1. Paul Lippi, personal communication.
2. R. Coote, “Review of The Book of Leviticus, by Gordon J. Wenham,” Int 35 (1981): 423.
3. Cf. M. Warburton, “Letting the Voice of Leviticus Speak,” STR 37 (1994): 163.
4. Cf. J. Milgrom, “Profane Slaughter and a Formulaic Key to the Composition of Deuteronomy,” HUCA 47 (1976): 14–15; J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 154–55.
5. See esp. Contemporary Significance section of Lev. 17.
6. G. Barna, quoted in Tim Stafford, “The Third Coming of George Barna,” CT (August 5, 2002): 34–35.
7. See Contemporary Significance section of Lev. 18.
8. Rob Bell, “Life in Leviticus,” Leadership Journal 24 (Winter 2002): 45.
9. Ibid.
10. Luke 2:22 (referring to Lev. 12); Matt. 8:4//Mark 1:44//Luke 5:14 (referring to Lev. 13–14); Mark 7:10 (referring to Lev. 20:9).
11. S. H. Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus (EB; New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900), 5–17.
12. J. ben E. Bonfils, Tsafenat Paneah, quoted in N. Sarna, Genesis (JPSTC; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 91.
13. See R. Gane, “Leviticus, Book of,” in J. H. Hayes, ed., Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), 55–56.
14. Ibid., 56–58.
15. Cf. D. Damrosch, “Leviticus,” in R. Alter and F. Kermode, eds., The Literary Guide to the Bible (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1987), 66–67, 75–76.
16. R. Rendtorff, “Is It Possible to Read Leviticus as a Separate Book?” in J. Sawyer, ed., Reading Leviticus: A Conversation with Mary Douglas (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 22–27, 33–35; G. Auld, “Leviticus at the Heart of the Pentateuch?” in Sawyer, ed., Reading Leviticus, 40–51.
17. See, e.g., Y. Radday, “Chiasmus in Hebrew Biblical Narrative,” in J. W. Welch, Chiasmus in Antiquity (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1981), 50–117, esp. 87–89 on inverted structures in Leviticus. For chiastic/inverted and parallel line structures in the latter “holiness” portion of Leviticus, see M. Hildenbrand, “Structure and Theology in the Holiness Code” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1998).
18. W. Warning, Literary Artistry in Leviticus (BIS 35; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 86–87.
19. J. Hartley, Leviticus (WBC 4; Dallas: Word, 1992), xxxiv–xxxv, 217, 224.
20. W. Shea, “Literary Form and Theological Function in Leviticus,” in F. Holbrook, ed., The Seventy Weeks, Leviticus, and the Nature of Prophecy (DARCOM 3; Washington, D.C.: Biblical Research Institute, 1986), 131–68, esp. 149.
21. J. H. Walton, “Equilibrium and the Sacred Compass: The Structure of Leviticus,” BBR 11 (2001): 299; cf. diagram on 300.
22. Ibid., 299–304, esp. 304.
23. Ibid., 298.
24. See Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 230; J. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27 (AB 3B; New York: Doubleday, 2001), 2440–46; D. Davies, “An Interpretation of Sacrifice in Leviticus,” ZAW 89 (1977): 396–98; against N. Snaith, “The Sprinkling of Blood,” ExpTim 82 (1970–71): 24; I. Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 175–78.
25. Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence, 69, 105; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 694; J. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22 (AB 3A; New York: Doubleday, 2000), 1343.
26. M. Douglas, “Poetic Structure in Leviticus,” in D. P. Wright, D. N. Freedman, and A. Hurvitz, eds., Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1995), 247–55, esp. 253; endorsed by Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1364–65.
27. J. K. Newman, The Classical Epic Tradition (WSC; Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 13.
28. M. Douglas, “Poetic Structure in Leviticus,” 253. For chaps. 1–17 in a ring, with 17:3–4 repeating the instruction of 1:2–4 that slaughter of animals must take place at the sanctuary, see M. Douglas, Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 192–3.
29. On holiness as the central theme of Leviticus, see, e.g., W. Kaiser, “The Book of Leviticus,” in NIB, 1:1131; W. Greathouse, Wholeness in Christ: Toward a Biblical Theology of Holiness (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1998), 24.
30. On arrangement of the Pentateuchal books as a chiasm with Leviticus at its center, see Radday, “Chiasmus,” 84–86.
1. Cf. 2 Kings 1:1, which also begins with a waw consecutive (imperfect) verb, thereby grammatically tying it to 1 Kings.
2. Cf. Num. 1:1, lit., “And the LORD spoke.” Ex. 1:1 also begins with “And,” but it is not attached to a verb (see P. Enns, Exodus [NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000], 40). In such contexts at the beginnings of literary units, translators generally omit this “And” for the sake of good English style, thereby giving up the “hook” to that which goes before.
3. Esp. waw consecutive with the verb “to be”: Josh. 1:1; Judg. 1:1; 1 Sam. 1:1, etc.
4. I am using Accordance, without which I would no longer dream of studying the Bible in any depth.
5. Heb. “he”; the NIV supplies “the LORD” here.
6. From the same root škn; see 40:35.
7. Enns, Exodus, 598–99.
8. While the bulk of Ex. 25–31 is fulfilled in chs. 35–40, this does not include fulfillment of ch. 29 (consecration of the priesthood and sanctuary), which is delayed until Lev. 8. This relationship between Ex. 29 and Lev. 8 constitutes another important link between the two books.
9. See J. H. Walton, Genesis (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 393–94, 401–4.
10. R. Rendtorff, “Is It Possible to Read Leviticus as a Separate Book?” 22–35; cf. G. Auld, “Leviticus at the Heart of the Pentateuch?” in Sawyer, ed., Reading Leviticus, 40–51.
11. On the way Leviticus calls the community to enact holiness through ritual and ethical practice, see F. H. Gorman, Divine Presence and Community: A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus (ITC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).
1. See, e.g., M. J. Selman, “Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East,” in R. Beckwith and M. Selman, ed., Sacrifice in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 88–104.
2. R. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, forthcoming), chs. 1–3. See also idem, Cult and Character: Purification Offerings, Day of Atonement, and Theodicy (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, forthcoming), ch. 1 (“The Locus of Ritual Meaning”). On conceptual issues involved in formation of theories regarding ritual and ritualization, and on methodologies for analyzing them, see C. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York/Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992); R. Grimes, Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in Its Practice, Essays on Its Theory (SCR; Columbia, S.C.: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1990), 13–15, 192. On such questions regarding the sacrificial category of rituals, see A. Green, The Role of Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East (ASORDS 1; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1975), 3–17.
3. Addition of salt is not included in the activity outline of any ritual, suggesting that it is preliminary to commencement of ritual proper. Cf. Ezek. 43:24, where two animals are presented before the Lord at the temple, priests throw salt on them, and then they are sacrificed as burnt offerings. In m. Tamid 4:3, Ezekiel’s procedure is not followed: The regular burnt offering and its cereal accompaniment are salted after the animal is cut up into pieces.
4. On slaughter as slitting the throat, see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 154–55.
5. Cf. 2 Chron. 29:22.
6. Cf. Lev. 9:12–14.
7. Cf. Lev. 1:13.
8. For procedural and zoological details, see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 169–71.
9. See Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure, ch. 1.
10. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 159–60.
11. J. Hoftijzer, “Das Sogenannte Feueropfer,” in Hebräische Wortforschung: Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag von Walter Baumgartner (VTSup 16; Leiden: Brill, 1967), 114–34.
12. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 161–62.
13. Atraḫrasis III v. 30–36; W. G. Lambert, and A. R. Millard, Atra-Ḫasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, repr. 1999; orig. 1969), 98–99.
14. Gilgamesh XI 160–62; A. George, The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1999), 94.
15. R. Gane, Altar Call (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Diadem, 1999), 54.
16. Ibid., 52.
17. E. Leach, Culture & Communication: The Logic by Which Symbols Are Connected (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976), 82.
18. Nevertheless, R. Grimes points out that investigation of ritual as performance should inform readings of ancient ritual texts “because in all but the most bookish traditions, ritual texts exist to serve ritual enactments, not the other way around” (Ritual Criticism, 9).
19. R. Knierim, Text and Concept in Leviticus 1:1–9: A Case in Exegetical Method (FAT 2; Tübingen: Mohr, 1992), 31, 64–67, 89–90, 94–97, 98–106. For R. Rendtorff the primary function of the texts for ensuring proper performance explains why they say so little about the meanings of the sacrifices (The Old Testament: An Introduction, transl. John Bowden [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985], 98).
20. Transl. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 133.
21. A. P. Ross, Holiness to the Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 95.
22. See S. R. Driver, “Propitiation,” in J. Hastings, ed., A Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Scribners, 1911), 4:131.
23. On kipper, see, e.g., ibid., 4:128; B. Levine, In the Presence of the Lord (SJLA 5; Leiden: Brill, 1974), 55–77, 123–27; B. Janowski, Sühne als Heilsgeschehen: Studien zur Sühnetheologie der Priesterschrift und zur Wurzel KPR im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament (WMANT 55; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1982), 95–102; B. Lang, “
[kipper],” in TDOT, 7:288–303; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1079–84; N. Kiuchi, The Purification Offering in the Priestly Literature: Its Meaning and Function (JSOTSup 56; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987), 87–109.
24. Not two hands; against m. Menaḥ. 9:8.
25. For the “identification of ownership” theory in comparison with other views, see e.g. R. Péter, “L’imposition des mains dans l’Ancien Testament,” VT 27 (1977): 48–55; D. P. Wright, “The Gesture of Hand Placement in the Hebrew Bible and in Hittite Literature,” JAOS 106 (1986): 433–46.
26. Burnt offering—Lev. 1:4; well-being offering—3:2, 8, 13; purification offering—4:4, 24, 29, 33.
27. Burnt offering—Ex. 29:15; Lev. 8:18; Num. 8:12; purification offering—Ex. 29:10; Lev. 8:14; Num. 8:12.
28. Purification offering—Lev. 4:15; 2 Chron. 29:23.
29. Wright, “The Gesture of Hand Placement,” 439.
30. J. Matthes, “Der Sühnegedanke bei den Sündopfern,” ZAW 23 (1903): 118–19.
31. See F. H. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the Priestly Theology (JSOTSup 91; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), 121–2.
32. See Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 3 (“ ‘Outer Altar’ Purification Offerings”); idem, Ritual Dynamic Structure, ch. 2.
33. H. C. Brichto, “On Slaughter and Sacrifice, Blood and Atonement,” HUCA 47 (1976): 31–35.
34. Compare S. R. Driver and H. A. White, The Book of Leviticus (SBONT 3; New York: Dodd, Mead, 1898), 66. Against the famous “abstract scheme of sacrifice” originally published by H. Hubert and M. Mauss in 1898 (Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function, transl. W. D. Halls [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964], 19, 32–3, 35, 44–5).
35. D. P. Wright, “Deuteronomy 21:1–9 As a Rite of Elimination,” CBQ 49 (1987): 387–403.
36. See Contemporary Significance section on Lev. 17; Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure, ch. 2.
37. Ibid.
38. See, e.g., Selman, “Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East,” 96–101.
39. Gane, Altar Call, 79–80.
40. Ibid., 55–56.
41. P. S. Kramer, “Family Traditions: Making Moments You and Your Children Will Always Cherish,” Woman’s Day (November 19, 1996), 68. See also R. Fulghum’s wonderfully insightful and practical book, From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Lives (New York: Ivy Books, 1995).
42. R. Gane, God’s Faulty Heroes (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald, 1996), 80.
43. In M. Walter, compiler, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 900.
1. On this kind of “procedural law” as a subcategory of “case law,” see R. Knierim, Text and Concept in Leviticus 1:1–9, 31, 65, 94–97, 98–106.
2. For details regarding the various kinds of preparation, see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 183–85.
3. On participation of women in ritual worship, see M. Gruber, “Women in the Cult According to the Priestly Code,” in J. Neusner, B. Levine, and E. Frerichs, eds., Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 35–48.
4. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 179.
5. On the distinction between “first-ripe” and “first-processed” firstfruits, see ibid., 190–91.
6. Transl. ibid., 178. For other possible explanations of ʾim at the beginning of this verse, see 192–93.
7. Compare A. Dillmann, Die Bücher Exodus und Leviticus, ed. V. Ryssel (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1897), 447.
8. Transl. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 177–78.
9. R. Gane and J. Milgrom, “
qarab,” TDOT, 13:142.
10. K. Koch excludes purification (ḥaṭṭaʾt) offerings from the category of sacrifices so that he can maintain consistency with Lev. 16:5, where the same term ḥaṭṭaʾt exceptionally applies to the nonsacrificial goat for Azazel. However, to sustain this notion he must manipulate the biblical evidence by asserting that in 4:31 the notice that purification offering fat is a “pleasing aroma” to Yahweh is “the result of textual corruption” (see “
ḥaṭaʾ,” in TDOT, 4:316).
11. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 189.
12. Ibid., 189–90.
13. See Philo, The Special Laws, 1.289.
14. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 191; cf. J. H. Walton, V. H. Matthews, and M. W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 122.
15. A. Schweitzer, Indian Thought and Development, transl. C. E. B. Russell (New York: Henry Holt, 1936), 6.
16. See R. M. Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker and into the World: Evangelism As a Way of Life (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1979).
17. A. Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought, transl. C. T. Campion (New York: Henry Holt, 1948), 230.
18. P. Yancey, Finding God in Unexpected Places (Ann Arbor: Servant Publications, 1997), 68–75.
19. S. Kierkegaard, Attack Upon “Christendom,” transl. W. Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968), 34.
20. M. Luther, The Small Catechism (Books for the Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 10.
21. In M. Water, compiler, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations, 371.
22. T. Watson, in ibid., 739.
23. F. Schaeffer, in ibid.
1. A singular form (šelem) shows up in Amos 5:22 as well as in Ugaritic texts.
2. For details on the various theories, see J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 220–21.
3. See ibid., 203.
4. The text precisely identifies the suet portions. On the physiological details, see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 205–13.
5. See R. Gane, “ ‘Bread of the Presence’ and Creator-in-Residence,” VT 42 (1992): 198.
6. In 21:6, 8, 17, 21, 22, etc., leḥem refers to sacrificial “food,” including meat. In other contexts the same word means specifically “bread” (e.g., 7:13; 8:26, 31, 32).
7. But see comments on 17:11 regarding the kipper meaning of well-being offering blood.
8. For life in the Promised Land, when many could live at a distance from the sanctuary, Deut. 12:15–16 allowed nonsacrificial slaughter of sacrificeable animals.
9. On joy in connection with meals following ancient Greek sacrifices to Olympian deities, see W. Durant, The Life of Greece (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939/1966), 2:195.
10. R. Gane, Altar Call, 89
11. On the bread as “microcosmic modelling,” see M. Douglas, “The Eucharist: Its Continuity with the Bread Sacrifice of Leviticus,” MT 15 (1999): 219–23.
12. Gane, Altar Call, 12, 58–62.
13. Ibid., 344.
14. L. Crabb, Finding God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), 38.
15. N. Herman (1611–1691), Brother Lawrence: The Practice of the Presence of God the Best Rule of a Holy Life, transl. from French (New York: Revell, 1958), 22.
16. Leslie Weatherhead, in The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations, 537.
17. André Gide, in ibid., 536.
1. The vegetable and animal sacrifices of Cain and Abel are called minḥah (Gen. 4:3–5), the term used in the Israelite sanctuary system in the narrower, technical sense of “grain offering” (Lev. 2, etc.).
2. A. R. S. Kennedy and J. Barr, “Sacrifice and Offering,” in J. Hastings, ed., Dictionary of the Bible, ed., F. C. Grant and H. H. Rowley, rev. ed. (New York: Scribners, 1963), 874; J. Milgrom, “Sin-Offering or Purification-Offering?” VT 21 (1971): 237–39.
3. J. Milgrom, “The Cultic 
and Its Influence in Psalms and Job,” JQR 58 (1967): 115–25, esp. 118. B. Levine summarizes the two related aspects of inadvertence as understood by the rabbis: “(1) inadvertence with respect to the facts of law; and (2) inadvertence with respect to the nature of the act” (Leviticus [JPSTC; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989], 19).
4. Although ordinary priests were also anointed (Ex. 29:21; 40:14–15; Lev. 8:30), the high priest received a special anointing on his head (Ex. 29:7; Lev. 8:12), and in Lev. 6:22 “the anointed priest” is the high priest in Aaron’s line of succession (cf. Ex. 29:29–30).
5. See comments on Num. 15:22–26 regarding a variant ritual for the community.
6. Cf. 2 Chron. 29:22.
7. Cf. Lev. 1:13.
8. E.g., B. Baentsch held that the blood was to be sprinkled in the area before the veil (Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri [HKAT; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1903], 323), but J. H. Kurtz argued against this position (Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament, transl. J. Martin [Minneapolis: Klock & Klock, 1980; repr. of 1863], 215 n. 1).
9. For a more detailed discussion see Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 4.
10. The rabbinic tradition that 16:16b refers to the 1 + 7 pattern in the inner sanctum (b. Yoma 56b) correctly interpreted this aspect of the ritual. However, this tradition understood the blood applications to be sprinklings performed once upward plus seven times downward (cf. m. Yoma 5:3–4).
11. C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, transl. J. Martin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952 [orig. 1874]), 2:400–401.
12. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1034.
13. On the spatial function of the inner veil, see R. Gane and J. Milgrom, “
paroket,” TDOT, 12:96. Compare the Akkadian cognate parakku, which can refer to an area: the shrine or cella of a deity (AHW, 2.827–9).
14. Cf. 2 Chron. 29:22.
15. Cf. Lev. 1:5.
16. Cf. Lev. 1:13.
17. P. Bovati, Re-Establishing Justice: Legal Terms, Concepts and Procedures in the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup 105; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 143–44 n. 48. C. Macholz points out that slḥ is like brʾ, (“create”) in that it takes only the deity as subject (“Das ‘Passivum divinum,’ seine Anfänge im Alten Testament und der ‘Hofstil,’ ” ZNW 81 (1990): 247–53, esp. 248.
18. J. McDowell, More Than a Carpenter (Wheaton, Ill.: Living Books, 1977), 19.
19. George Herbert, in R. Atwan & L. Wieder, eds., Chapters into Verse: Poetry in English Inspired by the Bible (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), 160.
20. With A. Büchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First Century (LBS; New York: KTAV, 1967), 266; B. Levine, Leviticus, 18. For a far more detailed analysis, see Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 6. Against the influential theory of J. Milgrom (“Israel’s Sanctuary: The Priestly Picture of Dorian Gray,” RB 83 [1976]: 390–96, reprinted in Studies in Cultic Theology and Terminology [Leiden: Brill, 1983], 75–81; see now Leviticus 1–16, 254–58), which is followed by M. Anderson and P. Culbertson, “The Inadequacy of the Christian Doctrine of Atonement in Light of Levitical Sin Offering,” ATR 68 (1986): 310, 315, 322; D. P. Wright, “Day of Atonement,” ABD, 2:72–73; F. H. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 76–77; K. C. Hanson, “Sin, Purification, and Group Process,” in H. T. C. Sun et al., eds., Problems in Biblical Theology: Essays in Honor of Rolf Knierim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 177; and A. P. Ross, Holiness to the Lord, 124–25, 132–34.
