PERRY YODER. Leviticus. Believers Church Bible Commentary Series. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2017. Pp. 341. $29.99 US.
Perry Yoder’s commentary on Leviticus in the Believers Church Bible Commentary series is a helpful resource for pastors and lay persons who want to know more about Leviticus. This volume moves the reader away from a legalistic understanding of Leviticus and shows how Leviticus reveals a God that is gracious with a people who are learning to live in the presence of a holy God. Well-written and accessible, Yoder’s contribution to the series offers an excellent beginning point for the study of Leviticus.
The book opens with an introductory section where Yoder names his method and approach. Yoder sets out to offer a plain-sense interpretation of Leviticus, focusing on “what is actually in the text” (18) In doing so, Yoder privileges “the envisioned audience of the text, its apparent goal, or its suggested context” (32), so that his plain-sense interpretations align with what he finds in the text, rather than with the history of interpretation. This text-based approach allows for clarity in understanding the basic meaning of the text on its own terms. Yoder’s intended readers are those who have “some familiarity with the Bible, but little with Leviticus itself. It is an audience more familiar with the New Testament than with the Old Testament, more familiar with later theological interpretation or uses of Leviticus than with its plain sense” (34). Additionally, Yoder asserts that reading Leviticus is helpful for better understanding the New Testament, particularly in grasping how the New Testament writers understood concepts such as purity and holiness. These commitments are woven throughout the book, as Yoder consistently highlights New Testament passages and how they can be illuminated by these new understandings of Leviticus.
In his interpretation of Leviticus, Yoder places Leviticus as the pinnacle of the Torah/Pentateuch, where Genesis and Exodus point towards Leviticus, and then Numbers and Deuteronomy lead away from Sinai. This framing is not a conventional one, but Yoder uses it to highlight his focus on this particular moment in the Pentateuchal narrative, where the people are first faced with living alongside the presence of God in the tabernacle in their camp. Yoder outlines the book of Leviticus in two primary sections, with chapters 1-15 addressing questions of how to properly worship God and chapters 18-27 concerned with everyday activities. Chapters 16-17 provide a hinge for Yoder, addressing how to purify the tabernacle and highlighting this movement from worship to everyday life. Within the various sections of the commentary, Yoder then provides in-depth analysis of passages, always maintaining his textual focus while culminating each section with essays on “The Text in Biblical Context” and “The Text in the Life of the Church.”
Yoder’s commentary has several strengths, the first of which is his work with the original Hebrew text. His use of multiple modern translations, as well as his own translations, makes it clear that he seeks to provide the most accessible English understanding of Leviticus for the reader. A second strength is that Yoder points to problems of anti-Semitism that are inherent in an approach to Leviticus that views it simply as legalistic and standing in opposition to the supposed freedom that Jesus offers from the law (187-188). Given Anabaptism’s historic tendency to minimize the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in ways that can at times lead to supercessionism, this a much-welcome contribution. Finally, the essays included at the end of the book provide excellent additional information for those who would like to dig deeper. Particularly helpful are the various articles on “Atonement,” which provide useful analysis of both the Hebrew word kipper and Christian understandings of atonement.
At different points, Yoder’s commentary could have been strengthened by defining some assumptions he makes about his audience. In particular, in “The Text in the Life of the Church” sections, Yoder at times employs the language of “we” and “us” without offering clarity as to who he envisions with this usage. For instance, Yoder surmises, “We may think that poverty, homelessness, and hunger are the problem of the state. . . . We may assume without evidence that poor people suffer because they do not seek work that they could do or show initiative in getting an education” (204). This use of “we” reveals that Yoder does not imagine the poor and uneducated as being among the audience for his commentary. The church broadly envisioned, or even more narrowly assumed to be the believers church as named by the editors in the introduction, is by no means that homogenous.
Yoder’s approach of seeking a plain-sense reading of the text is a minority approach among biblical scholars, by Yoder’s own admission (33). He demonstrates in the preface an awareness of complex issues of interpretation, such as time period of the writing of Leviticus, which leads him to ask, “was [Leviticus] a grab for power and control by the Jerusalem priesthood late in Israel’s history? Or was it an early work, thus assuming local shrines to which people could bring their sacrifices?” (17). However, he then dismisses these important questions in favor of his plain sense approach. In so doing, Yoder misses an opportunity to guide the reader into a deeper awareness of issues of interpretation. Additionally, by removing the text from any specific historical or cultural context, so too Yoder avoids helping contemporary readers make connections to their own cultural contexts.
Overall, Yoder has offered a valuable commentary for those interested in becoming more familiar with the book of Leviticus. He also points the more curious reader to additional resources to deepen their knowledge of broader interpretive issues surrounding Leviticus (34, 333-335).