The Offerings That Are Holy
January 26, 2023
Commentary
The Lord told Moses to say to Aaron and his sons (vv. 1-2): I am the Lord God, and I demand that you honor my holy name by showing proper respect for the offeringsbrought to me by the people of Israel. If any of you are unclean when you accept an offering for me, I will no longer let you serve as a priest (v. 3). None of you may take part in the sacred meals while you have a skin disease or an infected penis, or after you have been near a dead body or have had a flow of semen (v. 4), or if you have touched an unclean creature of any sort, including an unclean person (v. 5). Once you are unclean, you must take a bath, but you still cannot eat any of the sacred food until evening (vv. 6-7). I command you not to eat anything that is killed by a wild animal or dies a natural death (v. 8). This would make you unclean. Obey me, or you will die for disgracing the place of worship. Remember-I am the Lord, the one who makes a priest holy (v. 9).
Only you priests and your families may eat the food offerings; these are too sacred for any of your servants (v. 10). However, any slave that you own, including those born into your household, may eat this food (v. 11) If your daughter marries someone who isn’t a priest, she can no longer have any of this food (v. 12). But if she returns to your home, either widowed or divorced, and has no children, she may join in the meal (v. 13). Only members of a priestly family can eat this food, and anyone else who accidentally does so, must pay for the food plus a fine of twenty percent (v. 14). I warn you not to treat lightly the offerings that are brought by the people of Israel (v. 15). Don’t let them become guilty of eating this sacred food. Remember-I am the Lord, the one who makes these offerings holy (v. 16).
Application
As a servant of the Lord I have a great responsibility to keep my life clean and pure as long as I live.
Leviticus 22:1– 16 (NET)
1 The Lord spoke to Moses: 2 “Tell Aaron and his sons that they must deal respectfully with the holy offerings of the Israelites, which they consecrate to me, so that they do not profane my holy name. I am the Lord. 3 Say to them, ‘Throughout your generations, if any man from all your descendants approaches the holy offerings, which the Israelites consecrate to the Lord, while he is impure, that person must be cut off from before me. I am the Lord. 4 No man from the descendants of Aaron who is diseased or has a discharge may eat the holy offerings until he becomes clean. The one who touches anything made unclean by contact with a dead person, or with a man who has a seminal emission, 5 or with a man who touches a swarming thing by which he becomes unclean, or who touches a person by which he becomes unclean, whatever that person’s impurity — 6 the person who touches any of these will be unclean until evening and must not eat from the holy offerings unless he has bathed his body in water. 7 When the sun goes down he will be clean, and afterward he may eat from the holy offerings, because they are his food. 8 He must not eat an animal that has died of natural causes or an animal torn by beasts and thus become unclean by it. I am the Lord. 9 They must keep my charge so that they do not incur sin on account of it and therefore die because they profane it. I am the Lord who sanctifies them.
10 “‘No lay person may eat anything holy. Neither a priest’s lodger nor a hired laborer may eat anything holy, 11 but if a priest buys a person with his own money, that person may eat the holy offerings, and those born in the priest’s own house may eat his food. 12 If a priest’s daughter marries a lay person, she may not eat the holy contribution offerings, 13 but if a priest’s daughter is a widow or divorced, and she has no children so that she returns to live in her father’s house as in her youth, she may eat from her father’s food, but no lay person may eat it.
14 “‘If a man eats a holy offering by mistake, he must add one-fifth to it and give the holy offering to the priest. 15 They must not profane the holy offerings which the Israelites contribute to the Lord, 16 and so cause them to incur a penalty for guilt when they eat their holy offerings, for I am the Lord who sanctifies them.’”