The Book of Leviticus
Leviticus Chapters 23

INTRODUCTION TO THIS STUDY

The purpose of this work is to guide you in Spirit Filled interpretation of this "Selected Study". As necessary we will provide outlines, historical backgrounds, note the purpose and focus of the text, and also provide the original Hebrew language definitions for the key words in the highlighted text. The English translation used is the King James (Authorized) Version, not because it is the best translation available, but because I just plain prefer it for study!

All Scripture text will be presented in normal cased lettering, and all notes within the text will be in TRUE TYPE FONT, as shown. This (I hope) will allow you to avoid confusion between God's Word and my notes. As I update this website, I will continue to embellish the text so that anyone using NETSCAPE 3.0 or MICROSOFT 3.0 or higher will be able to read the document easier.
 

An excellent site to study Biblical Hebrew is by Lee R. Martin, Biblical Hebrew. The following are excerpts from his Hebrew Dictionary (if you want more, go to his site):

ABSOLUTE: In Hebrew Greek grammar, a word is absolute when it stands independently and has no grammatical relation to other elements in the sentence. The most common instance in Greek is the genitive absolute.

ABSOLUTE STATE: The Hebrew absolute together with a word in the construct state expresses the genitive. Do not confuse with the infinitive absolute. Heb: king (absolute); horse of (construct) the king (absolute), i.e., the king's horse (genitive).

ACCIDENCE: That part of grammar that treats inflection; a subcategory of morphology.

ACCUSATIVE CASE: A substantive used as the direct object of a transitive verb is said to be in the accusative case. In Greek, the accusative is the case of extension. Heb: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). Gk: "He gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12).

ACCUSATIVE ENDING: In Hebrew see DIRECTIVE h.

ACTIVE VOICE: In the active voice, the subject is the doer of the action that is expressed by the verb.

AKTIONSART: German for "kind of action."

ANARTHROUS: A word that appears without the article is anarthrous.

ARAMAIC: A branch of the northwest Semitic languages that is closely related to Hebrew. In the OT Masoretic text, Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26; Dan. 2:4b-7:28; and Jer. 10:11 are in Aramaic rather than Hebrew. Aramaic had become the common language of the Jewish people by NT times.

CASE: Case shows the grammatical relation of inflected forms such as nouns and pronouns to other words (nominative, possessive, objective cases).

CAUSATIVE VERB: A transitive verb that can be said to cause the action depicted in a corresponding intransitive verb. Ex: lay ("cause to lie") is the causative of lie; raise, the causative of rise.

DIRECT OBJECT: The word, phrase, or clause that is the primary goal or result of the action of the verb (cf. accusative case); the person or thing is directly affected by the action of the verb. Heb: "God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). Gr: "He grabbed him and began to choke him" (Matt. 18:28).

GENITIVE: The case that expresses possession or specifies a relationship that can be expressed in English by "of." In Hebrew this is called a construct relationship. The Greek genitive is the specifying case answering the question "What kind?" Heb: "the expanse of the sky" (Gen. 1:21). Gk: "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Mark 1:4).

GUTTURALS: The mute consonants whose sounds are produced when the front of the tongue approaches the palate of the mouth. Four letters in Hebrew, a h j and [ are the guttural letters (r has some guttural characteristics). Hebrew gutturals cannot be doubled, prefer a-class vowels, and composite shevas. In Greek, the guttural letters are g k and c also called velars, laryngeals, or palatals.

HITHPAEL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses intensive or emphatic action (classified by some grammars as causative action) and reflexive voice. For this emphasis in Greek, middle voice. Heb: "A group of adventurers gathered around [lit., gathered themselves around] him" (Judg. 11:3).

HOPHAL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses causative action and passive voice. Heb: "Let seven of his male descendants be given [hophal] to us" (2 Sam. 21:6).

IMPERATIVE: A verb or verbal mood that expresses command or makes a request.

