Welcome to the Love and Context podcast, engaging in unscripted conversations with your hosts,
Ben and Spencer.
Whether you're tuning in from your car, your office, your home, or anywhere in between,
we are so happy to have you join us today.
Our mission is simple, to explore the Bible through a powerful lens of love.
Together we'll uncover fresh insights and gain deeper understandings of how we can love
God and love the people in our everyday lives.
So buckle up and join us on this spiritual journey as we discover timeless wisdom that
is just as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago.
Without further ado, let's dive right in.
Welcome to the Love and Context podcast with Ben and Spencer.
Today we're going to be in Leviticus.
Again.
More Leviticus.
Yeah, we're going to be talking this one we've titled, The Weird Ones.
Yeah, so it's really funny because when we started talking about going through Torah,
everybody was asking me, they're like, what are you going to do when you get to Leviticus?
Are you just going to ignore those ones that everybody has issues with?
And on a very general level, I'm going to say, yes, we're going to ignore them because
we're not going to get into the nitty gritty, it's like the people always get upset about,
right?
We're more going to talk about broad context, which is basically what we've been doing
for the last 21 weeks.
Yeah.
I mean, if you've listened to us at all, you'll realize that this is more of a broad context
sweep, not necessarily a deep dive into some of this stuff.
Yeah.
We're trying to just really talk about how do we actually live this stuff out as Christians
and what does the old husband have to teach us about following Jesus?
Yeah.
Which turns out is a lot.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
We should caveat.
Okay.
We're going to talk about some of the weird issues, weird laws that come up in Leviticus.
If you're already super unsettled about these laws, what we talk about today is not going
to be helpful for you.
You're going to need to do more of a deep dive for your own.
There's tons of resources.
I think Bible Project has some, but there's also like a ton of scholars and theologians
who have material on this stuff.
Yeah.
If you're just curious, like how do I put this in a framework of the Bible?
Today's conversation is going to be really helpful.
And I just want to specify that because we're not here to change your mind today.
We're here to add some context.
Yeah, so that's just a little precursor to what's going to happen today.
To start us off today, if you have not read Leviticus 18, you should go read it.
Yeah.
And then you should be like, do I want to continue listening?
Do I want to continue listening?
That's where we're going to start off today.
And we're going to be starting to talk about laws around sexual behavior.
Yeah.
Specifically, we're going to do with three separate things.
So we're going to talk about sexual laws.
We're going to talk about laws as they pertain to slavery, and we're going to talk about
gender based laws.
Yeah.
So how do these laws actually crop up?
We're going to start with the sexual laws.
So jumping over to Leviticus 18, I'm just going to read a little bit of it because I
just, I think it's really important to understand the kind of literature we're stepping into.
Yeah, absolutely.
So Leviticus 18.1 says, the Lord said to Moses, speak to the Israelites and say to them, I
am the Lord your God.
You must not do as they do in Egypt where you used to live, and you must not do as they
do in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you.
Do not follow their practices.
You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees.
I am the Lord your God.
Okay.
Going down to verse six, we're going to start listing the laws.
So no one is to approach a close relative to have sexual relations.
I am the Lord your God.
Do not dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother.
She is your mother.
Do not have sexual relations with her.
Do not have sexual relations with your father's wife.
That would dishonor your father.
Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father's daughter or your mother's
daughter where she was born in the same home or elsewhere.
Do not have sexual relations with your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter.
That would dishonor you.
Do not have sexual relations with the daughter of your father's wife.
I'm born to your father.
She is your sister and so on.
This is a lot of Leviticus 18.
We're not going to read the whole chapter.
And so I think when you read something like this, especially when you've read Genesis
and Exodus and even the beginning of Leviticus, they're talking about like rules and rituals
and all these things.
You read the chapter and you're like, what just happened?
Yeah.
And you need to understand the sexual practices that happened in Egypt and in Canaan.
Right.
So if you like broad strokes overview on this for you, incest was a common state in Egypt.
So it was actually more common for you to have sexual relations with your sister to
keep the quote unquote pure bloodline going, especially if you're in royalty.
It was more common to see things like that happen than it was not.
