                           20020418.00

                Notes on Leviticus 26: 1-13

     1. The meaning of the Bible is not self-evident.  The
verses of the Bible must be interpreted in their context.
It is misleading to presume to ascertain from a single
verse, or from a group of verses a meaning independent of
other parts of the Bible, or independent of the (spiritual)
human experience that makes such interpretation possible.

     2. The verses of the Bible are not consistent one with
the other.  The Bible contains many contradictory passages.
Specifically, the numerous references in Leviticus to the
killing of human beings either in war or as judicial
punishment contradict the explicit commandment "Thou shalt
not kill" proclaimed in Exodus 20:13.

     3. In response to these contradictions one has several
options:
a) one may literally and figuratively, close the Bible with
the apology that one does not understand it.
b) one may pick and choose the passages that one "likes" or
that corroborate ones prejudices, and ignore the
contradictory ones, hoping that no one notices.
c) one may try to understand the (spiritual) meaning of the
contradiction. This may be very difficult, but it is the
most satisfactory option even if one is not (entirely)
successful.

     "1. Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image,
neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set
up any image of stone in your land, to bow down to it: for I
am the Lord your God." Leviticus 26:1

     This verse is clearly a restatement of Exodus 20:4-5,
with the significant difference that the commandment of
Exodus 20 is addressed to the individual in the second
person singular, while the commandment of Leviticus 26:1 is
addressed to the entire people in the second person plural.
The God of Exodus 20, is individual, personal and therefore
an inward, subjective God; whereas the God of Leviticus 26:1
is a God of the nation: and that makes him an outward,
public, objective God. The inescapable emblem of the public
God is the public image; the public image whether in
sculpture, in painting, or in dogma is the idol.  Thus
Leviticus 26:1 entails the contradiction of addressing the
prohibition of idolatry to a public, where the God that is
public requires to be named, and the named God would become,
unavoidably, an idol. Therefore in order to preserve the
sanctity of this text, one must interpret the God referred
to as a private, individual, subjective God.

     "2. Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my
sanctuary: I am the Lord." Leviticus 26:2

     This verse is a restatement of Exodus 20:8-11. The
logic underlying the institution of the Sabbath is simple:
God rested on the seventh day from _his_ labors of creation;
therefore being made in the image of God, man must, in
affirmation of his affinity with God, rest on the seventh
day from _man's_ labors of creation.  The imperative to
"keep my sabbaths" is compelling to the extent, and only to
the extent that it affirms man's affinity with God, with the
true God, with the inward, the nameless God. But keeping the
Sabbath is ineffective and meaningless with respect to the
public idolatrous God, with whom man has not and never will have
any affinity.  It is only the affinity with the private and
inward God which keeping the Sabbath is meant to confirm.
Keeping the Sabbath therefore becomes a private, inward,
subjective task, a matter of individual conscience, not
susceptible to public control or censure.

     "Ye shall reverence my sanctuary." If God is inward,
then God's sanctuary cannot be a temple of stone and wood,
but it must be the human being, specifically the human
spirit. It is an error of some consequence to interpret
"sanctuary" as a building.

     "3. If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my
commandments, and do them;
 4. Then I will give you ... " Leviticus 26:3-4.

     These verses establish a contractual relationship
between God and man.  The contract which is stipulated in
these verses, and expanded in verses 5-13 which follow,
explicitly contradicts Genesis 8:21-22, where God promised:
"I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake;
for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth
cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night,
shall not cease."

     To my mind, the foregoing contradiction is resolved
once more by reference to the subjective, inward God as
opposed to the public objective God which requires outward
(idolatrous) representation to be effective. The contract
made with the inward God is inaccessible to public scrutiny
or control.  This contract is a facet of the individual's
character and personality; this contract is an expression of
the individual's sense of dignity and responsibility; and
unlike a contract with an idolatrous external deity, it is a
source of freedom rather than an instrument of bondage.

     "13. I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth
out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their
bondmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made
you go upright."  Leviticus 26:13.

     I interpret the freedom from Egyptian servitude to be
concomitant with the freedom from the idolized outward God.
I believe that as a matter of history, in Egypt idolization
of the person of the Pharaoh was carried to an extreme; and
the freedom that God bestowed on the individual members of
his people was not only legal freedom from servitude, but
perhaps primarily the spiritual freedom from the idolatry of
the Pharaoh.

     It is the pathos and the tragedy of human nature that
true freedom is more difficult to bear than servitude; and
our sorrows and tribulations derive in large measure from
the circumstance that in religious as in civil society we
enslave each other with law and ritual because we are unable
to accept God's offered gift of freedom.


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