IMPERFECT: In Hebrew, the form of the verb used to express action that is incomplete or unfinished. Heb: "What if they do not believe me" (Exod. 4:1). The Greek imperfect tense expresses incomplete, linear action in past time. Gk: "People were eating and drinking..." (Luke 17:28). Other regular uses of the tense include iterative, frequentative, inceptive, and conative.

INFINITIVE: A verbal noun that has characteristics of both verbs and nouns. In English usually introduced by to. Hebrew has both infinitive absolute and infinitive construct forms. Heb: "I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land" (Gen. 15:7). The Greek infinitive is used as a substantive, in subordinate clauses, with prepositions, and in epexegesis. Gk: "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Phil. 1:21).

INFINITIVE ABSOLUTE: A form of the Hebrew infinitive that may function in a number of ways: to express certainty or intensification ("you will surely die," Gen. 2:17); to express repeated or continued action ("Be ever hearing," Isa. 6:9); as a finite verb ("They...broke the jars," Judg. 7:19); to express an emphatic imperative ("Remember the Sabbath day," Exod. 20:8).

MASORETIC TEXT: The vocalized text of the Hebrew Bible, prepared by a group of Jewish scholars around A.D. 700 to preserve the oral pronunciation of the Hebrew words.

MOOD: Mood indicates the manner in which the action is conceived (or its relation to reality). Moods are indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative. Mood may be expressed by finite verbs in Greek and by various means (form, words, or context) in Hebrew. Mode.

NIPHAL: A verbal form (stem) in Hebrew that expresses simple action and passive or reflexive voice. Heb: "She was given in marriage to Adriel of Meholah" (1 Sam. 18:19).

OPTATIVE MOOD: The mood of possibility and more doubtful assertion that expresses wish or desire. See also jussive and cohortative. Heb: "If only we had died in Egypt!" (Num. 14:2). Gk: "Maythe Lord direct your hearts into God's love and Christ's perseverance" (2 Thess. 3:5).

PARTICIPLE: A verbal form that has characteristics of both noun and verb. In Hebrew it represents characteristic, continual, uninterrupted action. Heb: "The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" (Gen. 1:2). The Greek participle is widely used as a substantive, adjective, and adverb in phrases and clauses. Gk:"...in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him" (1 Peter 1:21).

PARTICLE: A unit of speech that is ranked as an uninflected word but expresses some kind of syntactical relationship or some general aspect of meaning. Some grammarians classify all conjunctions, prepositions, and negatives as particles.

PASSIVE VOICE: A voice form of the verb that represents the subject as receiver of the action. Heb: "This land was given to us as our possession" (Ezek. 11:15). Gk: "You were marked in him with a seal" (Eph. 1:13).

PERFECT/PERFECT TENSE: In Hebrew, this form of the verb is used to express completed action, whether in reality or in the thought of the speaker or writer. Heb: rm'v; is a perfect form of the verb and would be translated "he guarded." The Greek perfect tense, by contrast, represents a state of completion with abiding results and is often translated as a present perfect. Gk: The perfect leluke would be rendered "he has released."

PIEL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses intensive or emphatic action and active voice. Heb: "They destroyed the high places and the altars" (2 Chron. 31:1).

PREPOSITION: A word that shows relationships between its object and some other word in the sentence. Some common English prepositions are in, to, from, with, above, for, by.

PRETERITE: A Latin name for the past tense; it is the equivalent of the perfect in Hebrew and the aorist indicative in Greek.

PUAL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses intensive or emphatic action and passive voice. Heb: "There was Baal's altar, demolished" (Judg. 6:28).

QAL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses simple action and active voice; it is sometimes spelled Kal. Ex:"Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew" (Gen.25:34).

REFLEXIVE VOICE: Denotes an action that is directed back upon the agent or subject; expressed in Hebrew by the niphal and the hithpael, in Greek by the middle voice.Heb: "I have...kept myself from sin" (Ps. 18:23). Gk: "Then he went away and hanged himself" (Matt. 27:5).