21. H. C. Brichto has recognized similar “privative” use of the preposition min in Lev. 15:15, 30 (“On Slaughter and Sacrifice,” 33). His understanding of privative min in such contexts accords with Milgrom’s interpretation of the noun ḥaṭṭaʾt (“purification offering”) as derived from the privative Piel of the verb ḥṭʾ (“purify”), which can describe the effect of the ḥaṭṭaʾt sacrifice (Ex. 29:36; Lev. 8:15; Ezek. 43:20, 22, 23; 45:18; Milgrom, “Sin-Offering or Purification-Offering?” 237; idem, Leviticus 1–16, 253). On the privative Piel in general, see GKC, §52h. Notice that in Lev. 16:16 the inner sanctum rather than one or more persons is freed from (min) evils on the Day of Atonement.
22. The word for “priest,” indicating the one who performs the expiation, usually follows kipper ʿal + offerer.
23. H. Maccoby points out that when a chieftain’s sin is removed from him (Lev. 4:26), it is the same sin that he committed, not another sin of contaminating the altar (Ritual and Morality: The Ritual Purity System and its Place in Judaism [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999], 178–79).
24. Milgrom’s translation agrees (Leviticus 1–16, 742). A. Rodriguez also agrees (Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus [AUSDDS 3; Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews Univ. Press, 1979], 104–5).
25. Cf. Lev. 16:30: “to cleanse you,” with “you” as direct object.
26. Against Milgrom, “Israel’s Sanctuary,” 390–96, etc. (see above).
27. Compare Lev. 14, where repeated pronouncements of purity (vv. 8, 9, 20) signify completion of successive stages of purification (Kiuchi, The Purification Offering in the Priestly Literature, 60–61).
28. R. E. Friedman, Commentary on the Torah (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 322.
29. Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 1; cf. F. Staal, Rules Without Meaning: Ritual, Mantras and the Human Sciences (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 127–29, 134, 137, 140, 330; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 279: “Ritual substances have no intrinsic force: they are powered by the will of God.”
30. Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 7; see also idem, Altar Call, 214–15.
31. On the various uses and connotations of horns in the Bible and the ancient Near East, see M. L. Süring, The Horn-Motif in the Hebrew Bible and Related Ancient Near Eastern Literature and Iconography (AUSDDS 4; Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews Univ. Press, 1980), esp. 313–17, 323–25, 440–41.
32. Gane, Altar Call, 92–93.
33. On this meaning of kipper, “expiate,” see Brichto, “On Slaughter and Sacrifice,” 26–8, 34–5.
34. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 161–62, 253. For a discussion of this word, see comments on 1:9.
35. Ibid., 253; Büchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement, 452. For the concept of “harm” to God, who is “duty-bound to uphold the moral order of the universe,” see R. Cover, “Sin, Sinners: Old Testament,” ABD, 6:38.
36. See t. Parah 1:1; Kennedy and Barr, “Sacrifice and Offering,” 875. On the difference between the procedural order, in which the purification offering is actually performed first (e.g., Lev. 9), and the administrative order, in which the burnt offering is listed first (e.g., Num. 28–29), see A. Rainey, “The Order of Sacrifices in Old Testament Ritual Texts,” Bib 51 (1970): 494–98.
37. Brichto, “On Slaughter and Sacrifice,” 30–33, 35. W. Kaiser missed this point in the context of the burnt offering when he states, “The atoning work is completed in the sprinkling of the blood” (“The Book of Leviticus,” in NIB, 1:1012). While Christians emphasize blood, Christ spoke of his sacrifice both in terms of flesh and blood (Matt. 26:26–29; John 6:53–58; 1 Cor. 11:23–26).
38. Gane, Altar Call, 72.
39. D. Wold, “The Meaning of the Biblical Penalty Kareth” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1978), 251–55.
40. Gane, Altar Call, 73.
41. Ibid., 106.
42. D. Prager, “When Forgiveness Is a Sin,” Reader’s Digest (March, 1998): 38; reprinted from The Wall Street Journal (December 15, 1997).
43. P. Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 85.
44. Gane, Altar Call, 109.
45. C. ten Boom and J. Buckingham, Tramp for the Lord (New York: Jove, 1974), 54–55.
46. Ibid., 55.
47. M. Luther, A Simple Way to Pray (London: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 27.
48. Compare Ross, Holiness to the Lord, 134.
49. J. Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come; Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream (Books For The Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 82.
50. Boom and Buckingham, Tramp for the Lord, 53.
51. H. W. Smith, The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life (Books For The Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 48–49.
52. P. Jenson, Graded Holiness: A Key to the Priestly Conception of the World (JSOTSup 106; Sheffield: JSOT, 1992), 172–73.
1. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 303.
2. Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Books for the Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 6:1607.
3. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 339.
4. Ibid., 339–45, esp. 345.
5. Ibid., 373–78; J. Milgrom, Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance (SJLA 18; Leiden: Brill, 1976), 7–11, 104.
6. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1425.
7. R. Knierim, “
ʾašam guilt,” TLOT, 1:193.
8. Milgrom, Cult and Conscience, 74–76.
9. Cf. instructions for constructing the tabernacle, beginning with the ark (Ex. 25:10–22) in the Most Holy Place and then moving to other items (25:23–27:21; 30:1–10).
10. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 307–18; cf. Levine, Leviticus, 28–29.
11. Cf. R. Rendtorff, Leviticus (BKAT; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1985–1992), 3:177.
12. Ibid., 29; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 304.
13. B. Janowski (Sühne als Heilsgeschehen: Studien zur Sühnetheologie der Priesterschrift und zur Wurzel KPR im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament [WMANT 55; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1982], 192) and Rendtorff (Leviticus, 1:38) maintain that a burnt offering expiates only when it is combined with a purification offering.
14. That is, 1.175 liters according to S. Rattray, “The Biblical Measures of Capacity,” in Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 895.
15. Levine distinguishes between sins of commission in 4:1–35 and omission in 5:1–13 (Leviticus, 19–20, 25–28).
16. Compare Kiuchi, The Purification Offering in the Priestly Literature, 30; Rodriguez, Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus, 148.
17. On leniency to encourage confession, cf. A. Phillips, “The Undetectable Offender and the Priestly Legislators,” JTS 36 (1985): 150.
18. On the graduated purification offering as the remedy for prolonged impurity (5:2–3), see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 310–13.
19. Ibid., 302; J. Milgrom, “The Priestly Doctrine of Repentance,” RB 82 (1975): 194; idem, Cult and Conscience, 108.
20. C. H. Spurgeon, The Spurgeon Sermon Collection (Books for the Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 3:483.
21. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 301–2, 373–78; idem, “The Priestly Doctrine,” 195–205; idem, Cult and Conscience, 119–27.
22. M. Lucado, When God Whispers Your Name (Dallas: Word, 1994), 133.
23. See, e.g., Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus, 259–60.
24. D. P. Wright, “The Spectrum of Priestly Impurity,” in G. Anderson and S. Olyan, eds., Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel (JSOTSup 125; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 180; cf. 171–79.
25. Gane, Altar Call, 88.
26. Ross, Holiness to the Lord, 135.
27. Ibid., 89.
28. See, e.g., ANET, 334 (Babylonian), 358–61 (Hittite).
1. Compare Rashi on Lev. 5:4; M. Rooker, Leviticus (NAC 3A; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000), 122.
2. Rodriguez, Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus, 190–91.
3. Cf. A. Médebielle, “Le symbolism du sacrifice expiatoire en Israël,” Bib 2 (1921): 300–301.
4. R. Knierim, “
mʿl to be unfaithful,” TLOT, 2:681.
5. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 345–56.
6. See ibid., 349. Compare the seriousness of misappropriating divine property in the Hittite “Instructions for Temple Officials” (ANET, 208).
7. Ibid., 337.
8. Cf. Abraham’s covenant ritual in Gen. 15, in which God represented himself as passing between the pieces of dismembered animals, thereby voluntarily binding himself by a conditional curse: “Let me be broken like these animals if this covenant is violated.”
9. D. Richardson, “Redemptive Analogy,” in R. D. Winter and S. C. Hawthorne, eds., Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, 3d ed. (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1981), 398.
10. Thomas A. Hemphill, “Identity Theft: A Cost of Business?” Business and Society Review 106 (2001): 52–53.
11. D. Patrick, Old Testament Law (Atlanta: John Knox, 1985), 49.
12. Gane, Altar Call, 103.
13. D. L. Moody, Prevailing Prayer: What Hinders It? (Books for the Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 27, 29.
14. C. Gorman, “The Science of Anxiety,” Time (June 10, 2002), 48.
15. F. Staal, Rules Without Meaning: Ritual, Mantras and the Human Sciences (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 135.
16. Laws of Hammurabi, law 2. For translations, see ANET, 166; M. T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (SBLWAW 6; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 81.
17. See, e.g., Patrick, Old Testament Law, 48, 81, 164.
1. On relationships between the four categories, see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 616–17.
3. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure, ch. 6.
4. See, e.g., R. Payne, “Feeding the Gods: The Shingon Fire Ritual” (Ph.D. diss., Graduate Theological Union, 1985).
5. Gane, God’s Faulty Heroes, 101.
6. See, e.g., R. Gane, “Schedules for Deities: Macrostructure of Israelite, Babylonian, and Hittite Sancta Purification Days,” AUSS 36 (1998): 231–44.
7. On this complex of rituals, see M. Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1985), 205–10, 216–19.
8. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 403; idem, “The Paradox of the Red Cow (Num. XIX),” VT 31 (1981): 64; cf. D. P. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (SBLDS 101; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 129–32. Milgrom points out that in the Temple Scroll (26:10), on the Day of Atonement the high priest must wash the blood of the people’s inner sanctum purification offering goat from his hands and feet, reinforcing the idea that purification offerings carry defilement (Leviticus 1–16, 1064).
9. Spattering (Qal of nzh) involves uncontrolled movement through the air (cf. 2 Kings 9:33; Isa. 63:3). The Hiphil of nzh indicates human control of sprinkling blood in Lev. 4:6, 17. A postbiblical limitation appears in m. Zebaḥ. 11:3: Only blood that has been collected in a vessel and is fit for sprinkling must be washed from a garment. For a detailed discussion of sacrificial blood, see Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 8.
10. Against Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 403, because blood is a sticky substance that would not ricochet through the air from the altar to a garment.
11. N. Zohar, “Repentance and Purification: The Significance and Semantics of 
in the Pentateuch,” JBL 107 (1988): 612.
12. Jenson, Graded Holiness, 157.
13. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 403–4. Compare the role of the uniquely holy Day of Atonement purification offerings, which carry defilement from the sanctuary (see comments on Lev. 16).
14. Ibid., 406; cf. Milgrom, “The Paradox of the Red Cow,” 64; Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 129–34; against N. Snaith, “The Sin-Offering and the Guilt-Offering,” VT 15 (1965): 76, and A. Geller, “Blood Cult: Toward a Literary Theology of the Priestly Work of the Pentateuch,” Prooftexts 12 (1992): 106.
15. For the idea that blood could be associated with more than one concept (life/strength and bloodshed/death) in the ancient Near East, including Israel, see D. J. McCarthy, “Further Notes on the Symbolism of Blood and Sacrifice,” JBL 92 (1973): 205.
16. Rodriguez, Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus, 133–34, 217–18; Kiuchi, The Purification Offering in the Priestly Literature, 119; cf. J. Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony, transl. C. W. Bingham (Grand Rapids: Baker, repr. 1996), 2:318.
17. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 258–61; cf. idem, “Israel’s Sanctuary,” 396–99.
18. Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 8.
19. Thomas Watson, The Lord’s Prayer (Books for the Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 164.
20. José Luis González-Balado, compiler, Mother Teresa: In My Own Words (New York: Gramercy, 1996), 29.
1. See Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 381, 422.
2. Cf. Wold, “The Meaning of the Biblical Penalty Kareth,” 251–55; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 457–60; B. Schwartz, “The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature,” in D. P. Wright, D. N. Freedman, and A. Hurvitz, eds., Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1995), 13.
3. Cf. ancient Greek sacrifices to the Olympian gods, in which the portion for the deity consisted of bones and a little flesh, wrapped in the fat (Durant, The Life of Greece, 2:194).
4. Regarding the meaning of blood, see comments on 17:10–12.
5. On the respective meanings of these terms for dedication, see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 415–16, 431, 461–81.
6. In M. Water, compiler, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 537.
7. Henri Nouwen, quoted in P. Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 266.
8. Author unknown, in Water, The New Encyclopedia, 607.
1. On the division of Leviticus into divine speeches as the foundation of the book’s structure, see W. Warning, Literary Artistry in Leviticus (BIS 35; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 37–63.
2. On the important distinction between prescriptive and descriptive ritual texts, see B. Levine, “The Descriptive Tabernacle Texts of the Pentateuch,” JAOS 85 (1965): 307–18; B. Levine and W. W. Hallo, “Offerings to the Temple Gates at Ur,” HUCA 38 (1967): 17–58.
3. Rainey, “The Order of Sacrifices in Old Testament Ritual Texts,” 495.
4. On rites of passage, see A. van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960).
5. For the ingredients and uses of the anointing oil, see Ex. 30:22–33.
6. Cf. Kiuchi, The Purification Offering in the Priestly Literature, 42.
7. Cf. O. P. Robertson’s definition of the covenant relationship between God and his people as a “bond in blood sovereignly administered” (The Christ of the Covenants [Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980], 4).
8. G. Klingbeil, “Ritual Time in Leviticus 8 with Special Reference to the Seven Day Period in the Old Testament,” ZAW 109 (1997): 500–13.
9. Compare week-long initiations of Solomon’s altar (2 Chron. 7:9) and Ezekiel’s altar (Ezek. 43:19–26).
10. Anointing of priests: e.g., Ex. 40:15; Lev. 8:12; anointing of kings: e.g., 1 Sam. 10:1; 16:13; 1 Kings 1:39.
11. For detailed analysis of this ceremony, see K. Mattingly, “The Laying on of Hands on Joshua: An Exegetical Study of Numbers 27:12–23 and Deuteronomy 34:9” (Ph.D. dissertation, Andrews University, 1997).
12. On the “part for all” principle, see Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 130; J. Milgrom, “The Modus Operandi of the Ḥaṭṭaʾt: A Rejoinder,” JBL 109 (1990): 112–13; Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 81; Gane, Altar Call, 217–22; idem, Cult and Character, ch. 8.
13. Compare Milgrom, “The Modus Operandi,” 112.
14. Not recognized by Rodriguez, Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus, 142–43 n. 1.
15. Cf. B. Carradine, The Sanctified Life (Books for the Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 142.
16. R. Burrill, Revolution in the Church (Fallbrook, Calif.: Hart Research Center, 1979), 24–25.
17. A. Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer (Springdale, Penn.: Whitaker, 1981), 228.
18. G. L. Jones, “Needy Pastors,” ChrCent (June 15–22, 1994): 62.
19. E. H. Peterson, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 7.
20. J. N. Griffith, Looking Up (Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press, 1993), 18.
21. Ibid.
1. F. H. Gorman, “Priestly Rituals of Founding: Time, Space, and Status,” in M. Graham, W. Brown, and J. Kuan, eds., History and Interpretation: Essays in Honour of John H. Hayes (JSOTSup 173; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 47–64.
2. A. Hurowitz, cited by J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 588.
3. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 591.
4. Augustine, Confessions, transl. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1961), 250.
5. On biblical hermeneutical controls for typology, especially of the horizontal and vertical varieties, see R. M. Davidson, Typology in Scripture: A Study of Hermeneutical τύπος Structures (AUSDDS 2; Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews Univ. Press, 1981).
6. R. Gane, Altar Call, 40.
7. See further in ibid., 41–43.
8. V. L. Hess, “Faith in Failure,” in R. Knott, ed., College Faith (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews Univ. Press, 2002), 37–38.
9. K. Fedarko and M. Thompson, “All for One,” Time (June 19, 1995): 21–26.
10. P. Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 227, 229.
11. See Gane, Altar Call, 16–19.
1. C. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (Ware, Hertfordshire, U.K.: Wordsworth Classics, 1993), 3.
2. Destructive divine fire also appears in Num. 11:1; 16:35; 2 Kings 1:10, 12; Rev. 20:9–10, 14–15 (= hellfire).
3. On several words derived from qrb, see R. Gane and J. Milgrom, “ qarab,” TDOT, 13:135–48.
4. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 600.
5. Compare P. Segal, “The Divine Verdict of Leviticus 10:3,” VT 39 (1989): 91–93.
6. On the meaning of ʾet peney, see comments on 4:6, 17.
7. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 608.
8. B. Schwartz, “The Literary and Ritual Unity of Leviticus 16,” paper presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Denver.
9. Modification of Milgrom’s translation (Leviticus 1–16, 596).
11. Cf. Kiuchi, The Purification Offering in the Priestly Literature, 73, 75–77.
12. Although the sacrifice was not invalidated, this departure from the script was conditioned by exceptional extenuating circumstances: divine execution of Nadab and Abihu when they engaged in ritual activity that “misfired” or “backfired” (literally!). On ritual mistakes and failures, see Grimes, Ritual Criticism, 191–209, repr. from “Infelicitous Performances and Ritual Criticism,” Semeia 41 (1988): 103–22.
13. S. Karff, “Silence and Weeping before the Song (Leviticus 10:1–20),” in F. C. Holmgren and H. E. Schaalman, eds., Preaching Biblical Texts: Expositions by Jewish and Christian Scholars (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 111–12.
14. Cf. J. H. Walton, Covenant: God’s Purpose, God’s Plan (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 94–99.
15. See e.g. ANET, 338–41, 343 (beer and wine in Mesopotamia).
16. COS, I:III: 396 (Enuma Elish, 3.135–38).
17. On šekar (so-called “strong/fermented drink”) offered in the Israelite tabernacle, see comments on Num. 28:7.
18. Ezek. 44:21 does prohibit priests from drinking wine when they enter the inner court of the later temple.
19. Milgrom, cited by Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 133 n. 22; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 622–25, 635–40. Supporters of the idea that eating the meat contributes in some way to expiation include Sipra, Shemini 2:4; Ibn Ezra on Lev. 10:17; B. Baentsch, Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri (HKAT; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1903), 325, 337, 352–53; D. Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus (Berlin: Poppelauer, 1905–1906), 213, 298.
20. Levine, Leviticus, 62; see also idem, In the Presence of the Lord, 104, 107.
21. A. Rodriguez, personal communication.
22. Cf. Ibn Ezra on Lev. 10:17; G. Olaffson, “The Use of nsʾ in the Pentateuch and Its Contribution to the Concept of Forgiveness” (Ph.D. diss., Andrews University, 1992), 263.
23. Cf. Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, 326; Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus, 213–14.
24. Schwartz, “The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature,” 8, 15; E. Jacob, Theology of the Old Testament, transl. A. Heathcote and P. Allcock (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), 291; A. von R. Sauer, “The Concept of Sin in the Old Testament,” CTM 22 (1951): 716–17; K. Koch, “
ʿāwôn,” TDOT, 10:559.
25. Schwartz, “The Bearing of Sin,” 9–15.
26. Koch, “
ʿāwôn,” 559.
