Chronologically, the book of Leviticus seems to be out of place. Exodus ends with the dedication of the Mishkan in the first month of the second year. Skip ahead one book to Numbers, and it picks up in the second month of the second year (and later backtracks to the first month of the second year). In terms of narrating a story, Numbers should come directly after Exodus; but in a thematic sense it’s quite clear that Leviticus follows Exodus. So it seems clear that G-d has chosen theme over chronology.
This tells us something about the purpose of the Torah. Its primary purpose is not as a book of history (although it certainly contains history), it’s primarily a book of law. The narrative is used to bind everything together, but the goal of the Torah is to transmit laws. There are several spots where events are out of order, and when we come across them we need to ask ourselves ‘why did the transmission of the laws in this section require the narrative to be out of order?”
Keeping this in mind will be a great help in understanding the Torah on a deeper level.
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