If you read this from a Westernized standpoint, like from culture that we live in America,
we'd be like, yeah, no duh.
We shouldn't do those things.
Right.
But you have to understand that these are actually pretty common practices from the
land that they were coming from.
And so for the Lord to say, hey, do not live as they lived.
This is how you're supposed to live when it comes to sexual relations.
And right at the top of that chapter, God specifically says, I don't want you to behave
like everyone else.
Yeah.
Like everybody else that you're going to be around.
I don't want you to look like that.
Let's just try to contextualize us.
So when we interpret Leviticus, and we've talked about this throughout this book, stop
interpreting it like God is mad with you.
He's not giving you a list of if you do this, I'm going to break you.
He's giving these laws as a wedding gift to his people to teach them how to be a kingdom
of priests, to put his kingdom on display and reach the entire world, to be a blessing
so that all people are blessed.
Yeah.
So that the entire kingdom actually puts the kingdom of God on display and they are made
into a healthier, more ethical society.
Yeah.
So if we assume that these laws are actually for our good and not just to mess with us,
then we're going to have to place these in a different context.
So first thing you were talking about, Spencer, is health.
Right?
Now we know from modern science that if you intermingle close bloodlines, you end up with
a ton of deformities.
Right?
There's a lot of physical things that show up.
There's a lot of mental things that show up.
And you can also get to the point where your lines are so muddled that you can no longer
conceive and keep going.
Like your generation's just stopped.
So we know that.
We are not medical professionals, so we're not going to claim a bunch of details on that,
but go do some research.
It takes a junior high level research via Google to make that happen.
There's a lot of biology textbooks that'll explain a lot of those things.
So go do some research on that if you don't know what we're talking about.
Just by abstaining from what is listed here, you're going to live a healthier life.
One of the things we see right away is that God is bringing this law to bring life to
the Israelites.
It is not a punishment.
It is not, hey, you can't be like everybody else because I'm going to punish you.
No, this is actually, this is good for you.
Yeah.
You come into these laws, you say, why would God even mention this?
We talked about like pork and seafood and hygiene and all these different things that
are going on in Leviticus.
This is God doing something for the Israelites that is going to completely change them among
all the nations.
They're going to go from being like the weakest of nations to the strongest of nations because
they're not getting sick and dying.
Their bloodlines aren't polluted.
They're able to actually grow into a strong, healthy, functioning, ethically moving nation.
Like this is the goal.
One of the things that keeps coming to mind when we talk about this type of stuff, I remember
when I was a kid and my parents were like, you have to eat your vegetables.
Right?
I did not want to eat my vegetables.
It was a change from eating junk food, which I liked.
My favorite dish growing up was mac and cheese.
Oh yeah.
Especially like the pre-made boxed garbage.
Yeah.
By the way, I got to just side note in here.
I just had some mac and cheese recently where we put spicy chorizo in it.
Oh.
Yeah, it was really good.
Oh yeah.
So little me would not have loved it because it would have been weird to put that in, but
older me is like, yes.
Yes.
And then whenever we'd have a meal, my parents are like, hey, here's a salad.
Here's some carrots.
My mom actually really liked kale growing up, which I still don't like kale, but it was
always on my plate and I always had to eat it.
Man, kale.
But I can tell you is that my parents weren't doing that because they hated me.
They're doing that because they're looking out for me.
So that's a weird analogy to use here, but God's doing the same thing here with the sexual
practices.
He's saying, hey, don't live how you have known to live the past 400 years in slavery.
Yeah.
And in a different way.
Exactly.
And it comes back to like the nature of sin itself.
We think God's holding out on us.
We're like, God, I know there's bacon cheeseburgers.
Why can't I have bacon cheeseburgers?
Bacon cheeseburgers are fine, but if you only bacon cheeseburgers, you're going to get clogged
arteries and die.
You're going to get heart disease and die.
You can look at the numbers in America.
We have heart disease on the rise.
Why?
Take a look at our fast food.
That's not to say you can't eat fast food, but if you consist on a diet of fast food,
it's going to cause problems.
And so all the way back in Genesis, we talked about this.
Eve looks at the tree and she says, it's desirable for gaining something that I feel like God's
holding out on me.
