Leviticus
Summary
Leviticus Chapter 24 addresses the ongoing service within the Tabernacle and a serious case of blasphemy. It describes the instructions for the pure olive oil for the lampstand and the bread of the presence, which was to be set out weekly on the golden table. The chapter then recounts the judgement following a man who cursed the Name of the LORD, establishing the law of "an eye for an eye" to ensure just and equal punishment. This combination highlighted that the beauty of God's dwelling and the reverence for His Name were the twin foundations of a just and stable society.
The LORD said to Moses,
"Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives for the light so that the lamps may be kept burning continually.
Outside the curtain that shields the tablets of the covenant law in the Tent of Meeting, Aaron is to keep the lamps burning before the LORD from evening till morning, continually. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come.
The lamps on the pure gold lampstand before the LORD must be kept burning continually.
"Take the finest flour and bake twelve loaves of bread, using two-tenths of an ephah for each loaf.
Arrange them in two stacks, six in each stack, on the table of pure gold before the LORD.
By each stack put some pure incense as a memorial portion to represent the bread and to be a food offering presented to the LORD.
This bread is to be set out before the LORD regularly, Sabbath after Sabbath, on behalf of the Israelites, as a lasting covenant.
It belongs to Aaron and his sons, who are to eat it in a holy place.
Now the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father went out among the Israelites, and a fight broke out in the camp between him and an Israelite.
The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the Name with a curse; so they brought him to Moses.
They put him in custody until the will of the LORD should be made clear to them.
Then the LORD said to Moses:
"Take the blasphemer outside the camp... the entire assembly is to stone him.
Say to the Israelites: ‘Anyone who curses their God will be held responsible;
anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD is to be put to death.
“‘Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death.
Anyone who takes the life of someone’s animal must make restitution, life for life.
Anyone who injures their neighbour is to be injured in the same way:
fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As they have injured the other, so they are to be injured.
Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death.
You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.’
Then Moses spoke to the Israelites, and they took the blasphemer outside the camp and stoned him. The Israelites did as the LORD commanded Moses.