27. Ibid.
28. For more detailed analysis of Lev. 10:17, see Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 5.
29. Carradine, The Sanctified Life, 142.
30. R. Stewart, Leper Priest of Molokai: The Father Damien Story (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 2000).
1. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 743.
2. Ibid., 667.
3. See ibid., 648, 656–57.
4. Some of the creatures listed in Lev. 11, especially the various birds, are notoriously difficult to identify by the Heb. terms for them. For details regarding animals known to peoples of the ancient Near East, including those mentioned in here, see E. Firmage, “Zoology,” ABD, 6:1109–67. On the animals of Lev. 11 in particular, see also Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 645–72.
5. Rodents and reptiles, but including the weasel, which is a mammal.
6. See, e.g., Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, 3.48; Ramban on Lev. 11:9.
7. On poisonous fish, see B. W. Halstead, Dangerous Marine Animals (Cambridge, Md.: Cornell Maritime Press, 1959), 107–31.
8. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 719.
9. M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Rout-ledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), 41–57, esp. 54–57.
10. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 726–27.
11. E. Firmage, “The Biblical Dietary Laws and the Concept of Holiness,” in J. A. Emerton, ed., Studies in the Pentateuch (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 177–208; cf. M. Douglas, “The Eucharist: Its Continuity with the Bread Sacrifice of Leviticus,” MT 15 (1999): 211–12.
12. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 735.
13. J. Moskala, The Laws of Clean and Unclean Animals of Leviticus 11: Their Nature, Theology, and Rationale (an Intertextual Study) (ATSDDS 4; Berrien Springs, Mich.: Adventist Theological Society Publications, 2000).
14. L. Schlessinger and S. Vogel, The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life (New York: Cliff Street Books, 1998), xxv.
15. H. L. Neal, Wave As You Pass, 2d ed. (Paris, Tenn.: Manorhouse, 1966), 17–18.
16. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, transl. L. Sherley-Price, 1993 ed. (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1952), 216.
17. The common translation “Thus he declared all foods clean” (NRSV; cf. NASB, NIV, NJB) does not accurately reflect the Greek original, in which the participle of katharizo (“to purify”) continues Jesus’ sentence in direct speech rather than beginning a new sentence explaining what he taught. There is no Greek behind the English translation “declared.” See Moskala, The Laws of Clean and Unclean Animals, 374–75.
18. C. House, “Defilement by Association: Some Insights from the Usage of κοινός/κοινόω in Acts 10 and 11,” AUSS 21 (1983): 143–53.
19. Ibid., 152–53.
20. Cf. the fact that in Mark 7, Jesus’ discourse regarding what makes a person unclean (Mark 7:14–23) is immediately followed by the incident of the Syro-Phoenician woman (7:24–30), who humbly requested Christ’s help with the words, “but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs” (Robert Johnston, Andrews University, private communication).
21. Cf. Moskala, The Laws of Clean and Unclean Animals, 351–69.
22. From the standpoint of health, Winston Craig of the Andrews University Department of Nutrition declares regarding the creatures in Lev. 11: “They’re all unclean.”
23. C. H. Spurgeon, A Popular Exposition to the Gospel According to Matthew (Books for the Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 102.
24. Yancey, Finding God in Unexpected Places, 58.
25. Ibid., 59.1. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 743.
1. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 746, 749.
2. On 1:5, Milgrom maintains that anyone could perform the slaughter (ibid., 154).
4. For surveys including other proposals, see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 750–51; R. M. Davidson, Flame of Yahweh: A Theology of Sexuality in the Old Testament (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2007), 246.
5. Daniel C. Oliver, M.D., Ob.Gyn., personal communication.
6. Cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 744.
7. J. Magonet, “ ‘But If It Is a Girl She Is Unclean for Twice Seven Days . . .’: The Riddle of Leviticus 12.5,” in J. Sawyer, ed., Reading Leviticus: A Conversation with Mary Douglas (JSOTSup 227; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 152.
8. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 763–65; G. Beckman, Hittite Birth Rituals, 2d ed. (StBoT 29; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983), esp. 251; M. F. Small, “A Woman’s Curse? From Taboo to Time Bomb: Rethinking Menstruation,” The Sciences (January/February, 1999): 24–29.
9. Beckman, Hittite Birth Rituals, 135, 137, 143, 219.
10. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 765.
11. While a sexually mature male can occasionally become impure for one day by having a nocturnal emission (Lev. 15:16–17; Deut. 23:10–11), a woman’s menstrual period makes her impure for seven days each month (Lev. 15:19–23) until menopause.
12. Against, e.g., Hartley, Leviticus, 168.
13. M. Gruber, “Women in the Cult According to the Priestly Code,” 43 n. 13.
14. m. Yadayim 4:6. Transl. J. Neusner, The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1988), 1130.
15. Gane, Altar Call, 115–17.
16. L. Grabbe, Leviticus (OTG; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 52.
17. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 154.
18. Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament, 416–17, 420; R. Rendtorff, Leviticus, 176, 216–17.
19. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 121.
20. T. Frymer-Kensky, “Pollution, Purification, and Purgation in Biblical Israel,” in C. L. Meyers and M. O’Connor, eds., The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 403–4.
21. On tolerated versus prohibited impurities, see D. P. Wright, “Two Types of Impurity in the Priestly Writings of the Bible,” Koroth 9 (1988): 180–93; idem, “The Spectrum of Priestly Impurity,”150–81.
22. Wright, “Two Types,” 191; idem, “The Spectrum,” 152, 165.
23. Wright, “Two Types,” 191; cf. Kiuchi, The Purification Offering in the Priestly Literature, 64–66. Similarly, J. R. Porter recognized: “In the priestly theology, sin is an objective, quasi-physical thing—hence, even if committed inadvertently, its consequences cannot be avoided—and so not sharply distinguished from defilement or uncleanness” (Leviticus [CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976], 37).
24. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 767–68, 1002–3; idem, “The Rationale for Biblical Impurity,” JANES 22 (1993): 107–11.
25. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 49; cf. 31–32, 48, 50, 207–8.
26. Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 9.
27. Cf. Büchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement, xxv–xxx.
28. Augustine, Confessions, 251.
29. Gane, Altar Call, 118.
30. Augustine, Confessions, 251.
31. Rabbi Hiyya b. Abin said in the name of R. Joshua b. Korha: b. Megillah 14a, transl. in The Soncino Talmud (The CD-ROM Judaic Classics Library; Davka Corporation, 1991–1995).
1. Ramban on Lev. 13:1.
2. E. V. Hulse, “The Nature of Biblical ‘Leprosy’ and the Use of Alternative Medical Terms in Modern Translations of the Bible,” PEQ 107 (1975): 103; J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 774–5.
3. Hulse, “The Nature of Biblical ‘Leprosy,’ ” 88.
4. But John of Damascus (A.D. 777–857), an Arab physician, later used lepra for what we know as “leprosy” (ibid., 89).
5. See Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 817.
6. R. K. Harrison, “Leper; Leprosy,” ISBE, 3:103–6; cf. idem, Leviticus: An Introduction and Commentary (TOTC; Leicester, U.K.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1980), 136–45, 241–46.
7. For interpretation of terminology, I am following Milgrom (ibid., 768–826).
8. Cf. Job 18:13, where a description of Job’s skin as eaten away by malignant boils is paralleled by the words: “Death’s firstborn devours his limbs.” In Lev. 13:18–23, scale disease can arise from the place of a boil that has healed.
9. Probably “moustache”; cf. 2 Sam. 19:24; Ezek. 24:17, 22.
10. Transl. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 828; emphasis supplied.
11. Cf. K. van der Toorn, Sin and Sanction in Israel and Mesopotamia (SSN 22; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1985), 74.
12. See, e.g., J. Nougayrol, “Sirrimu (non *purîmu) ‘âne sauvage,’ ” JCS 2 (1948): 207 n. 12. For other citations of scale disease as divine punishment, including in Mesopotamia, among the Greeks, in Persia, and among the Nuer people in Africa, see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 820–21.
13. D. P. Wright note in J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 824. Regarding injurious effects of popular views on those who are sick, cf. S. Sontag, Illness As Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (New York: Doubleday, 1990).
14. On the problem of pain and suffering, see P. Yancey, Where Is God When It Hurts? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990).
1. On Israelite, Mesopotamian, and Hittite ritual use of birds to carry away evil, see D. P. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (SBLDS 101; Atlanta: Scholars, 1987), 75–86.
2. According to Milgrom, that person can now enter his tent because he no longer defiles sacred things by overhang, i.e., by simply being in the same enclosed space (Leviticus 1–16, 844, 993).
3. This is the smallest biblical unit for measuring capacity. S. Rattray calculates it as about a cup (“The Biblical Measures of Capacity,” referred to in ibid., 898).
4. Cf. T. Vriezen, “The Term Hizza: Lustration and Consecration,” OtSt 7 (1950): 208.
5. Transl. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 829.
6. D. E. Garland, Mark (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 312–13.
7. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 832, 835.
8. Story courtesy of Dwain Ford, emeritus professor of biology, Andrews University, to whom Gulbrandson recounted this experience years later.
9. See Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952, 1953), 5–9.
10. Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age: A Brief History of A.A. (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1985), 62–63.
11. Ibid., 64.
12. Concert program notes by Richard E. Rodda.
13. A. Ruksenas, The World’s Best Russian Jokes (North Ryde, NSW, Australia: Angus & Robertson, 1986).
1. M. M. Kalisch, A Historical and Critical Commentary on the Old Testament, with a New Translation: Leviticus (London: Longman, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1872), 2:155; cf. J. V. KinnierWilson, who suggests infectious urinary Bilharzia (“Medicine in the Land and Times of the Old Testament,” in T. Ishida, ed., Studies in the Period of David and Solomon [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1982], 358).
2. See B. Levine, Numbers 1–20 (AB 4; New York: Doubleday, 1993), 185.
3. Milgrom (Leviticus 1–16, 920) draws the implication that if the impure person takes the precaution of rinsing his hands, he can live at home. Regarding a stricter rule, according to which males and females with genital flows must stay outside the war camp, see comments on Num. 5:1–4 (cf. Levine, Numbers 1–20, 185).
4. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 934–35.
5. Gruber, “Women in the Cult According to the Priestly Code,” 47–48 n. 40.
6. Against Milgrom’s “for his discharge” and “for her impure discharge” (Leviticus 1–16, 902–3).
7. Cf. S. Hills, “A Semantic and Conceptual Study of the Root KPR in the Hebrew Old Testament with Special Reference to the Accadian Kuppuru” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1954), 209.
8. Transl. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 903.
9. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 60; cf. 31–32, 48–50, 207–8.
10. Cf. G. Wenham, “Why Does Sexual Intercourse Defile (Lev 15:18)?” ZAW 95 (1983): 433–34.
11. Cf. M. F. Small, “A Woman’s Curse? From Taboo to Time Bomb: Rethinking Menstruation,” The Sciences (January/February 1999), 24–29.
12. John H. Walton, personal communication.
13. Beckman, Hittite Birth Rituals, 135, 137, 143, 219.
14. Transl. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 903.
15. J. Randolph, cited in Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 930–31.
16. M. Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002), 7.
17. Ibid., 9.
18. John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley (Books for the Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 6:286.
1. Geller, “Blood Cult: Toward a Literary Theology of the Priestly Work of the Pentateuch,” 97–124.
2. Kiuchi, The Purification Offering in the Priestly Literature, 128.
3. Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament, 392–93.
4. Cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1036–37, 1040; A. Bonar, A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus, Expository and Practical, 5th ed. (London: Nisbet, 1875), 310.
5. Levine, In the Presence of the Lord, 103.
6. Bovati, Re-Establishing Justice, 159.
7. Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 11.
8. A. B. Ehrlich, Randglossen zur Hebräischen Bibel: Textkritisches, Sprachliches und Sachliches (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968), 2:56.
9. E.g., R. Péter, “L’imposition des mains dans l’Ancien Testament,” VT 27 (1977): 48–55; D. P. Wright, “The Gesture of Hand Placement in the Hebrew Bible and in Hittite Literature,” JAOS 106 (1986): 433–46.
10. Y. Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, transl. and abridg. M. Greenberg (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960), 114.
11. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 45–72; J. C. Moyer, “Hittite and Israelite Cultic Practices: A Selected Comparison,” in W. W. Hallo, J. C. Moyer, and L. G. Perdue, eds., Scripture in Context II: More Essays on the Comparative Method (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 33–35; K. Aartun, “Eine weitere Parallele aus Ugarit zur kultischen Praxis in Israels Religion,” BO 33 (1976): 288.
12. E.g., BDB, 774; LXX; Targums.
13. E.g., Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1048; Porter, Leviticus, 131; E. Gerstenberger, Leviticus: A Commentary, transl. D. Stott (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 223.
14. Contrast the high priest of the Babylonian Ekua temple, who becomes impure even if he merely views purification of the temple of Marduk (= Bel) on the fifth day of the New Year festival (ANET, 333, lines 364–5).
15. BDB, 49; Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2022. On the plural of intensification, see GKC, §124e.
16. J. Milgrom, Advanced Biblical Hebrew Texts seminar, University of California at Berkeley, 1982; I. Schur, Versöhnungstag und Sündenbock (CHL 6/3; Helsingfors: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1933), 13, 31.
17. Gane, Altar Call, 197–98, 202.
18. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 19; D. P. Wright, “Day of Atonement,” ABD, 2:73.
19. A. Büchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First Century (LBS; New York: KTAV, 1967), 263; Shea, “Literary Form,” 166.
20. E.g. Temple Scroll 26.9–10, transl. Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll (Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society, 1983), 2:117; m. Yoma 8:8–9; b. Yoma 86a; A. Médebielle, L’expiation dans L’Ancien et le Nouveau Testament, 85; S. Y. Agnon, Days of Awe (New York: Schocken, 1948), 211–14; A. Schenker, Versöhnung und Sühne (BibB 15; Freiburg: Schweizerisches Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1981), 112, 114–15; W. Kaiser, “The Book of Leviticus,” in NIB, 999, 1113–14; F. Crüsemann, The Torah: Theology and Social History of Old Testament Law, transl. A. W. Mahnke (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 318.
21. Compare L. Morris, “The Day of Atonement and the Work of Christ,” RTR 14 (1955): 12; R. Rendtorff, Leviticus, 180; Shea, “Literary Form,” 166; Geller, “Blood Cult,” 107.
22. See Gane, Altar Call, 203–9; idem, Cult and Character, ch. 12.
23. Shea, “Literary Form,” 155.
24. For more detail, see Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 13.
25. E.g., Elliger, Leviticus, 200–201, 205–7, 209; G. André, “
ṭāmēʾ,” in TDOT, 5:333; A. Noordtzij, Leviticus, transl. R. Togtman (BSC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 166; R. Péter-Contesse and J. Ellington, A Handbook on Leviticus (UBSHS; New York: United Bible Societies, 1990), 250, 253.
26. Lev. 5:3; 7:20, 21; 14:19; 15:3, 25, 26, 30, 31; 18:19; 22:3, 5; Num. 5:19; 19:13.
27. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 257; idem, “Israel’s Sanctuary,” 393.
28. See also Ps. 32:1; 51:3; 65:3; 103:12; Isa. 43:25; Ezek. 18:22; Mic. 7:18.
29. Cf. A. R. von Sauer, “The Concept of Sin in the Old Testament,” CTM 22 (1951): 711.
30. R. Knierim, “ perversity,” TLOT, 2:864. For unintentional ʿāwon, Knierim cites Gen. 15:16; 19:15; Lev. 22:16; Num. 18:1, 23.
31. B. Schwartz, “The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature,” 10–15.
32. K. Koch, “ ʿāwōn,” TDOT, 10:559.
33. Jenson, Graded Holiness, 208.
34. Geller, “Blood Cult,” 108.
35. Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 14.
36. Ibid., ch. 16; Gane, Altar Call, 232–37.
37. M. Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (Jerusalem/Minneapolis: Magnes/Fortress, 1995), 45–56.
38. This is the usual plain sense interpretation of 2 Sam. 14:9; against the unconvincing alternatives offered by J. Hoftijzer, “David and the Tekoite Woman,” VT 20 (1970): 424–28; P. K. McCarter, II Samuel (AB 9; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984), 347–48. For detailed discussion, see Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 16.
39. U. Simon, “The Poor Man’s Ewe-Lamb: An Example of a Juridical Parable,” Bib 48 (1967): 220–21.
40. Gane, Altar Call, 237.
41. On the unity of love and justice in the character of God, see H. Cohen, “The Day of Atonement II,” Judaism 18 (1969): 84.
42. J. Wenham, The Enigma of Evil: Can We Believe in the Goodness of God? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985), 63–64, 68–69. Cf. Mesopotamian advice to a king: “If a king does not heed justice, his people will be thrown into chaos, and his land will be devastated. If he does not heed the justice of his land, Ea, king of destinies, will alter his destiny and will not cease from hostilely pursuing him” (transl. W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature [Oxford: Clarendon, 1960], 113, lines 1–3).
43. J. Watts, Reading Law: The Rhetorical Shaping of the Pentateuch (BSem 59; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 107; cf. 89–106, 108–9, 129.
44. Ibid., 96–98. On the international attraction of the Lord’s reputation as a just judge in Isa. 2:1–4, see B. Schwartz, “Torah from Zion: Isaiah’s Temple Vision (Isaiah 2:1–4),” in A. Houtman, M. Poorthuis, and J. Schwartz, eds., Sanctity of Time and Space in Tradition and Modernity (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 21–22.
45. P. Schaff, ed., The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Books for the Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), series 2, 10:80.
46. Cf. W. Carson, “What It Costs God to Forgive Sin,” Int 4 (1950): 168–75.
47. Cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1018; A. Dillmann, Die Bücher Exodus und Leviticus (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1897), 576. For more detailed discussion on this topic, see Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 11.
48. For the l of possession, cf. Ps. 3:1; Isa. 38:9; Hab. 3:1; see BDB, 513; Levine, Leviticus, 102—on seals.
49. H. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 88–89.
50. See Driver and White, The Book of Leviticus, 81.
51. C. D. Ginsburg and C. J. Ellicott, Leviticus (LHC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1961), 151.
52. L. Grabbe, “The Scapegoat Tradition: A Study in Early Jewish Interpretation,” JSJ 18 (1987): 152–67.
53. Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, 1:320; cf. 1:316–17, 319.
54. See, e.g., C. L. Feinberg, “The Scapegoat of Leviticus Sixteen,” BSac 115 (1958): 324–33; Levine, Leviticus, 250–53; H. Tawil, “ʿAzazel, The Prince of the Steepe: A Comparative Study,” ZAW 92 (1980): 43–59; Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 21–22; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1020–21; A. Treiyer, The Day of Atonement and the Heavenly Judgment from the Pentateuch to Revelation (Siloam Springs, Ark.: Creation Enterprises International, 1992), 231–58.
55. Gane, Altar Call, 248–49; cf. Zech. 5:5–11.
56. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1020.
