Torah Portion Vayikra - "And He Called"
Torah: Leviticus 1:1–5:26; Haftarah: Isaiah 43:21–44:23; Besorah: Matthew 16:1–20
Leviticus gets skipped a lot.
I know. People will read straight through Genesis and Exodus, arrive at the very first verse of Leviticus, feel something close to despair, and quietly put the Bible down for three weeks. If you grew up in a tradition that went straight from the Ten Commandments to the Sermon on the Mount, you probably got the impression that Leviticus was a long, loud pause in the story. All blood and smoke and regulations that nobody keeps anymore. Nothing to see here, moving on.
Friends, we are not moving on.
Here is what I need you to know before we take a single step into this book: Leviticus is a love letter. The rabbis called it Torat Kohanim, the Law of the Priests, and Jewish children traditionally begin their Torah study with this book. Not Genesis. Not Exodus. Leviticus. They started children there because pure hearts should first encounter a pure book. They understood something we have largely lost: this is not a book about rules. It is a book about nearness.
The very first word tells you everything.
The Word: וייקרא | Vayikra
Vayikra means “and He called.” Just three words in Hebrew open this entire book: “Adonai called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting.”
That word “called” is doing enormous theological work before the first sacrifice is ever described. God does not shout regulations down from a mountain in this book. He calls. The same way He called to Adam in the garden. The same way He called to Moses from the burning bush. The Torah is setting the tone from the very first syllable: what follows is not a ledger of requirements. It is a conversation.
And then there is the word that sits at the center of this entire portion: korban (קָרְבָן). We translate it “offering” or “sacrifice,” but neither word captures it. Korban comes from the root k-r-v (קַרְב), which means to draw near.
A korban is not a payment to appease an angry deity. It is a mechanism of intimacy. It is how a finite creature crosses the distance to an infinite God. When Israel brought a korban, the act itself was saying: I want to be close to You. I am bringing what costs me something because You are worth it.
Go ahead and let that restructure every single thing you thought Leviticus was about.
Because if Leviticus is about drawing near, then it has everything to say to us. Every single one of us knows what it feels like to be far from God. Every one of us has stood at a distance and wondered how to close it.
Torah: Leviticus 1:1–5:26 — The Five Offerings
Vayikra introduces five distinct types of offerings, and the variety is completely intentional. God did not design a one-size-fits-all religion. He designed a system that could meet people wherever they actually were. Which, honestly, is still exactly what He does.
The Olah: The Ascending Offering (Leviticus 1)
The olah was burned entirely on the altar. Nothing held back. Nothing kept for the priest or the worshipper. The whole animal went up to God. The word itself comes from the root meaning to ascend, to go up, which is the same root as the word aliyah. The offering ascends. The worshipper, in a sense, ascends with it.
Now here is something the text does that I love. The olah could be a bull. It could also be a turtledove or pigeon. The wealthiest person in the camp and the poorest person in the camp could both approach the altar and bring something that counted. The Torah refuses to make nearness to God the exclusive property of the affluent. Nobody gets turned away at the door for showing up with a bird.
In the believer’s perspective, this is Yeshua’s whole life made visible. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:2 that Yeshua “gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God,” using the exact sacrificial language of Leviticus. The olah held nothing back. Neither did he.
The Minchah: The Grain Offering (Leviticus 2)
The minchah was bloodless. Fine flour, oil, salt, and frankincense. The offering of grain. Of the harvest. Of human labor brought before God.
Two things are absolutely required: salt and no leaven. Salt preserves. Salt endures. Salt is the sign of the covenant. Leaven is what puffs up, what corrupts slowly and quietly from within. God doesn’t want some puffed-up offerings. He wants something that will last.
Here is the part that should genuinely stop you in your tracks. Even a small handful of flour, mixed with oil and set before the Lord, was called re’ach nicho’ach: a pleasing aroma to the Lord. A handful of flour. God is not measuring the size of what you bring. He is receiving the posture of your heart.
