“Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘When anyone of you offers an offering to Yahweh, you shall offer your offering of the livestock, from the herd and from the flock.
Parallel Translations
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“Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘When anyone of you offers an offering to Yahweh, you shall offer your offering of the livestock, from the herd and from the flock.
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Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock.
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Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them: When any man of you bringeth an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd or of the flock.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Commandments (1)
The laws of the Torah, each cited and shown as a primary source.
Cross-references (7)
Passages linked to Leviticus 1:2 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Leviticus 22:18-19 “Speak to Aaron, and to his sons, and to all the children of Israel, and say to them, ‘Whoever is of the house of Israel, or of the foreigners in Israel, who offers his offering, whether it is any of their vows or any of their free will offerings, which they offer to Yahweh for a burnt offering: that you may be accepted, you shall offer a male without defect, of the bulls, of the sheep, or of the goats.
- Romans 12:6 having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us: if prophecy, let’s prophesy according to the proportion of our faith;
- Genesis 4:3 As time passed, Cain brought an offering to Yahweh from the fruit of the ground.
- Genesis 4:5 but he didn’t respect Cain and his offering. Cain was very angry, and the expression on his face fell.
- 1 Chronicles 16:29 Ascribe to Yahweh the glory due to his name. Bring an offering, and come before him. Worship Yahweh in holy array.
- Ephesians 5:2 Walk in love, even as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance.
- Romans 12:1 Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain So they could offer of none other sort, but…
So they could offer of none other sort, but of those which were commanded.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Lev 1:2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and…
Lev 1:2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, [even] of the herd, and of the flock.
Ver. 2. Bring an offering.] Whereby they were led to Christ; as the apostle showeth in that excellent Epistle to the Hebrews, which is a just commentary upon this book.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain There are divers kinds of sacrifices here prescribed; some…
There are divers kinds of sacrifices here prescribed; some by way of acknowledgment to God for mercies either desired or received; others by way of satisfaction to God for men’s sins; others were mere exercises of piety and devotion. And the reason why there are so many kinds of them was, partly respect to the childish estate of the Jews, who by the custom of nations, and their own natural inclinations, were much addicted to outward rites and ceremonies, that they might have full employment of that kind in God’s service, and thereby be kept from temptations to idolatry; and partly to represent as well the several perfections of Christ, be true sacrifice, and the various benefits of his death, as the several duties which men owe to their Creator and Redeemer, all which could not be so well expressed by one sort of sacrifices.
Of the flock, or, of the sheep; though the Hebrew word contains both the sheep and goats, as appears both from the use of the word, Gen 12:16; 27:9; 38:17 and from Lev 1:10, and other places of Scripture. Now God chose these kinds of creatures for his sacrifices, either,
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1. In opposition to the Egyptian idolatry, to which divers of the Israelites had been used, and were still in danger of revolting to again, that the frequent destruction of these creatures might bring such silly deities into contempt. Or,
2. Because these are the fittest representations both of Christ and of true Christians, as being gentle, and harmless, and patient, and most useful to men. Or,
3. As the best and most profitable creatures, with which it is fit God should be served, and which we should be ready to part with, when God requires us to do so. Or,
4. As things most common and obvious, that men might never want a sacrifice when they needed or God required it.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto…
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them,.... For unto no other was the law of sacrifices given; not to the Gentiles, but to the children of Israel:
if any man; or woman, for the word "man", as Ben Gersom observes, includes the whole species:
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of you; of you Israelites; the Targum of Jonathan adds,"and not of the apostates who worship idols.''Jarchi interprets it of yours, of your mammon or substance, what was their own property, and not what was stolen from another (d), see Isa 61:8,
bring an offering unto the Lord; called "Korban" of "Karab", to draw nigh, because it was not only brought nigh to God, to the door of the tabernacle where he dwelt, but because by it they drew nigh to God, and presented themselves to him, and that for them; typical of believers under the Gospel dispensation drawing nigh to God through Christ, by whom their spiritual sacrifices are presented and accepted in virtue of his:
ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock; that is, of oxen, and of sheep or goats. The Targum of Jonathan is,"of a clean beast, of oxen, and of sheep, but not of wild beasts shall ye bring your offerings.''These were appointed, Ben Gersom says, for these two reasons, partly because the most excellent, and partly because most easy to be found and come at, as wild creatures are not: but the true reason is, because they were very fit to represent the great sacrifice Christ, which all sacrifices were typical of; the ox or bullock was a proper emblem of him for his strength and laboriousness, and the sheep for his harmlessness, innocence, and patience, and the goat, as he was not in himself, but as he was thought to be, a sinner, being sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, and being traduced as such, and having the sins of his people imputed to him.
(d) Vid. T. Bab. Succah, fol. 30. 1. & not. Abendana in Miclol Yophi in loc.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 2. Bring an offering] The word קרבן korban,…
Verse 2. Bring an offering] The word קרבן korban, from קרב karab, to approach or draw near, signifies an offering or gift by which a person had access unto God: and this receives light from the universal custom that prevails in the east, no man being permitted to approach the presence of a superior without a present or gift; and the offering thus brought was called korban, which properly means the introduction-offering, or offering of access. This custom has been often referred to in the preceding books. See also Clarke on "Le 7:38".
Of the cattle] הבהמה habbehemah, animals of the beeve kind, such as the bull, heifer, bullock, and calf; and restrained to these alone by the term herd, בקר bakar, which, from its general use in the Levitical writings, is known to refer to the ox, heifer, c. And therefore other animals of the beeve kind were excluded.
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Of the flock] צאן tson. SHEEP and GOATS for we have already seen that this term implies both kinds; and we know, from its use, that no other animal of the smaller clean domestic quadrupeds is intended, as no other animal of this class, besides the sheep and goat, was ever offered in sacrifice to God. The animals mentioned in this chapter as proper for sacrifice are the very same which God commanded Abraham to offer; see Ge 15:9. And thus it is evident that God delivered to the patriarchs an epitome of that law which was afterwards given in detail to Moses, the essence of which consisted in its sacrifices; and those sacrifices were of clean animals, the most perfect, useful, and healthy, of all that are brought under the immediate government and influence of man. Gross-feeding and ferocious animals were all excluded, as were also all birds of prey. In the pagan worship it was widely different; for although the ox was esteemed among them, according to Livy, as the major hostia; and according to Pliny, the victima optima, et laudatis sima deorum placatio, Plin. Hist. Nat., lib. viii., c. 45, "the chief sacrifice and the most availing offering which could be made to the gods;" yet obscene fowls and ravenous beasts, according to the nature of their deities, were frequently offered in sacrifice. Thus they sacrificed horses to the SUN, wolves to MARS, asses to PRIAPUS, swine to CERES, dogs to HECATE, &c., &c. But in the worship of God all these were declared unclean, and only the three following kinds of QUADRUPEDS were commanded to be sacrificed:
1. The bull or ox, the cow or heifer, and the calf.
2. The he-goat, she-goat, and the kid.
3. The ram, the ewe, and the lamb.
Among FOWLS, only pigeons and turtle-doves were commanded to be offered, except in the case of cleansing the leper, mentioned Le 14:4, where two clean birds, generally supposed to be sparrows or other small birds, though of what species is not well known, are specified. Fish were not offered, because they could not be readily brought to the tabernacle alive.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Lev 1:2. Divers kinds of sacrifices are here prescribed,…
Lev 1:2. Divers kinds of sacrifices are here prescribed, some by way of acknowledgment to God for mercies either desired or received; others by way of satisfaction to God for men’s sins; others were mere exercises of devotion. And the reason why so many kinds of them were appointed was, partly a respect to the childish state of the Jews, who, by the custom of nations, and their own natural inclinations, were much addicted to outward rites and ceremonies, that they might have full employment of that kind in God’s service, and thereby be kept from temptations to idolatry; and partly to represent, as well the several perfections of Christ, the true sacrifice, and the various benefits of his death, as the several duties which men owe to their Creator and Redeemer, all which could not be so well expressed by one sort of sacrifices. Of the herd and of the flock — By the herd, is meant oxen or kine; and by the flock, sheep or goats, as Lev 1:10. The only living creatures which were allowed to be offered on the Jewish altar were these five, namely, out of the herd, the bullock only: out of the flock, the sheep and the goat; from among the fowls, the turtle-dove, or young pigeon. These living creatures were common, and easy to be procured; besides, they were tame and gentle, useful and innocent. No ravenous beasts or birds of prey were admitted. Now God chose these creatures for his sacrifices, either, 1st, In opposition to the Egyptian idolatry, to which divers of the Israelites had been used, and were still in great danger of revolting again, that the frequent destruction of them might bring such silly deities into contempt. Or, 2d, Because these were the fittest representations both of Christ and of true Christians, as being gentle, and harmless, and patient, and useful to men. Or, 3d, As the best and most profitable creatures, with which it is fit. God should be served, and which we should be ready to part with, when God requires us to do so. Or, 4th, As things most common, that men might never want a sacrifice when they needed, or God required it.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Speak unto the children of Israel - It is…
Speak unto the children of Israel - It is important to observe that these first instructions Lev. 1:2–3:17 are addressed expressly to the individual who felt the need of sacrifice on his own account. They were not delivered through the priests, nor had the officiating priest any choice as to what he was to do. He was only to examine the victim to see that it was perfect Lev 22:17-24, and to perform other strictly prescribed duties Lev. 6:8–7:21. The act of offering was to be voluntary on the part of the worshipper, but the mode of doing it was in every point defined by the Law. The presenting of the victim at the entrance of the tabernacle was in fact a symbol of the free will submitting itself to the Law of the Lord. Such acts of sacrifice are to be distinguished from the public offerings, and those ordained for individuals on special occasions (see Lev 4:2 note), which belonged to the religious education of the nation.
Offering - Hebrew: קרבן qorbân - the general name for what was formally given up to the service of God (compare Mar 7:11), and exactly corresponding to the words “offering” and “oblation.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Offer, voluntarily, without any command. Some sacrifices were of…
Offer, voluntarily, without any command. Some sacrifices were of precept, Exodus xxii. 29. (Menochius) --- These first chapters are addressed to the people; the 6th from ver. 9, to the priests. Oxen, goats, and sheep, pigeons, and turtles, were to be offered in sacrifice, and small birds also, in the purification of lepers, (chap. xiv. 4,) as they might easily be procured. (Calmet) --- By sacrifice, we testify the dominion of God over all. They were offered by the patriarchs, and by all nations. God requireth that the victim should be without blemish, and slain with certain ceremonies wisely ordained, Psalm ciii. 24. (Worthington) --- A sacrifice. Hebrew korban, a present of any sort, Mark vii. --- Sheep and goats, ver. 10. The same term, tson, signifies both. (Menochius)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto…
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them--If the subject of communication were of a temporal nature, the Levites were excluded; but if it were a spiritual matter, all the tribes were comprehended under this name (Deu 27:12).
If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord--The directions given here relate solely to voluntary or freewill offerings--those rendered over and above such, as being of standing and universal obligation, could not be dispensed with or commuted for any other kind of offering (Exo 29:38; Lev 23:37; Num 28:3, Num. 28:11-27, &c.).
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bring your offering of the cattle, &c.--that is, those animals that were not only tame, innocent and gentle, but useful and adapted for food. This rule excluded horses, dogs, swine, camels, and asses, which were used in sacrifice by some heathen nations, beasts and birds of prey, as also hares and deers.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 2. If any man — Not any Israelite merely.…
2. If any man — Not any Israelite merely. Num_15:14. Here we may discover an early provision for admitting heathen to the worship of Jehovah as proselytes of the gate. When the temple was built there was a court of the Gentiles into which they might bring their offerings.
Bring an offering — Or, korban. A generic term for any oblation, bloody or bloodless. See Introduction, (3.) The objection may arise that it is illogical to describe offerings before the consecration of the priests. Written constitutions always describe the duties of their officers before their election and inauguration. Despite the assertions of irreverent and superficial critics, the subject-matter of this book is arranged with consummate skill. The practice of bringing offerings to Jehovah is here tacitly assumed. The method of speaking of the offerings in the first three chapters, as if well known, so different from those described in Leviticus 4-7, is one of the grounds of our discriminating between them as traditional and law-created. For the general character of the former see Introduction, (2.) In the presence of the overshadowing polytheism of Egypt, the Hebrew sacrifices had probably been omitted or infrequent and secret, lest the religious feelings of the Egyptians should be offended by taking the life of animals sacred to them. Exo_8:26.
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Unto the Lord — In the East a superior can be appropriately approached only by an introductory offering, or offering of access. Hence it would be exceedingly derogatory to the majesty of Jehovah, in the estimation of the people, to permit a breach of this immemorial usage. “None shall appear before me empty,” (Exodus xxiii, 15,) is a law of Jewish worship which, in spirit if not in form, St. Paul carried over into Christianity. 1Co_16:2.
Of the cattle — B’hemah is a collective term for beasts as opposed to men. Keil takes the liberty of disregarding the disjunctive accent equal to a period in English, and translates it, “If any man brings an offering of cattle unto the Lord.” This is doubtless the meaning.
Of the herd — The neat herd, or kine. Tame animals, in distinction from wild ones, and clean animals in distinction from unclean, were chosen. They were to be clean because He to whom they were offered is holy, and because some portion of all offerings, except the burnt offering and the sin offering of a priest and of the congregation, was to be eaten by the priest or the offerer.
Of the flock — The small cattle, sheep or goats.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 2. oblation] Heb. korban, from a root signifying ‘to…
2. oblation] Heb. korban, from a root signifying ‘to come near’; a general term for anything brought near to God, whether sacrifice, or other sacred gift. It occurs frequently in chs. 1–7, also in Lev_9:7; Lev_9:15, Lev_17:4, Lev_22:18; Lev_22:27, Lev_23:14, Lev_27:9; Lev_27:11 (in Lev_27:11 ‘sacrifice’ A.V.); Num_5:15 (the meal offering of jealousy), Lev_6:14; Lev_6:21 (the offerings of the Nazirite), 7 (the offerings of the princes, parts of which were not for sacrifice), Lev_9:7; Lev_9:13 (the passover), Lev_15:4; Lev_15:25, Lev_18:9 (‘oblation’ A.V.), Lev 28:2, Lev 31:50 (‘oblation’ A.V., the spoil of Midian).
In the Pent., the word occurs only in Lev. and Num.; outside the Pent, it is found in Eze_20:28; Eze_40:43; Neh_10:35; Neh_13:31. In Neh. the first syllable of the word has the vowel ŭ; both R.V. and A.V. translate ḳurban hâ‘çẓim by ‘wood offering.’ R.V. renders ‘oblation’ except in Eze_20:28 and Neh.; A.V. generally has ‘offering’; other renderings are noted in the list of passages given above. The verb from the same root is used in the Hiph.; it is applied to the action both of the layman and the priest, and is translated ‘offer.’
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The verse refers only to animal sacrifices, and serves as an introduction to the Burnt-Offering, and to the Peace-Offering of ch. 3.
of the herd and of the flock] i.e. large and small cattle. An offering of birds (Lev_1:14-17) is not mentioned here.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (2) Speak unto the children of Israel.—The directions for…
(2) Speak unto the children of Israel.—The directions for the different sacrifices specified in Lev_1:2; Lev_3:17, are not in the first instance communicated to the priests who should teach them to the people, but are directly addressed to the people themselves.