And once again, God is giving them an ability to say, hey, these are things that bring life.
It's almost like when Paul says that the law was meant to bring life, but it only brought
death.
He knew what he was talking about.
Yeah, absolutely.
So there's two things that were going on with sexual practices and there are various laws
that are addressed here.
So just understand I'm painting with a very broad brush.
Some of the sexual practices were based around accumulating power.
So if you're a son and you sleep with your father's wife, even if it's not your mother,
you're actually asserting your authority over your father.
These are things about accumulating power.
And not only this, a lot of the sexual practices are also tied to deity worship, which is why
you see in chapter 19 when it's talking about how we're going to treat each other because
we're going to actually talk in a couple of weeks about love one another.
He actually deals with the worship of malec around all these sexual ideas.
Why you have a lot of sexual practice that is put into worship, which is a lot of also
what's going on in the Corinthian Church in the New Testament and what Paul is dealing
with in Ephesus, Corinth and a few other places.
Yeah.
We wanted to provide some contextual commentary for you.
Yeah.
So just had, that's all we were doing on that.
Whereas not deep dive.
If you want to research that more, go read Leviticus 18, go find some more things to
read on that and you'll be surprised.
A lot of times when you're in reading these laws, stop reading them as what are they actually
telling them me to do as opposed to what are they trying to actually bring out of me?
I think about when Jesus in the New Testament says, you have heard it said, but I say unto
you and he's saying, this was always supposed to produce this.
What is the reality of like restricting your sexual behavior to a certain format?
What does that actually produce in you?
Produces loyalty, produces failty.
It produces a partnership with your spouse, like all these different things.
Like start to think about those types of things when you're interpreting Leviticus.
I think that's the place where a lot of times we get ourselves in trouble.
Yeah.
When we're reading the Old Testament.
Yeah.
You know, where a lot of people struggle.
Yeah.
So we're jumping onto slavery, just jumping onto slavery.
Yeah.
We're going to talk about slavery for a bit.
First thing we want to know on slavery at this point, we're going to be referencing
some stuff in Leviticus 19, some stuff in Leviticus 25.
So you turn over to those chapters if you need to.
We are not talking slavery as in the context that we know it in the US.
Correct.
Or even like the transatlantic slave transatlantic.
Yeah, we're not.
We are not talking slavery in that context.
Yeah.
We are not the biblical context of slavery and we need to understand that.
So Ben, do you want to talk more on the context of slavery?
Yeah.
And that's not to be like, I want to be really fair to people who actually take the biblical
context and then carry it forward to talk about transatlantic slavery.
I think that's completely appropriate.
Yeah.
But you need to start in the right place.
Yeah.
In biblical times.
So we're just going to go with the time of Egypt, Canaan, all those areas.
Slavery would either happen because a nation was conquered and their people were placed
in segregation underneath their rulers.
And in the case of in Egypt, they just placed them into slavery and then forced them to
actually build them.
But they still had like houses and jobs and all these things, but they weren't just free
to go and do whatever they wanted.
So that's slavery more like what we would understand it being conquest and that you
are actually ruled over by an authority.
But a much more common form of slavery in that time is if you don't own land or you
owe massive debts that you cannot pay, you would take yourself and place yourself into
slavery underneath somebody who would cover your debt.
And then you would work for them for a certain amount of time, usually you and your family
for a certain amount of time.
And then when that debt is repaid, you would be set free.
And it's because you don't have the money, the resources, whatever it is to actually
pay off this debt.
And so this is a very common thing that ends up coming up through here.
Stepping into that context, we want to be really sensitive like as we're talking about
this.
One of the pieces I want to pull is from Leviticus 19, 33 to 34.
And it specifically is how Israel is supposed to treat people who don't belong to them.
So this would include people that place themselves into slavery or people that they take captive
in the conquest.
It says in Leviticus 19, 33, when an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not
oppress the alien.
The alien who resides with you shall be to you as a citizen among you.
You shall love the alien as yourself for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
I am the Lord your God.
So extraterrestrials are in the Bible.
Yes, exactly.
And that's true.
Yeah.
Honestly, with the recent stuff in the news, like that's no, the alien being people that
aren't from your actual tribe.