57. P. D. Hanson, “Rebellion in Heaven, Azazel, and Euhemeristic Heroes in 1 Enoch 6–11,” JBL 96 (1977): 220–27; Levine, Leviticus, 252; R. de Vaux, Les sacrifices de l’Ancien Testament (CahRB 1; Paris: J. Gabalda, 1964), 87; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1020–21. Following Origen (Contra Celsum 6:43), Keil and Delitzsch thought Azazel must refer to Satan himself (Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, 2:398).
58. Jenson, Graded Holiness, 203.
59. I am grateful to Moise Isaac, my student, for drawing attention to this parallel.
60. A. Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer (Springdale, Pa.: Whitaker House, 1981), 194.
61. Walton, Genesis, 79.
62. C. H. Spurgeon, All of Grace (Books for the Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 21–22.
63. Ross, Holiness to the Lord, 136.
64. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 22–25; D. P. Wright, “Azazel,” ABD, 1:536–37; cf. G. A. Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 83.
65. Gane, Altar Call, 250–53.
66. Ibid., 253–55.
1. Compare J. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1326.
2. Regarding krt (“cut off”), see comments on 7:20–21.
3. E.g. J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994 [repr. of 1885]), 50–51.
4. Transl. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1295.
5. P. Brand and P. Yancey, In His Image (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 61.
6. B. Schwartz, “The Prohibitions Concerning the ‘Eating’ of Blood in Leviticus 17,” in G. A. Anderson and S. M. Olyan, eds., Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel (JSOTSup 125; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 57–58.
7. Ibid., 56–57.
8. Ibid., 55–56; Levine, In the Presence of the Lord, 61, 67–69; H. C. Brichto, “On Slaughter and Sacrifice, Blood and Atonement,” 26–28; Kaiser, “The Book of Leviticus,” 1:1012. For an alternative idea that expiation (koper) is not ransom in the sense of the price of a life, but the cost of reconciliation that a faulty party gives to placate and make peace with an injured party, who is free to accept or reject it, see A. Schenker, “kōper et expiation,” Bib 63 (1982): 32–46, esp. 45.
9. Ibid.; Bovati, Re-Establishing Justice, 156–58.
10. Ibid., 137.
11. E.g., L. Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1955), 143–52; R. L. Harris, “
kāpar,” TWOT, 1:452–53.
12. Cf. Milgrom, “A Prolegomenon to Leviticus 17:11,” JBL 90 (1971): 152–53.
13. However, cf. 1 Sam. 3:14; Ezek. 45:15, 17.
14. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 186–89; A. Schenker, “Das Zeichen des Blutes und die Gewissheit der Vergebung im Alten Testament,” MTZ 34 (1983): 203, 213.
15. Kiuchi, The Purification Offering, 107.
16. H. Gese, Essays on Biblical Theology (transl. K. Crim; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981), 96; cf. Kalisch, A Historical and Critical Commentary on the Old Testament: Leviticus, 1:172, 309, 318.
17. See J. H. Walton, Covenant: God’s Purpose, God’s Plan (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 158–61.
18. Minnie Warburton, “Letting the Voice of Leviticus Speak,” STR 37 (1994): 164.
19. S. Paul, Studies in the Book of the Covenant in the Light of Cuneiform and Biblical Law (VTSup 18; Leiden: Brill, 1970), 43.
20. Transl. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1295.
21. On postbiblical requirements for koshering meat, see, e.g., EJ, 6:28, 39.
22. G. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 35.
23. M. Luther, A Simple Way to Pray (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 54.
24. H. T. Blackaby, and C. V. King, Experiencing God: How to Live the Full Adventure of Knowing and Doing the Will of God (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 13.
25. Cf. B. Greenberg, “Hear, O Israel: Law and Love in Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 1–34),” in F. C. Holmgren and H. E. Schaalman, eds., Preaching Biblical Texts: Expositions by Jewish and Christian Scholars (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 150–53.
26. Patrick, Old Testament Law, 4.
27. J. H. Walton, Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context (LBI; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 90 (emphasis supplied).
28. Cf. Griffith, Looking Up, 41.
29. Ibid., 105.
30. Schlessinger and Vogel, The Ten Commandments, xxix.
1. S. Rattray, “Marriage Rules, Kinship Terms and Family Structure in the Bible,” SBLSP 26 (1998): 542.
2. For less convincing alternative explanations, see T. Meacham, “The Missing Daughter: Leviticus 18 and 20,” ZAW 109 (1997): 254–59. However, Meacham is right that a father who deflowered his daughter could lose the bride price he would receive if she were a virgin (257).
3. Cf. Davidson, Flame of Yahweh, 142–45.
4. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1567.
5. J. E. Miller, “Notes on Leviticus 18,” ZAW 112 (2000): 401–3.
6. Transl. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1296.
7. Cf. Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed 3.49.
8. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1540, 1542.
9. For the masculine equivalent expression, meaning “one [masculine] to another [masculine]” or “to one another,” see Gen. 37:19; 42:21, 28; Ex. 16:15; 25:20; 37:9; Num. 14:4, etc.
10. A. Tosato, “The Law of Leviticus 18:18: A Reexamination,” CBQ 46 (1984): 202–8.
11. Temple Scroll, 57.17–18, transl. Yadin, The Temple Scroll, 2:407; Damascus Document (CD) 4.21, transl. G. Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Allen Lane/Penguin, 1997), 130; Aaron ben Elijah (14th century Karaite), Keter Torah, on Lev. 18:18; R. du Preez, “Polygamy in the Bible with Implications for Seventh-Day Adventist Missiology” (D.Min. diss., Andrews University, 1993), 62–78.
12. Cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1549.
13. Davidson, Flame of Yahweh, 197.
14. Cf. Patrick, Old Testament Law, 49, on the third commandment of the Decalogue.
15. S. Rattray, cited in Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1551.
16. H. Orlinsky, “The Hebrew Root škb,” JBL 63 (1944): 40.
17. W. Kaiser, “Leviticus 18:5 and Paul: Do This and You Shall Live (Eternally?),” JETS 14 (1971): 28.
18. Blackaby and King, Experiencing God, 14. Compare biblical and practical answers to the contemporary culture that promotes adultery in Schlessinger and Vogel, The Ten Commandments, 207–34.
19. For comprehensive discussion of sexuality in the Hebrew Bible, see Davidson, Flame of Yahweh.
20. R. Gane, “Old Testament Principles Relating to Divorce and Remarriage,” JATS 12 (2001): 35–61.
21. On the idea of unjustifiable divorce in Mal. 2:16, see R. Westbrook, “The Prohibition on Restoration of Marriage in Deuteronomy 24:1–4,” in S. Japhet, ed., Studies in Bible (ScrHier 31; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986), 402–3.
22. See H. Hoffner, “Incest, Sodomy and Bestiality in the Ancient Near East,” in H. Hoffner, ed., Orient and Occident (Kevelaer/Neukirchen-Vluyn: Butzon & Bercker/Neukirchener, 1973), 81–90.
23. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1755.
24. W. J. Webb, Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 168–70.
25. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1788.
26. Ibid., 1786; cf. 1569, citing David Stewart.
27. Ibid., 1790.
28. Ibid., 1788–89.
29. Ibid., 1787–88.
30. J. R. White and J. D. Niell, The Same Sex Controversy: Defending and Clarifying the Bible’s Message About Homosexuality (Minneapolis: Bethany, 2002), 66.
31. Compare D. Wold, Out of Order: Homosexuality in the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 130.
32. See, e.g., Wold, Out of Order, esp. 207–18; J. B. De Young, Homosexuality: Contemporary Claims Examined in Light of the Bible and Other Ancient Literature and Law (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2000), 59–62, 163; R. A. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 487–89; against, e.g., A. O. Bellis and T. L. Hufford, Science, Scripture, and Homosexuality (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2002), 121–22. For recent collections of essays on various sides of the homosexuality question, see, e.g., D. L. Balch, ed., Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000); R. L. Brawley, ed., Biblical Ethics and Homosexuality: Listening to Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996); T. Sample and A. E. DeLong, eds., The Loyal Opposition: Struggling with the Church on Homosexuality (Nashville: Abingdon, 2000).
33. Cf. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 489.
34. P. Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 259.
35. Minnie Warburton, “Letting the Voice of Leviticus Speak,” 166–67.
1. Transl. T. Jacobsen, The Harps That Once . . . : Sumerian Poetry in Translation (New Haven, Conn: Yale Univ. Press, 1987), 128.
2. For the idea of divine perception in the Bible, cf. 1 Kings 8:39; Ps. 1:6; 44:20–21; 94:11.
3. Mules were not likely included in the scope of this verse because the Pentateuch does not include horses among livestock bred by Israelites (S. Rattray, cited by Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1658).
4. See ibid., 1657–65.
5. Cf. Laws of Eshnunna, law 26; Laws of Hammurabi, law 130. For translations, see ANET, 162, 171; M. T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (SBLWAW 6; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 63, 106.
6. Levine, Leviticus, 130.
7. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1671. For detailed discussion of the four main interpretations (indemnity, punishment, inquest, distinction) of biqqoret, which only appears here, see 1668–71.
8. Ibid., 1672, 1674–75; J. Milgrom, “The Betrothed Slave-girl, Lev 19:20–22,” ZAW 89 (1977): 43–50.
9. Wenham, Leviticus, 271.
10. Milgrom, Cult and Conscience, 16–25, 84–117; idem, Leviticus 1–16, 345–56, 365–73.
11. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1679.
12. Compare Laws of Hammurabi, law 60, where the owner of a Babylonian orchard and the gardener who develops it begin to utilize the fruit in the fifth year. For translations, see ANET, 169; Roth, Law Collections, 93.
13. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1679, 1684.
14. J. Grintz, “Do Not Eat on the Blood,” ASTI 8 (1972): 78–105; cf. Ramban on Lev. 19:26.
15. See H. Hoffner, “Second Millennium Antecedents to the Hebrew ʾob.,” JBL 86 (1967): 401.
16. Cf. W. M. Greathouse, Wholeness in Christ: Toward a Biblical Theology of Holiness (Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 1998), 17.
17. Schlessinger and Vogel, The Ten Commandments, xxii.
18. J. Muilenberg, “Holiness,” IDB, 2:616.
19. Cf. R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy, transl. J. W. Harvey (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1958).
20. Greathouse, Wholeness in Christ, 23, 25; W. Kaiser, “The Book of Leviticus,” NIB, 1:1131.
21. P. Schaff, ed., The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, 11:420.
22. See J. Bergman, A. O. Haldar, and Gerhard Wallis, “
ʾāhabh,” TDOT, 1:103.
23. Author unknown, in Water, The New Encyclopedia, 632.
24. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, transl. L. Sherley-Price, 1993 ed. (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1952), 97.
25. Hans Küng, Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic (New York: Continuum, 1993), 34.
26. Gane, Altar Call, 88.
27. In Water, The New Encyclopedia, 633.
28. P. Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 17–18.
29. Author unknown, in Water. The New Encyclopedia, 632.
30. Gane, Altar Call, 137–38.
31. J. Wesley, Plain Account of Christian Perfection (Chicago: Christian Witness, 1921), 99.
32. b. Šabb. 31a, transl. H. Freedman, Shabbath, ed. I. Epstein, Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud (London: Soncino, 1972).
33. F. Holmgren, “The Way of Torah: Escape from Egypt (Leviticus 19:1–37),” in F. C. Holmgren and H. E. Schaalman, eds., Preaching Biblical Texts: Expositions by Jewish and Christian Scholars (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 127.
34. Cf. A. Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951), 8–24.
35. P. Tillich, Theology of Culture, ed. R. C. Kimball (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959), 9.
36. Alan Greenspan, quoted in Time (July 29, 2002), 14.
37. Küng, Global Responsibility, 32–33.
38. Ibid., 33; see also 30.
39. S. Freud, Collected Papers, ed. James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 1959), 5:284.
40. Cf. K. Stendahl, “Hate, Non-Retaliation, and Love: 1QS X, 17–20 and Rom 12:19–21,” HTR 55 (1962): 343–55.
41. M. Lucado, When God Whispers Your Name (Dallas: Word, 1994), 92.
42. Ibid., 95.
43. For comparison between the Joseph story and the law of the betrothed slave woman in Lev. 19, see C. Carmichael, “A Strange Sequence of Rules: Leviticus 19.20–26,” in Sawyer, Reading Leviticus, 187–90.
44. Alex Perry and Mae Sai, “How I Bought Two Slaves, to Free Them,” Time (March 11, 2002), 7. Compare the words of Akhtar Muhammad, an Afghan father who sold two of his sons for bags of wheat: “I miss my sons, but there was nothing to eat” (“Verbatim” section, Time [March 18, 2002], 29).
45. Perry and Sai, “How I Bought Two Slaves,” 7.
46. “Only in America” column, Reader’s Digest (September 2002): 19.
47. J. Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 146
48. Ibid.
49. W. Durant, The Life of Greece (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939/1966), 2:195.
50. A. Cohen, “A Curse of Cliques,” Time (May 3, 1999), 45.
1. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1765.
2. Ibid., 1744.
3. Cf. 1 Kings 11:5, 7, 33; 2 Kings 16:3; 17:17; 21:6; 23:10, 13; 2 Chron. 33:6; Jer. 32:35. Regarding this hideous practice, see J. Day, Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament (UCOP 41; Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989).
4. Cf. P. Yancey, Finding God in Unexpected Places (Ann Arbor: Servant Publications, 1997), 9.
5. Regarding the penalty of being “cut off,” see comments on 7:20–21.
6. See, e.g., D. Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus (Berlin: M. Poppelauer, 1905–1906), 2:80; D. Daube, “Codes and Codas in the Pentateuch,” JR 53 (1941): 242–61.
7. Blackaby and King, Experiencing God, 17.
8. Probably resulting in death or being “cut off” (v. 19; cf. v. 17); see Schwartz, “The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature,” 13.
9. M. Greenberg, “Some Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law,” in M. Haran, ed., Yehezkel Kaufmann Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1960), 12–13; A. Phillips,“Another Look at Adultery,” JSOT 20 (1981): 3–25.
10. Cf. Greenberg, “Some Postulates,” 12; J. J. Finkelstein, “Sex Offenses in Sumerian Laws,” JAOS 86 (1966): 355–72.
11. For translations, see ANET, 159–88; M. T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (SBLWAW 6; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 13–35, 57–142, 153–94.
12. Transl. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, except that I have added “to Molek,” which was somehow left out.
13. J. Milgrom, “The Paradox of the Red Cow (Num. XIX),” VT 31 (1981): 71; Kiuchi, The Purification Offering in the Priestly Literature, 124.
14. Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 7.
15. J. Milgrom, “Israel’s Sanctuary: The Priestly Picture of Dorian Gray,” RB 83 (1976): 392–94; idem, Leviticus 1–16, 256–58; cf. idem, “Two Kinds of ḥaṭṭāʾt,” VT 26 (1976): 336. Interestingly, long ago A. F. Ballenger generalized from the same passages (Lev. 20; Num. 19) to the same conclusion that expiable sins defile the sanctuary when they are committed (Cast Out for the Cross of Christ [Riverside, Calif.: A. F. Ballenger, 1911?], 58–62).
16. Against Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 171, 176, 191–92.
17. Rodriguez, Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus, 105 n. 1. On the seriousness of such cases, see Wright, “The Spectrum of Priestly Impurity”, 161–63.
18. Gane, Altar Call, 212.
19. E.g., A. Green, The Role of Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East (ASORDS 1; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1975). W. Durant, The Life of Greece (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939/1966), 2:193–94.
20. D. Richardson, “Redemptive Analogy,” in R. D. Winter and S. C. Hawthorne, eds., Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, 3d ed. (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1981), 398.
1. Cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1841.
2. ANET, 139 (Ugaritic mythic poetry about Baal and Anath). On such burial and mourning customs, see, e.g., M. Farbridge, Studies in Biblical and Semitic Symbolism (LBS; New York: KTAV, 1970), 226–39.
3. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1807, 1819, also citing LXX and the Samaritan Pentateuch, which provide the conjunction “and” between the terms for the two kinds of women in 21:14.
4. E.g., Ehrlich, Randglossen Zur Hebräischen Bibel, 2:74; W. Kornfeld, Levitikus (NEchtB; Würzburg: Echter, 1983), 84.
5. Cf. A. J. Phillips, “Another Look at Adultery,” JSOT 20 (1981): 10.
6. When Nadab and Abihu died, the Lord laid these prohibitions on Eleazar and Ithamar (ordinary priests), as well as Aaron (the high priest), because of the gravity of the situation (Lev. 10:6).
7. For such high sensitivity to impurity, compare a Babylonian high priest, who is defiled by merely viewing the purification of a temple (ANET, 333, lines 364–65).
8. H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 20. (See also p. 25: “n. is never the author of specific spiritual activities.”)
9. Gerstenberger, Leviticus, 314.
10. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1811.
11. Cf. C. Meyers, Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), 163.
12. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1811.
13. Meyers, Discovering Eve, 163.
14. Cf. J. Doukhan, “Women Priests in Israel: A Case for Their Absence,” in N. Vyhmeister, ed., Women in Ministry: Biblical and Historical Perspectives (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews Univ. Press, 1998), 31; Davidson, Flame of Yahweh, 106–7.
1. While published English versions translate qrb here with the literal meaning “approaches/comes near,” this does not make good sense. Why would an impure priest be culpable for merely coming near a sacred object? On technical use of qrb or its synonym ngš for encroachment beyond boundaries of legitimate access, see J. Milgrom, Studies in Levitical Terminology, I: The Encroacher and the Levite; the Term ʿAboda (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1970), 33–43; R. Gane and J. Milgrom, “ qārab,” TDOT, 13:140, 143; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 351–56.
2. Regarding words for liability and reparation from the root ʾšm, see comments on 5:1–13.
3. For physiological details, see Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1876–80.
4. Compare the fact that a male Israelite infant receives the covenant sign of circumcision only on the eighth day (Gen. 17:11–12), remaining in his natural uncircumcised state for the first week of his life.
5. See also Deut. 22:6, which prohibits taking a mother bird and its young (cf. also, “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk,” Ex. 23:19; 34:26; Deut. 14:21).
6. Cf. B. Schwartz, The Holiness Legislation: Studies in the Priestly Code (Jerusalem: Magnes/Hebrew University, 1999 [Hebrew]), 298; Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence, 118–19.
1. Note too that just as Lev. 23 has two introductions, it has two final sections dealing with the Feast of Booths, one before the conclusion proper (vv. 33–36) and one after (vv. 39–43).
2. Cf. ANET, 320 (the Gezer Calendar).
3. The Boethusians, Samaritans, and Karaites counted from the morrow of the first Sabbath after Passover, the Pharisees counted from the morning after the Passover, and for the sectarians the date of the sheaf ceremony was Nisan 26 (Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll, 1:117; J. M. Baumgarten, Studies in Qumran Law [Leiden: Brill, 1977], 111).
4. Ramban on Lev. 23:17; Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence, 25.
5. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2004.
6. W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-ḫasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, repr. 1999 [orig. 1969]), 54–59 (esp. tablet I, lines 191, 195–97, 240–41).
7. J. Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis, 2d ed. (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1930), 35; Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 68–69.
8. Compare J. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch As Narrative (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 96–97.
9. On the uniqueness of Sabbath and the weekly cycle, which are not defined by movement of any celestial body, see U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus, transl. I. Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967), 244; N. Sarna, Exodus (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 111.
10. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 69.
11. R. Gane, “Sabbath and the New Covenant,” JATS 10 (1999): 315.
12. A. Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951), 10.
13. Cf., e.g., Davidson, Typology in Scripture, 346–47, 351–52.
14. James Moffatt, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1924), 51; F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 73–75.
15. Cf. 2 Chron. 2:4; 8:13, referring to Sabbaths, new moons, and festivals.
16. Paul Giem, “Sabbatōn in Col 2:16,” AUSS 19 (1981): 195–210.
17. NASB “in respect to”; NKJV “regarding”; NIV “with regard to”; NRSV “of observing”; NJB “about observance of”; BAGD (507) renders “in the matter of, literally ‘in the part of.’ ”
18. Gane, “Sabbath and the New Covenant,” 322.
19. G. MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 162–63.
20. Ibid., 162.
21. Ibid., 161.
22. Ibid., 164; cf. 163, 165–69. On Sabbath rest as good news for modern Christians, see S. Bacchiocchi, Divine Rest for Human Restlessness (Rome: S. Bacchiocchi, 1980).
23. See M. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 70.
24. Ibid., xii–xiii.
25. MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World, 171.
26. Ibid., 175.
27. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, 65–66.
28. MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World, 167.
29. Luther, A Simple Way to Pray, 29.
30. Meenakshi Ganguly, “In the Heart of Hate,” Time (March 11, 2002): 51.
1. For teruʿah in the context of God as king, see also Ps. 47:5; cf. 2 Sam. 6:15 of bringing the Lord’s ark up to Jerusalem.
2. See m. Roš. Haš. 4:5–6, 9; b. Roš. Haš. 16a; cf. Agnon, Days of Awe.
3. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2018; cf. 2043–46; S. Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, transl. D. R. Ap-Thomas (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), 1:122.
4. This mood is similar to that which prevailed during much of the Babylonian New Year Festival of Spring. Cf. K. van der Toorn, “Form and Function of the New Year Festival in Babylonia and Israel,” in J. A. Emerton, ed., Congress Volume: Leuven, 1989 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 6–8.
5. Cf. Agnon, Days of Awe, 186, 220–21.
6. Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 17. Cf. Levine’s observation that the Day of Purgation “ensured that the sanctuary and, hence, the people would be restored to a state of fitness in time for the celebration of the autumn Sukkot festival” (Leviticus, 162).
7. Cf. Ex. 19:15, where abstinence from sexual relations was part of preparation for the Lord’s appearance on Mount Sinai.
8. Cf. Harrison, Leviticus, 175.
9. Philo, Special Laws 2:196; Péter-Contesse and Ellington, Handbook on Leviticus, 258.
10. Cf. m. Yoma 8:8–9; b. Yoma 86a-b; Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus, 261; Noordtzij, Leviticus, 171.
11. Cf. Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 14. See also H. Cohen, “The Day of Atonement: I,” Judaism 17 (1968): 357; idem, “The Day of Atonement: II,” Judiasm 18 (1969): 86–87.
12. W. Heimpel, “The Nanshe Hymn,” JCS 33 (1981): 65–119. Jacobsen, The Harps That Once . . . : Sumerian Poetry in Translation, 125–42.
13. For detailed analysis and comparison with the Israelite Day of Purgation, see Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 17.
15. For detailed analysis and comparison with the Israelite Day of Purgation, see Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 17.
16. Cf. b. Roš. Haš., 16a-b; y. Roš. Haš., 1:3; Regarding judgment in connection with New Year’s celebrations in the ancient Near East, see M. Weinfeld, “Social and Cultic Institutions in the Priestly Source Against Their Ancient Near Eastern Background,” in Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies; Panel Sessions: Bible Studies and Hebrew Language (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies/Perry Foundation for Biblical Research, 1983), 116–17.
17. Transl. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1011.
18. Ibid., 258–61.
19. C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening Daily Readings (Books for the Ages; Version 2.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1996, 1997), 7.
20. Gane, Altar Call, 340.
21. Ibid., 316, 322.
22. Cf. Brand and Yancey, In His Image, 79.
23. Griffith, Looking Up, 62.
1. See Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel, 216–19; M. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 191–92.
2. Gorman, “Priestly Rituals of Founding: Time, Space, and Status,” 47–64.
3. Cf. Lev. 2:11, where leaven was forbidden in grain offerings burned on the outer altar. Tradition holds that the “bread of the Presence” was unleavened (m. Menaḥ. 5:1; b. Menaḥ. 57a).
4. B. Mitchell, “Leviticus 24:6: The Bread of the Presence—Rows or Piles?” BT 33 (1982): 447–48.
5. On possible locations of the frankincense, see Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2097–98.
6. Ibid., 2102.
7. Douglas, Leviticus As Literature, 207.
8. This “tetragrammaton,” consisting of four consonants, may have been pronounced something like “Yahweh.” “Jehovah” is an old transliteration of this name, which is often rendered “the Lord,” following the LXX.
9. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2113.
10. Cf. Deut. 13:5; 17:7, 12; 19:13, 19, etc.
11. On the process by which ancient Near Eastern law was formed from case to code, see R. Westbrook, “Biblical and Cuneiform Law Codes,” RB 92 (1985): 247–64, esp. 261–64 regarding Lev. 24:10–23; Num. 9:6–14; 15:32–37; 27:1–11; 31:25–28.
12. R. Gane, “Temple and Sacrifice,” JATS 10 (1999): 358.
13. Lines 12, 32–33; transl. W. Heimpel, “The Nanshe Hymn,” JCS 33 (1981): 83, 85.
14. A. L. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1964), 194–97.
16. Ibid., 268.
17. V. Fritz, “Temple Architecture: What Can Archaeology Tell Us About Solomon’s Temple?” BAR 13 (1987): 38–49.
18. Compare household use of incense in secular life (K. Nielsen, Incense in Ancient Israel [VTSup 38; Leiden: Brill, 1986], 90).
19. Gane, “ ‘Bread of the Presence’ and Creator-in-Residence,” 190. For an example of a Babylonian regular presentation offering that includes twelve loaves of bread and incense on a golden table, plus libations, see ANET, 334.
20. Atraḫrasis III v 30–36; W. G. Lambert, and A. R. Millard, Atra-Ḫasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, repr. 1999; orig. 1969), 98–99.
21. Gane, “ ‘Bread of the Presence,’ ” 179–203.
23. Gane, “Bread of the Presence,” 199–203.
24. For the connection between Melchizedek’s bread and that of the Last Supper, see M. Douglas, “The Eucharist: Its Continuity with the Bread Sacrifice of Leviticus,” 209.
25. Aristotle, The Politics, in O. A. Johnson, ed., Sources of World Civilization (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1994), 1:155.
26. See D. Daube, Studies in Biblical Law (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1947), 103–15.
27. We will deal with the penalty for assault here and capital punishment in the context of Num. 35.
28. Milgrom shows that vv. 17–21 form the heart of a larger introversion that embraces vv. 13–23, integrating the laws with the narrative (Leviticus 23–27, 2128–33).
29. Ibid., 2131–33.
30. A. S. Diamond, “An Eye for an Eye,” Iraq 19 (1957): 153.
31. S. Paul, Studies in the Book of the Covenant, 76. However, the Laws of Hammurabi prescribe talion inequitably: An awīlum status individual who blinds the eye or breaks the bone of another awīlum receives the same injury as punishment, but if the victim is of lesser status, only monetary compensation is required (laws 196–99; ANET, 175; Roth, Law Collections, 121).
1. See, e.g., CAD, 1/2:115–17.
2. Gaster, Festivals of the Jewish Year, 183.
3. Cf. m. Roš. Haš. 1:1; b. Roš. Haš. 8b.
4. R. Gane, “The Laws of the Seventh and Fiftieth Years,” JAGNES 1 (1990): 6. For a brief review of some other theories, which do not adequately account for all the data, see 4 n. 4. My conclusion agrees with that of R. Judah against the sages with whom he disputed, who held that the succession of sabbatical years would be interrupted by interpolation of the Jubilee year (b. Ned. 61a).
5. See Yadin, The Temple Scroll, 1:104. On such overlapping in the sectarian Book of Jubilees, see J. Baumgarten, Studies in Qumran Law (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 139.
6. C. Carmichael, “The Sabbatical/Jubilee Cycle and the Seven-Year Famine in Egypt,” Bib 80 (1999): 228–30.
7. Ramban on Lev. 25:20; Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2181–83; revising my explanation in “The Laws of the Seventh and Fiftieth Years,” 7.
8. For critique of other theories, see Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2181–83.
9. Carmichael, “The Sabbatical/Jubilee Cycle,” 229–32.
10. On legal dynamics of land redemption in Lev. 25 and Ruth 4 and preemption (before sale) in Jer. 32:6–15, see R. Westbrook, “Redemption of Land,” ILR 6 (1971): 367–75.
11. For details, see J. Milgrom, “The Levitic Town: An Exercise in Realistic Planning,” JJS 33 (1982): 185–88.
12. I. Mendelsohn, Legal Aspects of Slavery in Babylonia, Assyria and Palestine (Williamsport, Pa.: Bayard, 1932), 7, 14.
13. A. Levy, “Aspects of Bondage and Release in the Bible: Comparative Studies of Exodus 21:2–6; Leviticus 25:25–55; Deuteronomy 15:12–18” (Hebrew) (Ph.D. dissertation, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1981).
14. J. Joosten, People and Land in the Holiness Code (VTSup 67; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 198; see also 196–97.
15. Cf. the progression of events during the Egyptian famine in Joseph’s time (Gen. 47:13–26).
16. See Westbrook, “Redemption of Land,” 369.
17. Cf. the Laws of Hammurabi, law 117, which limited bondage of a wife and children to three years (ANET, 170–71).
18. A. Schenker, “The Biblical Legislation on the Release of Slaves: The Road from Exodus to Leviticus,” JSOT 78 (1998): 33, 36.
19. Gane, “The Laws of the Seventh and Fiftieth Years,” 13.
20. J. Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, ed. T. P. Peardon (LLA; Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1952), 17.
21. Cf. C. Wright, Living As the People of God: The Relevance of Old Testament Ethics (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1983), 37–38.
22. K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: Bantam, 1992 [repr. of 1888]), 17–18, 34.
23. For example, Reggae artist Ziggy Marley (son of the legendary Bob Marley) is attempting to popularize the idea of debt relief “by joining U2’s Bono in asking the world’s richest countries to forgive the debts of poorer nations like Marley’s native Jamaica” (D. Philadelphia, “Global Briefing,” Time [September 2, 2002]: A7).
24. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2270–71.
25. E. Gargan, “A Single-Minded Man Fights to Free India’s Slaves,” New York Times (June 4, 1992).
26. See practical suggestions by P. Spray, “Five Areas for Jubilee Today,” in H. Ucko, ed., The Jubilee Challenge: Utopia or Possibility? (Geneva: WCC, 1997), 134–39.
27. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2271.
28. Ibid., 2248, 2271.
29. L. S. Fried and D. N. Freedman, “Was the Jubilee Year Observed in Preexilic Judah?” in Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2257–70.
30. For a list of practical challenges involved in applying the biblical law, see N. Gottwald, “The Biblical Jubilee: In Whose Interests?” in Ucko, ed., The Jubilee Challenge, 38–40.
31. See N. Solomon, “Economics of the Jubilee,” in Ucko, ed., The Jubilee Challenge, 154–55.
32. See also Ex. 22:25; cf. Deut. 23:19–20.
33. C. Young, Nothing to Do but Stay: My Pioneer Mother (New York: Dell, 1991), 24–25.
34. M. Lucado, When God Whispers Your Name (Dallas: Word, 1994), 68.
35. Ibid., 69.
36. Wright, Living As the People of God, 34–35.
37. On social equality during the sabbatical year, see G. Blidstein, “Man and Nature in the Sabbatical Year,” Tradition 9 (1966): 48–55.
38. A. J. Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Noonday, 1955), 417.
1. V. Hurowitz, “Wish Upon a Stone: Discovering the Idolatry of the Even Maskit,” BRev (October 1999): 51.
2. Compare M. Farbridge, Studies in Biblical and Semitic Symbolism (LBS; New York: KTAV, 1970), 137–9.
3. The first are 11:44–45; 18:2, 4, 5, etc.
4. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1038–39.
5. On seven as the “prime sacred number,” see M. Tilley, “Typological Numbers: Taking a Count of the Bible,” BRev 8 (1992): 48–49.
6. Cf. Warning, Literary Artistry in Leviticus.
7. Transl. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 1941. For explanation, see 2342.
8. The word is distributed between the contexts of blessing (v.9), curse (vv. 15, 25), and restoration (vv. 42 [3×], 44, 45).
9. Then NIV omits one of the “I will remember” verbs.
10. Wright, Living As the People of God, 34–35.
11. Walton, Covenant: God’s Purpose, God’s Plan, 65. Compare the prologue to the Laws of Hammurabi, which makes clear that the purpose of the laws was to express the king’s justice (ANET, 164–165; Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 76–81.
12. For a convenient comparison between the biblical and other ancient Near Eastern treaty formats, see Walton, Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context, 101–5.
13. See Watts, Reading Law, 45–48.
14. Note that in contrast to our English Bibles, in which the Old Testament ends with Malachi, the last four books of the Hebrew Bible are: Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 and 2 Chronicles.
15. J. Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 140.
16. Blackaby and King, Experiencing God, 15–16.
17. Gane, God’s Faulty Heroes, 34.
18. U.S. News & World Report (September 26, 1994): 82.
1. E.g., Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2401–2.
2. Carmichael, “The Sabbatical/Jubilee Cycle and the Seven-Year Famine in Egypt,” 235–36.
3. Transl. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 1941. For explanation see 2368–73.
4. T. Cartledge, Vows in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (JSOTSup 147; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 142.
5. Transl. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 1942.
6. M. Haran, “
” in EM, 6:394 (Hebrew). W. Houston agrees with this against other proposed solutions, but without knowing of Haran’s discussion (“Contrast in Tense and Exegesis,” 418–20).
7. See Bridging Contexts section of Num. 31. The Mesha inscription (9th century B.C.) attests sacral ḥerem annihilation of Israelites by the Moabites (lines 16–17; transl. ANET, 320; for detailed discussion, see P. Stern, The Biblical Ḥerem: A Window on Israel’s Religious Experience [BJS 211; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991], 19–56).
8. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2396.
10. See ʿArak. 5:1.
11. C. Meyers, “Procreation, Production, and Protection: Male-Female Balance in Early Israel,” JAAR 51 (1983): 584–87; idem, Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), 170–71.
12. G. Wenham, “Leviticus 27:2–8 and the Price of Slaves,” ZAW 90 (1978): 264–5; idem, Leviticus, 338. For prices of slaves in ancient Mesopotamia, see Mendelsohn, Slavery in the Ancient Near East, 117–19.
13. See Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2370–71.
14. Philo, The Special Laws, 2.32–34; cf. the United States “Declaration of Independence.”
15. Greenberg, “Some Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law,” 13–17.
1. See Ex. 19–40, minus the affair with another “lover” (the golden calf in chs. 32–33), which threatened to annul the marriage while the wedding was still in progress.
2. Cf. J. Milgrom, Numbers (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), xvi.
3. H. H. Guthrie, Theology As Thanksgiving: From Israel’s Psalms to the Church’s Eucharist (New York: Seabury, 1981), 42–43.
4. D. Olson, The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New: The Framework of the Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch (BJS 71; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985), 163; cf. 151, 183–84, 196.
5. C. Stuhlmueller, “ ‘Would That All Were Prophets!’ (Numbers 11:29),” in F. C. Holmgren and H. E. Schaalman, eds., Preaching Biblical Texts: Expositions by Jewish and Christian Scholars (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 132.
6. J. Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 143.
7. P. Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 19.
8. Cf., e.g., R. D. Cole, Numbers (NAC 3B; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000), 34.
9. Cf., e.g., J. Magonet, “The Korah Rebellion,” JSOT 24 (1982): 10.
10. E.g., B. Levine, Numbers 1–20 (AB 4; New York: Doubleday, 1993), 48–84, 89–109. Levine insists on the importance of “identifying significantly different perceptions of the wilderness experience, perceptions that might be lost to us were we to study only the final product of the biblical process at the expense of the phases reflected in its literary development” (49). He also maintains that “the historicity of the Tabernacle traditions is highly questionable to start with” (172). On modern interpretation of the book of Numbers, see T. B. Dozeman, “Numbers, Book of,” in J. H. Hayes, ed., in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, ed. J. H. Hayes (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), 2:216–17.
11. E.g., Milgrom, Numbers, xvii–xxi.; I. Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995).
12. Milgrom, Numbers, xiii.
13. Cf. Olson, The Death of the Old, 48–49.
14. Ibid., 83–125.
15. K. Sakenfeld, “Zelophehad’s Daughters,” PRSt 15 (1988): 38.
16. D. Olson, Numbers (IBC; Louisville: John Knox, 1996), 5–6.
17. For a survey of proposed outlines of Numbers and Olson’s own outline, see Olson, The Death of the Old, 31–37, 118–20. Cf. Cole, Numbers, 36–52. Y. Radday suggests an overall tripartite structure (see his “Chiasmus in Hebrew Biblical Narrative,” in J. W. Welch, ed., Chiasmus in Antiquity (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1981), 89:
A Events that occurred and commandments given at Mount Sinai (1:1–10:11)
B The thirty-eight years in the desert (10:12–21:35)
A1 Events that occurred and commandments given in the Plains of Moab (22:1–36:13)
18. For some other introverted, chiastic, and inclusio/frame patterns in the book of Numbers, see, e.g., Radday, “Chiasmus in Hebrew Biblical Narrative,” 89–90; Milgrom, Numbers, xxii–xxvi, xxviii–xxix.
19. M. Douglas, In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers (JSOTSup 158; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), esp. 118.
20. On this relationship between narrative and law, see ibid., 102–4, 117; J. W. Watts, Reading Law: The Rhetorical Shaping of the Pentateuch (BSem 59; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 36–60; Levine, Numbers 1–20, 78–79; Milgrom, Numbers, xv–xvi.
21. X. J. Kennedy and D. Gioia, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, 2d compact ed. (New York: Longman, 2000), 798.
1. Milgrom, Numbers, 336–37.
2. On the meanings of the names of these chieftains, see R. Brown, The Message of Numbers: Journey to the Promised Land (BST; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 31.
3. See, e.g., J. H. Walton, V. H. Matthews, and M. W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 86, 88; Y. Shiloh, “The Population of Iron Age Palestine in the Light of a Sample Analysis of Urban Plans, Areas, and Population Density,” BASOR 239 (1980): 25–35.
4. N. Sarna, Exodus: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (JPSTC; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 62.
5. Cf. the meaning of ʾelep as “clan” in Judg. 6:15; 1 Sam. 10:19; Mic. 5:2.
6. G. Mendenhall, “The Census Lists of Numbers 1 and 26,” JBL 77 (1958): 52–66.
7. B. Scolnic, “Theme and Context in Biblical Lists” (Ph.D. dissertation, Jewish Theological Seminary, 1987), 63.
8. Ibid., 47–53.
9. Cf. ibid., 66–70. For “thousand” also in numbers of fighting men in the Gideon story (Judg. 6–8), see 43–47.
10. Walton, Matthews, and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary, 144.
11. Scolnic, “Theme and Context,” 68. Cf. Olson, The Death of the Old, 76.
12. Scolnic, “Theme and Context,” 90–91; Olson, The Death of the Old, 79; W. H. Bellinger, Leviticus and Numbers (NIBC 3; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2001), 182.