Ye shall bring your offering . . . —Or, from the cattle ye shall bring your offering, from the oxen and from the flock, that is, if the offering be of quadrupeds in contradistinction to the “fowl” mentioned in Lev_1:14, they are to be of oxen and small cattle (tzön), i.e., sheep and goats.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain If any man of you bring. Sacrifices are not…
If any man of you bring. Sacrifices are not now being instituted for the first time. Burnt offerings at least, if not peace offerings, had existed since the time of the Fall. The Levitical law lays down regulations adapting an already existing practice for the use of the Israelitish nation; it begins, therefore, not with a command, "Thou shalt bring," but, if any man of you (according to custom) bring. Any member of the congregation might bring his voluntary offering when he would. The times at which the public offerings were to be made, and their number, are afterwards designated. An offering. This verse is introductory to the ensuing chapters, and speaks of "offerings" in general. "Kor-ban," which is the word here used for "offering," derived from karab, meaning "to draw near for the sake of presentation," is the generic name including all offerings and sacrifices. It is used in speaking of animal sacrifices of various kinds, including peace offerings and sin offerings (Lev_3:1 Lev_4:23) and it is applied to vegetable offerings (Lev_2:1, Lev_2:13) and to miscellaneous offerings for the service of the tabernacle, such as wagons and oxen, silver vessels for the altar, gold, jewels, etc. (Num_7:3, 10 31:50) It is translated by the LXX into Greek by the word dwron , equivalent to the Latin donum, and our "gift." These offerings are now distinguished into their different kinds.
Vers. 2-17. The true end of sacrifice, entire consecration to God.
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We shall reach the end for which God introduced all that apparatus of Divine worship so elaborately described in this book if we take the following steps:
I THE SEPARATING PRESENCE OF SIN IN THE HEART AND LIFE OF MAN. But for the sin which "separates between us and our God" there would have been unrestrained communion between man and his Maker in every age and land: no need of mediation, of special arrangements, of careful limitations, of means and media of approach. Every line of this chapter, as also of this book, speaks of sin sin in the soul, sin in the life, sin on the conscience, sin as a hindrance in the way of man.
II THE EFFORT OF MAN TO FIND A WAY BACK TO GOD. It is impossible to forget that while Israel was offering its sacrifices as God directed, other nations were bringing their victims in such ways as they deemed best. The commonness of sacrifice, its prevalence outside the holy nation, speaks eloquently enough of man"s conscious distance from God, and of his desire and endeavour to find a way back to his favour. "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord?" This is the anxious question of sin-stricken, unenlightened man. "Shall I come with burnt offerings... wilt the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams?" This is his suggestion in reply. It is affecting to think of the multitudes of sacrifices under every sky, as instances of men "feeling after" the mercy of an offended God, groping in the dimness or the darkness towards reconciliation and peace.
III THE DIVINE PROVISION FOR MAN"S RETURN AND ACCESS TO HIMSELF.
1. Under the old dispensation. Man was to bring to the altar of God suitable offerings; such as were within his reach; the best of the kind; an unblemished male. It might be from his herd (verse 2), or from his flock (verse 10), or it might be a fowl of the air (verse 14). The priest was to pour the blood round about the altar (verses 5, 11), and the carcase was to be consumed upon the altar, a whole burnt offering unto the Lord.
2. Under the new dispensation. Instead of "the blood of bulls and goats," God has provided one offering which suffices for all souls of every land and age, even his own beloved Son. This was the "Lamb of God" (1), absolutely perfect, "without blemish and without spot"; (1Pe_1:19 Heb_9:14)
(2) shedding his own blood, (Heb_9:12) giving "his soul (his life) an offering for sin"; (Isa_53:10) "putting away sin by the sacrifice of himself"; (Heb_9:26)
(3) accepted of God; "an offering... of a sweet savour unto the Lord". (verse 17; Eph_5:2) Through that shed blood of "the Lamb that was slain" for us we have access at all times, forgiveness of sin, reconciliation to God. But not without
IV PERSONAL SPIRITUAL PARTICIPATION. The offerer under the Law took personal part in the offering: he brought his victim to the tabernacle (verse 10); he killed it with his own hands (verses 5, 11); he also "put his hands upon the head" of the animal (verse 4). The sinner, under the gospel, does not provide the sacrifice: "Christ our passover is slain for us." But he does take a personal participation: "by faith he lays his hand on that dear head of his;" he acknowledges that he himself is worthy of death; believes and appropriates to his own need the fact that Jesus died. for his sin; earnestly desires that his guilt may be transferred to the Lamb of God; entreats that that shed blood of his may atone for and cover his iniquity.
V THE END OF SACRIFICE, ENTIRE PERSONAL CONSECRATION. The consumption of the whole animal in the fire pictures the complete dedication of the Saviour, his absolute and entire consecration to the work which the Father gave him to do. It symbolizes ours also. Accepted by God through the atoning blood of the Lamb, we are to dedicate ourselves to him. Our personal consecration
1. Should follow upon and grow out of our acceptance through a crucified Saviour.
2. Should be thorough and complete: including heart and life, body and spirit, things sacred and things secular.
3. Will then be well pleasing to God, "an offering of a sweet savour unto the Lord" (verse 17). C.
Vers. 2-17. Principles of spiritual sacrifice.
All who know God are engaged, frequently, if not continually, in sacrificing unto him. Here are principles of sacrifice by which we may be guided.
I THAT GOD DESIRES AND DEMANDS THE BEST WE CAN BRING. If the offering were of the herd, it was to be a "male without blemish" (verse 3); so also if of the flock (verse 10). Not that which was of small account and could be well spared, but the worthiest and best. The best for the Highest. Not "that which costs us nothing" (2Sa_24:24) for him who has given us everything; rather the costliest of our treasures for him who, "though he was rich, for our sakes became poor." We may well break the rarest alabaster for him whose "body was broken" for our sin; may well pour out the most precious spikenard for him who poured out his life-blood for our redemption. "Worthy is the Lamb to receive riches". (Rev_5:12) When we worship him, or work for him, or give to his cause, we should bring, not our exhaustion, but our vigour; not our languor, but our energy; not costless effort, but that which has taken time and trouble to produce the gold rather than the silver, the silver rather than the pence; not anything that will pass in the sight of man, but the very best we can bring to his presence.
I THAT GOD ACCEPTS THE BEST WE ARE ABLE TO BRING. If he could not afford a bullock, the Hebrew worshipper might bring a sheep; or if that were beyond his means, a turtle-dove or pigeon (verses 2, 10, 14). God accepts gifts "according to that a man hath," etc. (2Co_8:12) He who approved the widow"s mites more than the rich men"s gold still "sits over against the treasury," and accepts what we can bring, however humble it be, if we bring with it "the willing mind." In the balances of heaven a conversation in a garret by the bedside of a pauper may weigh more than the greatest sermon before the noblest audience.
III THAT GOD REQUIRES THE FULL CONSENT OF OUR OWN MIND. "He shall offer it of his own voluntary will" (verse 3). The excellency, the beauty, the acceptableness of our offering lies largely in the hearty good will with which we bring it. "The Lord loveth a cheerful giver". (2Co_9:7) (See 1Ch_29:6, 1Ch_29:9)
IV THAT OUR OFFERING MUST BE MADE CONSCIOUSLY UNTO THE LORD. He shall offer it "before the Lord" (verse 3); he shall kill it "before the Lord" (verse 11). When the victim was slain the offerer was to have in his mind the presence of God, and was to present it consciously to him. Whatever form our sacrifice may take prayer, praise, inquiry of the Lord, contribution, exhortation it must be not mechanical, but spiritual; it must be religious; it must be rendered "as to the Lord, and not unto men.