The Shlamim: The Peace Offering (Leviticus 3)
The shlamim comes from the same root as shalom. This was the only offering that was shared. God received his portion, the priest received his portion, and the worshipper ate the rest with family and community. It was like a big BBQ (I am being facetious but it kind of was!). A celebration of restored wholeness. Peace offering means exactly what it sounds like: you eat it together because something has been made right.
The shlamim was brought on occasions of joy and gratitude. First-century Jewish believers would have recognized this pattern immediately in the fellowship meal and the breaking of bread. Eating together around the work of the Messiah was never just some nice idea. It was deep in the liturgical DNA of the people.
The Chatat: The Sin Offering (Leviticus 4)
Here is where Leviticus gets rich and where most Christian readers either rush through or avoid entirely. Stay with me because this one matters.
The chatat was specifically for unintentional sins. Sins of ignorance. Sins that happened because the person did not know, or forgot, or stumbled into something without premeditation. God built an entire offering category around the theology that people make mistakes. That ignorance is real. The gap between knowing and doing is genuine, and He accounts for it.
Notice also who has their own specific chatat described: the anointed priest, the whole congregation together, the leader, the ordinary person. Nobody is exempt. The high priest and the common Israelite bring the same kind of offering. Nobody gets to skip the chapter that says you too.
The Asham: The Guilt Offering (Leviticus 5)
The asham addressed wrongs done to other people. Fraud, breach of trust, handling someone’s property carelessly, swearing falsely. These were not just spiritual violations but relational and financial injuries. And the asham required two things: the sacrifice AND full restitution to the person harmed, plus an extra fifth. Twenty percent on top.
This is God’s theology of repair. You cannot offer a sacrifice to God and leave the person you harmed unaddressed. The altar and the relationship are not separate categories. Yeshua says exactly this in Matthew 5:23–24: leave your offering at the altar and go be reconciled to your brother first. He is not innovating. He is reading Leviticus to them out loud.
Haftarah: Isaiah 43:21–44:23
You Wearied Me With Your Sins
Isaiah 43 opens with God going on at some length about the redemption He is about to accomplish for Israel. He will pour out rivers of water in the desert. He will make a way through the wilderness. He will redeem them from Babylon. And then He pivots.
He says:
You did not bring Me offerings. You did not call on Me. You did not honor Me with your sacrifices. Instead you burdened Me with your sins and wearied Me with your iniquities.
The connection to Vayikra is deliberate and a little devastating. Leviticus spends five chapters describing exactly how Israel is supposed to draw near to God through the korbanot.
And the Haftarah opens with God saying: you stopped doing that. You stopped coming near. And the distance didn’t just disappear because you stopped showing up. It accumulated.
But then... the turn comes. Because it always does.
“I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” (Isaiah 43:25, TLV)
And then in 44:22, TLV:
“I have blotted out your transgressions like a thick cloud and your sins like mist. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.”
These two verses are quoted in the Yom Kippur liturgy. Jewish people have been praying these words over their sins for centuries. The system of korbanot was always pointing to a reality larger than itself.
God was ALWAYS the one doing the ultimate blotting out. The animal sacrifices addressed the immediate and the visible. But the sin that separates, the weight that accumulates, the distance that opens up... that required a word from God Himself.
I will not remember your sins.
Isaiah goes on to mock idolatry with what I can only describe as some genuinely sharp comedic instincts. He describes a craftsman who uses half a log to cook his dinner and the other half to make a god and bow down and say “save me.”
The contrast with the living God who forms, redeems, and blots out sin isn’t subtle. Isaiah wants his audience to feel the full absurdity of looking for nearness in something that cannot even keep itself out of the fireplace.
The Haftarah ends with a song of cosmic rejoicing:
“Sing, O heavens, for Adonai has done it! Shout, depths of the earth!”
(Isaiah 44:23, TLV)
What has He done? He has redeemed. He has blotted out. He has said: you are My servant, I formed you, you will not be forgotten by Me. Covenant reaffirmed. Distance closed. Nearness restored.
Besorah: Matthew 16:1–20
Who Do You Say That I Am?
Matthew 16 opens with the Pharisees and those old Sadducees demanding a sign from heaven. Yeshua flat out refuses. You can read the color of the sky and tell me tomorrow’s weather, he says, but you cannot read what is happening right in front of you.
