people of God. Some commentators find the intrusion of Leviticus peculiar in the scheme of biblical narrative, which comes to "a grinding halt" at Lev. 1.1: "All the elements you might normally expect are missing here: plot, poetry, stories of suspense or deep emotion--even the characters are few." One view is that part of Leviticus evinces a "perplexing arrangement of the laws," and another is that Leviticus has "strangeness" or is "dull" in the context of the other books of the bible.
Despite the seemingly odd placement of the nonnarrative Leviticus in the Pentateuch (and despite the extraordinary content of the text, as will be considered hereafter), a certain narrative logic can be discerned in the appearance of Leviticus after the Ark and Tabernacle have been established. To see why it is necessary to return to Exodus briefly. The evidence of the golden calf in Exodus is that the various commandments flowing from Sinai, while significant and necessary, appear not to have been sufficient to motivate the "stiffnecked people" (Exod. 33.5) to discard once and for all the ornaments, idols, and so on that have distracted them from God. It has apparently not been enough for the laws to have been articulated to guarantee their observance. Very well: We have Leviticus in response, in which God explains how observance and adherence to God is to be guaranteed. So let us all, God and his people, tarry a while at Sinai and learn how to live together. From that point of view, the sacrifices in Leviticus can be seen as something of an owner's manual or crib sheet for the children of Israel to accompany the historical narrative, instructing them in detail, by way of specific laws and ritual practices, about the nature of their relationship to God and the structure of behavior implicit in that relationship. In that connection, Bark cites (without complete agreement) David Damrosch's statement that "far from interrupting the narrative, the la...