Leviticus was written to expound a protocol for the priesthood of Solomon's Temple and to prescribe the regulations governing burnt, grain, sin, guilt, ordination and fellowship offerings. The initial authors of Leviticus sat in the court of King Solomon.
The authors committed legal fraud by insisting that their all-too-human rules were handed down to Moses at the Tent of Meeting (1:1, 3:2, 4:4, 6:16, 8:3, 9:5, 10:9, 12:6, 14:11, 15:14, 16:7, 17:4, 19:21, 24:3) or at Mount Sinai (7:37-38, 25:1, 26:46, 27:34) and therefore enjoyed divine sanction.
In fact Leviticus records the resolutions of thirty-four deliberating councils. Their decrees open with a bureaucratic formality stamped, "The Lord said to Moses" (1:1, 4:1, 5:14, 6:1, 6:8, 6:24, 7:22, 7:28, 8:1, 11:1, 12:1, 13:1, 14:1, 14:33, 15:1, 16:1, 17:1, 18:1, 19:1, 20:1, 21:1, 21:16, 22:1, 22:17, 22:26, 23:1, 23:9, 23:23, 23:26, 23:33, 24:1, 24:13, 25:1, 27:1).
The first council (1:1) naturally enough made haste to expound the rules for burnt, grain and fellowship offerings because these offerings were the Levites' means of sustenance (Deuteronomy 18:1).
The second council (4:1) forgave unintentional sins via the butchering of young bulls or goats. A provision allowed offering female lambs instead of female goats (4:32-35, 5:6) presumably after the council realized that some families kept sheep only. This second council also moved to forgive the sin of silencing important information if the sinner made a public confession (snitched) and presented a sin offering (5:1). The circumstance of tight-lipped witnesses to an unintentional killing comes to mind (Numbers 35:22-28, Deuteronomy 4:41-43, 19:1-7). The council also let poor people buy and offer doves instead of goats (5:7) or even let them buy and offer "a tenth of an ephah of fine flour" instead of doves in cases of extreme poverty (5:11). These concessions were surely mulled over in the confines of a flourishing market economy, not in the "vast and dreadful wilderness" of an inhospitable desert (Deuteronomy 8:15).
The third council (5:14) couched its resolution in abstruse language, but reading between the lines, it decreed that anyone guilty of cheating the edict of the second council had to offer "a ram from the flock" plus pay a fine worth 20% of the ram's value expressed in "sanctuary shekels." The circumstance of someone pretending to be poor to take advantage of the cheaper sin offerings decreed by the previous council comes to mind. The resolutions of the third council show that the Levites raised and sold rams to the faithful, ran a bank and minted their own currency. The third council also abrogated the sin offering of a female goat (4:27-28) and replaced it with "a ram from the flock" of the "proper value" (5:17-18).
The fourth council (6:1) exacted this same penalty ("a ram from the flock") for cheating a neighbour, secretly keeping lost-and-found items, swearing falsely or committing "any such sin that people may do." Levitical greed or penury is evident here.
The fifth council (6:8) reminded priests to char the discarded fat and meat portions of an offering; it also enjoined a priest and his family to eat the grain offerings "in the courtyard of the Tent of Meeting" (i.e., the courtyard of the Temple) probably to forestall the hoarding of grain and/or of uneaten meat for subsequent sale in the black market.
The sixth council (6:24) applied the same constraint to sin offerings. More importantly this council imposed the death penalty on "unclean" partakers of a fellowship offering (7:20). This first resort to capital punishment betrays a widespread flouting of the rules (cf. Deuteronomy 17:8-13).
The seventh council (7:22) extended the death penalty to eating the fat of cattle, sheep or goats or the blood of any bird or animal.
The eighth council (7:28) reserved the savoury portions of a fellowship offering for the priests. It also declared that the regulations governing burnt, grain, sin, guilt, ordination and fellowship offerings were now complete, but since the ninth council (8:1) set the rules for an ordination offering, the chronological order of the councils may be rumpled.
The tenth council (11:1) defined "clean" and "unclean" food. The exclusion of perfectly edible food (e.g., catfish) forced people to consume a diet that provided income and sustenance for the religious caste.
The eleventh council (12:1) commanded every woman who gave birth to present a year-old lamb as a burnt offering plus a dove as a sin offering. This decree outraged the populace and the second council's leniency was brought forward: "If she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons" (12:8).
The twelfth council (13:1) taught priests to examine sores, rashes, boils, burns and white spots on someone's skin solely with a view to branding the affected person "clean" or "unclean"; no medical remedies were forthcoming (cf. Numbers 24:4-9).
The thirteenth council (14:1) called on priests to certify a natural cleansing of "unclean" skin with a disgusting ritual involving two birds, and to pronounce the person "clean" eight days later subject to the offering of two male lambs, an ewe, three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour and one log of oil (14:10). This was another decree that must have soured the populace greatly. Towing the line of the second council, cheaper alternatives were afforded the poor, but undoubtedly the thirteenth council encouraged the concealment of sores, rashes, boils, burns and white spots.