Then he warns his disciples about the leaven... the chametz... of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Passover is in the air. The removal of leaven is fresh in everyone’s memory. Watch out for what corrupts, what puffs up, what spreads unseen through the whole community.
Then comes one of the most significant scenes in all four Gospels. They are near Caesarea Philippi, a city that has a landscape that’s just saturated with pagan worship. There was a big rock face there with a cave at its base that pagans called the Gate of Hades, the entrance to the underworld. Shrines to Pan and to Caesar surrounded the area. Yeshua takes his disciples there deliberately.
He picks THAT specific piece of real estate and asks: who do people say that I am?
John the Baptist. Elijah. Jeremiah. One of the prophets.
And then Yeshua sharpens it: But who do you say that I am?
Peter answers: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
In Messianic Jewish context, “Son of God” was a recognized title for the Davidic king, rooted in 2 Samuel 7:14 and Psalm 2.
Peter isn’t sitting in a philosophy class trying to work out the finer points of the trinity. He is making a thoroughly Jewish claim. You are the one the covenant has been promising. You are the anointed King. You are the one Israel has been waiting for.
Yeshua responds that flesh and blood did not reveal this. His Father in heaven did. And then he gives Peter the keys of the kingdom.
The “keys” imagery comes straight out of Isaiah 22:22, where Eliakim is given the key to the house of David and the authority to open what no one can shut. This is stewardship language and governing language.
And “binding and loosing” was a well-known rabbinic phrase for interpretive authority, the right to determine how Torah applied in specific situations. Every Jewish person listening understood EXACTLY what Yeshua was commissioning.
And here is where it all circles back to Vayikra. The whole book of Leviticus is about how a community of people actually draws near to a holy God. What are the mechanisms? What does it cost? What does it look like?
And Matthew 16 is Yeshua standing in front of pagan shrines next to what everyone called the gate of the underworld, asking his disciples whether they actually know who he is.
Because everything about how nearness to God works has just been concentrated in him. He is the korban walking in human skin. He is the one who makes the distance crossable.
The gates of Hades will not prevail against what he is building. He said it standing right next to that cave. That is no accident.
Threads Across All Three Readings
Nearness is the point. Every offering in Leviticus is a mechanism of drawing close. The Haftarah is God closing the distance from His side. The Besorah is Yeshua embodying that closeness in a body, standing in front of pagan shrines and asking: do you actually know who I am?
The system was built for real people. Doves for the poor. Grain for those with nothing else. An entire offering category for unintentional sin. This is a God who designed His approach around the actual condition of actual people, not an idealized version of what worshippers should be.
You cannot separate the altar from the relationship. The asham required restitution. Isaiah rebuked Israel for ritual without relational faithfulness. Yeshua sent people back to their brother before the altar. Vertical worship and horizontal relationship have never been optional additions to each other.
God blots out. The korbanot addressed the immediate and the visible, but Isaiah 43:25 reveals the deeper reality underneath all of it: God Himself was always doing the ultimate clearing of the account. Not for Israel’s sake. For His own sake. Because He is the God who redeems, not merely the God who records.
My Final Thoughts
Here is the thing about Leviticus that nobody tells you: it is the most personally confrontational book in the entire Torah.
Genesis tells you where you came from. Exodus tells you how God rescued you. Leviticus looks you in the eye and asks what you are going to do about the distance between you and God right now, today, with your actual life and your actual sins and your actual relationships.
Every offering in these five chapters is a question.
The olah asks: is there anything you have been refusing to give fully? The minchah asks: do you believe your small offering counts? The shlamim asks: are you eating with anyone, or have you been trying to do this faith thing entirely alone? The chatat asks: have you been carrying shame about something you did not even fully understand at the time? The asham asks the hardest one: is there a person you have wronged who you have been hoping God would just handle without you having to go back and make it right?
Five offerings. Five questions. And before you even think about skipping to the questions section, know that every single one of them is going to find you.
Isaiah responds to all five by saying: God was never waiting for you to earn your way back. He blots out. He erases. He says I will not remember with the same authority He used to say let there be light. The same God who spoke the world into existence speaks forgiveness into the distance between you and Him, and the distance closes.
