NOTES for Lev 19:1-37
Chapter 19 begins the second part of the Book of Leviticus, the part biblical scholars have called the Holiness Code. This name is not accidental: in it God's words are repeated like a refrain, "be holy, because I, Yahweh your God, am holy." What, then, does holiness mean here? Today, as a rule, we understand holiness as righteousness, and specifically Christian righteousness. Those who have become models of such righteousness are the ones we usually call saints. Yet in the Book of Leviticus, and especially in its second part, holiness is understood in a sense already not very different from the New Testament sense.
Here holiness means the state of a person's sanctification, the very state a person acquires when he remains in God's presence. A person became such every time he came to the altar and participated in sacrifice, for there at the altar God was completely and really present, and a person, if he was open to Him, changed just as completely and really as a result of meeting Him.
The problem, however, was that after returning to ordinary everyday life, a person again slid back, becoming what he had been before the encounter with God. The state of sanctification, or holiness, was not stable; it was only temporary, although for truly believing people it was regular enough, since such people usually came to the altar no less than once a week.
For a believing Yahwist, purity had traditionally been considered the main thing: the state of purity made a person ready to meet God and to be sanctified. Now, however, the aim of the believing Yahwist's life becomes not purity, but sanctification itself, holiness as an ordinary, everyday state. This was, of course, an immense task: the revelation had been received, but how to carry it out was not yet clear.
New revelations were needed here, and they came through the prophets, those whom biblical scholars usually call the later prophets, beginning with Amos and ending with Malachi. For the moment, however, the Book of Leviticus offers those seeking a full spiritual life and a relationship with God strict and unwavering observance of all the commandments and all the norms of ritual purity. The goal is clear: to live in such a way as to allow no defilement at all in one's life, not even the slightest. It seemed that if one lived this way, the goal would be reached. It took the experience of many centuries to understand that everything is not so simple and that the goal is not reached by this method; but that is another story.