Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures has served as a standard reference for more than a century. The subtitle “Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical” aptly describes the three-pronged approach to the biblical text. This translated version of the German text is often considered by many to be superior to the original.
“‘Any voluntary disfigurement of the person was in itself an outrage upon God’s workmanship, and might well form the subject of a law.’ Clark.” (Page 152)
“This chapter forms the culmination of all that has gone before, of the laws both of sacrifices and of purity, and therefore forms the fitting conclusion of the whole portion of Leviticus concerned with the means of approach to God.” (Page 123)
“Nevertheless, it is to be remembered that Leviticus was given at Sinai in view of an immediate and direct march to Canaan, which should have culminated in the possession of the promised land.” (Page 4)
“In Hebrew law, on the other hand, God appears ‘as the Creator and omnipotent Ruler of the universe, a personal Lord of an impersonal world, totally distinct from it in essence, and absolutely swaying it according to His will; but also the merciful Father of mankind.’ ‘Therefore the sacrifices of the Hebrews have a moral or ethical, those of other nations a purely cosmical or physical character; the former tend to work upon mind and soul, the latter upon fears and interests; the one strives to elevate the offerer to the sanctity of God, the other to lower the gods to the narrowness and selfishness of man.’” (Page 10)
“One of the plainest teachings of the sin offering is that everything opposed to the revealed will of God is sin, whether done with the purpose of transgressing it or not.” (Page 48)