Continual Service, and a Case That Requires a Ruling

After the calendar of feasts, the speech turns inside the tabernacle. The rules for the lamp and the bread follow the festival list directly, placing the daily and weekly service of the holy place beside the yearly one.

Command, tsav, is stronger than the usual speak. The verse repeats Exodus 27:20 almost word for word. Beaten is katith, olives crushed in a mortar rather than pressed, which yields the first, clearest oil with the least smoke. Continually is tamid, the word later used for the daily offering.

Without the vail of the testimony means in the outer room, the holy place, outside the curtain that screened the ark. From the evening unto the morning: the lamp burned through the night. Samuel lay down in the temple ere the lamp of God went out (1 Samuel 3:3), that is, before dawn.

Candlestick in the King James is the menorah, an oil lampstand, not a stand for candles. Pure means of pure gold (Exodus 25:31). It held seven lamps (Exodus 25:37), and to order them was to trim wicks and refill oil each evening.

Cakes is challoth, a word used for pierced or ring-shaped loaves. Two tenth deals, about four litres of flour, in each makes them very large loaves. Twelve is the number of the tribes, one loaf for each, an inference the text leaves the reader to draw.

Two rows, six on a row: the Hebrew ma‘arakhoth means arrangements, and the Mishnah (Menachot 11:5) describes two stacks of six rather than two lines. The table is the gold-covered table of Exodus 25:23–30.

The frankincense, not the bread, was burned on the altar as the memorial, ’azkarah, the token portion of 2:2. Frankincense came from southern Arabia; Jeremiah 6:20 speaks of incense from Sheba. The bread itself was kept for the priests to eat.

Every sabbath is doubled in Hebrew, on the sabbath day, on the sabbath day, to stress the regular renewal. An everlasting covenant is berith ‘olam, the phrase Exodus 31:16 uses of the sabbath itself. The bread on the table is a standing token of the covenant.

David asked for this bread at Nob, and Ahimelech gave him the hallowed bread because there was none other (1 Samuel 21:6). Jesus cited the incident in Mark 2:26, noting it was not lawful to eat but for the priests, as this verse says.

An Israelite mother and an Egyptian father place the man among the mixed multitude that left Egypt with Israel (Exodus 12:38). Strove together, natsah, is the verb of Exodus 2:13, when Moses saw two Hebrews strive together the day after he killed an Egyptian.

The Hebrew says he blasphemed the Name; of the LORD is supplied in the King James italics. The verb naqav can mean to pierce or to pronounce distinctly, and Jewish tradition took it as uttering the divine name, one root of the later custom of saying HaShem, the Name. Shelomith is the only woman named in Leviticus.

Put him in ward is mishmar, custody. Numbers 15:34 uses the same phrase for the man who gathered sticks on the sabbath, because it was not declared what should be done to him. Moses brings three other unresolved cases to God (Numbers 9:8; 27:5).

The answer from the LORD arrives in the same formula as every other law in the book, as though a new statute is being issued rather than a verdict delivered in private.

Without the camp: executions took place outside, beyond the living space of the community. Stephen was cast out of the city and stoned (Acts 7:58), and the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.

His God is ’elohav. Exodus 22:28 says thou shalt not revile the gods, using ’elohim, and Philo read that as forbidding contempt even for other nations’ gods. Here, bear his sin sets the general principle before the specific penalty of the next verse.

The priests’ accusation against Jesus at his trial, he hath spoken blasphemy (Matthew 26:65), reaches back to this law, as does the crowd in John 10:33 taking up stones for blasphemy. The stranger and the native born stand under it equally.

Killeth any man is literally strikes any life of a human being, makkeh kol nephesh ’adam. The law goes back to Genesis 9:6, whoso sheddeth man’s blood, and to Exodus 21:12. It is placed here to set the blasphemy case within a larger law of life.

Beast for beast is in Hebrew life for life, nephesh tachath nephesh, the same phrase Exodus 21:23 uses for human life. Make it good is shillem, to repay in full, from the root of shalom, wholeness.

Blemish is mum, the word used for a priest’s defect in 21:17 and an animal’s in 22:20. An injury to a neighbour is described with the vocabulary of wholeness and its loss. As he hath done, so shall it be done to him states the principle before the formula.

Breach is shever, the fracture of 21:19. Jesus quotes this line, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth (Matthew 5:38). The version in Exodus 21:24–25 is longer, adding hand, foot, burning, wound and stripe; Leviticus keeps only three.

The verse restates 17 and 18 in reverse order, beast then man. Many scholars read verses 16 to 22 as a mirror pattern: blasphemy, man, beast, injury, beast, man, one law, with the formula of verse 20 at the centre.

One manner of law is mishpat ’echad, one judgment. Exodus 12:49 had said the same at the first Passover, one law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger. The man of verse 10, half Egyptian, is judged under it.

Leviticus contains almost no narrative, and its two accounts, the deaths of Nadab and Abihu in chapter 10 and this stoning, both end in death at the LORD’s word. The people did as the LORD commanded, carrying out the sentence together.