Leviticus 21

Leviticus 21:1-22

Subdivision 2. (Leviticus 21:1-24; Leviticus 22:1-33.)Precepts for the priesthood. We come now to the laws for the priesthood, in which we find a higher separation naturally required of those who draw near to God. It is well to remember here that all Christians are priests, and that as brought nearer to Him than Judaism could ever accomplish, indeed only now really nigh, the holiness required from us must have a character corresponding. In Israel much was merely typical and outward. We have to do with the realities of what was with them typical. The five sections here are marked out for us each as a separate word of Jehovah.

1. The first of these insists upon abstinence from defilement for the dead, except in the case of the nearest relatives, on the part of men who present Jehovah’s offerings; also upon all impurity being refused in his relations, those especially which, being most important, are nevertheless most loosely, and at the dictates of mere passion, entered into. We have then the high-priest, specially characterized as one anointed with the holy oil, marked out for a still loftier separation.
2. The second section relates to personal blemish in the priest which would unfit for public ministration, though not for partaking of the holy things. Here we are reminded of the sacrificial victims, of which the same unblemished perfectness was required. A blemished priest would not suit an unblemished offering, for both the one and the other speak of Christ. If we approach to God, it can only be as in the perfectness of Christ before Him. On the other hand, lame legs do not hinder a Mephibosheth from being entertained at the king’s table. So the poor lame priest “shall eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy and the holy things.” Royal grace!
3. The third section legislates against the profanation of consecrated things, which was to profane God’s holy name. Defilement of the priest cut him off from partaking of them while the defilement lasted. Nor could any stranger, not being of the priestly house, partake, nor even the daughter of the priest, married and living out of the priestly household.
4. The fourth section takes up the subject of blemishes in the sacrifice, and is addressed through Moses to all Israel. It concerned them all. All kinds of imperfection are forbidden in the sacrifices, except only in a free-will offering, where, because such, something in defect or excess might be permitted. Nor was mutilation of God’s creatures to be practised in the land.
5. Lastly, when all this had been complied with, there were still conditions of acceptable offering, which are here detailed. As to age, the law of circumcision is the law of offering, and for a similar reason: in its first seven days it was unclean, the stamp of the old creation was upon it -a thing of which, strikingly, nothing is said with regard to the dove or pigeon, the bird of heaven. Here the old creation is set aside; in the second commandment not to kill the young and its mother on the same day, the natural links are shown as recognized however; while in the third, the repetition of the commandment to leave none of the thank-offering to the second day, we are bidden to beware of the entrance of mere nature into the things of God.