Commentary on Leviticus 1.0

To the venerable deacon Eutychianus, Hesychius, a sinner, servant of Christ, presbyter: greeting in Christ.

You have offered the Spirit a reed in place of a trumpet, and you have bidden a hoe, which can scarcely turn sand, to dig up rich and deep soil that needs many ploughs for its tilling. Why so? If any of those who are used to asking such things should ask you, perhaps you yourself will be silent, since the inquiry is very difficult and obscure. But you will produce your teacher Paul, who explains for you what you were asked: "That the excellence of the power may be of God and not from us." And what this means he himself explains again more plainly: "And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in the teaching … of men, but in the power of God." How, or where, this power is, and with whom it dwells, God's goodness itself shows when it said to Paul, who was asking that the thorn of his flesh be taken away and that the angel of Satan who buffeted him depart from him: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

Believing this, then, you have commanded me to do what others have not done: to interpret in order the intention of the book of Leviticus according to the Spirit, and to defend the letter, which lies open to many accusations from adversaries, by leading it up to a higher understanding. And I am to do this not as certain people once did, picking out a few chapters here and there, but discussing everything in order to the end. How difficult that is, learn from this one very small chapter, small in comparison with the whole content of the said book, which is full of such variety.

Of one who offers a sacrifice of peace offerings, or of salvation, he says: if he offers it for thanksgiving, "it shall be eaten on the day on which he offered it; none of it shall remain until morning. But if anyone offers a victim for a vow or freely, it shall likewise be eaten on the same day on which he offered it, and also on the following day." Since, then, the sacrifices are evidently of the same kind (for both are of peace offerings, or of salvation), he commanded that of the one, because it is of thanksgiving or praise, nothing be left until morning, but that the freewill one be eaten also on the morrow. Yet if it was bad to keep part of a sacrifice until the morrow, this ought not to have been allowed for either of them; and if it was good, it ought to have been ordained for both. And throughout, so to speak, the whole fabric of this law you will find that the lawgiver acted in this way through the Spirit: commanding what he had forbidden, and again forbidding what he had formerly commanded. This both reproves too strict an observance of the letter and shows that a consideration of the spiritual understanding is necessary. It also defends the gospel preaching, which forbids some of the things that seem to be read in the law to be understood or done according to the letter; and it shows that the lawgiver of the new and of the old testament is one and the same, since by his authority or power he now commands and now forbids what he wills. Yet he commands nothing contrary to himself, even if he admits what he formerly forbade and forbids what was once commanded. And there is also a most holy agreement in it, as he knows who is able to understand its intention and to perceive to what end its statutes look.

But since you have asked, with all patience and entreaty, that a word on these things be given me in the opening of my mouth, pray, as Paul did when praying for the church of the Ephesians, that the offering of my word may be acceptable, not only in Jerusalem but also in every land to which, by God's favour, it is carried, so that Christ may be glorified, who chose the foolish things of the world, and the weak, and the ignoble, and the things that are not: just as he has chosen me, who am destitute of all … and a stranger to wisdom, unfit, and not worthy to be called even a useless servant …, so that the things impossible with men may be seen to be possible with God, when unskilled men serve his wisdom.

What the subject of this book is, of which we are speaking here, one should ask of the writer himself. Wishing to instruct his readers briefly on the matters he meant to ordain, he named it, as we see, Leviticus, finding a name that would at one and the same time make plain the whole subject of the book. For the tribe of Levi was allotted the ministry of the holy tabernacle, in which sacrifices, the first fruits of the crops, and the offerings of the firstborn had to be offered and celebrated according to the law, and in which also whatever purifications the law prescribes for those made unclean from any cause had to be performed. These things the present book contains, and others of this kind joined to instruction. Whether you speak of the feasts, or of the distinctions among foods (which of them are clean and which must be called unclean), or of the prohibition of unlawful marriages, or of sacrifices that have a blemish, or of the sanctification of the altar: these too pertain to the Levites, as does whatever else is written in the present law. But so that we do not needlessly count up each item, let us make a beginning.

