Slaughter and Sacrifice: The Holiness Code · We arrive now at the final major section of the book of Leviticus, the Holiness Code. Chapters 17–26 constitute a document placed here by the Priestly redactors, and Leviticus 27 is a kind of appendix. The title of the Holiness Code comes from the expression found several times in these chapters: Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy. The Holiness Code contains cultic and ethical instruction to help the Israelites maintain their holiness as people of Yahweh. The Code was probably read and applied in the time of the monarchy and placed here later in the Priestly material, but these chapters contain much earlier material.

In Leviticus “holy” can refer to a person or a place or to the people as a whole. The basic meaning of the term is “set …