ROOT: That part of a word left when all affixes are removed; the morpheme that carries the minimal unit of meaning in a word and can be common to several different words. The three consonants in Hebrew that ordinarily compose the basic uninflected spelling of a word are called the root letters. Occasionally a Hebrew word may have two or four root letters. Gk: the root dik- is common to dikaio", "righteous," dikh, "justice," and dikaiow, "to acquit." Also called "Lexeme."

STATIVE VERB, STATIC VERB: A stative verb is one that indicates a state of being or relationship rather than action. In Hebrew, its vowel pattern is different from that of verbs of action or motion. Greek statives include eijmi, ginomai, and uJparcw. Heb: "the hands...will be strengthened (2 Sam. 16:21). Gk: "Who, being in very nature God" (Phil. 2:6).

STEM: The noun or verb base formed by the addition of derivational affixes to the root. Thus, in Greek, doro- is the stem of the noun doron, "gift"; do- is the root, ro is the affix (in this case, a suffix). Also called base in recent grammars. In Hebrew, the term is used to designate verb forms that express certain kinds of action and voice; the major Hebrew verbal stems are qal, niphal, piel, pual, hithpael, hiphil, and hophal.

STRONG VERB: In Hebrew, the regular verb whose stem consonants do not change, i.e., remain unmodified in conjugation, in contrast to the weak verb. In Greek, a tense stem formed from the verb stem or root itself by vowel gradation.

VOICE: Voice is a modification of a verb that tells whether the subject of the verb acts or is acted upon. There are three voices in English, Hebrew, and Greek: active, passive, and reflexive.

WEAK VERB: In Hebrew, the verbs with gutturals or weak letters ( n in first root position, y and w in first or second root position, identical second and third root letters) as radicals, which produce modifications in the conjugation, in contrast to the strong verb. In Greek, a tense stem formed by adding a suffix to the verb stem or root.

If you discover obvious errors (as I am human, and do make mistakes), please let me know. Do not contact me to argue about the doctrinal differences that you may have with my teaching. I do not argue Theology with anyone, so all Legalists, cultists, and others with extremist views, please save your (and my) time. If you want to discuss your doctrinal differences, or share a viewpoint, please contact me at Didaskalos Ministries. I am not so arrogant as to think I know it all, or even 1% of what the scripture teaches.
 
 

1  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

2  Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts(mow`ed [mo-ade'], feasts, celebrations, a time of happiness, a sacred festival)

of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts.
 

3  Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath (shabbath [shab-bawth'], a resting time, to repose or desist from exertion. The Sabbath was established by God to emphasize that there is nothing we as people can do to earn or deserve salvation)

of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings.
 

4  These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons.

5  In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD'S passover (The Passover [pecach {peh'-sakh}, see Exodus 12.11]was a type of Christ. It was instituted when the Death Angel "passed over" Israel and smote the unbelieving Egyptians, thus releasing Israel from bondage. Without the blood of the Passover sprinkled on the door posts of the house, the Angel came in and killed the firstborn).
 

6  And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread (The unleavened bread {matstsah [mats-tsaw'], a sweet or non-yeasted bread} symbolized fellowship with God in time. Leaven throughout Scripture symbolized sin - unleavened bread was therefore symbolically "without sin", and you fellowshipped around the table in the ancient world {much like Churches do today})

unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread.
 

10  Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest (the harvest was completely reaped before bringing the offering to God. This was to symbolize that there would be a great harvest of Old Testament souls saved by the resurrected Christ. The offering was "waved" {nuwph [noof], quivered or waved in the air} to symbolize that a greater number than those saved in the Old Testament would be saved in the New Testament era)

thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits (The "Feast of Firstfruits" was always celebrated in the Promised Land by a people in fellowship with God. Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Firstfruits were all held within an eight day period in April {the first month in the Jewish calendar}. In June Israel celebrated Pentecost - then all feasts were suspended until August. It is supposed by some theologians that the gap in the celebration represented the Church Age and the dispersion of Israel, though I will not be dogmatic on this)

of your harvest unto the priest:
 

11  And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath (see {1 Corinthians 5:6-8  Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:  Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.}; our Lord was resurrected three days after His death on Sunday, during the feast of the Firstfruits. Christ, our Passover, died on the Passover for us, thus fulfilling all prophecy and Old Testament types)

the priest shall wave it.
 

