Genesis Redux

Genesis Redux August 21, 2015

Leviticus 1-3 form a unit. 1:1 begins with “Yahweh called to Moses and spoke to him,” and a similar phrase, ‘Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying” shows up in 4:1. Chapters 1-3 form a single speech from God.

The chapters cover three offerings: the ascension (‘olah), the tribute of grain (minchah) and the peace offering (shelamim). The sequence makes sense from a number of angles. In ritual enactments, the tribute offering would be added to the ascension offering, and both would be offered prior to the offering of a peace offering.

The sequence also appears to follow the sequence of Genesis 1-2:

1) The offerer in Leviticus 1:2 is identified as an adam, a word that is not used again until 5:3-4. The ascension is the offering of the man made from the adamah, the earth.

2) As James Jordan has pointed out, the offerer of the tribute offering is not an adam but a nephesh, a “soul.” As we move from the ascension offering to the tribute, we move from the formation of Adam from dust to the enlivening breath of God that makes him a living soul (nephesh chayyah, Genesis 2:7). Having offered himself in the ascension, the worshiper is made alive to offer the fruit of his labor as tribute.

3) In Leviticus 3, we get the first hint that the sacrificial system somehow involves food: The verb “eat” (‘akal) is used for the first time in Leviticus in 3:17. Significantly, it is a food prohibition: “you shall not eat any fat or any blood.” It repeats the prohibition of blood after the flood (Genesis 9:4), which alludes back to the original food restriction in Eden (Genesis 2:17). 

Leviticus 1-3 thus moves through Genesis 2: An adam (Genesis 2:7a; Leviticus 1) is made into a soul (Genesis 2:7b; Leviticus 2) and told not to eat certain foods (Genesis 2:16-17; Leviticus 3).

It’s not an accident, then, that the next section of Leviticus, which begins at 4:1, opens with, “If a nephesh sins unintentionally in any of the things which God has commanded not to be done. . . .”


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