The Most Beautiful Love Story Ever Told…From Leviticus!

One of the most beautiful love stories in the Bible comes from the unlikely book of Leviticus. The aromatic fragrances of romance waft their way in and out of the biblical storyline. There’s Jacob’s romance with Rachel, Boaz’ with Ruth, David’s with Abigail, and a whole book of the Bible, Song of Songs, devoted to the passion between King Solomon and his lowly Shulamite bride, just to name a few. This love story, as we’re about to see, is a love story with Jesus and His bride. As unlikely as Leviticus is to find romance, even more preposterous is chapter 14, the meticulous priestly rituals surrounding the leper on the day of his cleansing! But step back, let’s ponder the key insights of the story, and look at it through the lens of Jesus. “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me” (Jn 5:46).

“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘This shall be the law of the leprous person for the day of his cleansing’” (Lev 14:1-2). “The Lord spoke to Moses” is a commonly repeated phrase in the whole book of Leviticus, a literary “page break” that accounts for most of its chapter divisions. So this account we’re about to read isn’t just Moses’ words. It’s what “the Lord spoke to Moses.” This is coming from the lips of Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the Lord here in our Old Testament. These words spoken by the Lord are as divinely inspired as the red letter words of Jesus we cherish in the Gospels.

As we go through these 32 verses, we’ll encounter live birds, blood, water, scarlet yarn, hyssop, cedar wood, sprinkling, olive oil, burnt offerings and more all interwoven in an elaborate kaleidoscope of priest-oriented rituals. We’re inclined to think, “This is confusing and irrelevant,” so we quickly move on to the next chapter of our read through the Bible plan. Wait! Don’t do that! It’s easy just to throw up our hands and say, “I’m never going to understand all these bizarre symbols and actions.” But thankfully with the help of the Holy Spirit, using Scripture to compare against Scripture, and coming to the Lord as a child, we can catch the heart of God in it. What makes this a bit challenging is that it takes God’s alphabet, that is, the basic pieces and parts of the priesthood and tabernacle, and strings them together in words, which then form a sentence. If one is a novice, having to be taught the alphabet, the sentence loses its beauty and poignancy. A big reason why we find something like Leviticus 14 so distasteful is that because we’re illiterate, not knowing God’s alphabet, so we’re unable to read the sentence. Leviticus 14 is sentence that draws from the alphabet or words of God’s vocabulary set out in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. If we miss this sentence—and what a sentence this is!—we miss the glory and excellency of the Subject of the sentence, Jesus Christ Himself!

More than a sentence, we’re going to see this law of the cleansing of the leper what I like to think of as a play. It’s at heart a play consisting of two acts, centered upon a central theme. Now, when we read Leviticus 14, we can read it in five minutes. When a leper, however, as a participant in this play experienced it, it lasted eight days. He (or she) had lots of time to think and reflect on what was going on. There’s a Greek word, epichorēgeō (ep-ee-khor-ayg-eh’-o), from the theater culture of the time that embodies what’s going on here. The generous theater operator furnishes everything needed for those performing in the play. We not only participate in its choreography but we are furnished with rich grace from the One who is the true Playwright of it all.

Before we dive into the details (and I’ll not develop all of them), we need to understand what’s the heart, the major theme, of the Lord’s play. What I’m proposing to you is that this two-act play is a romance reinforced with images of going home.

What indicates this as a going home story? I observe four clues. We’ll address them in the same order as they appear in the play. After we’ve grasped the conflict and resolution of the going home theme, we’ll circle back to examine the actors’ contributions to that central idea. The first clue is the cedarwood.

“The priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed two live clean birds and cedarwood and scarlet yarn and hyssop” (Leviticus 14:4 ESV).

One of the live birds was slaughtered and its blood mixed with water in an earthenware vessel, or clay pot. The remaining live bird, after being dipped into the water and blood, was released. We’ll examine that next as clue number two.

“And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed of the leprous disease. Then he shall pronounce him clean…” (Leviticus 14:7 ESV).

