Torah Within A Torah - Leviticus 19

The IM classifies chapter 19 as the start of the section of “Laws of Mercy and Righteousness,” and while TB doesn’t do that, he notes that chapter 19 is special to the Hebrews because it’s considered a “Torah within a Torah,” because it reiterates laws that have already been discussed. Back in chapter 11, TB spent a whole lecture of what it means to be holy and why it’s important. I didn’t spend a lot of time on it because it’s such an abstract concept and to me it just means continuously seeking a closer relationship with God through small, consistent improvements in our behaviors through repentance and the atonement. It’s not a glamorous definition and it’s not quick or easy, it’s definitely a “slow and steady wins the race” kind of mindset. Anyway, chapter 19 starts with the command from God “ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy.” In the next few verses 6 of the 10 commandments are reemphasized, in addition to more practical commandments about fairness in your work, trade, labor, and business practices such as paying employees fairly and promptly, and dealing justly with your customers.

When Jesus is teaching during his mortal ministry, he’s asked which of the laws are the most important. They are trying to trick him because there’s 613 laws in Judaism at that time and it would be a trap to decide that one is more important than another. But he answers the most important laws are to love God and “love your neighbor as yourself.” I never understood the “love your neighbor as yourself” because I’ve always held a deep sense of self-loathing just as a trauma response to what I’ve been through, I’m coming out of it but it takes time. I always wondered why I would ever treat anyone or feel about anyone else the way I felt about and treated myself. The IM has a piece about “to love or care for oneself is natural and good, but in addition, one must feel this same emotion for others.” I’m not going to speak to this because I don’t understand it but verse 18 is the place that is cited as being where this concept first came from so it wasn’t Jesus making anything up out of thin air, he had a frame of reference, even if it was considered obscure and not widespread knowledge.

There is also a bit that talks about agriculture and gives rules for that, saying that the first 3 years of a trees life, the fruit is not to be eaten, then the 4th year the fruit is to be sacrificed to God at the tabernacle and given to the priests to eat and then afterward the fruit can be eaten in the years following. TB suggests that the first 3 years are not just to throw the fruit away but instead to spend that time properly pruning and trimming the trees so that starting that 4th year the trees would be much more fruitful for the rest of it’s lifetime. These were laws that wouldn’t be appliable for another 40 years in the future because the people would be nomadic until then, but the people didn’t know that and these kinds of commandment probably reinforced their belief that their inheritance of the land of Canaan was right around the corner.

There is a part that talks about a “bond-maid” and who is allowed to have sex with her and who she is allowed to marry and the bride price and what happens if she’s “seduced” by a man that she’s not promised to and who will pay her owner if her husband doesn’t want her anymore. Interestingly, it doesn’t say what happens to male servants and it makes me wonder if the servants were mostly female because when TB was talking about this topic he said that it was common practice and allowed for fathers to sell their daughters into servitude but there was no mention of if they were allowed to do the same thing to their sons. The whole thing has a tone of “who will compensate me for the loss of my slave-girl’s purity” and it’s aggravating but again, it is what it is and it is mostly about fair business practices, which from a non-emotional view point, I understand.

The next part seems like a ton of random commands thrown together like no drinking blood, no magic, no trying to communicate with the dead, no cutting your own flesh, no tattoos, no prostitution of your daughters. These all seem random until we consider that the vast majority of God’s laws as given to the Hebrews at this time were mostly just undoing or contradicting what other Canaanite and Egyptian societies were doing at the time. The cutting of your hair a certain way or shaving the beard a certain way isn’t significant because of it specifically but because other societies did it as part of their idol worship rituals and God wanted to make doubly sure that Israel not only knew that they weren’t going to partake in that idolatry but that the surrounding communities knew Israel was completely different from them religiously.

The decree against “familiar spirits” makes dealing with any kind of occult forbidden. The only spirit the Israelites were to deal with was God himself and no one else. TB talked about this and the IM says the same, that when someone goes to communicate with the dead through a medium, they aren’t encountering the spirit of that dead person but instead encounter a demon or one of the spirits that were cast down with Satan who are a part of the adversarial plan. They know things because they’ve been around for a long time and probably knew the people they want to talk to and knew of their lives and all that. So when they get some stuff right it’s because they knew it from before, not because they have some exclusive access or knowledge of that person after they died. And again, they lie anyway, so whatever they say doesn’t matter anyway. I had a friend ask me once to go with her to a medium to talk to some spirits and I came to the same conclusion as TB here at the time. How do I know we would be speaking to the person who died and not just some random spirit who had been cast out of heaven and therefore just knew a lot of stuff and made up the rest. Kind of interesting to think about.