V THAT GOD DESIRES OBEDIENCE IN THINGS BEYOND OUR UNDERSTANDING. Doubtless the priests of the tabernacle failed to see the import of many of the Divine directions. The people also must have been at a loss to understand the reason of many details of the service (verses 6, 8, 11, 15, 17). But both priests and people were required to conform under penalty of severe displeasure. In many things unintelligible to them do our children and the uninstructed conform, because they rightly trust to those who are older and wiser. There are many things concerning which we have all to feel ourselves to be the little children we really are in the presence of the heavenly Father, and we must do unquestioningly what he bids us. Let us try strenuously to understand, and when we fail to reach the Divine meaning, trustfully conform.
VI THAT THERE CAN BE NO WASTE IN THE FULLEST SACRIFICE WE LAY ON HIS ALTAR. In the burnt offering the whole victim was consumed; no part was saved for food. "To what purpose is this waste?" is it asked? We reply:
1. That the God in whom we live and whose we are is worthy of everything we can offer him.
2. That we never so truly realize the end and reach the height of our manhood as when we are devoting ourselves to God.
3. That we may count on a large and generous response at his liberal hand.
4. That we gain in spiritual profit far more than we lose in material reduction. C.
"Speak unto the children of Israel
and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock." Here is the great fundamental principle, as it were the preamble of the law of offerings. Notice
I THE DIVINE LAW IS UNIVERSAL. "Any man of you." No respect of persons with God. Same law to rich and poor, wise and unwise, as to its essential requirements. These private offerings represented personal religion. There may be differences of official duty, but what we bring to God for ourselves must be without respect to anything but the real relation between our soul and God.
II ALL OFFERINGS MUST BE VOLUNTARY. No compulsion with God but the compulsion of heart and conscience. True worship is not a mere objective obedience. "If any man bring an offering." It is brought by a willing mind, not out of caprice, not to any place or to any God, but with intelligent acceptance of the will of God as coincident with our own will. When we bring offerings we should know what it is in our hearts to bring, not trust to the impulse of the moment or the variations of fluctuating feelings.
III THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTIC OF THE OFFERING IS SURRENDER, ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE LORD"S CLAIM OVER US. Out of the herd or flock." That is, out of our own possessions, valued, known, intimately associated with ourselves. A religion which costs us nothing cannot be real. The more of one"s self there is in it, the more really offered it is. The mistake of all ritualism is that it leads us to offer up another"s offering instead of our own. We observe the rite, we repeat by rote the words, we listen to the music, but is the offering out of our own herd or flock? Jesus will have no disciple who does not first count the cost.
IV WHILE THE OFFERING IS VOLUNTARY, IT IS STILL PRESCRIBED. Ye shall bring your offering of the cattle." An enlightened recognition of Divine commandments is necessary to acceptable worship. "Faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the Word of God." "Not every man that saith, Lord, Lord; ... but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven things that I say." The liberty of the gospel is not license. The doctrines, rules, and practical teachings found generally in the New Testament, though not systematized there, are yet positively given. While we are delivered from the bondage of a legal dispensation, we are yet under law to Christ. Will-worship is unchristian. Tendency of our time is to an individualism which is dangerous. The study of the Old Testament in the light of the New a wholesome antidote. Yet our faith must always work by love (vide Galatians 5). R.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Bring an offering unto the Lord.
Lev_1:2
Bring an offering unto the Lord.
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The Levitical sacrifices
I. The sacrifices arising from breach of the covenant--compulsory. Sin and trespass-offerings (chaps. 4-5). Presumptuous--literally high-handed--sins incurred that forfeiture(Num_15:30; Deu_17:12). In contrast to these sins of presumption
1. The sin-offering was for sins of ignorance (chaps. 4., 5.).
2. The trespass-offering (Lev_5:14, &c.) differed from the sin-offering mainly in the character of the sin to be atoned for. It was a sin calling for amends or compensation.
II. The sacrifices from within the covenant--voluntary. Omitting the meat-offering (chap. 2.), which was an adjunct of the other sacrifices, and involved no shedding of blood, we notice--
1. The burnt-offering. The stated and congregational burnt-offerings of the day, and week, and year, &c., were compulsory. The occasional offering, of which we speak here, was voluntary (chap. 1). The burnt-offering pointed to the entire surrender of a mans being and life to God. Its characteristic was its entire consumption arid up-going in a flame to God. It was equivalent to a prayer, recognising Gods sovereignty, and His claim of service in all our relations. He who asks, How can I best serve God? will commit his way to God, and be at peace.
2. The offering vowed: i.e., made as the result of a preceding vow (Gen_35:1; 1Sa_1:11; 1Sa_1:28).
3. The thank-offering, the greatest of the three. The occasions for the thank-offering were innumerable. Joy as well as sorrow calls to religious exercise. In everything give thanks. This sacrifice of praise is the one sacrifice of heaven. (W. Roberts, M. A.)
The giving of the sacrificial laws
I. The very same voice which proclaimed the commandments on Sinai Is here said to announce the nature of the sacrifices, and how, when, and by whom they are to be presented. The unseen King and Lawgiver is here, as everywhere, making known His will. Those sacrifices which it was supposed were to bend and determine His will themselves proceeded from it.
II. These words were spoken to the children of Israel out of the tabernacle. The Tabernacle was the witness of Gods abiding presence with His people, the pledge that they were to trust Him, and that He sought intercourse with them.
III. The Tabernacle is represented as the Tabernacle of the congregation. There, where God dwells, is the proper home of the whole people; there they may know that they are one.
IV. Say to the children of Israel, If any of you bring an offering to the Lord. The desire for such sacrifice is presumed. Everything in the position of the Jew is awakening in him the sense of gratitude, of obligation, of dependence. He is to take of the herd and the flock for his offering. The lesson is a double one. The common things, the most ordinary part of his possessions, are those which he is to bring; that is one part of his teaching. The animals are the subjects of man; he is to rule them and make use of them for his own higher objects; that is another.
V. The victim was taken to the door of the place at which all israelites had an equal right to appear; but the man who brought it laid his own hand upon the head of it. He signified that the act was his, that it expressed thoughts in his mind which no one else could know of.
VI. The reconciliation which he seeks he shall find. God will meet him there. God accepts this sign of his submission. He restores him to his rights in the Divine society.
VII. Now it is that we first hear of the priests, Aarons sons. If there was to be a congregation, if the individual Israelites were not to have their separate sacrifices and their separate gods, then there must be a representative of this unity. The priest was consecrated as a witness to the people of the actual relation which existed between them and God. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)
Communion with God by a redeemed people through altar-offerings
I. Altar-offerings and tabernacle ministries all reach their completion in Christ.
1. In each offering three distinct objects are present: the offering, the priest, the offerer. Christ is each of and all these: Substitute, Mediator, Innocent Victim.
2. The difference in the several offerings. Different aspects of Christs offering.
3. The offerer himself also reflects Christ in His diverse aspects.
4. The different grades in the various offerings: bullock, lamb, dove. Denoting the different estimates and apprehensions formed of Christ by His people. Some never go beyond the conception of Christ as their Paschal offering, securing their redemption from Egyptian bondage and death. Others, however, see Him as their Burnt-offering, wholly devoted to God for them; while to others He is the passive Lamb, silent and submissive in affliction; and to others the mourning Dove, gentle and sorrowful in His innocency.
II. Altar-offerings and tabernacle ministries were designed for Israels acceptable communion with God. The types of Leviticus, in distinction from the types of redemption or deliverance from doom, give us the work of Christ in its bearing on worship and communion.