13. Cf. H. Wolf, An Introduction to the Old Testament Pentateuch (Chicago: Moody Press, 1991), 150–51.
14. Cf. the conclusion of T. Ashley at the end of his detailed critique of the various proposals: “In short, we lack the materials in the text to solve this problem” (The Book of Numbers [NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993], 66; cf. 60–65).
1. Y. Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands in the Light of Archaeological Study (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 1:236–37; K. Kitchen, “The Tabernacle—A Bronze Age Artifact,” Bible and Spade 8 (1995): 36.
2. Oriental Institute Prism Inscription, col. I, lines 1–4, 7–16; transl. D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (OIP 2; Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1924), 23–24.
3. Cf. P. Borgman, Genesis: The Story We Haven’t Heard (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 22–39.
4. Dr. Seuss, Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories (New York: Random House, 1958).
1. See J. Milgrom, Studies in Levitical Terminology, I: The Encroacher and the Levite; the Term ʿAbode (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1970), 16–21; R. Gane and J. Milgrom, “ qārab,” in TDOT, 13:140, 143.
2. On tekelet as violet (i.e., blue-purple, from dye extracted from the gland of the murex snail), see Milgrom, Numbers, 411.
3. From another variety of the murex snail, see ibid.
4. A. Einstein, “My Views,” in E. Knoebel, ed., Classics of Western Thought: Volume III—The Modern World, 4th ed. (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 3:539.
5. D. L. Moody, The Home Work of Dwight L. Moody (Books for the Ages; Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 70.
6. J. Ortberg, If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get out of the Boat (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 58.
7. Cf. N. Herman, Brother Lawrence: The Practice of the Presence of God the Best Rule of a Holy Life (New York: Revell, 1958), 26.
1. Cf. Milgrom, Numbers, 33.
2. On equivalent spatial gradations established by the rabbis for the temple, Temple Mount, and Jerusalem and by the Qumranites for the Temple City and ordinary cities, see H. Harrington, The Impurity Systems of Qumran and the Rabbis: Biblical Foundations (SBLDS 143; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 57–58.
3. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 178.
4. Using the Greek word for sexual immorality, we could call this “porneia paranoia.”
5. J. Milgrom, “A Husband’s Pride, a Mob’s Prejudice,” BRev 12 (1996): 21.
6. See H. Orlinsky, “The Hebrew Root škb,” JBL 63 (1944): 40.
7. See also BDB, 966, 1065; Milgrom, Numbers, 40.
8. Cf. also Gen. 34:5, 13, 27; Lev. 18:23, 24; Ezek. 18:6, 11, 15; 22:11; 23:17; 33:26.
9. H. C. Brichto, “The Case of the Sōṭā and a Reconsideration of Biblical ‘Law,’ ” HUCA 46 (1975): 66.
10. Compare: “in Egypt ‘the most approved mode of charming away sickness or disease is to write certain passages of the Ḳorān on the inner surface of an earthenware cup or bowl; then to pour in some water, and stir it until the writing is quite washed off: when the water, with the sacred words thus infused in it, is to be drunk by the patient’ ” (G. B. Gray, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Numbers [ICC; New York: Scribner’s, 1903], 54).
11. For an analysis of this ritual and some ancient parallels, see J. M. Sasson, “Numbers 5 and the ‘Waters of Judgement,’ ” BZ 16 (1972): 249–51.
12. Cf., e.g., Lev. 7:20–21 regarding ritual impurity.
13. Compare trial by the divine Euphrates River in Laws of Hammurabi, law 2 (transl. ANET, 166; M. T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor [SBLWAW 6; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995], 81). Drowning established guilt, but surviving proved innocence.
14. Cf. Brichto, “The Case of the Sōṭā,” 67; Milgrom, Numbers, 350; idem, “A Husband’s Pride,” 21.
15. Cf. N. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (New York: Signet Classic, 1999), e.g., 46–48.
16. NPNF1: Volume XIV—Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of St. John and the Epistle to the Hebrews, 227 (Homily LXII).
17. J. Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke, transl. T. H. Parker (CC; Edinburgh: Saint Andrew, 1972), 2:62.
18. J. Donne, in M. Water, compiler, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 215.
19. M. L. King, in ibid., 215.
1. See, e.g., m. Nazir 3:6; 6:11.
2. For reasons why people took Nazirite vows during the latter part of the Second Temple period, including faulty reasons (asceticism, wagers, fits of temper), see Milgrom, Numbers, 358.
3. Ibid., 355.
4. Elsewhere the word nezer can refer to the crown of a monarch (e.g., 2 Sam. 1:10; 2 Kings 11:12).
5. Milgrom, Numbers, 355.
6. J. Milgrom, Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance (SJLA 18; Leiden: Brill, 1976), 66–70; idem, Leviticus 1–16, 357–58.
7. Milgrom, Numbers, 48.
8. Milgrom convincingly counters the theory of A. Marx (“Sacrifice pour les péchés ou rite de passage? Quelques réflexions sur la fonction du ḥaṭṭāʾt,” RB 96 [1989]: 37–48) that this and other purification offerings are “rites of passage” (J. Milgrom, “The Ḥaṭṭāʾt: A Rite of Passage?”RB 98 [1991]: 120–24; idem, Leviticus 1–16, 289–92). Milgrom tentatively follows Ramban in regarding this sacrifice as uniquely functioning for the purpose of desanctification as the Nazirite removed himself or herself from the sacred domain (Milgrom, Numbers, 48). But the text provides no evidence that the ritual has a kind of goal outside the scope of purification offerings in general.
9. On this question regarding the priests’ purification offering, which also decontaminates the outer altar (Lev. 8:15), cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 521–22.
10. On hair, which grows throughout life, representing vitality and offered in place of whole persons in ancient rituals, see Milgrom, Numbers, 356–57.
11. B. G. Webb, The Book of Judges: An Integrated Reading (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987), 169.
12. If so, it is ironic that Eli mistakenly thought she was intoxicated (1 Sam. 1:13–14).
13. Milgrom, Numbers, 355.
14. Gane, God’s Faulty Heroes, 107.
1. See M. Korpel, “The Poetic Structure of the Priestly Blessing,” JSOT 45 (1989): 3–13.
2. The idea of putting/giving (Qal of śym) peace/well-being (šalom) also appears in Ps. 147:14.
3. P. Kyle McCarter, Ancient Inscriptions: Voices from the Biblical World (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1996), 121–22; E. Puech, “Palestinian Funerary Inscriptions,” ABD, 5:127.
4. Milgrom, Numbers, 360–61.
5. Ibid., 360.
6. Gane, Altar Call, 152.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 158.
1. R. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, forthcoming), ch. 6.
2. Cf. Milgrom, Numbers, 53.
3. Rashi on Gen. 14:14; Deut. 20:5; see S. C. Reif, “Dedicated to 
,” VT 22 (1972): 495–501.
4. On this problem, see P. J. Budd, Numbers (WBC 5; Waco, Tex.: Word, 1984), 85–87.
5. Cf. 1 Kings 4:7; 5:13 of King Solomon’s requirements for resources. However, notice that he did homage to the Lord by providing offerings to initiate the temple that he built (1 Kings 8:62–64). In a sense the human king replaced the tribal chieftains (see also Ezek. 45:17).
6. S. Richards, ed., Best Plays of the Sixties (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1970), 252.
1. Milgrom, Numbers, 62.
2. Ibid., 342–43.
3. Ibid., 371; cf. 369–70.
4. See Bridging Contexts section of Lev. 4.
5. Pointed out to me by J. H. Walton of Wheaton College.
6. For preposition l + infinitive construct to express purpose, see GKC §114g. An alternate reading, “and Aaron effected purgation on their behalf, purifying them” (cf. GKC §114o), would have the same net effect.
7. See, e.g., t. Šeqal. 3:26; Sipre Numbers 62.
8. Compare 1 Chron. 23:3, where the starting age is thirty, with no upper limit.
9. Cardinal John Henry Newman, in R. Atwan & L. Wieder, eds., Chapters into Verse: Poetry in English Inspired by The Bible (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), 125.
10. For human beings as “lamps” or having metaphorical “lamps,” cf., e.g., 2 Sam. 21:17; 1 Kings 11:36; Job 21:17; Ps. 132:17; Prov. 13:9; 20:20; 24:20.
11. Sanctuary class lecture, Jon Paulien, Andrews University, 2002.
12. Cf. the Code of Justinian, according to which a man could not become a Christian deacon before the age of twenty-five (M. C. Mirow and K. A. Kelley, “Laws on Religion from the Theodosian and Justinianic Codes,” in R. Valantasis, ed., Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice [PRR; Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2000], 267–68), the same age at which an ancient Levite could go on active duty (Num. 8:24).
1. Cf. nepeš met (“dead person,” NASB) in Lev. 21:11; Num. 6:6.
3. Milgrom, Numbers, 67.
4. On this literary pattern, see M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 98–102.
5. Cf. R. Westbrook, “Biblical and Cuneiform Law Codes,” RB 92 (1985): 261–64. On the dynamic relation between sin and law, in which sin creates the need for additional expressions of law to control human behavior, see, e.g., J. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch As Narrative (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 312–13.
6. Cf. J. Hartley, Leviticus (WBC 4; Dallas: Word, 1992), 406.
7. See Milgrom, Numbers, xv–xvi; Douglas, In the Wilderness, 102–4, 117.
8. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27 (AB 3B; New York: Doubleday, 2001), 2102.
9. R. Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” HLR 97 (1983): 4–5.
10. Watts, Reading Law, 32–60.
11. Cf. the thick cloud on Mount Sinai that veiled the divine glory (Ex. 19:9, 16; 24:15, 16, 18; 34:5).
12. Cf. E. Feldman, “The Second Pesaḥ: Mitzvah As Paradigm,” Tradition 24 (1989): 43.
13. J. Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 142.
14. H. T. Blackaby and C. V. King, Experiencing God: How to Live the Full Adventure of Knowing and Doing the Will of God (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 20–21.
15. Ibid., 15.
1. According to postbiblical tradition in m. Roš. Haš. 4:9.
2. Milgrom, Numbers, 80, lists three traditions “concerning the nature of Israel’s divinely designated guide: a cloud-encased fire (Num. 9:15–23; 14:14; Deut. 1:33); the Ark (Num. 10:33; Josh. 3:3, 6, 11); and an angel (Ex. 14:19a; 23:20–23).”
3. Milgrom takes 10:35–36 as comprising a poetic unit that he calls “The Song of the Ark” (ibid., 81).
4. Cf. W. Dumbrell, “Midian—A Land or a League?” VT 25 (1975): 331.
5. Milgrom, Numbers, 79.
6. On divine-human cooperation in the book of Judges, see R. Gane, God’s Faulty Heroes (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald, 1996), 39–40, 43, 51–52, 56, 71–73, 127–28.
7. A. Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer (Springdale, Pa.: Whitaker House, 1981), 142.
8. Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted, 135.
9. Ibid., 150.
10. M. Luther, A Simple Way to Pray (London: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 30.
1. Manna was introduced in Ex. 16. For detailed discussion of theories regarding the name and nature of this food, see P. Maiberger, “mān,” TDOT, 8:389–95.
2. Author’s translation here.
3. Author’s translation here.
4. Notice the correspondence in Heb.: “gather” (ʾsp, v.16) in response to the “riffraff/gathering” (ʾasapsup, v. 4).
5. A. J. Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Noonday, 1955), 416.
6. M. A. Powell, “Weights and Measures,” in ABD, 6:903–4. For the homer as a priestly dry measure of 117.5 liters (about 3.5 bushels), see S. Rattray, “The Biblical Measures of Capacity,” in J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 895.
7. See, e.g., Ashley, The Book of Numbers, 217; J. Wilkinson, “The Quail Epidemic of Numbers 11:31–34,” EvQ 71 (1999): 196–97.
8. J. Gray, “The Desert Sojourn of the Hebrews and the Sinai-Horeb Tradition,” VT 4 (1954): 148.
9. Wenham, Numbers, 109; cf. Gray, “The Desert Sojourn,” 148–49.
10. Cf. Milgrom, Numbers, 91; Wilkinson, “The Quail Epidemic,” 208.
11. With the Targums and the LXX. Some interpret krt here as cutting, i.e., chewing, between teeth (e.g., BDB, 504; NASB, NKJV, NJPS).
12. Of makkah with reference to divine punishments, such as plagues, see also Lev. 26:21; Deut. 28:59, 61; 29:22; 1 Sam. 4:8. The Hiphil of nkh + makkah can also refer to a military force inflicting severe defeat (e.g., Josh. 10:10, 20).
13. Wilkinson, “The Quail Epidemic,” 201–8; cf. Ashley, The Book of Numbers, 219.
14. “The Holy One of Israel” occurs in all major portions of Isaiah (1:4; 5:19, 24; 10:20; 12:6; 17:7; 29:19; 30:11, 12, 15; 31:1; 37:23; 41:14, 16, 20; 43:3, 14; 45:11; 47:4; 48:17; 49:7; 54:5; 55:5; 60:9, 14), serving as a major factor in unifying the book.
15. Budd, Numbers, 128. For human beings as metaphorical victims of sacrifice, see Jer. 46:10; Ezek. 39:17, 19; Zeph. 1:7.
16. See the Bridging Contexts section of Num. 22, regarding Balaam.
17. M. Lucado, He Still Moves Stones (Dallas: Word, 1993), 116–17.
1. Taking ki here to introduce the direct speech, as in Gen. 21:30; 29:33; Ex. 3:12. The NIV reads ki as introducing an explanation: “. . . for [ki] he had married a Cushite.”
2. So D. Adamo, “The African Wife of Moses: An Examination of Numbers 12:1–9,” AfTJ 18 (1989): 230–37; B. P. Robinson, “The Jealousy of Miriam: A Note on Num 12,” ZAW 101 (1989): 428–32; Levine, Numbers 1–20, 328.
3. In a broader sense Jacob and the Israelites saw God face to face (Gen. 32:30; Deut. 5:4; cf. Num. 14:14—lit., “eye to eye”).
4. N. G. Cohen, “ ‘
. . . 
’: An ‘Enthusiastic’ Prophetic Formula,” ZAW 99 (1987): 221–23.
5. With Robinson, “The Jealousy of Miriam,” 430–32, and P. Trible, “Bringing Miriam out of the Shadows,” BRev 5 (1989): 21–22, notwithstanding the contention of N. Graetz that Miriam was no more responsible than Aaron, but was discriminated against because she was a woman (“Miriam: Guilty or Not Guilty?” Judaism 40 (1991): 184–92.
6. Cf. S. Dawes, “Numbers 12.3: What Was Special About Moses?” BT 41 (1990): 338–39.
7. Cf. C. Rogers, “Moses: Meek or Miserable?” JETS 29 (1986): 257–63.
8. VAT 7525 col. II, lines 42–45, transl. J. V. Kinnier-Wilson, “Leprosy in Ancient Mesopotamia,” BA 60 (1966): 50.
9. E. V. Hulse, “The Nature of Biblical ‘Leprosy’ and the Use of Alternative Medical Terms in Modern Translations of the Bible,” PEQ 107 (1975): 103.
10. See also 14:49, 51, 52 in the ritual for a fungous house.
11. Trible, “Bringing Miriam,” 23.
12. Robinson, “The Jealousy of Miriam,” 431–32; Trible, “Bringing Miriam,” 22.
13. In M. Water, compiler, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 854.
14. Ibid.
15. A. Einstein, “My Views,” in E. Knoebel, Classics of Western Thought: Volume III—The Modern World, 4th ed. (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 3:538.
16. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, transl. L. Sherley-Price (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1993), 96.
1. Cf. the book of Job, which demonstrates that causality can be complex. The suffering that Job assumed to have come from God, the ultimate Cause, actually came from Satan, whom God permitted to test him (see esp. Job 1–2).
2. It was even older than Zoan, i.e., Tanis, the capital of Egypt (v. 22b; see N. Naʾaman, “Hebron Was Built Seven Years before Zoan in Egypt [Numbers 13:22],” VT 31 [1981]: 488–92). On the geography of the scouts’ itinerary, which would take about forty days on foot, see Ashley, The Book of Numbers, 235–38.
3. “Moses asked about the population density, hydrology, urbanization, and agricultural quality. But the spies’ answers were in this order: hydrology, agricultural potential, urbanization, and population density” (J. A. Beck, “Geography and the Narrative Shape of Numbers 13,” BSac 157 [2000]: 279).
4. Ibid., 273–80.
5. Milgrom, Numbers, 107.
6. Beck, “Geography,” 280.
7. Compare J. N. Griffith, Looking Up (Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press, 1993), 34.
8. Quoted in J. C. Maxwell and J. Dornan, Becoming a Person of Influence: How to Positively Impact the Lives of Others (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997), 72.
9. Griffith, Looking Up, 63.
10. M. Lucado, When God Whispers Your Name (Dallas: Word, 1994), 44.
11. Cf. Wenham, Numbers, 125.
12. R. Gane, “Caleb’s Finest Hour,” CUD 13 (2001): 24.
13. J. M. McPherson, “Antietam, Battle of [1862],” in J. W. Chambers, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Military History (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), 32.
14. Griffith, Looking Up, 20.
15. Ibid.
16. P. Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 17.
17. Quoted in Maxwell and Dornan, Becoming a Person of Influence, 67.
18. George Herbert, in R. Atwan & L. Wieder, eds., Chapters into Verse: Poetry in English Inspired by The Bible (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), 148.
1. See Levine, Numbers 1–20, 364.
2. Maxwell and Dornan, Becoming a Person of Influence, 69–70.
3. Milgrom takes “them” in “the whole assembly talked about stoning them” (v. 10) as referring to Moses and Aaron (cf. v. 5; Numbers, 109).
4. So Milgrom, ibid.
5. K. Sakenfeld, “The Problem of Divine Forgiveness in Numbers 14,” CBQ 37 (1975): 325–27.
6. For instances of Israel explicitly testing (Piel of nsh) the Lord, see Ex. 17:2, 7; Deut. 6:16; Ps. 95:8–9. The Lord also tested Israel: see Ex. 15:25; 16:4; 20:20; Deut. 8:2, 16; cf. 33:8, of God’s testing Aaron at Massah = the waters of Meribah.
7. Cf. Neh. 4:12; Job 19:3.
8. Aside from introductions to Balaam’s oracles in Num. 24 (vv. 3, 4, 15, 16), neʾum appears in the Pentateuch only in the opposing contexts of Gen. 22:16 and Num. 14:28. Also notice the contrast between Ex. 6:8 and Num. 14:30.
9. Cf. chs. 27, 36, where there is no Mrs. Zelophehad.
10. In M. Water, compiler, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 863.
11. Notice the alliteration in v. 44: The ark and Moshe (Moses) did not depart (Qal of mwš) from the midst of the camp.
12. For a similar idea in Ezekiel regarding God’s postexilic restoration of the Israelites, in spite of their lack of repentance, see B. Schwartz, “Ezekiel’s Dim View of Israel’s Restoration,” in M. Odell and J. Strong, eds., The Book of Ezekiel: Theological and Anthropological Perspectives (SBLSymS 9; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 43–67.