And then Yeshua shows up in Matthew 16 and stands at the entrance to what the pagans literally called the underworld and says: I am going to build something here that death itself cannot stop. And He asks the people standing with Him to say out loud who they believe He is.
That question has never stopped being asked. It is still being asked right now. Not who do people say He is. Not what your tradition decided. Not what the commentary says. Who do you say that He is?
Leviticus is God’s instruction manual for closing the distance. Yeshua is the distance already closed.
Come near.
Hebrew Letter Lesson for the Week: Nun (נ)
The Basics of Nun
Sound: “N” as in nefesh (soul)
Numerical Value: 50
Appearance: Nun has two forms. The regular nun (נ) bends forward like a servant bowing, and the final nun (ן), which appears at the end of a word, stretches downward in a long, upright line, like a servant who has been raised to stand before a king.
How Nun Is Written
נ
The bent form of nun speaks of humility. The extended final form speaks of what humility becomes when it is fully surrendered: something upright, tall, and enduring. The same letter. Two postures. One journey.
Spiritual Meaning of Nun
In Aramaic, nun means fish. The ancient pictogram for this letter was literally a fish, and every layer of meaning attached to nun flows from that image. A fish lives fully submerged in its natural element. It doesn’t strain against the water. It doesn’t negotiate with the current. It simply moves through what it was made for, completely at home, completely alive.
Moses himself is called Dag Gadol, the Great Fish, in some traditions, because he was drawn from the water as an infant and lived out his entire life as the most humble man on the face of the earth. His faithful successor? Joshua ben Nun. The son of the fish. Humility passed from teacher to student.
Nun also gives us two of the most important Hebrew words in Scripture. Neshama (נשמה) means soul, the deepest part of the human person, the heavenly spark housed in an earthly body.
And ne’eman (נאמן) means faithful. The word ne’eman in Hebrew actually begins and ends with nun, wrapping faithfulness inside itself the way water wraps around a fish.
Nun carries the number fifty, one of the Torah’s most loaded numbers. There are fifty days of counting the Omer between Passover and Shavuot, the journey from redemption to revelation. And every fifty years, the Jubilee arrives, when every inheritance returns to its original owner and every debt is released. Fifty is the number of what God releases when He opens what no one else can open.
There is one more beautiful thing I want to share. Nun + Samech (נס) = nes, which means miracle. The humble fish and the encircling support of God together make a miracle. That isn’t a coincidence. That is the aleph-bet telling you how the universe works.
A Little Nugget
Psalm 145 is an acrostic poem that works through the entire Hebrew alphabet in order. Some versions won’t show the Hebrew acrostic but the JPS Tanakh and some other versions do. But it is missing the verse for nun. The rabbis asked why, and the answer they gave is striking: the nun verse would have read “The fallen (nefila) of Israel shall rise no more” (Amos 5:2), which was too dark a statement to include in a psalm of praise. So God, in His mercy, skips the falling and goes straight to the samech verse: “Adonai supports (somech) all who fall and raises all who are bowed down.” (Psalm 145:14, TLV). The lesson of nun is that even our falling is held by His faithfulness.
Application
The soul was made to swim in God’s presence the way a fish was made for the sea. Not straining. Not performing. Not earning its way through the water. Just near.
The entire sacrificial system of Vayikra is a system designed for the neshama to move toward God. The korban is how the soul closes the distance. The letter nun and the word korban are telling you the same thing from two different directions: you were made for nearness. Stop fighting the current.
Ask yourself this week:
Where am I swimming against the current of God’s presence instead of moving with it?
Is my soul living in its natural element right now, or has it been surviving on dry land?
What would it look like to bring a korban this week, to take one deliberate step toward nearness instead of waiting until the distance feels smaller?
Let nun draw you back to the neshama, the deepest part of you that was made for God, and let that part of you come near.
Weekly Practice
This week, identify the offering your soul most needs to bring right now. Is it the olah, something you have been holding back from God entirely? The minchah, the small offering from limited resources, trusting that a handful of flour still counts as fragrant? The asham, a relationship that needs repair before you can come fully to the altar? Sit with which one resonates. Bring that thing before God with intention this week.
