Hey, we're reading Leviticus.

Israel has created the tabernacle.

The place where God and humans can live together out in the wilderness a new Eden spot.

But in the very last story we read, the priests fail.

To follow God's commands, they do what is good in their own eyes, bringing in their alternative liturgy,

and their struck down.

Dead in the most holy place.

The place where there should be life is now death.

Yahweh's living room has been vandalized with death.

And so what are we going to do?

Well, what Yahweh says is, I need some priests who will learn the importance of holiness versus commonness,

and purity versus impurity.

And this is why the next part of Leviticus that we'll read are a bunch of purity laws.

Now, purity laws are going to seem kind of strange to us modern Western thinkers.

Laws about bodily fluids, touching dead bodies, skin disease.

It feels like a random list of icky things.

But for the ancient thinker, these were symbols of life and death.

I am constantly living at the border of life and death.

I'm a mortal creature.

Becoming impure is not morally wrong, but what it reminds me is that I live outside of Eden,

and that I live in a world that is not the way it's supposed to be or that it could be.

In your translations, you might find the words pure and impure.

...