Lockdown, Leviticus, and Lent
Photo by Yogendra Singh on Unsplash
What a vast difference a microscopically small virus makes! Around a decade ago, a couple of books came out that aimed to show how silly it was to take literally all the rules of the Old Testament: The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs (2008) and A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans (2012). But once the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, we all found ourselves following health protocols that seemed remarkably similar to the Old Testament’s expectations for ancient Israelites. Our collective experience of the pandemic has made us conscious of the issues of cleanliness and spacing that preoccupy the book of Leviticus in particular. Almost nobody claims Leviticus as his or her favorite book in the Bible, but if going through a pandemic can aid us in understanding and appreciating this much-neglected part of God’s Word, then let’s not waste the opportunity. In what follows, I draw out comparisons between life in ancient Israel under Levitical law and contemporary life in a COVID-conscious culture in order to prepare you, my readers, for Easter. I aim to link together lockdown, Leviticus, and Lent.
Before I start drawing specific parallels, let me clear up what I’m not doing. I’m not claiming that government-issued pandemic protocols are direct applications of Old Testament law. Arguments on one side like “If you don’t get vaccinated, you’re going against the Bible!” or on the other side like “Christians aren’t under the Law of Moses, so we shouldn’t have to wear masks!” are not what I’m after. I’m also not making a one-to-one correlation between contracting the virus and being an especially bad sinner (the book of Job reminds us that even the righteous suffer maladies and misfortunes). Lastly, I’m not trying to trivialize how deeply and tragically COVID-19 has affected millions of people. Some of you have lost jobs. Some of you have lost family members, co-workers, and neighbors. Some of you have lingering long-term physical or psychological effects that are dragging down your quality of life. I take all of that seriously. In fact, the season of Lent is a time to reflect soberly on our lives and losses in the light of Christ’s tragedy-redeeming death and resurrection. He identifies with us in our brokenness in order to bring us his healing. And he told his first followers that the whole Old Testament pointed ahead to him (Luke 24:25–27, 44–47). That includes Leviticus! Let’s put what we’ve gone through with COVID to good use by letting it help us grasp better how Leviticus leads us to Jesus.
Cleaning Routines
The first wave of COVID cases triggered a corresponding spike in sales of cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer. It seemed like I was washing my hands constantly while playing through the alphabet song in my mind to make sure I was doing it long enough to kill germs. (One of my more spiritual colleagues recommended reciting the Lord’s Prayer while washing!) A similar repeat-rinse ritual was a staple of the Israelites’ lifestyle, too. Here are some examples:
“If an animal that you are allowed to eat dies, anyone . . . who eats some of its carcass must wash their clothes, and they will be unclean till evening. Anyone who picks up the carcass must wash their clothes, and they will be unclean till evening” (Lev. 11:39–40 [NIV here and throughout]).
“Anyone [a] man with a discharge touches without rinsing his hands with water must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening” (Lev. 15:11).
“When a man has sexual relations with a woman . . . both of them must bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening” (Lev. 15:18).
The contagiousness of ceremonial impurity was as much a concern for Israelite society as the spread of a virus is for ours. That concern also led to the next parallel between Leviticus and us.
Social Distancing and Masking
Store signs explaining how far apart to stand, companies and churches going remote, contact tracing and quarantines, new grandparents watching babies on-screen rather than holding them in person—these are snapshots of the world of lockdown ushered in by COVID-19. Then there were the debates and shifting standards over facial coverings: was a bandana enough? A gaiter? An N95? A face shield? Did you have to wear them outdoors? At home around close family? In the car while driving?
Compare Levitical Israel: mothers of newborns had to stay away from the sanctuary for anywhere from forty to eighty days (Lev. 12:1–5). Persons afflicted with a “defiling skin disease” (what older Bible translations called “leprosy”) had to “cover the lower part of their face and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ As long as they have the disease they remain unclean. They must live alone; they must live outside the camp” of the community of Israel (Lev. 13:45–46).
Limited Access
Closely tied to social distancing are occupancy limits. Another snapshot from the peak of the pandemic was business entrances with clerks like nightclub bouncers only letting in a certain count of customers. Leviticus 16 lays down an ordinance of limited occupancy for the sanctuary: entry into the Most Holy Place was restricted to one person per year! On the Day of Atonement, the high priest would offer a sacrifice to cover all the sins that the people (including himself) had committed that year. Then he’d take the sacrificial blood into the Most Holy Place, the place of God’s special presence on earth, to bring reconciliation between God and the people.
All these Levitical rules strike us as strange—yet this side of COVID, strangely familiar. God used them to train the people of Israel to think in terms of cleanliness and distance so that they had categories for grasping the spiritual and ethical realities of sin and holiness. Ritual impurity wasn’t sinful per se, but it gave Israel an easy-to-grasp analogy for sin, just like even today we use the categories of purity and impurity as moral metaphors: we talk about “dirty” money, “filthy” lies, “coming clean,” and “staying pure.”
Diagnosing Our Disease
For instance, Leviticus mandated a purification ceremony for lepers who had been healed. A priest would use a hyssop plant to sprinkle fresh water and sacrificial blood on the former outcasts to pronounce them clean and ready to reenter society (Lev. 14:1–7). King David alludes to this ceremony in his prayer of repentance after being confronted with his sordid sins of adultery and murder. He cries out, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. . . . Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean” (Ps. 51:5, 7). David recognized that his sin was no merely minor matter. It was the spiritual equivalent of leprosy: contaminating, alienating, and destroying his whole life.
We learn from David’s appropriation of Leviticus that our sinfulness runs more than skin deep. It’s not just a few isolated bad choices but an inner ailment from birth that’s extremely contagious. And it’s truly a pandemic: it doesn’t just afflict people of a different political persuasion or ethnicity or nationality than ourselves—it infects you and me, too, regardless of how “asymptomatic” we appear. As we move through Lent, let’s not brush off the diagnosis that Scripture gives for our corrupt condition. But let’s not stop short of the cure, either.
Treatment Regimen
That cure comes from one who cleansed lepers with a touch, forgave sins with a word, and got close enough to sinners to eat with them instead of staying aloof (Mark 1:40–2:17). What the high priest could do only symbolically on the Day of Atonement, Jesus has done for real. Hebrews chapters 7–9 describe how he sacrificed his own sinless life to cover our sins, then rose from the dead and ascended to the true Most Holy Place in heaven to make lasting peace between God and humankind.
Christ’s once-for-all atonement has provided the cure. Will we accept it by faith or refuse, perhaps denying we’re sick with sin or chasing after alternative treatments that ultimately prove false? Hebrews describes the appropriate response to all Christ has done: “let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:22). The occupancy limits and distancing requirements for God’s presence are lifted! We have free access through Christ! And as we draw near to God daily, he continues to administer the antidote to the contagion of sin. As another New Testament writer puts it, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
This Lenten season, use whatever COVID protocols you’ve lived under in the same way David and the New Testament use Leviticus: as a symbolic reminder of our sin, God’s holiness, and Christ’s salvation.
Jerome Van Kuiken is Professor of Ministry and Christian Thought at Oklahoma Wesleyan University.