Volume I
The Third Book of Moses, Called Leviticus
With John Brown’s marginal references, notes and reflections · Vol. I, p. 362
This book, so called from its connection with the Levitical tribe, contains the laws which God intimated to Moses from off the mercy-seat, during the first month after the tabernacle was erected; viz. (1) Laws relative to sacred oblations, burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, peace-offerings, sin-offerings, trespass-offerings, i.-vii. (2) The history of the consecration of Aaron and his sons, and the death of the two eldest; laws concerning priests' mourning and abstinence from liquor, viii.-x. (3) Laws of purifications from ceremonial uncleanness, contracted by means of unclean beasts, childbirth, leprosy, running issues, public and national sins, xi.-xvi. (4) Miscellaneous laws, prohibiting the eating of blood, sacrificing to devils, alliance with Canaanites, imitation of heathenish superstition and idolatry, theft, perjury, incest, sodomy, bestiality; or requiring abstinence from fruit of trees newly planted; leaving of gleanings to the poor; regulating the priests' mournings and marriages; marking the blemishes which disqualified them for their work, and partaking of the more sacred victuals, or which rendered animals unfit for sacrifice, xvii.-xxii. (5) Laws directing the observation of their sacred solemnities; sabbath, passover, pentecost, feast of trumpets, feast of expiation, feast of tabernacles, release, jubilee; intermixed with some regulations relative to the lighting of the lamps, show-bread, punishment of blasphemy, murder, &c., lending to or buying of poor Hebrews, xxiii.-xxv. (6) After promises of great favour to the obedient and penitent, and threatenings of manifold punishments to the disobedient, are subjoined laws regulating the dedication of things to the Lord, and redeeming them back, xxvi. xxvii. Whatever this book, or some parts thereof, may appear to an ignorant and carnal mind,—to such as are truly sensible, and evangelical, it is a rich, though
obscure mine of the gospel of Christ, typically exhibiting him as the great high-priest, sent and prepared of God for his work; exhibiting his sacrifice in its nature and form; and its influence disclosing the love of God, showing the curse of sin, procuring peace to the mind, quieting the guilty conscience, nourishing the soul, and purifying the heart; exhibiting the gospel-method of cleansing ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh or spirit, inherent or contracted, by due applications of his blood and Spirit: and, in fine, exhibiting the necessity of abstaining from sin in all its forms, appearances, and temptations; of exact attendance on instituted means of grace, and of perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.
[The Moral Law, though in itself 'holy and just,' and 'the commandment good,' Ro. 7. 12, brings yet no gift to the sinner beyond 'the knowledge of sin;' while by that knowledge 'every mouth is stopped' from either palliation or denial of its sinfulness, and 'all the world stands guilty before God,' Ro. 3. 19, 20. Now this law was delivered on the mount, 'amidst blackness, and darkness, and tempest,' He. 12. 18. But the Ceremonial Law, as it has been called, which is partly delivered in Exodus, and partly in Deuteronomy, and is spread out at large in Leviticus, was delivered 'out of the tabernacle,' where God appeared in all the mild effulgence of the Shekinah, and spoke from the mercy-seat, 'God in Christ,' preparing the way for the 'word of reconciliation,' 2 Co. 5. 19. This book may accordingly be described as the pictorial gospel;—the gospel for the eye as well as for the ear; the gospel to the sense, that it may conduct to faith.
Taking the Epistle to the Hebrews as the key to this book, we discover that the gospel was presented by it in types, figures, emblems, or shadows, He. 10. 1. A type is something shown as being more or less like another, and which it is intended to represent. The chief types of Christ are, (1) persons, as Adam, Noah, Moses, Joshua, David; (2) offices, as the priestly, prophetical, and kingly; (3) places, as Jerusalem, Zion; (4) times, as the jubilee; (5) laws, as of the Sabbath, of the first-born; (6) feasts, as of tabernacles; (7) special food, as of unleavened bread; (8) things made, or buildings erected, according to God's direction, as the golden candlestick, the tabernacle, the temple; (9) offerings and sacrifices of various kinds. Now these, with many other things, are severally called types of Christ, in so far as, by any inferior excellence, they contain and exhibit some correspondent but far more exceeding excellence in Christ. But whilst one great end of the Levitical institutions was to exhibit Christ to the eye and the understanding, another great end was—to gain him, as the promised seed and Saviour, a place in the heart. But when Christ enters, idolatry must be cast out. The Levitical institutions were therefore God's great antidote to idolatry. Now one of the most universal and besetting forms of idolatry is 'covetousness,' Col. 3. 5. To rebuke, to check, to condemn, and to mortify covetousness, will accordingly be found one great spiritual end of all the ceremonial enactments. Hence, at every approach of the sinner, God demands his heart, through a claim upon his hand, thus testing the sincerity of the worship offered, through the cheerfulness of the surrender made. But another of the most general objects of idolatry is the appetite. So general and so melancholy is this fact, that Paul records it 'weeping,' and so general, that he affirms that there are 'many whose god is their belly,' Phi. 3. 19. Now a large portion of the most stringent directions and interdicts of the Levitical institutions is dedicated to the subject of food; and in this department, no doubt, their primary reference was to him who is 'the bread of God which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world,' Jn. 6. 33. But another object was by every feeling of appetite which it was forbidden to gratify, unless with food which God had sanctioned, to impose a daily, habitual, and above all a divine, restraint upon the appetite, and thus to teach the true worshippers of God to 'keep under the body and bring it into subjection' in order to its being presented a 'living sacrifice,' Ro. 12. 1.
These views of the Levitical institutions, intended to condemn, and through the spiritual and mortifying use of the sacrifices utterly to cast out, the idols of covetousness and appetite, and thus to preserve undefiled the temple of the heart 'an habitation of God through the Spirit,' 1 Co. 3. 17; Ep. 2. 22, will serve to illuminate our path as we attempt to trace out their shadowy mysteries, till we discover their connection with the 'body of Christ,' 'the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth,' Ro. 10. 4. C.]
[Every type contained a prophecy. It was designed to foreshadow some greater event in the distant future. That design implied prophetic knowledge; and the embodiment of the design in the type was prophecy in act. All the ceremonies of the Mosaic law were types of Christ and his kingdom, expressly designed of God to prefigure the person or work of the Messiah. The rite of sacrifice embodied the grand truth of a crucified Saviour as the only ground of reconciliation between a guilty world and a holy God. The passover typified the character, sufferings, death, and salvation of Christ. So the sin-offering, the peace-offering, the red heifer, the day of atonement, &c., were all types of Christ in some aspect of his person or work. In a word, the whole Mosaic economy—its ordinances, vessels, observances, down to the minutest particular—was 'a shadow of good things to come;' but 'the body is of Christ.' It is only when the typical character of this book is kept fully before the mind that it becomes to the reader not merely interesting but most instructive. P.]