Leviticus 19–20
Holy Love, Holy Fire, Holy Justice
Georges Rouault
Among so many different commands lies the beautiful task of sowing on a hostile earth, plate 22 from Miserere, 1926, Aquatint on paper, 585 x 430 mm (plate); 655 x 505 mm (sheet), Art Institute of Chicago; Gift of Marjorie H. Watkins, 1966.181, ©️ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris; Photo: The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY
Merciful Agriculture
Commentary by Stephen John Wright
God’s holiness rests in divine being itself; for mortals, holiness is etched out in action. The holy life, in Leviticus 19, appears to present itself as a series of tasks. And yet, it is a holy life, something not reducible to duty, but endeavoured in the world. Holiness entails neighbours and aliens, plantings and harvests, family and offerings. The distinction between service to God and service to others does not hold (Gerstenberger 1996: 267). Leviticus 19 calls for the cultivation of holiness within the land.
In a shadowy landscape, Georges Rouault’s sower stretches out his right hand to bless the field with scattered seed. This print is one of a series of 58 in his Miserere project, which takes its title from Psalm 51: ‘have mercy’. Rouault evokes the grim darkness of 1920s bourgeois society in Europe: ‘sharpened by the horrors of war’, in the words of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (Balthasar 1991: 203). Yet, hopefully, he imagines it changing into ‘a profound fellowship in suffering with trampled, disfigured humankind’ (ibid). In this print, Rouault depicts ‘profound fellowship’ through the lens of a life hedged in by divine commands. It is entitled ‘Among so many different commands lies the beautiful task of sowing on a hostile earth’.
The sower’s eyes appear to be closed, making the sowing a meditative act within the uncertain dimness of the world. We are drawn into the moment of sowing, the manner in which in this sowing the sower locates his existence between God and ground, between cloud and clod. Rouault evokes the cultic vision of the world embedded within the tasks of Leviticus. Keeping the law, sanctifying the ground, transcends mere moral imperatives, while evoking a cosmic order in which we are drawn to fellowship with the trampled persons of society.
As Rouault’s sower sows, the Levitical harvester reaps (19:9–10). The edges of the field are reserved, along with a portion of the vineyard’s grapes, for those with no fields of their own so that they may gather their own harvest. The fields are instruments of justice, and the singular contemplative act of sowing expands into the communal act of gleaning, in which even those who live at the borders of the world will feast.
References
Balthasar, Hans Urs von. 1991. The Glory of The Lord, Volume V: The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age, trans by Oliver Davies et al (San Francisco: Ignatius Press)
Gerstenberger, Erhard S. 1996. Leviticus (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox)
Rinko Kawauchi
Untitled (AT15), from the series Ametsuchi, 2012, Lambda print, 635 x 787.4 mm; ©️ Rinko Kawauchi. Courtesy of ROSEGALLERY
Moving Holy Flames
Commentary by Stephen John Wright
Not indifferent to the lives of the people, the God of Israel invests in the religious and social arrangements of that society. Dividing the pure from the impure, the holy from the unholy, the LORD sets out regulations in which the people can find their place within a cosmic order (Leviticus 20:22–26). Holiness, far from an inner experience of personal transcendence, is encoded in action and life (Radner 2008: 201–09). A whirlwind of regulations confound and divide, parting and separating, uniting the people to God in holiness.
One face of the hill in Rinko Kawauchi’s photographic print remains unscorched, slowly enclosed by two lines of fire. The fire separates and divides, though not as a fence does, with its demarcation of boundaries. The fire separates through the process of transformation. These are not immovable boundaries, but a progressing line of flame. Taken in the Aso region in southern Japan, Kawauchi here documents a farming process over a millennium old in which the fire clears the land for sowing (Kawauchi 2013). The fire passes across the hill until all ground has been consecrated by its purifying heat.
