Statistically, if you’ve made it to February in your Bible reading plan, you’re past the time of year when most people drop off. Doubtless however it’s still a month when some begin to flag - as many reading plans take people through the last half of Exodus, quickly followed by Leviticus.
However the introduction to Andrew Bonar’s 1846 A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus, Expository and Practical (reprinted by Banner of Truth and also available as a properly digitised free PDF) may be just the shot in the arm that some need to keep going.
In fact, even the protracted nature of all these instructions for the tabernacle and its sacrifices should give us pause for thought before throwing in the towel. Bonar quotes Witsius’ remark that:
God took only six days [for] creation, but spent forty days with Moses in directing him to make the tabernacle – because the work of grace is more glorious than the work of creation.
But why do we still need types and allegories when we have the real thing?
Types were originally intended ‘to deepen, expand, and ennoble the circle of thoughts and desires, and thus heighten the moral and spiritual wants…of the chosen people’ (quoting Hahn).
Yet even today, according to Bonar they imprint in us wisdom which lasts ‘when bare words go but in at the one ear and out at the other’.
William Tyndale agrees that even once we have found Christ, we can use allegories and examples to open Christ even unto believers, and in fact ‘can declare [him] more lively and sensibly with them than with all the words of the world’.
Types not only simplify truth, they also help us understand better truth we already know. Indeed, ‘The existence of a type does not always argue that the thing typified is obscurely seen, or imperfectly known’.
Above all, the use of types shows us God’s grace. ‘Our Heavenly Father has condescended to teach his children by most expressive pictures; and, even in this, much of his love appears’.
How much did they know?
When it comes to interpreting Leviticus, we aren’t left to make it up as we go along, but find principles set out in the book of Hebrews. And in fact, the way the author of Hebrews writes ‘leads us to suppose that it was no new thing for an Israelite thus to understand the ritual of Moses’.
Bonar traces this understanding back to Anna and Simeon in Luke 2 who ‘frequented the temple daily in order to read in its rites future development of a suffering Saviour’. They were included in those of 1 Peter 1.10 who ‘knew that they prophesied of the grace that was to come to us, and, therefore, inquired and searched diligently’.
In fact, Bonar holds out the tantalising possibility that some of the priests may have had revealed to them the full significance of what they were doing:
Had Aaron, or some other holy priest of his line, been "carried away in the spirit" and shown the accomplishment of all that these rites prefigured, how joyful ever afterwards would have been his daily service in the sanctuary. When shown the great antitype, and that each one of these shadows pictured something in the person or work of that Redeemer, then, ever after, to handle the vessels of the sanctuary, would be rich food to his soul
He even goes as far as to say:
[T]he bondage of these elements did not consist in sprinkling the blood, washing in the laver, waving the wave-shoulder, or the like; but in doing all this without perceiving the truth thereby exhibited. Probably to a true Israelite, taught of God, there would be no more of bondage in handling these material elements, than there is at this day to a true believer in handling the symbolic bread and wine through which he "discerns the body and blood of the Lord.
Whether we'd agree with him or not, surely better to give these Old Testament saints too much credit rather than too little!
Christ Shines Through
Perhaps the fact that Leviticus was 'a much-neglected book' even in Scotland at the time of the Disruption is because of our tendency to forget the one principle of which Bonar said nothing 'is more obviously true'. That is, 'the belief that Christ is the centre-truth of revelation'. These Old Testament shadows are, after all, 'projected from Christ "the body"' (cf Col 2.17). From the beginning it has been this Messiah that has been 'the chief object to be unveiled to the view of men'.
The reason that 'many Levitical rites appear to us unmeaning' is because we're looking at them the wrong way:
As it is said of the rigid features of a marble statue, that they may be made to move and vary their expression so as even to smile, when a skilful hand knows how to move a bright light before it; so may it be with these apparently lifeless figures
And even if we don’t see it completely now, one day we will fully ‘learn how not one tittle of the law has failed’.
A word from M’Cheyne
Bonar is perhaps best known for his Memoir and Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray M'Cheyne. Amidst Bonar's own gems in this introduction is one from his recently-departed friend in what seems to have been an unpublished letter to Bonar himself. M'Cheyne used the example of a stranger wrapped in a veil ; if some of his features were pointed out you could get some idea of what he was like:
But suppose that one whom you know and love-whose features you have often studied face to face-were to be veiled up in this way, how easily you could discern the features and form of this Beloved One! Just so, the Jews looked upon a veiled Saviour, whom they had never seen unveiled. We, under the New Testament, look upon an unveiled Saviour; and, going back on the Old, we can see, far better than the Jews could, the features and form of Jesus the Beloved, under that veil.
So why struggle on with Leviticus?
To those beginning to flag, Bonar would urge:
But let us proceed to the contents of this Book. It will be found that it contains a full system of truth, exhibiting sin and the sinner, grace and the Saviour; comprehending, also, details of duty, and openings into the ages to come, – whatever, in short, bears upon a sinner's walk with a reconciled God, and his [conduct] in this present evil world.
It is "The Gospel according to Leviticus" and "the clearest book of Jewish gospel".
NB: A more recent (and a bit more technical) book on Leviticus that comes highly recommended is Michael Morales’ Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the LORD?