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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
22:1-33 Holiness of the Offerings. This chapter aims at guaranteeing the holiness of offerings, particularly against those who handle them (i.e., the priests and lay offerers). The offerings, just like the priest, ought to be physically without blemish (cf. vv. 21-22 with 21:17-22).
22:1-3 The potential cause of profaning the offerings lies in uncleanness. The heavy responsibility demanded of the priests is reflected in the phrase cut off from my presence (v. 3), which is more severe than the ordinary formula "cut off from his people." When a layman is cut off in the Levitical law, it is from among the people (19:8; 20:5), but the priest is exiled from the service in the tabernacle (i.e., in God's presence).
22:4-9 For the background of these rules, see 11:1-47; 13:1-59; 15:1-33; and 17:15. Contracting uncleanness is inevitable, but when purification has been made, one can eat the holy offering. If purification is not made and the offering is eaten, the offender forfeits his life.
22:10-16 For non-priests, the right of eating the holy offerings is conditioned on whether a person belongs to a priestly house (whether through purchase or by birth). Priests and their families subsisted on food from donations to the tabernacle. Who else may partake of that food? A slave purchased by a priest is included (v. 11), but a hired laborer is not. A priest's daughter may participate only until she is married outside the priestly family (vv. 12-13). The priests are to guard the holy food so that those unauthorized may not eat of it (vv. 15-16).
22:17-25 No animal is to be sacrificed if it is blemished. This parallels the requirements of priestly purity (21:17-23). Animals with defects are considered unholy and incomplete, and are therefore not to be offered to the Holy One.
22:26-28 The rationale for these laws is uncertain. Some argue that they perhaps have a polemical function against pagan ritual, in particular the fertility rites of the Canaanites. Others believe that they reflect the sanctity of the cycle in Israel. Yet others maintain that the laws simply show the high regard for all life that the Hebrews are to have (cf. Ex. 23:19; Deut. 20:19-20; 22:6-7).