Kawauchi’s career has been measured by successive photobooks. Her photographs sit best when viewed together. The images interpret one another, and allow connections to emerge that cannot be contained within the single frame. Ametsuchi takes this feature of her work, and elevates it by placing prints of the film negatives inside partially uncut pages, visible only in part, just beneath each corresponding positive print. On the other side of the leaf lies the negative, with its blue fire burning across a black hillscape, leaving behind fields scorched white.
Placed alongside the book of Leviticus, we see similar connections emerging. Just as the singular photographic image cannot contain all of its own meaning—the purifying flame that burns in red and blue, the landscape scorched white and black—the laws of the so-called Holiness Code cannot be isolated either from one another or from the overall cultic world of Israel without doing damage to them. These are not granular ethical mandates, but expansions upon the thematic cosmology of Israel and the singularity of YHWH—all other gods must be put aside. The grounding mandate that occasions the laws is ‘be holy, as I am holy’, and in this way Israel knows YHWH as God.
References
Kawauchi, Rinko. 2013. Ametsuchi (New York: Aperture Foundation)
Radner, Ephraim. 2008. Leviticus (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press)
Caroline Chariot-Dayez
La Joie III, 2018, Oil on board, 80 x 122 cm, Collection of the artist, Brussels; Courtesy of artist
Love is Sight
Commentary by Stephen John Wright
Some things must not go unseen. The closing of the eyes to the young ones given up to the Canaanite deity Molech (Leviticus 20:4) irremediably mars the soul and places one under the LORD’s judgement. To see entails bearing witness to atrocity, to challenge and rise up against violence and exploitation. The holy are those who see.
Some things must be left unseen. The sexual regulations of Leviticus 20, which mirror those of chapter 18, regulate the body according to what is seen and unseen. The incestuous ‘uncovering’ of a sister’s nakedness (20:17) is a moral failure. The sexual practices mentioned here seem to hearken back to the rites of the old gods and their demand for theatrical sexual concourse—sexuality shorn of all intimacy and care (Douglas 1999: 345–47). The holy are those who do not see.
By painting folds and creases in cloth, Caroline Chariot-Dayez evokes the depths of what cannot be seen. La Joie III belongs to this approach, suggestive of a human body—perhaps seated, perhaps jumping in joy—just out of view. A bright light falls upon the upper half of the image, burning out the contours of the figure; as this light diffuses in the lower half, shadows enable us to see peaks and ridges, giving the sense of unseen legs puckering the fabric. Whoever is there cannot be seen.
Placed alongside our passage from Leviticus, the painting expands our sense of sight, resonating with the codes of holiness. Chariot-Dayez gives us something to be seen, light and shadow, depths and contours, but at the same time withholds from view the fullness of what might be seen. The holiness of God is only ever known in part, seen indirectly in law and mandate.
The detailed ethical and cultic mandates of Leviticus escalate into the mandate to love: ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (19:18). In the Gospels, Jesus follows a rabbinic tradition to treat this imperative as the law-in-sum (Matthew 22:37–39; Luke 10:27). The law regulates sight because it regulates the heart. To see, to love—these are bound up together. One sees with the law because it helps one to love.
To love is to see the victims of pagan idolatry, to refuse to uncover the nakedness of another for the purposes of sexualized ritual in service to the pagan gods. Seeing and unseeing constitute holiness. Love is sight.
References
Douglas, Mary. 1999. ‘Justice as the Cornerstone: An interpretation of Leviticus 18–20’, Interpretation, 53.4: 341–50
Georges Rouault :
Among so many different commands lies the beautiful task of sowing on a hostile earth, plate 22 from Miserere, 1926 , Aquatint on paper
Rinko Kawauchi :
Untitled (AT15), from the series Ametsuchi, 2012 , Lambda print
Caroline Chariot-Dayez :
La Joie III, 2018 , Oil on board
No other gods
Comparative commentary by Stephen John Wright
In scripture, a conversation with YHWH is never private. These words directed to Moses are inscribed and preserved for the people of Israel to live out publicly. Leviticus 19–20 lies at the heart of the Torah, composing the centre of the so-called ‘Holiness Code’ (Leviticus 17–26). The singular focus of these chapters—holiness—has its source in the singularity of God, evoked by the regular invocation of the divine name, ‘I am YHWH’. This rhythm intensifies to its peak in chapter 19, with the holy name of God punctuating the commands fourteen times. We hear the root cause and goal of all holiness: ‘You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy’ (19:2).
