So, you rightly ask, what's with the (18) up there?
Well, it turns out that when I was doing yesterday's post I completely forgot about chapter 18. Not one for the easily blushed, that one. It's also quite socially problematic, because here's where we get the first explicit proscription against homosexuality. Well, specifically, homosexual sex. That sounds redundant... Is "homosex" a word? Is it offensive? It's easier to say, but that tends not to matter in cases like this...
Anyway, the problem here (as I see it) is that not only is it explicit, but we as a society generally accept just about every other sex statute (sextute?) listed here - don't sleep with your parents, your cousins, your sisters/brothers, don't marry a woman and her sister/mother, don't have sex with animals, whether you're a man or a woman. These are all things that we as a society - secular or religious - more or less agree on.
Then there's this one about a man lying with another man (as he would with a woman) being an abomination. That gets trickier. All of a sudden, there's huge societal pressure to capitulate.
It's not even really an argument that you can have on a purely logical/philosophical level. It's either gotten too emotionally charged for that, or it always has been. But there it is, staring up in black and white...
What to do, what to do...
Oh yeah, and there's the one about if you see a woman naked while she happens to be on her period, you're also defiled and cut off from your people.
Wait. What?
Okay, so there's at least one other statute here that we more or less ignore nowadays. Women aren't shunted off into their own separate ghettos for a week each month, and nobody even thinks twice about that.
Yes, the homosexuality debate is more complex than that, but the beauty of doing this one-chunk-at-a-time close reading is that the whole point is to take the small chunks of text as presented. I haven't been doing much in the way of "grand-scheme" interpretation here, and - because it's incredibly convenient at this very moment - I'm not going to start now. So there.
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Of course, the flip side of that is that I also can't use a New Testament filter to actually demonstrate that some of these laws really ought to be kept around when others are okay to be discarded, so I guess the joke's on me a bit too.
Still, I can point out how awesome it is that here, codified into Hebrew law, given by God Himself, we have very cool provisions for helping out society's miserables. Basically, you get one shot harvesting your fields or vineyards, and that's it, and you're not even allowed to be really finicky about it, either. Just get your stuff and leave the rest so that poor people can have some too.
I like this for a number of reasons. First off, because I think that the "poor people are poor because they heartily deserve it" tripe that is perpetually spewing from the mouths of the political right south of the border (and, worryingly, increasingly here on the home front as well...) is... unpalatable, to say the least.
However, I also like it because it's something a little more dignified than an order to simply choose some of your junk and give it to them. There's a sense that it's giving work as well as charity. It's not a handout, it seems somehow empowering by comparison. Maybe that's just me, though.
I also like how there are specific laws against discriminating against foreigners and strangers in the Hebrews' new land (you listening, Arizona?). That's cool.
Also, human sacrifices suck. BOO! HUMAN SACRIFICES!
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I know I said I'm keeping the NT out of this, but this is a little different. It's more something just to keep in mind when we eventually get there (I'm guessing maybe August?).
It's really easy to just pooh-pooh the Pharisees, etc, when Jesus comes and stomps all of them for being so uppity about who can touch whom and who gets to enter the temple, etc, but I think this passage gives a lot of insight into what Jewish society becomes, thousands of years later. Just keep on the back burner until the Gospels roll around:
17 "Speak to Aaron, saying, 'No man of your offspring throughout their generations who has a defect shall approach to offer the food of his God. 18 'For no one who has a defect shall approach : a blind man, or a lame man, or he who has a disfigured face, or any deformed limb, 19 or a man who has a broken foot or broken hand, 20 or a hunchback or a dwarf, or one who has a defect in his eye or eczema or scabs or crushed testicles. 21 'No man among the descendants of Aaron the priest who has a defect is to come near to offer the LORD'S offerings by fire ; since he has a defect, he shall not come near to offer the food of his God. 22 'He may eat the food of his God, both of the most holy and of the holy, 23 only he shall not go in to the veil or come near the altar because he has a defect, so that he will not profane My sanctuaries. For I am the LORD who sanctifies them.' "
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