Read the Introduction
Exodus closed with the cloud upon the tabernacle and the glory of the LORD taking possession of the tent of meeting, and Leviticus opens at that same door with the LORD calling to Moses out of the congregation. Before this one the record raised the sovereign venue and wrote the constitution of the nation that was to dwell about it. This book sets the administration of that venue in order. Genesis gave the grant, Exodus gave the jurisdiction and the dwelling, and Leviticus gives the statutes by which the covenant people and the men who serve at the altar are governed day by day.
Volume I of Leviticus runs from the first chapter through the sixteenth, and its movement is the ordering of the court. Five offerings open it: the burnt offering, the whole value laid upon the altar; the meat offering, the tribute of labor with its memorial burned and its remnant left to the priest; the peace offering, the covenant meal eaten before the LORD; the sin offering, whose cleansing is scaled to the standing of the offender, whether priest, congregation, ruler, or common person; and the trespass offering, which carries the fifth part added, the ledger rule of restitution written into the code. A summary law of the offerings follows, settling the altar administration, the perpetual fire, and the administrator's portion by statute. Next comes the consecration of Aaron and his sons, with the washing, the vesting, the anointing, and the seven days at the door of the tabernacle, and the first service is answered by fire from before the LORD. Hard upon it follows the strange fire of Nadab and Abihu, and the boundary of the office is enforced upon the men who left the specification. From the altar the code turns to the people: the clean and the unclean, the dietary law, the leprosy of the skin judged by the priest the law appoints, the leprosy of the garment and the house, the cleansing of the leper, and the issues of the body with the lines of approach drawn about person and dwelling.
That close is deliberate, because the sixteenth chapter is the pivot upon which the whole book turns, and two chapters of this volume carry it. The first is the entry within the veil, granted to the high priest once in the year, with the blood of the bullock and of the goat sprinkled upon the mercy seat, under the cloud of incense. The second is the scapegoat, the live goat upon whose head the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, are confessed and laid, and which is sent away by the hand of a fit man into a land not inhabited. The blood carried within the veil answers for the sanctuary, and the goat sent away carries the liability out of the camp. That is the annual settlement of the nation's account, standing where the offerings, the priesthood, and the purity code meet and are resolved into one day. From there the law of the blood and the life is stated, and after it the holiness code gives the people their statutes and their balances, their calendar, the sabbatical year, and the Jubilee. Volume I ends where the altar is complete and the statutes of the people are about to begin.
The doctrine carried through these chapters is the statutory turn of the covenant. Leviticus is the statutory code of the covenant, the book in which the assemblies of the people are given their procedure and the office of the priest is defined by what he may do and what he may not do. An offering is not a sentiment but a transaction with a specification: the animal without blemish, the fire that must not go out, the fat that is the LORD's, the portion fixed for the administrator, and the restitution counted with its fifth part. The priesthood is an office with a boundary, and the boundary is enforced at the cost of two lives in the tenth chapter. Lines of approach are drawn about the person and the dwelling by the purity laws, and the examination statute puts the judgment of clean and unclean in the hands of the priest the law appoints for it. Atonement is stated as bookkeeping: the blood makes the reconciliation, and the release carries the debt away.
What makes these chapters worth a book of their own is that this is where the covenant stops being a story and becomes a procedure. A people delivered out of Egypt and given a dwelling for their God still have to know how to approach Him, what to bring, who may carry it, and what happens when they come wrong. Every ordinance in the volume answers one of those questions, in the register the law uses everywhere else: a named thing, a stated condition, a fixed portion, and a consequence.
For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the LORD.
Leviticus 16:30
Nothing here asks to be taken on trust. The scripture is quoted whole, every reading beyond the text is named as doctrine, and the weighing belongs to whoever holds the book.