These chapters exposit holiness by detailing its concretion in human affairs. Gestures of division and union structure the exposition––grains and threads and animals are to remain unmixed (19:19); parents and strangers and elders are to be objects of reverence and holy love (19:3, 32, 34). The people are holy to the extent that their devotion is offered to YHWH alone (20:7–8). Qds, holiness, means being separate from ‘the peoples’ (20:24). Holiness orders all of human life by what it divides and what it joins.
These orderings are simultaneously cultic and ethical, a distinction that one struggles to maintain in reading Leviticus (Nobuyoshi 2003: 529). The harvesting of fruit from freshly planted trees is, in the Hebrew, ‘uncircumcision’ (19:23), rendered in the NRSV as ‘forbidden’. Conversely, ‘circumcised’ living follows the positive commands of Leviticus 19, a living oriented towards love of neighbour.
The aquatint of Georges Rouault’s print creates a dusky setting for the life of the sower. With the tilt of his head and the arc of his back, his body inclines towards the ground. The titular sowing of beauty takes place against the background of the commands of God. Holy agriculture attends to the forgotten and outsider (19:9). The poor and the alien are given freedom to glean and to eat by means of a blessedly inefficient reaping. The sower hunches, perhaps not because he is weighed down by the burden of the law, but with tender care for the beloved stranger.
This photograph from Rinko Kawauchi’s photobook, Ametsuchi (Heaven/Earth), records the process of agricultural controlled burns. This purgative fire blackens the hillside in the effort to renew the landscape. The work traces boundaries between sky and ground, heaven and earth. John Berger comments of photography that its true subject remains unseen: the passage of time (Berger 2013: 19). Kawauchi records transformation. With time, the sharp line of the horizon blurs under the influence of flame and smoke. The holy fire of the individual commands does not stay still, it moves and advances, eliminating false gods (18:2–3; 19:4; 20:23). The blaze establishes a new landscape, a new grounding. The cultic observances here speak to the purity of the land, a purity that is hard won through ritual observance.
But the holy fire also calls into question the stability of assumed boundaries. The commands, like the people called to adhere to them, are in motion, moving and removing boundaries: the alien welcomed as a neighbour, the blind as a friend; the unapproachable holiness of God becomes the holiness of the people. Kawauchi joins two words in her title, amatsu/ame (heaven, 天) and tsuchi (earth, 土). The syllable tsu (つ) binds the words together, establishing a unity between the two realms of the world. Holy fire unites heaven and earth, as the people mirror the holiness of YHWH.
Caroline Chariot-Dayez’s painting invites reflection on the relation between covering and uncovering. Light falls unevenly across the surface of the image, obscuring and illuminating the topography of folds and contours. One can infer an unseen figure here, but the image does not invite us to imagine what lies behind, instead suggesting that joy can be seen in the covering itself.
Leviticus 20, mirroring chapter 18, similarly interrogates the disclosures of the body. These sexual regulations fall under the command to put aside the practices of the foreign nations (20:34). The practices and abuses embedded within foreign rites—bodies intertwined in public displays of bestiality or ritualized incest or male temple prostitution—reveal something other than the holiness of YHWH (Douglas 1999: 345–46). The way of holiness centres not on rituals and imperatives, but on an expansive and transgressive love (19:18) oriented towards justice.
References
Berger, John. 2013. Understanding a Photograph (London: Penguin Books)
Douglas, Mary. 1999. ‘Justice as the Cornerstone: An interpretation of Leviticus 18–20’, Interpretation, 53.4: 341–50
Kiuchi, Nobuyoshi. 2003. ‘Leviticus, Book of’, in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, ed. By T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker (Downers Grove: IVP), pp.522–33
Commentaries by Stephen John Wright