1. They meet the needs of a ransomed people in providing for their access to God. If they come for consecration they bring the burnt-offerings; if for grateful acknowledgment of Divine bounty and graciousness, they bring the food offerings; if for reconciliation, after ignorant misadventure or neglect of duty or temporary transgression, they bring their peace or trespass-offering. But they all provide a basis for access to and acceptance with God.
2. Christs work, as connected with the communion of His people, must be viewed under manifold representations. (A. Jukes.)
Of the differences between the giving of the moral law, and these ceremonial laws
1. The moral law contained in the Decalogue was delivered immediately by God Himself, because it concerned all people; the ceremonial law by Moses, because it specially concerned the Jews.
2. They differed in the manner; for the Decalogue was written in tables of stone, but these only in a book; to show that they were perpetual, these not to endure always.
3. The place was different. The moral law was delivered in Mount Sinai; the ceremonial out of the Tabernacle, to show that it served only for the Tabernacle, and was to continue no longer.
4. They differ in the time of delivery. The moral law was delivered at once; the ceremonies were given at divers times, for Moses had not been able at once to have received them all.
5. There was some difference in respect of the people, in whose hearing these laws were delivered. The Decalogue was delivered in Mount Sinai by a loud, thundering voice, that all might hear; but here at the giving of the ceremonial law only the heads, princes, and elders came together, particularly the Levites whom the observations of these ceremonies more nearly concerned. (A. Willet, D. D.)
Essential significance of the Mosaic injunctions
1. At the root of the essential significance of the Mosaic sacrifices two ideas lie--viz., the Mosaic idea of presentation, and that of atonement.
(1) Upon the idea of presentation (or giving to God, as it has been otherwise termed), the fundamental idea of all sacrifice, little need here be said. The Mosaic system of worship, like the patriarchal, was based upon the fact that man might approach God so long as his hands were not empty. As Adam worshipped in Eden by the surrender of time and strength in obedient performance of the Divine will, and possibly by the presentation of some of the fruits of his labour, as Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock, the acceptance of his gift opening a way to God which the patriarchs were not slow to follow; so, in the law given upon Sinai, the Jew was bidden to come near his Maker and Preserver, gifts in hand. Offerings of toil became means of grace; things eloquent of cost were channels for what was priceless; pledges of human sincerity in appeal were transmuted into pledges of Divine earnestness in reply; gifts from men to God brought gifts from God to men.
(2) Unlike the preceding idea, which belonged to every sacrifice of whatever name, in some measure or other, the idea of atonement belonged simply to sacrifices of blood. To make an atonement, if we probe the Hebrew figure to the bottom, was to throw, so to speak, a veil over sin so dazzling that the veil and not the sin was visible, or to place side by side with sin something so attractive as to completely engross the eye. The figure which the New Testament uses when it speaks of the new robe, the Old Testament uses when it speaks of atonement. When an atonement was made under the Law, it was as though the Divine eye, which had been kindled at the sight of sin and foulness, was quieted by the garment thrown around it; or, to use a figure much too modern, yet equally appropriate, it was as if the sinner who had been exposed to the lightning of the Divine wrath had been suddenly wrapped round and insulated. The idea of atonement was the so covering the sinner that his sin was invisible or non-existent in the sense that it could no longer come between him and his Maker.
2. Carrying in mind these two conceptions of presentation and atonement which the language of the law associates with every animal sacrifice, the names and express statements concerning each variety of such sacrifice will enable us to add their distinguishing to their general characteristics.
(1) The burnt-offering was at once a sacrifice and an atonement; but it was the element of presentation which was brought by it into especial prominence. It was pre-eminently the sacrifice of worship.
(2) The peace-offering resembled the burnt-offering in the relative insignificance which it attached to the fact of atonement; it differed in laying stress upon quite another affinity which might exist between God and man. As the burnt-offering provided a means of individual worship, the peace-offering provided a worship that was social. Tile peace-offerings were the sacrifices of friendship, and were presented by those who either desired, or lived and rejoiced in, the sense of an established friendship between themselves and their Maker and Preserver.
(3) In the sin and trespass-offerings the fact of atonement is emphasised.
(a) The sin-offerings, as their name implies, were offerings for sin. They may be divided into three classes: those which were presented in processes of purification; those which had to do with the expiation of precise sins, whether committed in church or state, by priest or ruler or common Israelite; and those which had to do with the expiation of undefined sins.
(b) The trespass-offerings were presented in atonement for sins against God or against man which admitted of compensation. There was in every trespass-offering the idea of retribution.
(4) Of the several species of bloodless sacrifices, nothing further need be said as regards their essential significance than that they are gifts pure and simple, without any element of atonement, and that they have for their aim to carry this fundamental conception of worship by presentation into all the ramifying relations of life. By the aid of the meat-offerings and drink-offerings and their priestly analogues, the shew-bread and oil and incense, God might be approached by the produce of labour; by the ransoms and firstfruits, He might be approached in recognition of the gifts of child and beast and produce of the earth; even battle might be consecrated by the presentation of spoils. By gifts God could be approached, and the sources of these gifts being various, the Divine hallowing might be as various.
3. Without minutely investigating the essential significance of the various holy days of the Jewish calendar, it is sufficient to call to mind that, amongst other uses, these holy days were days for holy convocation. They were opportunities specially arranged for a more regular and continuous attendance upon the means of grace provided by the Tabernacle and its services. (A. Cave, D. D.)
The Jewish calendar of sacrifice
How laborious, protracted, and intricate a system was this Mosaic worship by presentation! Yet how imposing! No religious ritual of ancient or modern times has appealed more forcibly to the eye or the imagination. It was a stirring and suggestive sight, beyond all question, which greeted such an one as a Levite, as he stood in early morning within the court of the Tabernacle ready to perform those more menial offices to which he had been appointed. Around him ran the white curtains of the sacred enclosure, relieved at regular intervals by the dull gold of the copper uprights and the gleam of the silver capitals. A few paces from where he watches, the more favoured members of his tribe, bearded, clad in their priestly robes of white and their parti-coloured girdles, are standing barefoot near the altar of burnt-offering, on the hearth of which the remnants of last nights sacrifice are still burning, or possibly purifying themselves at the laver in preparation for their sacred duties. The lamb for the morning sacrifice is slain and burnt before his eyes; and a few moments afterwards, the high priest, in his official robes of white and blue, Holiness to the Lord glistening in gold upon his fair mitre, the jewelled breastplate flashing in the sun, is passing to the Holy Place, the golden bells and pomegranates at the fringe of his tunic ringing as he goes, Perhaps, as holy hands draw aside the curtain of the sanctuary, a glimpse is caught of the consecrated space within, lit by the golden candlestick and hazy with incense from the golden altar; or, if the interior is sealed, there nevertheless is the tent of Jehovah, its gorgeous parti-coloured curtain in full view, and its immediate covering of blue and gold and scarlet and purple worked upon white, with cherubim, just visible beneath the outer awnings; and the onlooker knew that within, not far from the ark and the mercy-seat and the Shechinah, which were hidden behind the veil, the high priest was performing Divine service, and meeting with Jehovah under exceptional privileges. As private members of the chosen race come streaming in with their offerings, the more active duties of the day begin. At one time, one who has inadvertently broken some commandment of the law is watching the blood of the sin-offering, which he has just brought and killed with his own hand, as it is smeared in atonement upon the horns of the altar; at another, the priest is listening over the head of a ram to a confession of fraud, and computing the amount of monetary indemnity to be paid. Now a Hebrew woman, but recently a mother, is modestly presenting herself with her offering of pigeons; and now the high priest is passing through the gate of the court, attended by a Levite carrying birds and scarlet wool and hyssop--he has been summoned without the camp to examine a restored leper. Anon an application is made for the means of purifying some tent where the dead is lying. Here, in joyful recognition of the Divine favour, a solitary worshipper is presenting a burnt-offering; there, recumbent upon the holy soil, a whole family are merrily partaking of the remains of a peace-offering. At one hour a householder is compounding for the property which he has voluntarily vowed unto the Lord; the next, a Nazarite, with unshorn hair and beard, is presenting the prescribed sacrifices for release from his vow. Possibly, as the day advances, a consecration to the priesthood is impressively performed. And these and other ceremonies are maintained the whole year round. As the Jewish calendar ran its course in those times, exceptional, alas I when the religious sense of the nation was quick and its practice scrupulous, it was as if one long bleat, one incessant lowing, filled the air; it was as if one long, continuous stream of sacrificial blood choked the runnels of the court. The year opened with the evening sacrifice and the new moon celebration, the expiring flames of which were fed next day by the ordinary morning sacrifice and by a round of individual presentations, which must sometimes have known no interruption until the smoke of the evening sacrifice again rose into the air and another day began. Day after day the customary ceremonial was repeated, till the Sabbath twilight fell and double sacrifices were slaughtered. On the fourteenth day of the first month came the solemn celebration of the Passover, when in every home, with devout recollections and enthusiastic hopes, a Paschal lamb was spread upon the board. Then followed the seven days of Unleavened Bread, with their customary and holy-day ritual, bringing at length, after the repeated diurnal, sabbatic, and mensual formalities, the fuller slaughter of Pentecost. Day after day, Sabbath after Sabbath, new moon after new moon, the authorised worship was again continued, until there came a break to the monotony once more on the first day of the seventh month in the Feast of Trumpets, and on the tenth day of the same month in the awful and grave procedure of the Day of Atonement, followed after five days interval by the singular and more grateful worship of the Feast of Tabernacles. The year was afterwards brought to a close by the common series of daily, weekly, and monthly effusions of blood. (A. Caves, D. D.)