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Bible Study Questions
The Hebrew word korban comes from the root meaning “to draw near.” How does understanding the offerings as mechanisms of closeness rather than transactions of appeasement change how you read Leviticus?
The olah was burned entirely. Nothing kept back. What does complete surrender look like in your actual daily life, not as a theological concept but as a lived practice?
The grain offering required salt and no leaven. Salt represents covenant endurance; leaven represents what puffs up and corrupts quietly. What in your spiritual life needs more salt right now, and what needs less leaven?
The chatat addressed unintentional sins because God built provision for the gap between knowing and doing. What does it mean to you that God anticipated human frailty and designed His approach around it rather than against it?
The asham required not just a sacrifice but full restitution plus twenty percent to the person harmed. Is there a relationship where the altar is waiting for you to address a human injury first?
Isaiah 43:25 says God blots out transgressions “for His own sake.” What does it mean that His forgiveness is motivated by His own character rather than your merit?
Yeshua asks “Who do you say that I am?” while standing next to a cave pagans called the Gate of Hades. What is he declaring by choosing that specific geography for this question?
Reflection Questions
Which of the five offerings resonates most with where you are right now: olah, minchah, shlamim, chatat, or asham? What does that tell you about what your soul is carrying into this season?
Isaiah says Israel wearied God with their iniquities. Have you ever been in a season where your relationship with God grew distant, not because He moved but because you quietly stopped bringing yourself near? What brought you back?
The peace offering was eaten communally, with God, the priest, and the worshipper all at the same tble. Where in your life do you experience that kind of “triangulated” belonging, the sense of being at a table that includes God and real community at once?
Peter’s confession came as divine revelation, not human reasoning. Have there been moments in your faith when you knew something about God that you did not arrive at by logic... where it simply landed in you as true? What was that like?
God tells Isaiah’s audience: “You are My witnesses.” What have you witnessed God do that you are not telling anyone?
Action Challenges
Read Leviticus 1 through 5 slowly this week, not for information but for formation. As you read each offering, ask: what would it cost me to bring this? What would it feel like to lay my hands on it and transfer the weight?
Read Ephesians 5:2 and Hebrews 9:11–14 alongside Leviticus 1 and 4. Write down every place where the New Covenant writers use specific sacrificial language from Leviticus. The connections are not incidental.
Identify one relationship in your life that needs an asham, an act of repair and restitution. Take one concrete step toward that repair this week. Come to the altar having gone to your brother first.
Sit with the question Yeshua asked Peter. Write your own answer to “Who do you say that I am?” Not the Sunday school answer, not the creedal answer, but the answer from your own encounter with him. What have you actually witnessed?
Read Isaiah 44:21–23 out loud, slowly, as a personal declaration. Let “I have blotted out your transgressions like a thick cloud” land in the specific places where you still carry the weight of what you have done.
If this study stirred something in you, share it with a friend who needs to hear that Leviticus is not, in fact, a punishment.
And if it left you wanting to go slower and deeper into the Word, I’ve got a whole room for that.
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About the Author
Diane Ferreira is a Jewish believer in Yeshua, a published author, speaker, seminary student, wife, and proud mom. She is the founder of She’s So Scripture and She Opens Her Bible. She is the author of several books, including The Proverbs 31-ish Woman, which debuted as Amazon’s #1 New Release in Religious Humor, as well as Holy, Hormonal and Holding On.
She is currently pursuing her graduate degree in Jewish Studies in seminary, with her favorite topics being the early church and Biblical Hebrew. Diane writes and teaches from a unique perspective, bridging her Jewish heritage with vibrant faith in the Messiah to bring clarity, depth, and devotion to everyday believers.
When she’s not writing, studying, or teaching, you’ll find her curled up with a good book, crocheting something cozy, or playing her favorite video games.
Tree of Life (TLV) – Scripture taken from the Holy Scriptures, Tree of Life Version*. Copyright © 2014,2016 by the Tree of Life Bible Society. Used by permission of the Tree of Life Bible Society.