Leviticus 19:1 to 20:27
Standing by My Word
This week’s reading begins with the much-discussed, perhaps over-discussed, commandment, “You shall be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” What’s not to understand? But in English we miss part of the sentence because this translation obscures the double meaning of a phrase within it.
Elsewhere in biblical Hebrew, “I am the Lord your God” (or simply “I am the Lord”) is not an act of self-identification. It’s not telling us Who is speaking. We know perfectly well Who is speaking, and even if we didn’t, there would be no reason for God to keep saying “I am the Lord”—some thirteen times in this chapter alone. “I am the Lord” means something else entirely.
In various societies past and present, there have been different ways of officializing an agreement. In much of today’s world, two people who have been discussing something—the sale of a used car or a change in the monthly rent—can say all kinds of things to each other (not all of them polite), but nothing that they say will have any significance until they each take out a pen and make some sort of squiggle at the bottom of the last page. Usually, it doesn’t even matter if the signatures are legible—in fact, some countries seem to specialize in illegible signatures. But somehow, once those signatures are in place, there’s no going back: the agreement is henceforth in effect and valid.
In biblical Israel, there were various ways of making things official. Sometimes, swearing a solemn oath in the presence of witnesses served this purpose (Gen 21:22-30), and/or a festive meal might put things into effect (cf. Exod 24:11). Impressing a seal on a small lump of moist clay could be used for the same purpose (Jeremiah 32). And, as this chapter in Leviticus makes abundantly clear, God’s saying “I am the Lord” was, all on its own, a way of His saying “I stand by My word,” or even, “I hereby put into effect all that I just said.”
In light of this, it should be clear that God’s declaration at the beginning of this week’s reading has a double meaning. Part of that meaning says: “Be holy because I am holy.” This is what is sometimes known as the commandment of imitatio Dei, that is, human beings are to behave in keeping with what we know of God’s nature and His doings. But right in the middle of this commandment is, as it were, God’s own assertion of authority, because “I am the Lord your God” is not an act of self-identification. It means, “I am telling you that I stand by everything I say.”
But if so, why does God continue to say the same thing time and again? As a matter of fact, none of the subsequent mentions of “I am the Lord” has anything to do with humans imitating God. The Torah never says that. All the subsequent mentions of “I am the Lord” mean the same thing: “I stand behind everything I say.” It’s only the first verse that seeks to reach further, asserting that human holiness and divine holiness are somehow related, cut from the same cloth, as it were. In fact, what that first verse, Lev 19:2, seems to be implying is that divine holiness somehow “rubs off” onto humans; that’s how we can be compared to God in the first place.