15  And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete:
 

16  Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; (this is Pentecost, which was symbolic of both the start of the Church Age and the dispersion of Israel in 70 AD)

and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD.
 

17  Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves (the wave loaf symbolized the Church Age believer. "Two" because of {Matthew 18:20 "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them"}; "wave" because the loaves were waved in the air in dedication to God; and standard leavened loaves because, though we are dedicated to God, we still can sin, though {1 John 1:8-10 "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.} applies)

of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the LORD.
 

18  And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without blemish of the first year, and one young bullock, and two rams: they shall be for a burnt offering (symbolic of the Propitiation or Payment of Christ on the Cross. {1 Peter 1:19  "But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot"})

unto the LORD, with their meat offering, and their drink offerings, even an offering made by fire, of sweet savor unto the LORD.
 

19  Then ye shall sacrifice one kid of the goats for a sin offering, (Offering made when the sin was one of cognizance, or known)

and two lambs of the first year for a sacrifice of peace offerings (Once the Sin Offering was made, the believer had reconciliation with God and Peace - thus the Peace Offering was made; a Gift to God, not a token to appease Him {Romans 5:1 "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ"}. As believers today, we give our obedience to God after salvation as a present to Him, not as a means of making restitution).

23  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
 

24  Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, (October, our time)

in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, (symbolizes the regathering of Israel at the Second Advent of Christ {Isaiah 11:11-12  "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.  And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth"})

an holy convocation. (qodesh [ko'-desh] miqra' [mik-raw']; a sacred calling out, sacred day set aside by God. Special Sabbaths like these were a reminder to the faithless that God was yet faithful {2 Timothy 2:13  "If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself"})
 

25  Ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD.
 

26  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

27  Also on the tenth day of this seventh month (October 10th, our time)

there shall be a day of atonement: it shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall afflict your souls, (Refers to self examination, careful scrutiny of the soul. {Philippians 2:12 "Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling"} Too many assume that they are "saved" because they are faithful members of a Church, or members of a club or organization that does good works. But frankly, my dearest, if you ain't got Jesus inside, you ain't a Christian! Poor grammar, but great truth. The Christian is one who operates in the sphere of Love in all that he or she does. If you are operating in bigotry, selfishness, laziness, etc., then you are operating like an unbeliever and may be hell bound! {Matthew 7:21-24 "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.  Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock"})

and offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD.
 

28  And ye shall do no work (You can do nothing to earn or deserve the atoning salvation of Christ but believe{see Hebrews 9.6-14; Leviticus 16})

in that same day: for it is a day of atonement, to make an atonement (kaphar [kaw-far'], to expiate or place a covering on sin. We cannot cover our own sin, for we are sinful and all that we touch is contaminated. It took a pure Person to bear our sins, Jesus Christ. {1 Peter 2:24  "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed"})

for you before the LORD your God.
 

34  Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh month (October 15th by our calendar)

shall be the feast of tabernacles (cukkah [sook-kaw'], booths, tents. These are temporary shelters that the Israelites were to dwell in for seven days {see vs 42}. The purpose was to remind the Israelite that all they had, they had because of the overwhelming Grace of God. When they lived in Egypt they had nothing - God gave all. {Psalms 75:6-7 "For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south.  But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another"} )

for seven days unto the LORD.
 

40  And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice (samach [saw-makh'], rejoice, be glad, shine, have a celebration)

before the LORD your God seven days.
 

41  And ye shall keep it a feast unto the LORD seven days in the year. It shall be a statute for ever in your generations: ye shall celebrate it in the seventh month.
 

42  Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths:(see Zechariah 14.4, where this feast is shown in its fulfillment)
 

43  That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.