Divers sacrifices, but one Christ
1. There were many sorts of sacrifices and yet but one Christ to be signified by them all. This did the Lord in great mercy and wisdom, that so His people, fully busied and pleased with such variety, might have neither cause nor leisure to look unto the wicked idolatries of the heathens, according to the several charges given them of God, To beware lest they were taken in a snare, to ask after their gods saying, How did these nations serve their gods, that I may do so likewise? &c. Seeing all the abomination that God hateth, they did unto their gods, burning both their sons and daughters with fire to their gods, and the Lord would have them do only what He commanded, putting nothing unto it, neither taking anything from it.
2. Although Christ be but one, and His sacrifice but one, yet great is the fruit, and many mercies flow from Him and His death unto us. By Him our sins are washed out, by Him Gods wrath against us is appeased, by Him we are adopted and taken for the sons of God and fellow-heirs with Him, by Him we are justified and endued with the Holy Ghost, enabled thereby to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness, walking in His holy commandments with comfort, and longing for our deliverance out of this Vale of misery, That we may be clothed with our house, which is from heaven, &c. Divers sorts of sacrifices, therefore, were appointed, to note, by that variety, the variety of these fruits of Christ to all believers, though He be but one.
3. There were many sorts of sacrifices, that so plainly the Church might see that these kind of sacrifices were not the true sacrifices for sins. For if any one had been able to take away sin the others had been in vain added (see Heb_10:1). (Bp. Babington.)
The need of varied sacrifices
The commencing chapters of Leviticus present to us five different aspects of the sacrificial service of Christ, varied according to the variety of those needs in us which the grace of the One Sacrifice is designed to meet. The want of that full and unreserved devotedness which is due on our part to God, and claimed by Him, but which is by us never rendered, is met by that abounding grace which has appointed another, perfect in devotedness and self-renunciation, to be a burnt-offering in our room. The manifold deficiences in our personal characters--the presence in them of so much that should be absent, and the absence of so much that should be present, is met by the presentation of Him for us, the perfectness of whose character is here typified by the excellency of the meat-offering. The condition of our nature which is enmity against God, because sin, essential sin, dwells in it, is met by the efficacy of the peace sacrifice, whereby, notwithstanding the enmity of our nature, peace with the Holy One becomes our portion. Sin, even when committed in such intensity of blindness, as that we understand not the heinousness of that which we are doing, and perhaps mistake it for good--such sin is met by the sin-offering; or if it be committed knowingly, not under the blindness of ignorance, but in the wilfulness of a heart that consciously refuses to be restrained, it is met by the grace of the trespass-offering. Such are the aspects under which the perfectness of the One Sacrifice is presented to us in the commencing chapters of Leviticus. The aspects are various, but the sacrifice is one; just as the colours of the rainbow may, for instruction sake, be presented to us separately, but the rainbow which they unitedly constitute is one. After we have learned in distinctness, we combine in unity. Nor is there any division of the perfectness of the One Sacrifice in its application to them that believe. From the first moment we believe, the perfectness of Christs sacrifice is in all its totality ours. We may not, perhaps, either appreciate or understand all that is typified by these various offerings, yet the united value of them all is reckoned to us by God. (B. W. Newton.)
Origin of sacrifices
It is a little surprising, upon first view, that God should appoint or sanction rites and services of worship, the observance of which would make His sanctuary look so much like a solemn slaughter-house. But where sin is stayed and quenched, there must be blood. Blood is the substance of life; and as sin involves the forfeiture of life,! without shedding of blood there is no remission. Hence almost all things are by the law purged with blood. These bloody rites, however, did not originate with the law. It is a question with learned men how they did originate. Some refer them to some primitive enactment of God, and others regard them as the natural outgrowth of mans consciousness of sin, and his desire to appease the Divine anger felt to attend upon it. It is certain that they are nearly as old as man. They date back to Noah, to Abel, to Adam Himself. They have been found among nearly all nations. And when God gave commandment to Moses concerning them, they already formed a part of the common religion of the world. They are not here spoken of as a new institution, now for the first time introduced, but are referred to rather as an ancient and well-known element of mans worship, to which the Divine Legislator meant only to affix a more specific ritual. That offerings would, and ought to be made, seems to be taken for granted, whilst these new commands relate only to the manner in which they were to be made. If, that is, in the ordinary course of things already familiar, or, when any man of you shall bring an offering to the Lord, ye shall bring so and so. There is a worship, at least a disposition to worship, which has descended upon all serious men from the very beginning. There is a theology even in Nature, and a faculty of worship or religiousness which is somehow natural unto man. Revelation does not deny this, but takes it for granted, and often appeals to it, and proceeds upon it as its original groundwork. It does not propose to engraft a religious department on mans constitution, but recognises such a department as already in existence, and proposes merely to assist, and guide, and guard it against falsehood, idolatry, and superstition. Nature, left to herself, and unassisted by Divine teachings, certainly wanders into mazes of perplexity, involves herself in error and blindness, and becomes the victim of folly, full of all sorts of superstition. So said the knowing leader of the glorious Reformation; and all the records of time attest the truth of his statement. Man needs to hear a voice from heaven--a supernatural word--to guide him successfully to the true God, and to the right worship of that God. Nature may dispose him to make offerings, and a common religious consciousness may approve and sanction them; but it yet remains for God to say what sort of offerings are proper, and how they are to be acceptably presented. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.)