And so the whole preface in treating anybody who's outside of your tribe, God says you
got to love them like they're part of your tribe.
And this is so countercultural.
This is not what Egypt did to the Israelites.
This is not what other nations did to people that were outsiders.
Yeah.
When we looked at the Pharaoh that rises up, right?
He says he places this us and them.
What if they do this and what if they do that?
And he didn't recognize them as actually members of their society.
Yeah.
It's really important.
We understand that everything that comes after this is with this in mind.
Right?
So specifically, let's take a look in Leviticus where it talks about slavery of fellow Israelites.
Take a look at 25 verse 39.
If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to you, do not make them
work as slaves.
They are to be treated as hired workers or temporary residents among you.
They are to work for you until the year of Jubilee.
Then they and their children are to be released and they will go back to their own clans and
the property of their ancestors.
Because the Israelites are my servants whom I brought out of Egypt.
They must not be sold as slaves.
Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God.
Now what I've heard a lot of people take from this is they say, okay, we can't do that to
Israelites so you can do it to other people.
No.
Leviticus 19 is still there.
Right?
And so it's predicated on this fact that you're supposed to love the alien as yourself.
The person who's on the outside you're supposed to love as yourself.
And so what we actually end up seeing in a lot of these spots in Leviticus 25, God's
saying Israelites don't enslave one another and Israelites don't oppress one another.
And he says it again in a couple of verses later, Israelites, you may have, you might
have foreign slaves, but don't oppress one another.
Then he says later in later in that same chapter, impoverished Israelites may sell themselves
to foreigners, but they must be redeemed at least be released in the Jubilee year.
But Israelites don't oppress one another.
Now what's the overriding thing that happens over and over this chapter?
Don't oppress one another.
By the way, Jesus says a new command I give to you, love one another as I have loved you.
It's a new interpretation on an old command.
Don't oppress each other, but love each other.
And so we're talking about a society where slavery is normal in a different context,
not in the context of I am going to rip you out of your home, your world and bring you
to another place and force you to work.
That's not the context we're talking about.
We're talking about people who are saying, Hey, I'm indebted to you here.
Let me work for you for X amount of time to pay off my debt.
Let me and my family work for you so our debt can be paid.
So we got to understand that in this context and the word that they use to describe this
type of lifestyle was slavery.
The verse that comes up that people have quoted to me the most, actually it's not in Leviticus,
believe it or not.
They always say it's from Leviticus.
It was actually from Exodus.
So see if you're familiar with this one.
Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies
as a direct result.
And then there's the stipulation that if he doesn't die, then their own recompense and
like all these different things, right?
Now you can be uncomfortable with that statement.
And I think that's completely appropriate.
Once again, context, because in that culture, if you are the master and you beat the slave
and they die and you're the conquesting nation, do you have any responsibility?
No, you don't.
When God says, no, that's going to change, you're actually going to place value.
You're going to place dignity.
You're going to place equity on these.
Now you don't hear that in probably 2023 as revolutionary, but God is laying down some,
to quote the colloquialism of modern day, he's spitting bars, right?
Like he is like dropping fire left and right for them.
And they're like, really?
This is what we have to do?
Like we have to behave this way.
We behave this way, God.
You want us to be this way.
It's almost like God saying, we're going to set you apart for greater work.
Yeah.
That doesn't ring a bell at all, does it?
No, not at all.
That doesn't sound, God never says, Hey, be different, just like I'm different.
I'll be holy like I'm holy.
Be therefore perfect as I am perfect.
He never says anything like that in the Bible ever.
Yeah.
And then the whole thing here is that in a land where slavery is the norm.
Yeah, God tells them to be abnormal because it's not just that we've talked about Sabbath.
So once a week they recognize that their worth comes not from what they can produce, but
from whose identity they're made in.
Right?
Yeah.
And every seven years it's at Rinden Leviticus in same area, by the way, then the second half
Leviticus, every seven years, they're actually called not only to place their faith like
they do every, every week where they one day a week don't work, but they're actually asked
to not work the land for an entire year, place their faith that God will provide.
Yeah.
Allow the land to rejuvenate.
Yeah.
