c. The earlier collections in the one case (ΡῈ) carry us back to the earlier years of the monarchy, and in the other (P*) preserve probably with accu- racy the procedure at the Temple during the period after Josiah’s reformation, and no doubt partially reflect the praxis of previous centuries, for thie continuity of custom and persistency of ritual where no historical revolution has taken place must be remembered.
ἃ. As a whole, Lv is the mirror of the Second Temple and its system. Whenever it or its several parts were written, it is on all hands admitted that its provisions were never fully executed till the time of Ezra.
§ 7. RELIGIOUS VALUE OF LEVITICUS.
a. We still need, side by side with the prophetie, the priestly view of religion. (See§6b). For all J” was Israel’s God, but for the one His Righteous- ness, and for the other His Holiness was the dominant attribute. (The earlier prophetic term ‘Holy One of Israel’ hardly belongs to the same circle of ideas as Ly.)
Ὁ. Amid the labyrinth of connected but fre- quently conflicting ordinances the watehwords of the Law of Holiness enable us to thread the maze securely. There are diflerences in the way by which it is sought to realize the ideal: the iden is but one, the Holy God amid a Holy People in s Holy Land. :
LEWD, LEWDNESS
c. The Law of Sacrifice reminds us of our human need for something visible and outward in our worship, while its particulars happily illustrate, even if they do not teach, the various parts of ' Christian devotion. Sacrifices are elements in the visible fabric of religion by which the spiritual service of the Hol od was given a protective shell for its growth: eternal moments in the life energy of the worshipping spirit, visualized in temporary form: op Sr pointing to the Perfect Sacrifice: earnests of that Sacrament which re- places sacrifice proper by commemoration and com- munion.
d. The Law of the Consecration of the Priesthood, with the multitude of ordinances on the duties and holiness of the priests, must ever remain solemn reading for all those who believe themselyes to have been made priests unto their God, and especi- ally for them on whom the great High Priest has laid the awful burden of ministering as His com- missioned representatives.
e. Lastly, the Law of Clean and Unclean enforces one great lesson alike of the Incarnation itself and of the life of the Incarnate, that the body matters intensely. Health helps not happiness only, but holiness. Cleanliness and ΠΟΘΙ μος have their real and close relations. The study of hygiene, the promotion of public health by helping to make or enforce good sanitary laws and bye-laws, the provision of baths and wash-houses or of a water supply, simple living, good housewifery, the stamp- ing out of infectious diseases, the treatment of the poor and sick,—if Lv only furnished texts for the commendation of these things, could we say that its religious value was insignificant ?
LireraTuRE.—(See art. HexaTeucH). Kalisch’s Comm. is the best in Eng.; cf. also Driver and White in Polychrome Bible brief comments); Kellogg in Expos. Bible (for application) ;
exapla in Leviticwm, 1631 (older views fully given); see also arts, PRIESTS AND LEVITES, SACRIFICE, TYPE, UNCLEANNESS.
G. HARFORD-BATTERSBY.
LEWD, LEWDNESS.—The Anglo-Saxon laéwed (or geléwed) was the past ptep. of laéwan, to enfeeble; in middle Eng. it appeared as Jewed, which was afterwards contracted to lewd. Thus the earliest meaning is ‘ enfeebled,’ ‘ useless,’ as in Piers Plowman, ii. 186—
‘Chastite with-oute charite worth cheynid in helle ; Hit is as lewede as ἃ lampe that no lyght ys ynne.’ Next we find the meaning of ‘ignorant,’ which was the usual sense of the word down to Shakespeare. Thus Chaucer, (ἢ) Romaunt, Frag. C. 1. 6217— ‘Lered or lewd, lord or lady’;
Spenser, Shepheards Calendar, ii. 10—
‘Lewdly complainest thou, laesie ladde,
Of winters wracke for making thee sadde’; and Ascham, Scholemaster, p. 45: ‘This lewde and learned, by common experience, know to be most trewe.’ From this arose a special use of the word to designate the J/aity, who are the lewd inasmuch as they are the unlearned, and so are distinguished from the ‘ clergy’ or ‘clerks,’ the learned.* Wyclif (1382) translates 1S 21} ‘And answerynge the pee to David seith to hym, I haue not leeuyd oouys at hoond (1388, ‘Y haue not lewid, that is comyn, looues at hoond’), but oonli hooli breed.’ Again, in the Wycliffite tr. of 1388, Ac 418 is rendered, ‘And thei siyen the stidfastnesse of Petre and of Joon, for it was foundun that thei weren men unlettrid, and lewid men, and thei wondriden, and knowen hem that thei weren with Jhesu’; which in 1380 had been ‘founden that thei weren men with oute lettris, and idiotis’ (Gr.
* Trench and Skeat hold that the sense of ‘lay’ came first, and that ‘ignorant’ developed out of it, the laity being seen to be ‘the ignorant party.’ But the other order seems proved by the examples we have gathered.
LEWD, LEWDNESS 199
l6:Grac=private persons, ‘laymen’; Vulg. idiote ; Tind. ‘laye people’; Cran. ‘laye men’; Rhem. ‘of the vulgar sort’). The two meanings of ‘ignorant’ and ‘lay’ are closely combined in Ascham, Works, (ed. 1815), p. 206, ‘Hereby is plainly seen, how learning is robbed of the best wits; first, by the great beating, and after, the ill choosing of scholars to go to the universities : whereof cometh partly that lewd and spiteful proverb, sounding to the just hurt of learning, and shame of learned men, that the greatest clerks be not the wisest men’; and in Sir John Davies, The Soul, st. 13— ‘Thus these great clerks their little wisedome shew, While with their doctrines they at hazard play ; Tossing their light opinions to and fro, To mocke the lewde, as learnd in this as they.’