Introduction
Leviticus is in the middle of the five books making up ¡°the Law,¡± the heart
of the Old Testament. It gets its name from the fact that it focuses
especially in the ministry of the Levite priests, and the core of the book
is the law of holiness. This tells us what God demands of the people who are
privileged to belong to him, both in terms of their worship and of their
daily lives.
This is enough for us to situate the book. We will better understand these
laws and liturgical regulations, which are characteristic of ancient times,
if we are willing to remember that holiness ¨C in the biblical sense, is just
as real for us now. Holiness is one of the keys to knowing God and it helps
us to understand our special vocation as a holy people. We can never
overstate the fact that God embraces all of creation in his love, that God
is present in it and in the lives of peoples, that God is very close to us
¡°in secret¡± (Mt 6:6). Neither should we forget that God is ¡°holy,¡± that is
to say, totally distinct from creation and that his mysterious personality
is incredibly beyond anything we can imagine. If God has called us to
believe in his Only Son, our mission cannot be confused with any of the
paths of wisdom that humankind has ever known: God has chosen us for his own
¡°amazing and mysterious¡± work. Today though we are no longer bound by the
countless liturgical or sociological precepts of the Law, these pages tell
us again that we have been set apart in order to serve as leaven.
The spirit of the Law never changed after the revelation made to Moses, and
became its foundation. However, many developments and adaptations did take
place. The ¡°Mosaic books,¡± as they are called, reach us in the state in
which they were fixed by the Jewish priests of the fifth century before
Jesus, at the time of the return from the Exile.
Previously, the influence of the prophets made itself felt. They were asking
for a more dynamic faith, an awareness of the demands of justice inscribed
in the Covenant and a struggle against alienating foreign influences. They
were also speaking about preparing the future. But after the Babylonian
captivity, Israel¡¯s need to affirm its identity in order to face up to the
trials of the nation, brought about a conservative trend that would become
increasingly stronger in the course of time. Thus, many Jews went back to a
religious conservatism made of rituals and traditions that Jesus would
severely condemn (Mt 23).
These laws form part of the Scriptures and therefore they are the word of
God. But they are words of God addressed to a people who had not yet
received Christ. If we receive these words, it does not mean we should put
them into practice just as they are since we have passed the first stage of
human and religious formation of the Old Testament. In his letters, Paul
attacks those who did not want to go beyond the customs and feasts of the
Jews (Col 2:16), as well as those who primarily saw God¡¯s word as laws to be
observed (Gal 3:1-7). On the other hand, Jesus invites us not to lose
anything of the spirit that inspired these laws (Mt 5:17-19).