Now I know there's a ton of environmental people who recognize the value in land not
being worked one out of every seven years, right?
It actually replenishes and you actually have to carry on nutrients and all these different
things.
You don't overtax the land.
But the crazy thing is every seven of seven years, so the 50th year, you're supposed to
celebrate this thing called Jubilee where everybody who, if they own debt, they're in
slavery, they're completely covered, they've sold their ancestral land, whatever it is,
God says, you got to set them free and you got to give them their land back.
Accumulate all you want in those 50 years, but at 50 years, you got to make sure that
people aren't going into generational slavery, generational debt.
How crazy would it be if we as Christians lived with this mentality that we did not
let people live in generational chaos?
I was just thinking of that rule, the return things to its owners essentially after every
50 years.
I'm like, my house is 41 years old.
And I was like, as you're saying that, I'm like, I got nine years.
Yeah.
And I was like, okay, wait, that's not how that works anymore.
But that's the mindset that was going on.
Yeah.
And then there's kind of things like if you were a member of Israel, you would actually
have land that's yours no matter what.
The person could then can sell their land again, but then you're dealing with the next
generation.
So what God is doing is he's setting up an economy where you can grow and you can be
creative, you can work in business.
But at the same time, if you're going to be faithful to Yahweh, then you also have to
care about people and their future, which is a very profound lesson.
Yeah.
So God says where slavery might be the norm, I'm going to speak something into this and
actually change the course of what this is going to look like in the future.
Yeah.
This is a lot of what God does throughout the Word of God.
He is speaking into our life and the ramifications and what it does long term is massive.
Huge.
Massive.
Huge.
So last one.
And this is one that goes all throughout the Bible and there is probably even listeners
who disagree with us on some of our perspectives on men and women in the church.
Yeah.
Now, just a reminder for speaking into context about the gender-based laws that are going
on in Leviticus.
Genesis 1, God says we're going to make mankind in our image, male and female, He created
them.
Man and woman together are the image of God.
We represent God together.
And so that is the basis by which we start interpreting everything going forward.
It's also the reason Paul describes marriage as an example of the relationship we have
as a church with Christ because marriage is supposed to signify the completeness of our
relationship being restored to Christ.
Yeah.
That's so good.
I like, you shot my brain off like 15 different ways.
So I'm just like, oh, I love that.
There are a couple of gender-based laws in the Book of Leviticus that I want to address
that I think are, that are problematic for people when they interpret them.
So the first one is this idea of the redemption price being different for males and females.
This is in, this is later in Leviticus.
And basically the firstborn is supposed to belong to God.
And if the firstborn is not given to God, now, once again, this is not human sacrifice
because God says you can't do that.
And I specify that because sometimes people, when they say give to God, they're like, oh,
so God's promoting sacrifice.
No, He's already made it very clear.
Melek, not happening.
He made it clear with Abraham and Isaac that this is not what He ever requires.
Right?
In fact, if it's ever going to happen where a somebody is going to have to lay their life
on behalf of somebody else, He's going to do it Himself.
Yeah.
Which He proved.
Yeah, exactly.
There's this section where it talks about the children and the redemption price of different
children when you bring them in at different ages and adults.
And so if they come in, they're part of your culture, they become part of your family,
part of your tribe, all those different things.
There's these different redemption rates.
And so I'm going to go through them really quick because it's super boring, but also
just good for us to know.
So if you have a child age 0 to 4, the male is five shekels, the female is three shekels
to redeem.
If it's 5 to 19, it's 20 shekels for the male, 10 shekels for the female.
20 to 59, there's 50 versus 30.
60 and over, it's 15 versus 10.
Okay?
Now you look at that and on a very broad level, you would say, oh, men are worth more than
women.
The problem is what this is specifically addressing is ability to work in a agricultural wandering
society, hunter gathering, right?
Farming, right?
A lot of physical labor.
Now on a general level, very general level, men are going to be more productive in those
fields than women physically.
Men are just built different.
Now that is the rule, not the exception.
There's tons of women who would work circles around me, especially after I hurt my back.
And so I'm not discounting somebody's ability to do things, but these are actually based
on the type of work, not the value of the person.