Redemption by blood offensive to some minds
Redemption by blood is the great theme of the Scriptures, from beginning to end. It ever and again comes up. God will not permit it to remain out of sight for a single chapter. No matter what the figure is, it is made somehow to embrace this. It is repeated at every turn. It stands out boldly at every step. Every imaginable method is taken to write it deep in the soul, to engrave it upon the conscience, to fill the whole mind with it, and to make it the grand centre of all religious thought and belief. It seems greatly to disgust and offend many that we have so much to say about blood. Some verily seem to think, and some sceptics have argued, that the Bible cannot be what it claims to be, because it represents God as appointing and taking pleasure in such sanguinary arrangements and services. But observe the glaring inconsistency of such people in shrinking with abhorrence from the bloody nature of the system which God has arranged for our salvation, whilst they are yet great admirers of the taste and culture of the men and times we read of in the classics. They are charmed with the ancient Greeks and Romans, and are ever putting them forward as our exemplars and guides; and cannot get done talking about their glorious civilisation; just as if the religion of Greece and Rome had no sanguinary rites, or involved no dealing in bloody sacrifices. Never was there a religious system on earth more bloody in its observances, or more shocking in its sacrificial ritual, than those in vogue among these very Greeks and Romans, sanctioned and supported by their laws, and advocated by their greatest men. Their altars flowed, not only with the blood of bulls and goats and various unclean and disgusting creatures, but with the blood of human beings, who were annually slain and offered up in religious worship to propitiate their sanguinary deities. In the worship of Zeus Lycaeus in Arcadia, human sacrifices were regularly offered for hundreds of years, down to the time of the Roman Emperors. In Leucas, a man was every year put to death at the high festival of Apollo. When their great generals went out to war, they first offered up human victims to gain the assistance of their divinities. Before the battle of Salamis, Themistocles sacrificed three Persians to Dionysius. The city of Athens--the very eye of Greece--had an annual festival in honour of the Delian Apollo, at which two persons were every year put to death, the one for the men and the other for the women, of that renowned metropolis. The neck of the one who died for the men was surrounded with a garland of black figs, and the neck of the other with a garland of white figs, and both were beaten with rods of fig-wood as they were led forth to a place where they were burned alive, and their ashes cast into the air and sea. And Grecian story tells of many parents, who laid violent hands upon their children, and offered them up as bloody sacrifices to their gods. Nor was it much different with the Romans. In their earlier history it was the custom, under certain contingencies, to sacrifice to their deities everything born of man or beast between the first day of March and the last day of April. Even in the latest period of the Roman Republic, men were sacrificed to Mars in the Campus Martius, by priests of state, and their heads stuck up at the Regia. I mention these things, not to vindicate the Levitical rites, of which they were monstrous and wicked distortions and perversions, but to show the miserable inconsistency of those sceptical people who denounce the atoning regulations of the Scriptures, and hold up the taste and ideas of the Greeks and Romans as the true models of what is beautiful, refined, and elevated. I merely wish to have you know and feel, that if the Hebrew ritual is to be regarded as offensive to a lofty aesthetic taste, the ritual of the most polished nations of antiquity was still more offensive and abhorrent in the utmost degree; and that if the religion of the Scriptures cannot be received as of God by reason of its connection with scenes of blood, there is no system of religion upon earth, ancient or modern, that can be so received; because all others have been equally and still more sanguinary in their services, and that, too, without any of the deep and affecting moral meaning of this. And I freely confess that I see nothing in the doctrine of salvation by blood, or in the Jewish rites, which typified it with so much strength and clearness, either to offend my taste, to shock my reason, or the least to interfere with the readiest and fullest acceptation of the Scriptures as the true revelation of Almighty God. True, I behold in it much that humbles my pride--that tells me I am a very wicked sinner--that proclaims my native condition far removed from what Gods law requires--that assures me I am undone as regards my own strength--and that holds out death and eternal burning as what I deserve. But all this accords with my conscience, and is re-echoed in the deepest convictions of my soul. And with it all, it presents to me a plan of redemption so out of the line of mans thoughts, so fitted to my felt wants, and so completely attested by its moral efficacy, that it is itself a mighty demonstration to my mind of its Divine original. The very fact that the Bible has but one great subject running through all its histories and prophecies, ordinances and types, epistles and psalms--that salvation by blood is the focal point in which all its various lines of light converge--is to me one of the strongest evidences that it has come from God. When I consider that its writers lived hundreds and thousands of years apart, that they were found in all walks of life, and that they wrote in languages foreign to each other, I can find no way to account for the unity which pervades it but by admitting that these various writers were all moved and guided by the same high intelligence and inspired of God. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.)
The ancient ritual
Here is a singular conjunction of the legal and the voluntary. Jehovah fixes the particulars, but the man himself decides on the act of sacrificial worship. Observe how the Lord works from the opposite point from which the first of the Ten Commandments was given. There God called for the worship: here He leaves the man to offer the worship and proceeds to tell him how. The preparation of the heart and the answer of the tongue are from God. No man was at liberty in the ancient Church determine his own terms of approach to God. The throne must be approached in the appointed way. We are not living in an era of religious licentiousness. There is a genius of worship, there is a method of coming before God. God does not ask us to conceive or suggest methods of worship. He Himself meets us with His time-bill and His terms of spiritual commerce. God is in heaven and we are upon the earth; therefore should our words be few. The law of approach to the Divine throne is unchanged. The very first condition of worship is obedience. Obedience is better than sacrifice, and is so because it is the end of sacrifice. But see how, under the Levitical ritual, the worshipper was trained to obedience. Mark the exasperating minuteness of the law. Nothing was left to haphazard. The worship was to be offered through mediation. The priestly element pervades the universe; it is the mystery of life and service. The service was voluntary. Notice the expression, He shall offer it of his own voluntary will. The voluntariness gives the value to the worship. We can only pray with the heart. There is in this great ritual a wonderful mixing of free will and Divine ordination; the voluntary and the unchangeable; the human action and the Divine decree. We cannot understand it; if we are able to understand it then it is no larger than our understanding: so God becomes a measurable God, merely the shadow of human wit, a God that cannot be worshipped. It is where our understanding fails or rises into a new wealth of faith, that we find the only altar at which we can bow, with all our powers, where we can utter with enthusiasm all our hopes and desires. So we come with our sacrifice and offering, whatever it may be, and having laid it on the altar, we can follow it no further--free as the air up to a given point, but after that bounded and fixed and watched and regulated--a mystery that can never be solved, and that can never be chased out of a universe in which the infinite and finite confer. The worship of the ancient Church was no mere expression of sentiment. It was a most practical worship, not a sentimental exercise; it was a confession and an expiation--in a word, an atonement. This fact explains all. Take the word atonement out of Christian theology, and Christian theology has no centre, no circumference, no life, no meaning, no virtue. If we could read this Book of Leviticus through at one sitting the result might be expressed in some such words as these--Thank God we have got rid of this infinite labour; thank God this is not in the Christian service; thank God we are Christians and not Jews. Let not our rejoicing be the expression of selfishness or folly. It is true we have escaped the bondage of the letter, but only to enter into the larger and sweeter bondage of the spirit. The Jew gave his bullock or his goat, his turtledove or his young pigeon; but now each man has to give himself. We now buy ourselves off with gold. Well may the apostle exhort us, saying, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Wonderful is the law which lays its claim upon the ransomed soul--none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself; whether we live, we live unto the Lord; whether we die, we die unto the Lord; living or dying we are the Lords. We have escaped measurable taxation, but we have come under the bond of immeasurable love. We have escaped the letter, we have been brought under the dominion of the spirit. Let us be careful, therefore, how we congratulate ourselves on having escaped the goat-offering and heifer-offering, and turtledove and young pigeon sacrifices; how we have been brought away from the technicality and poverty of the letter into the still further deeper poverty of selfishness. As Christians we have nothing that is our own; not a moment of time is ours; not a pulse that throbs in us, not a hair of our head, not a coin in the coffer belongs to us. This is the severe demand of love. Who can rise to the pitch of that self-sacrifice? (J. Parker, D. D.)
