Bechukotai - Leviticus 26:3-27:34

This is the last portion of the Book of Leviticus, so let's take a moment to see a snapshot of this entire book of 27 chapters.

1. The kind of sacrifices that pleases God
2. Priests get a portion of the offerings, and don't forget the salt.
3. The innard parts of the animals, God enjoys.
4. How to get rid of unintentional sins, through sacrifice  (guilt offering).
5. Only the priest can atone for the person who sinned.
6. A nocturnal emission requires atonement to be clean.
7. Meat from a guilt offering belongs to the priests.
8. Initiation into the priesthood and the food they eat.
9. God's holy fire comes forth to consume holy offerings on its own.
10. The holy fire consumed the sons of Aaron for getting too close before they were called.
11. Defining what animals are kosher to eat.
12. All the things that have to be done due to menstruating.
13. The magical disease tza'arat. Only a priest can diagnose it.
14. How to cure tza'arat and only a priest can do it.
15. Handling discharges from women and men to make them clean again.
16. Explaining where God sits and how the priests need to dress to approach Him.
17. It's forbidden to sacrifice an animal without a priest being involved. Eating blood is bad.
18. Forbidden sex, nakedness, and customs of the gentiles.
19. Divination and worshiping other Gods is bad. Be nice to your congregation.
20. Sorcery and necromancy is bad. Bestiality bad. Adultery and cursing parents, also bad.
21. Priests don't defile themselves with the dead. A priest's daughter is burned for harlotry.
22. Only a person made pure by a priest can come before God. Priest's food is holy.
23. How to do the holidays and the Sabbath.
24. God needs fresh bread and candlelight daily. The bread belongs to the priests. Blasphemy bad.
25. Shmittah (Sabbath of the land). Jews cannot be sold like slaves. Gentile are slaves forever.
26. Serve God and you are rewarded. Refuse and he'll make your life hell!
27. God needs cash, or material equivalent!

Of course, there is so much left out of this list, but if you look carefully, you will see that there is an ongoing theme in Leviticus:

The priests are special, you need them, only they can tell if you are clean or unclean, and only they can correct that problem, and only they can do the proper sacrifices, and only they can atone for you, and only they can have a portion of some of the offerings, and only they can eat perform the holiday rituals, and it ends with: giving money or the equivalent to God, through them, is always good!

Yes, in the middle of all of this, there are a few commandments, like don't cheat your neighbor or steal from him, and some other nice things to live by. And the are some pretty horrible things as well slavery, stoning blasphemers, and threats of horrible things to happen to you if you deviate from these rules.

This also includes the rule about shmittah, which only appears in this book, and in this week's portion the priestly writers repeatedly emphasize that not doing this will be one of the things that will cause your pride to be destroyed and you and your people will be sent into exile and you will have a horrible time.

It's almost as though this was written after the loss of the temple from a text supposedly written before there was a Temple or even the thought of building one.

This brings me to verse 26:42 where it says "I will remember my covenant with Jacob".

In the Torah the name "Jacob" is spelled YAQV (יעקב) all of 211 out of 212 times. In this sentence it is spelled YAQOV (יעקוב) which is unique. And the only other place where that spelling is used is 4 times in the book of Jeremiah, which was written after the loss of the Temple cult and the Jews being delivered into exile.

Now it could just be a coincidence, and yet, chapter 26, which has a long description of the horrible things that will befall the Jews, is reminiscent of the warnings of Jeremiah as well.

One last thing about the curses.

One of the curses is the suppression of rain. Verse 26:19 says that God will make shamayim (another word for firmament - see Genesis 1:8) like iron and the earth like bronze. I am using a transliteration "shamayim" rather than use "heavens", since that term doesn't make sense these days. Remember, this is supposedly written in the bronze age. 

And in Deuteronomy, Moses repeats many of these curses except in Deuteronomy 28:23 he tells the people that God will turn shamayim into brass and the earth into iron - a reversal of the Levitical text.

In fact, compare all of the curses in Deuteronomy 28 to Leviticus 26, and you will see that the authors of each book were almost competing as to who could come up with the best curses!

So if the threat of turning the firmament into a bronze or iron dome, I wonder what it was originally made of. I suppose we'll never know!