What is the actual return on ability?
Yeah.
Right?
When the redemption cycle is going through, that's what's actually coming into place.
A boy, specifically a male between 20 and 59 is worth 50 shekels, right?
Because that's the prime of their working ability.
But after 59, it decreases significantly.
Why?
Because they physically can't work as well.
Right?
Makes sense.
Yeah.
Okay.
So when you understand that this is not a qualitative assessment, it is a quantitative
assessment, it helps you put this law into context.
On the broader context, outside cultures outside of the Israelites did not have a redemption
price for women.
Correct.
So if you're talking, if you're looking at this from a contextual standpoint, and the
culture of which the Israelites were placed at the time, this puts tremendous value on
women.
Correct.
Because it's saying, hey, we are worth more than the garbage that we are treated like
via other cultures.
Because very frequently in the culture surrounding in Mesopotamia, that area, women are going
to be valued for the children they can produce, and specifically the boys they can produce
or the girls that they can marry off.
Yeah.
They're going to be their value.
And yet God says here, no, there is an intrinsic labor-based value for women, and there's also
a value of dignity and equity.
Yeah.
Now, I understand when you read that, if you are like, they should be equal, all those different
things, I completely hear you.
And I don't even disagree with you.
But I'm trying to help you add some context.
So once again, I said, if you're not comfortable or you're upset about these things in general,
our conversation may or may not be helpful.
And I would say, don't get hung up on the price point.
Correct.
That's not necessarily what is the focus should be here.
The focus should be that there's being value placed on women where there was not in the
known world at the time.
Correct.
And so what will that actually produce in the nation?
What will that actually cause them to do or become?
Right?
Yeah.
So the other gender-based law is there's instructions we talked a couple of weeks ago about hygiene
law.
And I explained how being unclean doesn't mean sinful.
It means that you're unclean.
Yeah.
So it might be based on hygiene.
It might be based on ritual purification, all those different things.
It's not actually based on sin because a woman is not sinning once a month when she has her
period.
So it's in Leviticus 12.
It says, if she gives birth to a daughter for two weeks, the woman will be unclean as
during her period.
Then she must wait 66 days to be purified from her bleeding.
Now, if you're reading the text, which a lot of people get bogged down in and they read
past, you'll actually notice that for a woman who has a daughter, the period of cleansing
and the period of waiting is actually twice as long.
Now there are a couple of interesting things about that.
And in fact, I actually wrote a couple of blogs that I'm going to link in our podcast
episode where I dive a little bit deeper into these concepts.
And you guys can take a look at that.
When people have interpreted this in the past, there's been a couple of different reactions.
The first is that, hey, this is just misogyny, that it's a girl instead of a boy.
So it's double the time.
And there's actually been biblical commentary where people have made statements like that
the woman sinned first, so she carries a double burden.
That is really bad theology.
It doesn't say that and it doesn't even imply that in the text.
So if somebody's told you that at some point, I'm sorry.
That is not what the Bible is saying.
Another perspective is that the mother is serving purification for what the daughter
might eventually do, which is have a baby.
But because a daughter can produce a baby, she has double purification because she's
serving it for her daughter too.
That one doesn't really hold weight either, but it's rabbinic commentary.
And then there's another commentary piece that people run with and they say that women
are weaker than men.
I've been married for 13 years and I know that is not the case.
My wife showed up to our house the other day.
It was a 200 pound massage chair in the back of our truck.
And I asked her, I was like, how'd you get it up there?
She's like, I just picked it up.
I was like, did you have someone to help you?
And if you see my truck, like it's a lifted Chevy 2500 with a toolbox bed, the bed's four
feet off the ground.
And I'm like, and you just picked up a 200 pound massage chair and threw it in the back
of the truck?
Yep.
Yeah.
Women are not weaker than men.
We're built differently.
We're built differently for different specialties.
And it's really important to know that I was there when both of my kids were born.
I promise you, I am not tougher than my wife.
That did not look pleasant.
I like the end result.
I love my boys, but that did not look pleasant, right?
A lot of these interpretations though, once again, we've said this a bunch of times, if
you interpret the Bible as God is mad at you, if you're saying all of the Torah and Old
Testament until the time that Jesus comes and then suddenly God loves you, is that God
is mad at you, you're going to interpret these the wrong way.