For a book so exacting in the minutest details, surprisingly Leviticus doesn’t spell out exactly how the cedarwood, scarlet yarn, and hyssop were used. But from the context it’s apparent that all three were used in the sprinkling of the healed leper. The scarlet yarn bound the hyssop to the cedarwood. Hyssop is a commonplace plant of the Middle East used to sprinkle sacrificial blood. Most notably hyssop was used to apply the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts and lintels of each Israelite’s house. Why cedarwood bound together with hyssop was done here and nowhere else in Scripture (except the cleansing of the leper’s house following and the red heifer ritual), the Lord doesn’t say outright. One commentator suggested cedar wood provided antiseptic properties. Well, if killing germs was so needful, then why wasn’t cedar wood always a part of the hyssop sprinkling? Rather, as typical of Scripture, these stage props are symbols pointing to a greater spiritual reality.

How is cedar treated in the Bible? The cedars of Lebanon were the most majestic and stateliest of trees. Interestingly, King Solomon’s breadth of knowledge of the natural world was synopsized as such: “He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall.” The greatest tree, the cedar, is bound together with the least, the lowliest, tree, the hyssop. The hyssop, as an instrument of sprinkling, is also a symbol of purification or cleansing. How does cedar function and what does it symbolize?

That answer is not hard to find. David, the man after God’s own heart, expresses the role of cedar: “See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent” (2Sa 7:2). The contrast is between David’s stately, rich dwelling and God’s meager dwelling. A house of cedar is a rich man’s home. The tabernacle had no cedar in its construction. But as the tabernacle, God’s mobile tent in the desert, transitioned to the temple, His fixed abode, cedar appeared conspicuously. “He lined the walls of the house on the inside with boards of cedar. From the floor of the house to the walls of the ceiling, he covered them on the inside with wood, and he covered the floor of the house with boards of cypress” (1Ki 6:15). Note how the walls and ceiling had cedar but the flooring had planks of a different tree: cypress. The vertical walls of cedar intimated the rising trunks of the cedar tree, the horizontal beams its skyward boughs above. It conveyed cedar trees in the garden of Eden! The prophet Ezekiel, speaking metaphorically of the fallen Assyrian kingdom as a cedar tree, made this allusion: “The cedars in the garden of God could not rival it, nor the fir trees equal its boughs” (Ezek 31:8). As temple imagery abounded with Eden imagery, cedars, too, transported one’s imagination back to that garden. So the Song of Songs bride imaginatively conceived their forest rendezvous, “The beams of our house are cedar; our rafters are pine” (1:17). The frequent connection of cedar with God’s dwelling place, His resting place, denotes what cedar symbolizes: the Lord’s home.

So as we return to the story at hand, the cedarwood, bound to hyssop by scarlet yarn, is a symbol of God’s home. As the play unfolds, we’ll see the movement from cleansing (the hyssop) to home (the cedarwood).

Our second clue that this theatrical drama is about going home is in the releasing of the living bird.

He shall take the live bird with the cedarwood and the scarlet yarn and the hyssop, and dip them and the live bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the fresh water. And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed of the leprous disease. Then he shall pronounce him clean and shall let the living bird go into the open field. (Leviticus 14:6-7 ESV)

The similarities to the slain goat and live goat sent into the wilderness just two chapters later at first glance made me think that the slain bird and live bird loosed to the open field were the same thing. On the surface that seemed to be the case. But careful examination in their associated contexts demonstrates that they’re two different stories.

Now, the ritual with the two live goats on the Day of Atonement had many significant differences than the two live birds. The goats were set before the door of tabernacle, the birds outside the camp. Lots were cast to determine which goat died and which goat lived. No lots were cast for the live birds. The blood of the slain goat was brought inside the Holiest for sprinkling of the mercy seat, then other tabernacle items. The blood of the slain bird was mixed with the living water in the clay pot, which was then sprinkled on the healed leper. The live goat sent to the wilderness wasn’t sprinkled with the blood of the slain goat. The live bird was dipped into living water mixed with the blood of the slain bird. The live goat had the nation’s sins confessed over it, the live bird had no confession. The live goat was led by “the hand of a man who is in readiness,” the live bird was simply loosed to fly freely of its own accord. So it’s clear from these very different rituals that two very different stories are being told.

The live goat was sent to the wilderness, miḏbār (mid-bawr’), the live bird was set free to return to the open field, śāḏê (saw-deh’). Field, śāḏê, is commonly used throughout the Hebrew Bible as the dwelling place of wild animals. Though it can also mean a cultivated field, as it relates to wildlife, śāḏê is their natural habitat or home. A common phrase is “beast of the field,” appearing four times in Genesis’ Eden story (19:20, 19:21, 3:1, 3:14). In Leviticus 14’s setting, as the children of Israel tromped through the wilderness, their home was their tent. What the tent is for man, the open field is to the bird. It’s home. Contrast this to the wilderness, an alien and foreign place to which the domesticated goat was exiled.