13. D. Gowan, “Changing God’s Mind (Exodus 32:7–14),” in F. C. Holmgren and H. E. Schaalman, eds., Preaching Biblical Texts: Expositions by Jewish and Christian Scholars (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 104.
14. Cf. G. Olafsson, “The Use of nśʾ in the Pentateuch and Its Contribution to the Concept of Forgiveness” (Ph.D. dissertation, Andrews University, 1992), 208, 274–75.
15. Cf. the suggestion of Y. Muffs on 14:20 that “the author does not imply a total forgiveness, but rather the divine resolve to bear the sin of a sinful generation until the time He actually punishes them, in other words, until they die a natural death” (Love and Joy: Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992], 22).
16. R. Gane, Cult and Character: Purification Offerings, Day of Atonement, and Theodicy (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, forthcoming), ch. 16.
17. G. MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 59, speaking of John the Baptist’s preparation in the desert.
18. Ibid., 60.
19. M. Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002), 9.
20. Gane, “Caleb’s Finest Hour,” 25.
21. C. Pinnock, R. Rice, J. Sanders, W. Hasker, and D. Basinger, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 162.
22. Ibid., 161.
1. On the function of law in Num. 15 within its context between the preceding and following narratives, see Olson, The Death of the Old, 170–74.
2. Never on the incense altar (Ex. 30:9).
3. An ephah = 11.75 liters, about a peck, and a hin = 1.17 liters, about a quart (S. Rattray, “The Biblical Measures of Capacity,” in Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 895–98).
4. Although scholars have not settled on the definite meaning of this word, it clearly refers to some aspect of the bread-making process.
5. See Milgrom, Numbers, 121–22.
6. On Num. 15:22 see, e.g., Ibn Ezra (performative) versus Ramban (idolatry).
7. Cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 264–69.
8. Wenham, Numbers, 130.
9. For more detailed analysis and interaction with scholarly theories, see Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 4.
10. Cf. Wenham, Numbers, 130.
11. Here is the fortieth and last occurrence of the word tekelet in the Pentateuch.
12. Milgrom, Numbers, 127.
13. Violet was also used for the sanctuary fabrics (Ex. 26:1, 4, 31, 36; 27:16), including those that covered sacred objects when they were transported (Num. 4:6, 7, 9, 11, 12).
14. Tablet 14 Rev. IV 23’–25’; author’s transl. (Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure, ch. 6). Another example is the second (afternoon) regular meal for Bēl/Marduk, the city god of Babylon, on the fifth day of the Babylonian New Year festival of spring (see ibid., ch. 5; cf. ANET, 334).
15. See Gane, Altar Call, 166.
16. For a fuller discussion, see R. Gane, “Numbers 15:22–31 and the Spectrum of Moral Faults,” in G. Klingbeil, ed., Inicios, paradigmas y fundamentos: Estudios teologicos y exegeticos en el Pentateuco (River Plate Monograph Series in Biblical and Theological Studies 1; Libertador San Martin: Editorial Universidad Adventista del Plata, 2004), 149–56.
17. Cf. Ps. 19:12–13; J. Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony (Grand Rapids: Baker, repr. 1996), 341.
18. K. Koch, “Sühne und Sündenvergebung um die Wende von der exilischen zur nachexilischen Zeit,” EvT 26 (1966): 331–32.
19. So, e.g., G. A. Anderson, “The Interpretation of the Purification Offering () in the Temple Scroll (11QTemple) and Rabbinic Literature,” JBL 111 (1992): 19, 30–31.
20. See, e.g., P. Saydon, “Sin-Offering and Trespass-Offering,” CBQ 8 (1946): 397.
21. A. Schenker, “Das Zeichen des Blutes und die Gewissheit der Vergebung im Alten Testament,” MTZ 34 (1983): 205; idem, “Interprétations récentes et dimensions spécifiques du sacrifice ḥaṭṭāt,” Bib 75 (1994): 65, 69; idem, Recht und Kult, 121.
22. See Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 9.
23. A. Büchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First Century (LBS: New York: KTAV, 1967), 307–8, 456; R. K. Harrison, “Leviticus: An Introduction and Commentary” (TOTC; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1980), 31, 172.
24. C. Labuschagne, “The Meaning of beyād rāmaā in the Old Testament,” Von Kanaan bis Kerala (Festschrift for J. P. M. van der Ploeg; AOAT 211; Kevelaer/Neukirchen-Vluyn: Butzon & Bercker/Neukirchener, 1982), 146; cf. 145, 148.
25. Transl. A. L. Oppenheim, Letters from Mesopotamia (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967), 190.
26. Cf. K. Kinghorn, “Biblical Concepts of Sin,” WesTJ 1 (1966): 22, 25–26.
27. Cf. Wenham, Numbers, 130–31; Budd, Numbers, 173–74.
28. M. Haran, “The Disappearance of the Ark,” IEJ 13 (1963): 50–51. The fact that Manasseh was a vassal of Assyria does not excuse him. Second Kings 21 and 2 Chron. 33 do not mention Assyrian imposition of idolatry (R. Gane, “The Role of Assyria in the Ancient Near East During the Reign of Manasseh,” AUSS 35 [1997]: 31) and deities worshiped in Judah during Manasseh’s reign were Canaanite and Aramean rather than Assyrian (M. Cogan, “Judah under Assyrian Hegemony: A Reexamination of Imperialism and Religion,” JBL 112 [1993]: 411).
29. Cf. Gane, Altar Call, 42, 149–50, 212. On direct forgiveness, see also A. P. Ross, Holiness to the Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 130.
30. F. Maass, “
kpr pi. to atone,” TLOT, 2:631.
31. Gane, Altar Call, 213.
32. A. Stanley Kramer, Three Rabbis in a Rowboat: The World’s Best Jewish Humor (New York: Citadel Press, 1996), 28.
33. Cf. Gane, Altar Call, 191–95. For detailed analysis, see idem, Cult and Character, ch. 16.
34. David had pardoned Shimei (2 Sam. 19:18–23) for cursing him (16:5–13), but later he did not regard him as worthy of clemency (1 Kings 2:8–9).
1. Lit., “Is it [too] much for you . . . ?”
2. For a summary of proposed solutions, see Milgrom, Numbers, 312–13.
3. Cf. Magonet, “The Korah Rebellion,” 22.
4. Ibid., 16.
5. Comic strip Peanuts by Charles Schulz, cited by Maxwell and Dornan, Becoming a Person of Influence, 67.
6. See Levine, Numbers 1–20, 414.
7. Only this verse and Ex. 32:19 (the golden calf episode) refer to Moses’ anger by the Qal of ḥrh, which usually describes God’s wrath (e.g., Ex. 32:11; Num. 11:1, 10, 33; 12:9). Elsewhere Moses’ anger is expressed with the verb qṣp (Ex. 16:20; Lev. 10:16; Num. 31:14).
8. With M. Noth here (Numbers [OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968], 126–27), against the interpretation of A. Noordtzij, that the “assembly” here consists of the Israelite representatives and leaders rather than the entire community (Numbers, transl. E van der Maas [BSC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983], 149).
9. See D. Daube on what he terms “ruler punishment,” in which a guilty person’s punishment involves “taking away or damaging his free subjects” (Studies in Biblical Law [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1947], 163). For example, the first infant son of David and Bathsheba died as part of David’s punishment for adultery (2 Sam. 12:13–23).
10. Later in history, unauthorized King Uzziah is also punished when he tries to offer incense, but he is smitten with scale disease rather than divine fire (2 Chron. 26:19–21).
11. Magonet, “The Korah Rebellion,” 21.
12. Milgrom, Numbers, 342–43.
13. G. MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 13.
14. Ibid., 14.
15. Confucius, The Analects 12.7, cited in M. P. Green, ed., 1500 Illustrations for Biblical Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), 215.
1. Compare J. Sturdy, Numbers (CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976), 124.
2. B. Maarsingh, Numbers: A Practical Commentary (transl. J. Vriend; TI; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 63.
3. Compare R. K. Harrison, Numbers: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 244.
4. Milgrom, Numbers, 144–5.
5. On nonritual incense, see K. Nielsen, Incense in Ancient Israel (VTSup 38; Leiden: Brill, 1986), 90.
6. Lucado, He Still Moves Stones, 102.
7. R. Pritchard, And When You Pray: The Deeper Meaning of the Lord’s Prayer (Nashville: Broad-man & Holman, 2002), 20.
8. M. Mead, “Family System and Society,” in G. Pirooz Sholevar, ed., Changing Sexual Values and the Family (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1977), 33–35.
9. P. Tillich, Theology of Culture, ed. R. C. Kimball (New York: Galaxy/Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), 201.
1. Milgrom, Numbers, 145, 424.
2. Without qualification, “the altar” denotes the outer altar.
3. J. D. Livingston, “A Critical Study of the Greek Words Translated ‘Veils’ and an Application to the Book of Hebrews” (M.A. thesis; Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, 1949), 34–36, 39–45.
4. R. Gane and J. Milgrom, “ pāroket,” TDOT, 12:95–97.
5. See also Lev. 21:23, if NJPS is correct in rendering, “but he shall not enter behind the curtain,” i.e., into the Most Holy Place.
6. R. Gane, “Re-Opening Katapetasma (‘Veil’) in Hebrews 6:19,” AUSS 38 (2000): 6–7 n. 5.
7. E.g., M. Weinfeld, “
berît,” in TDOT, 2:263; Walton, Matthews, and Chavalas; The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, 122.
8. Levine, Numbers 1–20, 449.
9. Compare Levine, Numbers, 450–51; Milgrom, Numbers, 432–36.
1. J. Milgrom, “Impurity Is Miasma: A Response to Hyam Maccoby,” JBL 119 (2000): 731; idem, Leviticus 23–27, 2460.
2. T. Frymer-Kensky, “Pollution, Purification, and Purgation in Biblical Israel,” in C. L. Meyers and M. O’Connor, eds., The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 399–400. On the rabbinic assessment of the corpse as “the Father of Fathers of Impurity,” see H. Harrington, The Impurity Systems of Qumran and the Rabbis: Biblical Foundations (SBLDS 143; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 147–50.
3. R. Brown, The Message of Numbers: Journey to the Promised Land (BST; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2002), 161.
4. Compare the early stages of purification from scaly skin disease (Lev. 14:1–8).
5. Cf. F. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the Priestly Theology (JSOTSup 91; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), 196, 199.
6. Not purification/sacrifice from sin (against NIV; NKJV; NASB; NJB). NJPS is more accurate—“It is for cleansing”—but still misses the fact that in ritual texts the verbless clause ḥaṭṭʾat huʾ/hiʾ, “it (is) a ḥaṭṭʾat,” is always the label for a particular kind of sacrificial ritual, i.e., the “purification offering” (Ex. 29:14; Lev. 4:24; 5:9, 11–12).
7. J. Philip, Numbers (ComC 4; Waco, Tex.: Word, 1987), 216.
8. Cf. Wenham, Numbers, 146.
9. Noth interprets this to mean that the animal was unprofaned by common work (Numbers, 140).
10. Contrast nonsacrificial slaughter by breaking the neck in Deut. 21:4.
11. On this ritual as a sacrifice, see, e.g., J. H. Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament, transl. J. Martin (Minneapolis: Klock & Klock, 1980 [repr. of 1863]), 423; J. Milgrom, “The Paradox of the Red Cow (Num. XIX),” VT 31 (1981): 63–68; against those who have maintained that the red cow is not a sacrifice, e.g., G. B. Gray, Sacrifice in the Old Testament: Its Theory and Practice (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), 59–60; S. Wefing, “Beobachtungen zum Ritual mit der roten Kuh (Num 19.1–10a),” ZAW 93 (1981), 349, 354.
12. Milgrom, “The Paradox,” 63.
13. Levine, Numbers 1–20, 463–64; for another derivation of niddah—“that which makes one flee”—see Ashley, The Book of Numbers, 367.
14. See comments on Lev. 6:27 regarding the polluting quality of purification offering blood in relation to its contact with the altar.
15. See Bridging Contexts section of Lev. 8.
16. D. P. Wright, “Heifer, Red,” ABD, 3:116.
17. Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 8.
18. Cf. J. Milgrom, “Confusing the Sacred and the Impure: A Rejoinder,” VT 44 (1994): 557–58.
19. G. André and H. Ringgren, “ ṭāmēʾ,” TDOT, 5:333.
20. See further Gane, Cult and Character, ch. 8; against A. Baumgarten, “The Paradox of the Red Heifer,” VT 43 (1993): 442–47.
21. The ritual in Deut. 21 for an unsolved murder is not a sacrifice (see D. P. Wright, “Deuteronomy 21:1–9 as a Rite of Elimination,” CBQ 49 [1987]: 387–403).
22. Against J. Milgrom, “Israel’s Sanctuary: The Priestly Picture of Dorian Gray,” RB 83 (1976): 393; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 257.
23. Against Kiuchi, The Purification Offering, 124.
24. J. Malino misses this powerful line of application, becoming sidetracked by the theory that the sacrifice represented a transition from magic to religion, and by the misconception that it had to do with morality (“The Ashes of the Red Heifer: Religious Ceremonies and Obedience to Torah [Numbers 19:1–22],” in Holmgren and Schaalman, eds., PREACHING BIBLICAL TEXT, 144–48), 673.
1. Milgrom, Numbers, 164.
2. Cf. ibid., 164. On the problem of Kadesh, see Original Meaning section of Num. 33.
3. Cf. Ex. 17:5; M. Margaliot, “The Transgression of Moses and Aaron—Num. 20:1–13,” JQR 74 (1983): 210–11; against W. Propp, “The Rod of Aaron and the Sin of Moses,” JBL 107 (1988): 22–26.
4. Pockets of water collected in sedimentary rock would yield insufficient water (Walton, Matthews, and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary, 157).
5. Against N. Helfgot, “ ‘And Moses Struck the Rock’: Numbers 20 and the Leadership of Moses,” Tradition 27 (1993): 55–56.
6. Cf. 17:12–13; 20:3 of gwʿ as death inflicted by God. Outside Numbers it can denote natural death (Gen. 25:8, 17; 35:29; 49:33).
7. Called Meribah of Kadesh in 27:14; cf. Massah/Meribah as names for Rephidim in Ex. 17:7.
8. For various possible interpretations of these words, see Margaliot, “The Transgression of Moses and Aaron,” 212–15.
9. Ibid., 224; cf. 225.
1. Regarding ḥrm (dedication to God), see comments on Lev. 27:28–29. When the Israelites defeated the Amalekites decades earlier (Ex. 17:8–13), they did not devote them to utter destruction. However, the Lord later commissioned King Saul to carry out that kind of vengeance on them (1 Sam. 15).
2. W. Churchill, Never Give In!: The Challenging Words of Winston Churchill, compiled by D. Price and D. Walley (Kansas City: Hallmark Editions, 1967), 26.
3. Cf. Judg. 10:16; 16:16; Zech. 11:8.
4. Notice the chiastic relation between qṣr nepeš and nepeš qwṣ, linking the people’s impatience to their revulsion toward the manna.
5. Lev. 10:2; Num. 11:1; 16:35, 39 (Qal passive participle of śrp, referring to the rebels “who had been burned up”). On poisonous snakes in this region even today, see Noordtzij, Numbers, 186.
6. B. Levine, Numbers 21–36 (AB 4A; New York: Doubleday, 2000), 89.
7. On the route of Israel in relation to Moabite geography, see J. M. Miller, “The Israelite Journey Through (Around) Moab and Moabite Toponymy,” JBL 108 (1989): 577–95.
8. For linguistic, historical, and archaeological details regarding this poem and Heshbon, with its environs, see Levine, Numbers 1–36, 101–9, 113–25; Ashley, The Book of Numbers, 421–28. The Madaba Plains Project, an archaeological consortium sponsored by Andrews University and other institutions, has been carrying out excavations in this region, including at Tall Hisban, formerly thought to be Sihon’s Heshbon.
9. M. Lucado, When God Whispers Your Name (Dallas: Word, 1994), 44.
10. Cf. J. D. Derrett, “The Bronze Serpent,” EstBib 49 (1991): 321.
11. Lucado, When God Whispers Your Name, 52.
12. P. J. Wilson, “Snake on a Stick,” ChrCent (March 2, 1994): 223.
13. Gane, Altar Call, 77.
14. J. Stott, Basic Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, repr. 1997), 92.
15. S. M. Peck, People of the Lie (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 269.
16. Pronounced Be-er, not like an alcoholic beverage.
17. Maxwell and Dornan, Becoming a Person of Influence, 70.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., 70–71.
20. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2018.
21. J. Donne, The Works of John Donne (WPL; Ware, Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 1994), 252.1.
1. On the Transjordanian monarchies as tribal kingdoms rather than true nation-states, see O. LaBianca and R. Younker, “The Kingdoms of Ammon, Moab and Edom: The Archaeology of Society in Late Bronze/Iron Age Transjordan (ca. 1400–500 BCE),” in T. Levy, ed., The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land (New York: Facts on File, 1995), 401–15; R. Younker, “Moabite Social Structure,” BA 60 (1997): 237–48.
2. For detailed discussion of the Deir ʿAllā inscriptions, see, e.g., Levine, Numbers 21–36, 241–75; Milgrom, Numbers, 473–6; J. T. Greene, Balaam and His Interpreters: A Hermeneutical History of the Balaam Traditions (BJS 244; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 2–3.
3. S. C. Layton, “Whence Comes Balaam? Num 22, 5 Revisited,” Bib 73 (1992): 32–61.
4. Noordtzij, Numbers, 200–201. On apparently contradictory cues for Balaam’s geographic origin, see also Levine, Numbers, 145–49.
5. About 360 miles from Moab (Noordtzij, Numbers, 200).
6. Because of an accumulation of such correspondences between the binding of Isaac story in Gen. 22 and the story of Balaam’s donkey in Num. 22, J. Safren regards the latter as a “reflection story,” in which Balaam appears as the antithesis of Abraham (“Balaam and Abraham,” VT 38 [1988]: 105–13).
7. Compare Gen. 22:11–12, where an angel of the Lord called to Abraham at the climax of the binding of Isaac story (ibid., 106–7). Although these passages lack the definite article before “angel,” Christian versions render “the angel (or Angel) of the Lord (or LORD)” (e.g. NIV, NASB, NKJV, NRSV), implying a special theophanic angel, i.e., a manifestation of the deity himself as an angel.
8. For śaṭan as a human person who acts as an adversary, see 1 Sam. 29:4; 2 Sam. 19:22; 1 Kings 5:4; 11:14, 23, 25.
9. Compare Milgrom, Numbers, 320, citing rabbinic sources.
10. Levine, Numbers, 5, 159.
11. Many Christians have understood such striking identifications between the/an angel of the Lord and the Lord himself to mean that the angel spoke as the Lord = the pre-incarnate Christ, but W. G. MacDonald has disputed this interpretation (“Christology and ‘The Angel of the Lord,’ ” in G. F. Hawthorne, ed., Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975], 324–35).
