And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am YHWH your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.

Outside of the necessity being the mother of invention and perceived tradition mandating the necessity, would any seminary professor restrain himself from failing a student who turned in the following in an exegetical paper?

Leviticus 18.5 means the only way the Israelites can get life from God is to sinlessly keep every one of God’s commandments without ever needing to exercise faith or trust God for continual forgiveness.

After all, the context is simply the following of other gods and following the true God. This is an exhortation, in our age, to be a faithful Christian rather than one who explores other religions. Nothing in the statement implies that only those without any sin are capable of heeding the command.

And wouldn’t he get an even worse grade if he also said:

Moses provides an alternative to the demand of Leviticus 18.5 in his statements in Deuteronomy 30:

For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

Here Moses is exhorting the Israelites to live by faith as opposed to the works principle found in Leviticus 18.5.

Would this not be an insane interpretation?

And contrary to popular opinion, Paul does not engage in such horrible exegesis in Romans 9 and 10. Here is what he writes:

What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law of righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were by works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written,

Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense;
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the goal of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

For Moses writes about the righteousness that is from the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. And the righteousness from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) or “‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

(By the way, the ESV’s take on Romans 10.3 is absolutely inexcusable: “For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.” Here the exact same phrase in the Greek “translated” (so-called) in two entirely different ways. It actually reads: “For, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.” The Greek changes the word order, so you could perhaps change the last to “righteousness of God” to be hyperliteral and show a mild chiasm. But the relationship is a simple genitive. “comes from” is not anywhere in the text. If it is supposed to be supplied, let it be supplied by the reader figuring out what the possessive relationship is supposed to mean!)

You will notice that in my translation, rather than contrasting what “Moses writes” with what “the righteousness from faith” says, using a “But,” the two are compared with an “And.” This is a perfectly plausible translation of the Greek word, de. Paul’s point is not that the law taught works righteousness but a passage in Deuteronomy gives us a clue that we shouldn’t listen to the law. Paul’s point is that the righteousness of the law was never meant to be pursued “as if it were by works” but only “by faith.” Paul is using the passage from Deuteronomy to properly interpret the one from Leviticus and show they are both consistent with each other.

(Paul uses Leviticus 18.5 in Galatians 3, but here he does not compare it to a passage from Deuteronomy, but with the faith in which both Jew and Gentile are one seed. The law set up boundaries that divided Jewish and Gentile believers while the faith has come to make us all one in Christ. In that sense “the law is not of faith” and we needed Christ to get us out of the realm of the Law by suffering the curse that would be involved in leaving it behind to embrace the new covenant.)

Of course, there are other interpretative options someone might argue for, but claiming that Leviticus 18.5 teaches one must be perfectly obedient in order to live is not plausible and there is no prima facie reason to force such an interpretation because of something the Apostle Paul wrote.