Leviticus 24: Showbread and an Eye for an Eye
From the tabernacle lamps to the law of exact retribution.
Leviticus 24 opens with instructions for the continual lamp and the twelve loaves of showbread kept before the LORD, following the feast calendar of Leviticus 23. Its command that the light burn without fail is echoed later in 2 Corinthians 4:6.
Then the LORD said to Moses,
“Command the Israelites to bring you pure oil of pressed olives for the light, to keep the lamps burning continually.
Outside the veil of the Testimony in the Tent of Meeting, Aaron is to tend the lamps continually before the LORD from evening until morning. This is to be a permanent statute for the generations to come.
He shall tend the lamps on the pure gold lampstand before the LORD continually.
You are also to take fine flour and bake twelve loaves, using two-tenths of an ephah for each loaf,
and set them in two rows—six per row—on the table of pure gold before the LORD.
And you are to place pure frankincense near each row, so that it may serve as a memorial portion for the bread, an offering made by fire to the LORD.
Every Sabbath day the bread is to be set out before the LORD on behalf of the Israelites as a permanent covenant.
It belongs to Aaron and his sons, who are to eat it in a holy place; for it is to him a most holy part of the offerings made by fire to the LORD—his portion forever.”
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. (His mother’s name was Shelomith daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan.)
They placed 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, and have all who heard him lay their hands on his head; then have the whole assembly stone him.
And you are to tell the Israelites, ‘If anyone curses his God, he shall bear the consequences of his sin.
Whoever blasphemes the name of the LORD must surely be put to death; the whole assembly must surely stone him, whether he is a foreign resident or native; if he blasphemes the Name, he must be put to death.
And if a man takes the life of anyone else, he must surely be put to death.
Whoever kills an animal must make restitution—life for life.
If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him:
fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Just as he injured the other person, the same must be inflicted on him.
Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a man must be put to death.
You are to have the same standard of law for the foreign resident and the native; for I am the LORD your God.’”
Then Moses spoke to the Israelites, and they took the blasphemer outside the camp and stoned him. So the Israelites did as the LORD had commanded Moses.