The fourteenth council (14:33) issued a similar dictate to deal with the presence of mildew in a house. Evidently these councils aimed to raise the income of the religious caste.
The fifteenth council (15:1) prolonged the outrage and proclaimed that every man's "bodily discharge" (undefined) or every woman's period required atonement with a joint sin/burnt offering of two doves.
The sixteenth council (16:1) turned its attention in-house and laid down the rites for the High Priest on the Day of Atonement.
The seventeenth council (17:1) tightened the screws on the people once more and enacted the death penalty for slaughtering an ox, lamb or goat without a priestly sanction.
The eighteenth council (18:1) moved to regulate the sexual mores of society and enumerated seventeen couplings (among them incest, bestiality and male homosexuality) punishable by death. Misplaced verse 18:21, "Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God," appertains to the twentieth council.
The nineteenth council (19:1) reiterated and expanded the commandments of Exodus 20-23. Two novel injunctions, "Do not hold back the wages of a hired man overnight" (19:13) and "Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight or quantity" (19:35) once more tab a flourishing market economy, not the dire straits of vagabonds in a wasteland.
Reading between the lines, a considerable number of people must have been executed for eating the leftovers of a fellowship offering too late (19:5-8). This same council twice ordained keeping the Sabbath (19:2, 19:30), a sure sign that it had been ignored.
The twentieth council (20:1) reiterated and increased the number of death sentences. Two legal means of execution were stoning and "burning in the fire" (20:14). This council obviously convened after Solomon passed away because it sought to punish the worship of Molech the god of the Ammonites with stoning by the community (20:1-5). King Solomon had turned to Molech in his old age (1 Kings 11:1-7) but who would have dared to suggest then that he ought to be stoned to death by his subjects?
The twenty-first council (21:1) laid down the general rules of conduct for all priests including the High Priest.
The twenty-second council (21:16) defrocked the blind, lame, disfigured, deformed, crippled or dwarfed men.
The twenty-third council (22:1) added more in-house rules. Reading between the lines, it was normal for priests to own slaves (22:11).
The twenty-fourth council (22:17) ordained that freewill or vow offerings were to consist of an unblemished male specimen from the cattle, sheep or goats. The attendant reproach, "Do not offer to the Lord the blind, the injured or the maimed, or anything with warts or festering or running sores," reveals the practice. Withal the council relented perhaps after poor families complained, "You may, however, present as a freewill offering an ox or a sheep that is deformed or stunted, but it will not be accepted in fulfillment of a vow" (22:23).
The twenty-fifth council (22:26) appended three short rules to the burnt and thanksgiving offerings, thereby annulling the premature eighth council's closure.
The twenty-sixth council (23:1) reaffirmed the Sabbath (nineteenth council) and instituted the feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread.
The twenty-seventh council (23:9) appended the Feast of New Grain. Misplaced verse 23:22 reproduces verse 19:9.
The twenty-eighth council (23:23) instituted the Feast of Trumpets. This council also convened after Solomon passed away because his monarchy celebrated only Unleavened Bread, Weeks (or New Grain) and Tabernacles (2 Chronicles 8:12-13).
The twenty-ninth council (23:26) instituted the Day of Atonement. The chronological order fixed for this council and the sixteenth, which laid down the rites for the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, is rumpled.
The thirtieth council (23:33) instituted the Feast of Tabernacles. The chronological order fixed for this council and the twenty-eighth, which instituted the Feast of Trumpets, is also jumbled because King Solomon celebrated Tabernacles but not Trumpets (2 Chronicles 8:12-13).
The thirty-first council (24:1) commanded the people to supply olive oil for the lamps at the Temple, presumably gratis.
The thirty-second council (24:13) decreed the death penalty for blasphemy or murder and ordained reciprocity for injuring a neighbour and restitution for killing his animal.
The thirty-third or second-last council (25:1) decreed fallow every seventh year and a Jubilee every forty-ninth. It elaborated complex rules for buying or selling real estate ahead of a Jubilee. It proscribed lending money with interest to a fellow Israelite or treating him like a slave, but it condoned the acquisition of foreign slaves (25:44-46). It bears repeating that despite the leadoff justification, "The Lord said to Moses," the deliberations of this thirty-third council tab the activities of a bustling market economy, not the aimless wandering of nomads depicted in the Book of Exodus.
Leviticus 26 is a rehash of Deuteronomy 28.
The thirty-fourth or last council (27:1) fixed the monetary equivalence of persons vowed to the Lord and empowered priests to set the monetary equivalence of animals, houses or fields vowed to the Lord. A man could recover his vowed animal, house or field by paying a surcharge of 20%. Reading between the lines, the fear of repression (read the twentieth council) must have triggered many reluctant vows to the Lord.