12. J. H. Walton, Genesis (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 610.
13. A. S. Kramer, Three Rabbis in a Rowboat: The World’s Best Jewish Humor (New York: Citadel Press, 1996), 29.
14. R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 106. Here Alter notes the midrash Bemidbar Rabbah, 20:21, which points out the irony of the fact that Balaam wanted a sword to kill a donkey when he is setting out to defeat an entire nation with only his words.
15. J. Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 141–42.
16. Aesop’s Fables, transl. G. F. Townsend (Books for the Ages, Version 1.0 on CD-ROM; Albany, Ore.: Ages Software, 1997), 45.
17. S. Gaukroger and N. Mercer, eds., A–Z Sparkling Illustrations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997), 76–77.
18. J. Ortberg, If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get out of the Boat (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 65.
1. J. H. Walton, private communication.
2. Milgrom, Numbers, 197.
3. Lit., “high points,” cf. “peaks” of mountains in Ps. 95:4.
4. Alternatively, “He [Israel] has [strength] like the horns of a wild ox” (cf. NIV; Ps. 92:10). Outside Israel, either humans or deities could be depicted this way: “King Hammurabi of Babylon proclaims himself as ‘the fiery wild ox who gores the foe.’ In the ancient Near East, gods were depicted with horns or wearing horned crowns. On a bas-relief from Ugarit, Baal is pictured wearing the horns of a wild ox” (Milgrom, Numbers, 200).
5. Cf. the divine command, “Do not practice divination” (Piel of nḥš; Lev. 19:26).
6. In May, 1844, Samuel F. B. Morse sent these words in the KJV—“What hath God wrought!”—as the first formal message from Washington, D. C. to Baltimore on the first inter-city telegraph line in the world.
7. Cf. Ps. 22:21, reversing the order of lion and wild ox.
8. Cf. the definition of magical ritual by R. Grimes: “Insofar as it is a deed having transcendent reference and accomplishing some desired empirical result, a rite is magical” (Beginnings in Ritual Studies [Washington, D. C.: Univ. Press of America, 1982], 45).
10. According to E. Leach, “whereas the primitive technician is always in direct mechanical contact with the object which he seeks to change, the magician purports to change the state of the world by action at a distance” (Culture and Communication: The Logic by Which Symbols Are Connected [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976], 30).
11. Col. William Kirby, personal communication.
12. Cf. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch As Narrative, 405–6.
13. Ibid., 406–7.
14. See Walton, Covenant: God’s Purpose, 100.
15. Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God, 266–67.
16. Schlessinger and Vogel, The Ten Commandments, xxiii.
1. Against the idea of B. Levine that Balaam is voluntarily acting in harmony with what he knows to be the Lord’s will (Numbers 21–36, 191).
2. Notice that 24:8b is a triplet rather than a couplet.
3. Cf. the book of Esther, where the enemy of the Jews is Haman, an “Agagite” (Est. 3:1, 10; 8:3, 5; 9:24), which could be taken to imply that he was somehow descended from the Amalekite royal line.
4. Cf. Akkadian maḫāṣu, “to hit, to wound, to kill, to strike” (CAD, 10:71).
5. “Sons of Sheth” for the Moabites or as their counterparts appears only here. Elsewhere the proper name Šet refers to Seth, the son of Adam (Gen. 4–5; 1 Chron. 1:1).
6. Cf. Nah. 3:16, where the prophet Nahum says of Nineveh, capital of Assyria: “You have increased the number of your merchants till they are more than the stars of the sky.”
7. In the Bible, see Deut. 4:19; 17:3; 2 Kings 17:16; 21:3, 5; 23:4–5; Jer. 8:2; 19:13; Amos 5:26; Zeph. 1:5; Acts 7:42–43.
8. R. Labat, Manuel d’épigraphie Akkadienne, 5th ed. (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1976), 1, 48–49.
9. Noordtzij, Numbers, 236–37.
10. Cf. Dan. 4:17, 25; 5:21.
1. A. Adler, quoted in Kramer, Three Rabbis in a Rowboat, 21.
2. Olson, The Death of the Old, 159.
3. Cf. Cole, Numbers, 441.
4. J. Sturdy, Numbers (CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976), 184–85.
5. So Cole, Numbers, 441; Budd, Numbers, 280.
6. Cf. Ashley, The Book of Numbers, 521.
7. Cf. the Day of Atonement, on which rebellious faults are purged from the sanctuary for the benefit of the Israelite community even though the sinners do not receive the benefit (see Bridging Contexts section of Lev. 16).
8. Cf. Jer. 33:17–22, where the Lord reaffirms his covenants both with David and with the Levitical priests.
9. Other biblical examples of pejorative personal names are “Cushan-Rishathaim” (“Cushan of the Double Wickedness”; Judg. 3:8, 10) and Ishbosheth (“Man of Shame”; 2 Sam. 2:8, 10, 12, 15, etc.; but see 1 Chron. 8:33). See also the pejorative derivation of the geographic name “Babel” (Akkadian Bab-ili, “gate of god[s]”) from the root bll (“confuse”; cf. Gen. 11:9).
10. On the relationship between their nefarious deployment for the purpose of luring Israelite men to commit sacrilege and subsequent deployment of Israelite troops in retaliation (v. 5), see Levine, Numbers 21–36, 455–56.
11. Echoed by King Jeroboam I of the northern kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 12:28).
12. S. Terrien, Till the Heart Sings: A Biblical Theology of Manhood & Womanhood (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 60.
13. See Bridging Contexts section of Lev. 24; R. Gane, “Temple and Sacrifice,” JATS 10 (1999): 362.
14. R. M. Davidson, Flame of Yahweh: A Theology of Sexuality in the Old Testament (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2007), 100.
15. Elsewhere this sexual term appears only in the prophetic books, where it can be used metaphorically for unfaithfulness to the Lord through polytheism and idolatry (e.g., Jer. 3:2, 9; 13:27; Ezek. 23:27).
16. L. Crabb, Finding God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), 20.
17. S. Erlandsson, “
zānāh,” TDOT, 4:102.
18. Cf. D. Daube on “ruler punishment” (Studies in Biblical Law [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1947], 163).
19. J. Stott, Basic Christianity, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 94.
20. Cf. ibid., 94–95.
21. For parallels between the golden calf and Baal of Peor narratives, see Wenham, Numbers, 184–85. For example, both involve idolatry, slaughter of idolaters, and divine reward for faithful members of the tribe of Levi, who carry out divine retribution.
22. On the long and fascinating paradigmatic role of Balaam in biblical and extrabiblical literature, see Greene, Balaam and His Interpreters.
23. Remember the story of three rabbis in a rowboat (see Contemporary Significance section of Num. 15).
24. Dan Oliver, “As God Is My Savior,” in CD titled “Desert of Exile” (Deer Park, Calif.: Silk Road Records, 1997); used by permission.
1. Compare the nes (“pole/standard”) on which Moses displayed the bronze serpent that he made (Num. 21:8–9).
2. T. Campolo, “Just a Kid with Cerebral Palsy,” in A. Gray, ed., Stories for the Heart: Over 100 Stories to Encourage Your Soul (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 1996), 60–61.
1. Remember that while Joshua was a generation younger than Moses, he belonged to the same generation as Zelophehad, but was exceptionally permitted to enter Canaan (14:30).
2. K. Sakenfeld, “Zelophehad’s Daughters,” PRSt 15 (1988): 41.
3. He and Aaron had used similar language at Kadesh under extreme circumstances when they cried out for God to spare his mutinous people (16:22).
4. H. Minkoff, “Moses and Samuel: Israel’s Era of Charismatic Leadership,” JBQ 30 (2002): 257–61.
5. For analysis of this ceremony, see K. Mattingly, “The Laying on of Hands on Joshua: An Exegetical Study of Numbers 27:12–23 and Deuteronomy 34:9” (Ph.D. dissertation, Andrews University, 1997).
6. If Moses and Joshua were monarchs whose reigns overlapped (e.g., the Neo-Babylonian kings Nabonidus and Belshazzar), this arrangement would be called a “coregency.”
7. (No listed author), Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age: A Brief History of A.A. (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1985), 74–75.
8. As Sir Edmund Gosse, an English critic and translator (1849–1928) said of Sturge Moore, a poet.
9. Cf. the prologue to the Laws of Hammurabi: “I am Hammurabi, the shepherd, selected by the god Enlil, he who heaps high abundance and plenty” (transl. M. T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (SBLWAW 6; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 77.
10. Dr. Seuss, Seuss-Isms: Wise and Witty Prescriptions for Living from the Good Doctor (New York: Random House, 1997), 8.
11. Ibid.
3. J. P. Smith, ed., A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957; founded on the Thesaurus Syriacus of R. P. Smith), 577.
4. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 188–90.
5. R. Gane, “ ‘Bread of the Presence’ and Creator-in-Residence,” VT 42 (1992): 187.
6. So m. Zebaḥ. 10:1; Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure, ch. 7.
7. Ibid., 88–92.
8. See Lev. 23:15–16.
9. Cf. A. J. Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Noonday, 1955), 417.
10. See Bridging Contexts of Lev. 23:1–22.
11. Griffith, Looking Up, 52.
12. R. Gane, “Sabbath and the New Covenant,” JATS 10 (1999): 317.
13. Cf. U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus, transl. I. Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967), 244.
14. Cf. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 27–52; Walton, Covenant: God’s Purpose, 49–50.
15. Gane, “Sabbath and the New Covenant,” 328.
16. Cf. W. Specht, “The Sabbath in the New Testament,” in K. Strand, The Sabbath in Scripture and History (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1982), 105.
17. P. Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 182–83.
18. Luther, A Simple Way to Pray, 18.
19. See Num. 6:23–27; 1 Sam. 1:10–11; 2:1–10; 1 Kings 8:22–54; 1 Chron. 6:31–46; 16:4–37, 41–42; 25:1–31.
20. For detailed analysis, including development of criteria for determining whether or not sacred occasions remain in force, see R. Cole, “The Sacred Times Prescribed in the Pentateuch: Old Testament Indicators of the Extent of Their Applicability” (Ph.D. dissertation, Andrews University, 1996), esp. 335–53.
21. Griffith, Looking Up, 57.
22. Ibid., 26.
1. Milgrom, Numbers, 252; idem, Leviticus 1–16, 245.
3. Rather than referring to the only kind of vow that a husband could annul (see L. Schiffman, “The Law of Vows and Oaths [Num. 30, 3–16] in the Zadokite Fragments and the Temple Scroll,” RevQ 15 [1991]: 211).
4. Against D. Marcus, Jephthah and His Vow (Lubbock, Tex.: Texas Tech Press, 1986), 48. See R. Gane, God’s Faulty Heroes (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald, 1996), 87–98.
5. Cf. P. Bird, “Images of Women in the Old Testament,” in R. R. Ruether, ed., Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 51.
6. Ibid., 51, 56.
1. Cf. the last lines of Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.”
2. Compare this army of 12,000 (12 × 1,000) equally representing the Israelite tribes with the perfectly symmetrical group of 144,000 (12 × 12 × 1,000) in Rev. 7:4; 14:1, 3.
3. Other examples include the wars by which the Israelites conquered Canaan (book of Joshua), battles for deliverance recorded in the book of Judges, Saul’s war against the Amalekites (1 Sam. 15), and attacks by Mesha (King of Moab) on Israelites, which he claims that his god Chemosh commanded (Mesha Stele, lines 14, 32; transl. ANET, 320–21).
4. Against S. Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), 89; idem, “War, Women, and Defilement in Numbers 31,” Semeia 61 (1993): 53.
5. Wright, “Purification from Corpse-Contamination in Numbers XXXI 19–24,” 218–19.
6. Ibid., 221–23.
7. See comments on Lev. 27 regarding ḥerem (devotion to God for destruction).
8. C. Cowles, “The Case for Radical Discontinuity,” in Show Them No Mercy: Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 13–44; J. J. Collins, “The Zeal of Phinehas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence,” JBL 122 (2003): 3–21.
9. Cf. E. Merrill, “The Case for Moderate Discontinuity,” in Show Them No Mercy, 63–94; D. Gard, “The Case for Eschatological Continuity,” in Show Them No Mercy, 113–41; Tremper Longman III, “The Case for Spiritual Continuity,” in Show Them No Mercy, 161–87.
10. M. Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 163.
11. See the extensive bibliography on this fascinating subject compiled by B. L. Whitney: Theodicy: An Annotated Bibliography on the Problem of Evil 1960–1990 (New York: Garland, 1993).
12. See Bridging Contexts section on Num. 16:1–35; Gane, God’s Faulty Heroes, 21–22.
13. Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, 13.
14. A. Einstein, “My Views,” in E. Knoebel, ed., Classics of Western Thought: Volume III—The Modern World, 4th ed. (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 3:539.
15. Küng, Global Responsibility, 73–74.
16. R. Firestone, “Conceptions of Holy War in Biblical and Qurʿānic Tradition,” JRE 24 (1996): 105–7, 111–18.
17. Question formulated by a rabbi at an interfaith meeting in New Orleans with Jews, Muslims, and Christians, cited by P. Yancey, Finding God in Unexpected Places (Ann Arbor: Servant Publications, 1997), 56.
18. Küng, Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic, 76.
19. Pope John XXIII, “Pacem in Terris,” in D. Gochberg, ed., Classics of Western Thought: Volume IV—The Twentieth Century (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 4:463.
20. Yancey, Finding God in Unexpected Places, 54–55.
1. See R. de Vaux, “Le pays de Canaan,” JAOS 88 (1968): 23–30; Milgrom, Numbers, 501–2; M. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11 (AB 5; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 174–75.
2. The only other instances of nwʾ in the Pentateuch are in Num. 30, referring to a father or husband restraining a daughter or wife by annulling her privilege and obligation to fulfill a vow (30:5, 8, 11).
3. Levine, Numbers 21–36, 489–90.
4. Scolnic, “Theme and Context in Biblical Lists,” 137.
5. J. N. Griffith, Looking Up (Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press, 1993), 31.
6. For detailed discussion, including comparison with other biblical passages regarding the Israelite itinerary, see Scolnic, “Theme and Context,” 112–241.
7. For identifications of locations named in the biblical text, see, e.g., Cole, Numbers, 518–28, with a helpful table comparing Pentateuchal itineraries and identifying locations if possible; Ashley, The Book of Numbers, 627–33; Levine, Numbers 21–36, 514–22; Milgrom, Numbers, 278–82.
8. C. R. Krahmalkov, “Exodus Itinerary Confirmed by Egyptian Evidence,” BAR 20 (1994): 58; cf. 57.
9. Milgrom, Numbers, 83.
10. On difficulties fitting the accounts of Numbers and Deuteronomy into a single, coherent picture, cf. ibid., 164, 281.
11. On these boundaries, see Cole, Numbers, 532–38, with comparison between boundary and territorial lists in Num. 34; Josh. 14–19; and Ezek. 47; Ashley, The Book of Numbers, 639–642; Levine, Numbers 21–36, 532–36; Milgrom, Numbers, 284–87.
12. Judg. 9:57; 1 Sam. 25:39; 2 Sam. 1:16; 1 Kings 2:32–33, 44; 8:32; 2 Chron. 6:23. Abimelech’s punishment literally came down on his head in the form of an upper millstone (Judg. 9:53, 56). In Obad. 15 the talionic formula, “As you have done, it will be done to you” (cf. Lev. 24:19; Deut. 19:19; Judg. 1:7; 15:11), parallels “your deeds will return upon your own head.” Since R. Yaron has found the same pattern of expression in the Egyptian “Judicial Papyrus of Turin” from the reign of Rameses IV, he suggests that it is a kind of fixed formula (“A Ramessid Parallel to 1 K ii 33, 44–45,” VT 8 [1958]: 432–33). See Bridging Contexts section of Lev. 16 regarding “The mysterious Azazel.”
13. K. Koch, “Is There a Doctrine of Retribution in the Old Testament?” transl. T. Trapp, in J. Crenshaw, ed., Theodicy in the Old Testament (IRT 4; Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SPCK, 1983), 60–82.
14. Ibid., 75–78.
15. Cf. Gane, God’s Faulty Heroes, 19–20, 24–25, 27–30.
16. D. L. Moody, cited by H. Finzel, The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make (Colorado Springs: Victor, 1994), 100.
17. Ibid., 99–101.
18. Ibid., 108–9.
19. P. Hersey and K. Blanchard, Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources, 5th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988), 170–94.
20. J. C. Maxwell and J. Dornan, Becoming a Person of Influence: How to Positively Impact the Lives of Others (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997), 67.
21. T. Roosevelt, cited by Finzel, The Top Ten Mistakes, 101.
22. Ibid., 103–5.
23. Ibid., 106.
1. Regarding the layout, see J. Milgrom, “The Levitic Town: An Exercise in Realistic Planning,” JJS 33 (1982): 185–88; idem, Numbers, 502–4.
2. Sakenfeld, “Zelophehad’s Daughters,” 45–46; R. Gane, “The Laws of the Seventh and Fiftieth Years,” JAGNES 1 (1990): 10.
3. Patrick, Old Testament Law, 53.
4. Compare the fact that words from the root ḥṭʾ can refer either to sin (e.g., Lev. 4:27–28) or to purification from evil (8:15) by a purification offering (ḥaṭṭaʾt; 8:14).
5. Isa. 41:14; 43:14; 44:6, 24; 47:4; 48:17; 49:7, 26; 54:5, 8; 59:20; 60:16; 63:16; see also Ps. 19:14; 78:35.
6. Augustine wrote: “He who alone was free among the dead, for he was free to lay down his life and free to take it up again, was for us both Victor and Victim in your sight, and it was because he was the Victim that he was also the Victor. In your sight he was for us both Priest and Sacrifice, and it was because he was the Sacrifice that he was also the Priest. By being your Son, yet serving you, he freed us from servitude and made us your sons” (Confessions, transl. R. Pine-Coffin [New York: Barnes & Noble, 1992], 10.43 [p. 251]).
7. J. S. Feinberg and P. D. Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World (Wheaton, Ill.: Cross-way, 1993), 138.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. According to tradition, the right of the Sanhedrin to impose capital punishment was annulled by the Romans forty years before the Second Temple was destroyed (b. Sanh. 41a; i.e., during the time of Jesus’ ministry).
11. Feinberg and Feinberg, Ethics, 138–39.
12. For Lawal’s story, see S. Robinson, “Casting Stones,” Time (Sept. 2, 2002): 36–37.
13. “Notebook: Milestones” page, Time (Oct. 6, 2003): 25.
14. Feinberg and Feinberg, Ethics, 139.
15. Patrick, Old Testament Law, 54.
16. See Bridging Contexts section of Lev. 20 regarding sexual offenses.
17. M. Greenberg, “Some Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law,” in M. Haran, ed., Yehezkel Kaufmann Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1960), 13–20; idem, “More Reflections on Biblical Criminal Law,” in S. Japhet, ed., Studies in Bible (ScrHier 31; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986), 1–17 (responding to criticism by B. Jackson, “Reflections on Biblical Criminal Law,” JJS 24 [1973]: 8–38).
18. Feinberg and Feinberg, Ethics, 139.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. According to Eusebius (Church History 2.25), Paul was beheaded.