You're going to automatically look at these as punishments.
So if it's not a punishment though, why might God be doing this?
And the God being mad at you, there are two big issues.
I don't know if we've directly said out loud, but I'm just going to say them, is one, if
you're saying God was mad also the Old Testament and all of a sudden he loves you, you're saying
God changed his nature.
Correct.
Which scripture actually tells us that he's the same yesterday, today and forever.
So his nature has not changed.
So if his nature in the New Testament is love, his nature in the Old Testament has to be
love.
Yeah.
And then with that, if Jesus is the perfect representation of the father on earth, then
Jesus should look like an angry old man.
And yet he doesn't.
Right?
We say that Jesus is love, like he actually embodies the idea of love.
So if it's not a punishment though, why might God be doing this?
I did actually do some research and some reading and there are actually some interesting scientific
studies on the way that the body works and why God might have actually instituted double
the time for women as opposed to men.
And apparently there is some sort of toxin only present when girls are born that is present
for a certain amount of time.
And it can actually be better for them if they're actually kept away from people for
a longer period of time.
Now I don't understand why biologically that would be the case, but God did create humanity.
So it stands to reason that he would know that.
But I want to ask you, okay, so we've talked about how women are valued in Mesopotamian
culture.
What's going to happen family after family, generation after generation, tribe after tribe,
like birth after birth, if the mother who only believes that boys are valuable, women
are not, and the family who believes boys are valuable and women are not, if they're
spending twice the amount of time connected to their child before they rejoin society,
time after time after time, like what's going to start happening?
It's going to change society.
Right.
You're going to have mothers who have a stronger bond with their daughters than you've ever
seen before.
Side note, like first couple months that a kid's alive, like the parent that they're
spending the most time with, there's actually been a few studies that indicate that's probably
going to be the parent that they're most connected with.
Right.
And they indicate that and not necessarily prove that it's an indication.
So you're going to have a society change because one, you have a value shifting.
Whether the boys, here's half the time, then let's start mixing other people into the mix.
But the girls, it's no, I need more time because the reality, let's just take this a couple
different ways.
So if you are in the camp where you are like, okay, women should stay at home, be moms,
stuff like that.
First off, being a mom is a horribly difficult job.
It's very rewarding, but horribly difficult job.
I frequently say that my wife's job is way harder than mine.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Because it's true.
Oh yeah.
And so then you have somebody who, if you're in that camp, you have somebody who's okay,
if their focus is creating a home and a place where your hospitality can happen, that's
huge.
Now if you're in the camp where you're like, women should be allowed to work, absolutely.
100%.
I'm there.
I'm there with you too.
There's biblical basis for that.
You have a value system placed on women.
You actually fast forward that value system over into Acts.
And then you have people like Lydia of the purple cloth and other people in Mesopotamian
culture who actually have jobs.
Correct.
And they're the wealthy people.
Yeah.
And even they come back in the Old Testament, there's Ruth working the fields.
There is Deborah serving as a judge.
There are examples all throughout the Old Testament of this happening too.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So I think there's a lot of camps where you're going to go all these different places.
When we interpret the Bible, when we're reading the Bible, right?
We want to try to place it in its context and ask, what is the, who is the audience
that it's directed at?
Now if God is directing this at a culture who has now devalued women, they're only useful
for what they can produce.
And God is changing their mind to tell them they're not useful for what they can produce,
but because of who they are.
And birth after birth, every time a woman is born, you have twice the amount of time
that the family is spending with that kid.
This is going to start to shift or change you generation to generation to the point
where you start to realize the value of women.
Yeah.
It's almost like God plays the long game.
Yeah.
So going back to those camps, like whatever camp you're in, as far as what women should
be allowed and allowed not to do, either camp, there's tremendous value on women.
Correct.
Yeah.
And there is, we try really hard not to take an aggressive stance one way or the other.
There is one aggressive stance that I'm going to take here and it's that women are incredibly
valuable to the kingdom of God.
Stop selling them short.
Yes.
We need to seek God together and allow God to direct what we do and don't do.