This brings us to our third thematic going home clue. The live bird released to return home is a parallelism, a picture really, of the cleansed leper who is returning home. The same blood and water that the live bird was dipped into was sprinkled upon the leper. In this play, after the priest sprinkled the leper seven times (complete cleansing), he watched the live bird fly away to the open field. That bird’s departure prophetically pictured the purified leper’s eager longing to return home. Coming back home was a big deal to this leper. He or she most likely spent lonely months or years in social isolation, exiled from his home. The live bird’s journey home put wings of hope to the leper’s yearning to return home.

And he who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes and shave off all his hair and bathe himself in water, and he shall be clean. And after that he may come into the camp, but live outside his tent seven days. (Leviticus 14:8 ESV)

Time limits me to go into all the biblical proofs that leprosy is a picture of sin. Leprosy is one of those letters in God’s alphabet that holds out so many insights whose explanation deserves a full treatment of its own. Nevertheless, briefly we can see that leprosy, though a disease, is spoken of not as being healed but as being cleansed, a term identified with sins. Leprosy is treated in a class all by itself, employing many of the same purification rituals that cleansed a transgressor from his sin. No other disease required this blood and water cleansing. The leper, then, is a symbol of the sinner. The leper pictures you and me.

So the leper, once shaved, shorn and bathed, could come out of the wilderness and into the camp, but could not enter his tent for the first seven days. Why? In the context of Leviticus, the people were in the wilderness for forty years. As mentioned, a tent in this setting was their home. Coming into the camp out of exile was wonderful, but he had to wait seven whole days before he could go back into his tent. He couldn’t come home.

This odd detail of the leper barred access to his tent for seven days make sense in light of the live bird going home. The live bird immediately flew home. The leper had to wait. Something is left wanting in the leper’s heart during those seven days. That period of delay heightened anticipation for the eighth day when he’d enjoy full rights and privileges. So the live bird’s immediate appropriation of home held out a promise to the leper for his homecoming.

The fourth and final going home clue occurs on the eighth day. On this great and final day, the cleansed leper was brought to the door of the tabernacle.

And the priest who cleanses him shall set the man who is to be cleansed and these things before the Lord, at the entrance of the tent of meeting. (Leviticus 14:11 ESV)

Just prior to this he was cleansed with blood and anointed with oil much like a priest prepared to go in the Lord’s tent. Just as his cut hair, shaved beard and eyebrows, all signified a new start, this positioning before the door lines up with a new start. Being at the door is a fresh start with God! Being brought to the door of the tent of meeting is the beginning of a journey home. This journey, though typified physically, is a spiritual one. The leper not only has the privilege of being reunited with God’s people, the camp, but God Himself! The leper is “set…before the LORD.” He’s brought back into communion and fellowship not only with his neighbors but with his God.

So this play enacts the returning home of the live bird and the cleansed leper. Curiously, day eight omits any mention about going back inside his own tent. On day eight the tent of prominence—the tabernacle—is the Lord’s home. The play ends with the cleansed leper standing before an open door before the Lord. That nothing is said regarding the cleansed leper’s own tent brings about an unresolved tension. Which tent will he choose? Divine romance is not about coercing mindless robots but Love inviting to come on in through the open door. When God cleanses us from our sins and washes us by the living water of His Spirit, which home will we choose?

So there are depths and layers of relational richness with Jesus here that I’m delighted to show you! We’ll see this play picked up in Mark’s gospel, in which the fullness of Christ overflows the riverbanks of the shadows of Christ here (see Col 2:16-17). How Mark puts a face to the cleansed leper as a lover of Jesus is absolutely dazzling! So stay tuned.

Now that we’ve sketched out what I believe to be the theme of God’s play, we can now see how all the actors integrate into this beautifully crafted production. If the major theme is going home, how do the main characters relate to it? More importantly, what good news does this play announce to us about Jesus Christ and His love story to welcome us in? This is so tremendously awesome! God is the best playwright ever! To this divine romance, beautifully centered in the exile coming back home, we now turn.