Welcome back to a year in the Bible with Daily Grace. I'm Shelby and I'm here with

CJ and today we're in Leviticus chapters 21 through 24. We're talking about priests more in

these chapters and also holy days come up. Can you walk us through what's happening here, CJ? Sure. So in Leviticus 21 through 22, we have some specific commands for priests. And here I just

kind of want to flag something that I think is important for us to understand. Priests, outlining

these chapters, are supposed to maintain a heightened level of purity.

They can't even bury their close relatives because they would be getting too close to a corpse.

And I think that should sort of help us understand Leviticus 12 when we think about the loss of blood during childbirth and how that required the woman to offer a purification offering.

Reading this now helped us understand that Leviticus 12 is an anti-women. It just demonstrates

that God is really, really about purity. Being life itself, he just doesn't like things that

are oriented towards death, so much so that the priests can't even bury their relatives. So just something to flag. Yeah, for sure. Another thing is in Leviticus 23. Here we have the various feasts and celebrations that mark the ancient Israelite calendar. So things like Passover, unleavened bread, Day of Atonement, which is in Leviticus 16, which we've already covered and some of the others

that we're probably familiar with. And then we have Leviticus 24, which describes that that

lamp, which is supposed to be shining all the time. And then we have the loaves of bread,

which are on the table near the lamp. And a lot of scholars will argue that this is symbolic

of the relationship of God and Israel.

We have God's light constantly shining upon the 12 loaves of bread, which represent the 12

tribes of Israel, and it's just sort of a metaphor or an image to show that God is always with

Israel.

Yeah.

I think it's so helpful when you break those things down like that. Otherwise, they can just

seem like random elements of the tavernacle. Okay, but we're not ancient Israelite priests.

This is true. I'm not. Yeah, I'm also not. And so how can we understand these chapters? Do they

have applications for us here today?

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