five sacrifices detailed in the first two Torah portions of Leviticus. The text seems needlessly repetitious, but there is a purpose. In Vayikra, God instructs the Israelites how to make offerings in order to draw closer to him. In Tzav, he instructs the priests on how to dispose of those offerings. But there’s more to it than just that. If you read carefully, you’ll notice that the sacrifices are listed in a slightly different order in each place. As Robinson shows, the offerings are grouped according to an inexplicit classification.

In Vayikra the first three offerings (burnt, grain, and peace) are voluntary, while the last two (sin and guilt) are not. In Tzav, the first offering is completely burned up, the next three are partly burned and partly consumed by the priest, and the final offering is partly burned, partly eaten by the priest, and mostly eaten by the offerer and his community.

Although I don’t know exactly what to make of the following correlations, I think they are correct.

Five is the number of Torah, and there are five sacrifices. The purpose of both Torah and the sacrifices is to draw us closer to YHWH. (See Vayikra 5770 – Approaching under Cover.)

  • The burnt offering is something wholly given to God, and there are commandments in the Torah which are designed to bring us closer to God the Father.
  • The grain, sin, and guilt offerings are partly given to God and partly to the priest. There are many mitzvot throughout the Torah that draw us closer to God while foreshadowing the ministry of the Messiah as a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. (There is something else here about Moses and the order of Melchizedek, but I’ll save it for another time.)
  • The peace offering, like many mitzvot concerning how to live at peace with one’s neighbors, is designed to draw us closer to God as a community, to make us a united people under the banner of the Messiah.

I believe the order in Vayikra says something about another layer of classification that can be overlaid on the Torah, but I will save that for another day too. Vayikra 5771 perhaps.

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Manual for Priests

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

Ariel ben-Lyman HaNaviy makes a very good point in his teaching on Tzav this week. (Part A is great. Part B contains too much rabbinic mythology.) The book of Leviticus (aka Vayikra) is a manual for priests. Christian men claim to be the priests of their homes. LDS men claim to be priests of another sort. The Torah says that Israel is to be a kingdom of priests to the world, and John wrote that Yeshua has made all those who believe on him to be kings and priests. Here in Leviticus we have a manual for priests. Even though it was specifically addressed to the Levitical order, it is full of principles and patterns that apply to all priests of whatever order.

P.S. Here is an interesting thought. I have heard it taught that David was able to eat the bread of the Tabernacle without repercussion because he was also a priest, but of a different order. Being a foreshadowing of the Moshiach ben David, he too was a priest of the order of Melchizedek, which consists of a royal priesthood, men who are both kings and priests simultaneously. If Yeshua has made all those who believe on him to be both kings and priests, then this line of reasoning implies that all believers have the same (or parallel) responsibilities and privileges as the Cohanim. That does not mean that they are above the Law any more than David was. On the contrary, both priests and kings are held to a higher standard. I am not saying that this is a correct interpretation, only that it is a possibility worth considering.

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Tzav 5769 – Chew the Fat

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Ye shall eat no manner of fat, of ox, or of sheep, or of goat. Leviticus 7:23

Occasionally, skeptics like to pick this verse to show how ridiculous the Torah is. How can anyone eat meat without eating fat? Are you supposed to trim every bit of fat from every cut of meat? You only have to look a couple more verses down to see that that is not what God meant.

For whosoever eateth the fat of the beast, of which men offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD… Leviticus 7:25

The particular fat that is offered by fire is the fat and glands around the kidneys and other internal organs, not the fat that is commonly found around muscles.

The command against eating blood has a similar problem, but can’t be resolved by reading a little further. It can, however, be resolved by thinking a little further. The Torah was not written for morons. It’s not complicated, but it was written for people who are at least capable of thinking their way out of a paper bag. If you follow the Torah’s instructions for killing and bleeding an animal, then whatever blood is left in the tissues is fine. Like the yeast that lives in the air at Passover, there will always be some blood in meat, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Stay away from  boudin noir, but don’t worry about a rare steak.

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Tzav 5768 – Prison Is Stupid

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Then it shall be, because he hath sinned, and is guilty, that he shall restore that which he took violently away, or the thing which he hath deceitfully gotten, or that which was delivered him to keep, or the lost thing which he found, or all that about which he hath sworn falsely; he shall even restore it in the principal, and shall add the fifth part more thereto, and give it unto him to whom it appertaineth, in the day of his trespass offering. (Lev. 6:4-5)

Prison is a short-sighted, feebleminded idea. Debtors prison is worse. True Justice is not concerned with rehabilitation and only tangentially with punishment. It does not equate to law and order. Justice is about keeping things in balance. Although civil law (as opposed to God’s Law) should never be unjust and should address itself solely to matters of justice, it is not justice in itself. Civil law cannot correct every injustice, nor should it try. Some injustices must be tolerated by the law in order to ensure liberty to the people, and some injustices are beyond the jurisdiction of men. When men try to right every wrong and force everyone to behave, the end result is the multiplication of that which they ought to oppose: injustice. Prison is a perfect example.

If a person steals, we imprison him as punishment. So that we feel better about kenneling a fellow human being, we often refer to prisons as “correctional facilities.” We’re not putting people in cages; we’re fixing them, helping them to be more productive, happy citizens. We’re morons. Prison does no such thing. We’re treating people like irresponsible animals and then expecting them to behave like humans when we let them go again. We’re morons, because we seem to be continually surprised that this doesn’t work.

God’s Law never prescribes prison for anyone. Thieves, embezzlers, con-men and the like are expected to restore what they stole plus damages. If they are unable to pay, then they are to work off their debt. In slavery if necessary. Murderers and adulterers are to be executed. Addictions are ignored by the Law. Addicts are their own punishment.

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Tzav 5767 – The High Priest of God

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

Joh 1:29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
Heb 9:26 For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Lev 6:29 All the males among the priests shall eat thereof [the sin offering]: it is most holy.
Lev 7:6 Every male among the priests shall eat thereof [the trespass or guilt offering]: it shall be eaten in the holy place: it is most holy.
Lev 10:17 Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin offering in the holy place, seeing it is most holy, and God hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the LORD?
Psa 110:4 Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.

It is a time honored principle that a leader bears some responsibility for the behavior of his subordinates. In eating the sin and guilt offerings, the priests symbolically (and possibly in some real, tangible way) took the sins of the penitent into themselves. They took responsibility before God so that the people could be reconciled to him.

Yeshua’s sacrifice, being an order of magnitude greater than any animal sacrifice, and being offered on the altar in Heaven, opened the door for all of us to surrender our guilt to him. We have but to trust in God and make our allegiance to him.

No other human sacrifice would have been sufficient. Every blood sacrifice must be perfect. Yeshua, the Son of God, is a King-Priest like Melchizedek, and he is perfect and sinless, and he gave up his life willingly. Another person’s death would have been ineffective for the purpose of atonement, so it would have been murder and nothing else. Yeshua’s death was murder, but it enabled our salvation. Like rescuing an animal on the Sabbath, it was a choice between which action effects the greater reconciliation of man to God: preventing one murder or enabling the salvation of billions. In shedding his perfect blood, he took all of our sins, whether intentional or not, upon himself.

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