Above all, the word solemnly charges those who are going to read these things that the interpretation must be drawn up to anagogy, the hearing carried from lowly things to loftier ones, and the spiritual understanding searched out in the letter. Nor does this contradict the law; rather it all the more defends and confirms the law, since we have undertaken not to fight against it but rather to fight for it against those who resist it. This is plain from the fact that the law's enemies above all accuse it of being in many things of no help and useless; but we show its very great usefulness through the anagogy of things perceived by the mind. Let no one, then, whether one of ours or an outsider, presume to find fault with anagogical interpretations, with the consideration of meanings, or with the explanation of the letter. For our side has clear and varied testimonies to such exposition: for example, the parables of Christ, in which, explaining the field as the world, the farmer as himself, the good seed as the righteous, the weeds as the wicked, the reapers as angels, and the enemy who sowed weeds over the wheat as the devil, he gave each of these things its name. What incongruity is there, then, if someone now, expounding the business of the law, says that the ox is the man who works righteousness, the sheep the simple and innocent, the dove or the turtledove those who live more loftily and give themselves to contemplation?

Nor can the Jew contradict such an interpretation of the law. Did not the prophet Ezekiel call Jerusalem a lioness, and her cub Jehoahaz, who was led into Egypt, and another cub Jehoiachin, whom Nebuchadnezzar brought to Babylon in chains, or, as the Seventy rendered it, in a cage? And what is meant by the eagle with great wings? What by the ornaments, the hyacinth and the fine linen with which God, as this same prophet says, clothed Jerusalem? What by the brick on which he drew the city? What by the iron pan? What by the bread of wheat and barley and beans, lentils, millet and vetch which he ate at God's command? And that not only what is said in parables but also what happened according to history must be led by allegory to a loftier understanding, Paul says openly and without delay, writing to the Galatians: "Tell me, you who wish to be under the law, have you not read the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one from the slave woman, the other from the free woman. But the one from the slave woman was born according to the flesh, and the one from the free woman through the promise; which things are spoken by allegory." And saying this, he at once sets out the allegory, for he says: "These are two testaments, one from Mount Sinai, bearing children into slavery, which is Hagar," and the rest that follows.

But now these things too must be drawn to allegory in the same way as the rest of the Scriptures; and yet not in the way that those Scriptures, though they have great force in themselves, nonetheless receive greater usefulness through contemplative interpretation, is it so with the present ordinance. Rather (small and very slight as I am, and, as must be believed and not kept silent) this letter is useless, or perhaps even harmful, if it is stripped of the spiritual understanding, since many and various objections arise against the letter itself, as we shall find in what follows, unless someone takes refuge in a loftier interpretation and seeks from it how he can give an answer on behalf of the letter. For this reason God, through the prophet Ezekiel, called the law, or the commandments, both good and not good, saying: "I brought them out of the land of Egypt and led them into the desert, and I gave them my precepts and showed them my judgments, which a man shall do and live in them." See: they are good, and very good, inasmuch as he recalls that they give life. See what he then added about these commandments: "And I gave them commandments that are not good, and judgments in which they shall not live." How can these be good and not good? Or how do they now give life and now not give it? Or rather, who keeps them according to him according to whom they were written by the lawgiver, that is, the Spirit? For "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth": such a one lives in them. But one who takes them carnally rightly finds the divine judgments not good, since he neither understands them nor uses them well. Hence the things that are good rightly become not good for him, and he does not live in them. For, first, they do not know the life that is hidden in them; and then the lawgiver willed that they be kept on the surface, not always but for a certain time, in order to bind the hard neck of the Jews, which needed a heavier yoke. That is why the prophets call that people stiff-necked; and Isaiah called the people of the Jews not only stiff-necked but a frantic heifer. A heifer that is frantic, if it takes the yoke in that state, is in no way tamed. And again: "Ephraim is a heifer taught to love threshing; I will pass over the beauty of her neck," meaning by the neck the obedience on which he laid the yoke of the law, so that the people, humbled, might willingly take up the yoke of the gospel, as being light and sweet. But now it is time for us to set out the letter of the law itself.