A resource for you if you want a great resource on this.
It's written in a little bit of old English, so it's a little tougher read sometimes, but
B.T.
Robert's book, Ordaining Women, great resource for this if you want.
It's not a long read, but it's a great resource if you want some good insight.
Yeah.
It's actually interesting that you mentioned that because obviously we've made clear how
we feel in particular or how we understand God moving through the Bible.
And once again, if you disagree with us, that's okay.
We're still going to love you anyways.
We're still going to love each other anyways.
And we'll probably get to heaven and figure out that we're both wrong.
Right?
B.T.
Robert's book is like 120 years old.
It's like 140 now.
Yeah.
It's like 140 now.
So 140 something like that.
So this conversation is not new.
It's actually been around for a while.
In fact, this is another interesting piece.
Just somebody throwing in here at the end of the podcast.
There is during the time of the Reformation in Germany, there was a pastoral wife like
that were part of the Reformation movement and they had a big church.
The husband died and the wife continued to pastor the church.
And she was the one who was actually leading the church.
And it was one of the most productive churches in Germany during that time.
Like it's just fascinating to me that we just gloss over that.
Yeah.
So hopefully what this is helping you do is play some context and some framework around
these things.
I'm not trying to solve all your issues with Leviticus today because quite honestly, you
need to actually go and do the work.
I mean, we need more than just like eight or nine episodes in Leviticus to do that.
Yeah.
In fact, if you have a specific law that you have a question about, we have a Q&A coming
up in the next couple of episodes.
I think it's three episodes away.
So you should send us an email at lovingcontexts.gmail.com.
You can send us some messages on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and you can also comment
us at our YouTube page.
Any of those places you can email and contact us and let us know like specific questions
that you have about a specific line.
How do we place that in the context of the overall Bible?
Yeah, absolutely.
We'd love to hear from you on that.
We call this one the weird ones.
And I'm hoping actually by the time we actually get to the end of this episode, you actually
don't think they're that weird.
Like you understand the purpose of these laws.
And I think that once you start to understand the purpose, you're actually able to interpret
them in such a way that it brings life.
Because we go back to the beginning and we talk about the sexual laws and what it means
to look like different than everybody else.
What is that producing you?
We talk about slavery.
What does it mean when no matter how low somebody is socioeconomically below you, you add value
and you promote them up?
The good modern day parallel to that is if you live in a community where alcoholism is
a huge problem and you've taken a stance as a follower of Jesus, hey, as long as I'm in
this community, I'm not going to touch alcohol because you recognize it's a huge problem
in your community.
That's a similar thing that's going on here.
Yeah.
Recognizing that alcohol isn't necessarily sinful, but you're able to put on the kingdom
of God on display in such a way in your culture.
And then finally that it's not about your gender, that God has plans for us.
And he is reminding us that we're partners in this endeavor to work together for the
kingdom of God to grow his ways forward.
So that his name is put on display so that all his kids come home.
Now I think we would be remiss of saying that God doesn't require us to change.
He absolutely does.
We cannot follow God and stay the way that we are.
Because the following God requires us to lay ourselves down continually.
Absolutely.
And so don't try to explain away Leviticus, understand it and then live through it.
Yeah.
Empowered by the spirit.
Absolutely.
So that concludes our episode today.
Again we have a Q&A coming up, so please email us questions, message us questions on Instagram,
Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, wherever you want to do that.
We would love to hear from you.
Thank you all for listening and until next time.
Bye bye.
That's a wrap for today's episode.
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for updates.
My mic seems way louder than yours.
Yeah, mine does not seem like it's super loud.
Did I do something?
Did I do something to offend you?
You're like, we've had a little too much of Ben.
Some of this.
Yeah, that looks a little more even.
A little more even, yeah.
A little more, yeah, there we go.
All right.
Welcome to the Love and Context podcast with... I was perfect because I was about to crack
a joke.
You were like going all serious and I was going to be like, oh.
I forgot how to talk.
I went on a cruise and I forgot how to talk.
Well, I mean, you know, your main problem is that you don't have an iPhone.
I was going to try to sneak that by and then Ben's like, nope, nope, nope.
This roll.
It's fresh.