I am wrung out like a washcloth over today’s Bible reading.  I know that the Lord’s commands are for our good, but I think there must be something about Jewish culture that I am missing.  When I read Leviticus 27:29, my heart skipped a beat.  What does it really mean? 28 “However, anything specially set apart for the Lord—whether a person, an animal, or family property—must never be sold or bought back. Anything devoted in this way has been set apart as holy, and it belongs to the Lord. 29 No person specially set apart for destruction may be bought back. … Continue reading Leviticus 26-27: Confounded and Confined, but Content

The Year of Jubilee….a time when slaves are set free, and those who have been forced to sell their family countryside lands are given them back.  Every fifty years, the Lord created a time of release…for the land, to let it lie fallow, and for the people. God’s Word is full of wisdom.  Our scientific minds can tell us why allowing the land to lie fallow is a good idea.  They can cite evidence of nutrient depletion, erosion, and other factors that render soil barren unless it is given a chance to rest.  Yet God, the creator of that very … Continue reading Leviticus 24-25: Sweet Release

I didn’t realize that the Lord provided instructions for mold and mildew remediation in houses!  I worked at a school a long time ago whose outer walls were contaminated with black mold — the very bad stuff.  It oozed out of walls when we tacked anything up on them and made the whole classroom smell moldy.  The district had to hire a firm to come in and remove the walls that were contaminated — very similar to what the priests had to do when the people’s homes were overrun with mold and mildew….only without the spacesuits and plastic bubble. Short … Continue reading Leviticus 14-16:Continued provision

Poor Aaron.  My heart broke for him as I read about his family’s first official duties as priests.  Two of his sons got it wrong…they went their own way and burned the incense differently than the way in which the Lord had commanded, with tragic results.  The Bible says that fire blazed forth from the Lord’s presence and burned those sons to their deaths. I had a long post about the possibility of the reasons behind this explosion…that perhaps they put in the incense in the incorrect order, rendering them extremely flammable.  But then in looking at other translations I … Continue reading Leviticus 8-10:Ultimate consequences