It’s not too uncommon to have the Narrative pause in the middle of a long string of statements and make an exhortative comment. It’s not only necessary to break up the staccato beat of command after command that we oftentimes see, but it’s also necessary to give context.
In other words: What’s the point of everything we’ve just read?
Sometimes these comments are obvious. “Do this” God will say, “because this will happen.”
Other times, it’s much more subtle, like the mention in Leviticus 20:24. I read this over a few times before it finally occurred to me what (I think) is the point of this verse. God repeats Himself several times by saying to avoid the customs of the nations, hold fast to His statutes, make a distinction between the holy and the unholy.
And then, in verse 24, God says that “You are to possess the land.”
That almost seems a given. After all, isn’t that what all of this has been about? Possessing Canaan as an inheritance?
But think about that that idea actually means. If you buy a used house and you sign over the paperwork to possess the house, that means that the house is now yours. You are free to decorate as you wish, bring people in as you wish, and use it for whatever (legal) purpose you desire.
You know what’s not there anymore? Any of the previous occupants’ possessions. And if they are, they become yours now.
Now, apply that same principle to what you read here in Leviticus 20:22-27. When God tells the people to “possess it” and couples it with phrases about distinction—do this because of God, don’t do this because it’s them—it’s the same principle. The land is now theirs’, not the Canaanites. As such, all remnants of the previous occupants should be gone.
Of course, we know the history of Israel. While they certainly did go in to take over the land, you can make a strong argument that it took them a long time to actually go and possess it. Judges 1 talks about how they refused to take over certain areas—citing fear, mostly—and then relegated themselves to just occupying certain parts of it.
Occupation is different from possession, though. When the Allies occupied Berlin after World War 2, they remade certain parts of it in their image, but they largely left the land in German hands. Allied culture crept in, but when they left, Germany was still Germany.
That’s what Israel did to Canaan. They occupied it, but they never really left their mark. Instead, they occupied it for a few centuries, and, because they never really extinguished the mementos from the previous occupants, they never possess the land. Instead, as God talked about, it “spewed them out.”
What a perfect image of our life as Christians. When we’re baptized, we become a “new image”—not a refurbished image, but a new one.
Are we really possessing our salvation, or are we merely occupying it, mixing it with bits and pieces of our old life?