Gods way out of sin
What an important part the word if plays in the opening chapters of Leviticus! At first we did not seem to see it, but by frequent repetition it urges itself upon our notice as a term of vital importance in the argument of the subject, whatever that subject may be. We cannot enter into the subject except through the gate if. It is Gods word. Through the gate if we enter into the temple of obedience. Having crossed the threshold, then law begins to operate. After the if comes the discipline--the sweet, but often painful necessity. Observe the balance of operation: Man must reply; having replied, either in one form or the other, necessary consequences follow. It is so in all life. There is no exception in what is known as the religious consciousness and activity. The great sea says in its wild waves, If ye will walk on me and become citizens of this wilderness of water, then yon must submit to the law of the country; you must fall into the rhythm of the universe; you must build your wooden houses or your iron habitations according to laws old as God; you need not come upon my waters; I do not ask you to come; when you come I will obliterate your footprints so that no man may ever know that you have crossed me; but if you come you must obey. We have, therefore, no liberty after a certain time. This is the law of all life. But we never give up our liberty in response to the laws of the universe without our surrender being compensated after Gods measure. The law gave great choice of offering. It said, If you bring a burnt-offering, bring it of the herd if you have one. If you have not a herd of cattle, bring it of the flocks; bring it of the flock of the sheep; but if you are too poor to have a flock of sheep, bring a goat from the flock of the goats; only in all cases this condition must be permanent: whatever you offer must be without blemish. But if you have no cattle, no sheep, no goats, then bring it of the fowls: bring turtledoves or young pigeons; the air is full of them, and the poorest man can take them. Is that not mercy twice blessed? We are not all masters of cattle that browse upon the green hills; nor are we all flock-masters, and amongst flockmasters there are rich and poor. God says, Let your offering be according to your circumstances, only without blemish, and it shall be accepted. There is no short and easy method with sin. Men have sought by excess of the very thing itself to destroy sin, and if they could have gone forward from indulgence to indulgence, from insanity to insanity, they might have escaped the remorse of this world; but God has so constituted the universe that men have moments of sobriety, times of mental and moral reaction, periods in which they see themselves and their destiny with an appalling vividness, and in those hours it is found that the sin which began the mischief is still there. There is no way out of it but Gods way. (J. Parker, D. D.)
What is our offering to the Lord?
If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord. And is there any man of you who will not bring an offering unto the Lord? Have you brought an offering to Him? When? What was it? You dont mean to call that trifle that you dropped into the contribution-box because you must keep up appearances in church, you know; you dont mean to call that your offering unto the Lord! You dont mean to call your amount paid for pew-rent--so that you could have your own independent sittings, and that in the very best place you could get for your money; you dont mean to call that your offering to the Lord! Come, now, what has been your offering unto the Lord--an offering that you could fairly point the Lord to, in comparison with what He has given to you, and could say, There, Lord, that is my offering to Thee? If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord--well, what is the offering? Let it be fairly recognised. God wants to know what it is. Can you tell Him? (H. C. Trumbull.)
Sacrifice the one great idea of the Bible
As in Beethovens matchless music there runs one idea, worked out through all the changes of measure and of key, now almost hidden, now breaking out in rich, natural melody, whispered in the treble, murmured in the bass, dimly suggested in the prelude, but growing clearer and clearer as the work proceeds, winding gradually back until it ends in the keys in which it began, and closes in triumphant harmony: so throughout the whole Bible there runs one great idea: mans ruin by sin, and his redemption by grace; in a word, Jesus Christ the Saviour. This runs through the Old Testament, that prelude to the New; dimly promised at the Fall, and more clearly to Abraham; typified in the ceremonies of the law; all the events of sacred history paving the way for His coming; the great idea growing clearer and clearer as the time drew on. Then the full harmony broke out in the song of the angels, Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, goodwill towards men. (H. W. Beecher.)
The ceremonies of the law pointed to Christ
The earth bringeth forth fruit of itself, but first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear (Mar_4:28). So did the blade or herb spring out of the law of nature; the ear or culm, in the law written; but we have in the gospel the pure grain or full corn, which is Christ Jesus. Therefore, as the stalk or ear is of necessary use till the corn be ripe, but the corn being ripe we no longer use the chaff with it, so till Christ was exhibited in the flesh, which lay hidden in the blade and spike of the law, the ceremonies had their use; but since that by His death and passion this pure wheat is thrashed and winnowed, and by His ascension laid up in the garner of heaven, they are of no further use (Eph_2:15). The Jews were taught by those shadows that the body should come, and we know by the same shadows that the body is come; the arrow moveth, whilst it flies at the mark, but having hit the mark, resteth in it. (J. Spencer.)
The completed design
Bartholdis gigantic statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, occupies a fine position on Bedloes Island, which commands the approach to New York Harbour. It holds up a torch, which is to be lit at night by electric light. The statue was cast in portions in Paris. The separate pieces were very different in appearance, and, taken apart, of uncouth shape. It was only when all were brought together, each in its right place, that the complete design was apparent. Then the omission of any one would have left the work imperfect. In this it was an emblem of Holy Scripture. We do not always see the object of different portions, nevertheless each has its place, and the whole is a magnificent statue of Jesus Christ. (The Freeman.)
Outlines of Christ
I was looking one day at some of the paintings of the late American artist, Mr. Kensett. I saw some pictures that were just faint outlines; in some places you would see only the branches of a tree and no trunk, and in another case the trunk and no branches. He had not finished the work. It would have taken him days, and months, perhaps, to have completed it. Well, my friend, in this world we get only the faintest outlines of what Christ is. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain THE voice of Jehovah which had spoken not long…
SACRIFICE: THE BURNT OFFERING
Lev_1:2-4
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THE voice of Jehovah which had spoken not long before from Sinai, now speaks from out "the tent of meeting." There was a reason for the change. For Israel had since then entered into covenant with God; and Moses, as the mediator of the covenant, had sealed it by sprinkling with blood both the Book of the Covenant and the people. And therewith they had professedly taken Jehovah for their God and He had taken Israel for His people. In infinite grace, He had condescended to appoint for Himself a tabernacle or "tent of meeting," where He might, in a special manner, dwell among them, and manifest to them His will. The tabernacle had been made according to the pattern shown to Moses in the mount; and it had been now set up. And so now, He who had before spoken amid the thunders of flaming, trembling Sinai, speaks from the hushed silence of "the tent of meeting." The first words from Sinai had been the holy law, forbidding sin with threatening of wrath: the first words from the tent of meeting are words of grace, concerning fellowship with the Holy One maintained through sacrifice, and atonement for sin by the shedding of blood. A contrast this which is itself a Gospel!
The offerings of which we read in the next seven chapters are of two kinds, namely, bloody and unbloody offerings. In the former class were included the burnt offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the guilt, or trespass offering; in the latter, only the meal offering. The book begins with the law of the burnt offering.
In any exposition of this law of the offerings, it is imperative that our interpretation shall be determined, not by any fancy of ours as to what the offerings might fitly symbolise, nor yet, on the other hand, be limited by what we may suppose that any Israelite of that day might have thought regarding them; but by the statements concerning them which are contained in the law itself, and in other parts of Holy Scripture, especially in the New Testament.
First of all, we may observe that in the book itself the offerings are described by the remarkable expression, "the bread" or "food of God." Thus it is commanded {Lev_21:6} that the priests should not defile themselves, on this ground: "the offerings of the Lord made by fire, the bread of their God, do they offer." It was an ancient heathen notion that in sacrifice, food was provided for the Deity in order thus to show Him honour. And, doubtless, in Israel, ever prone to idolatry, there were many who rose no higher than this gross conception of the meaning of such words. Thus, in Psa_50:8-15, God sharply rebukes Israel for so unworthy thoughts of Himself, using language at the same time which teaches the spiritual meaning of the sacrifice. regarded as the "food," or "bread," of God: "I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices; and thy burnt offerings are continually before Me I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he-goats out of thy stalls If I were hungry, I would not tell thee; for the world is Mine, and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God the sacrifice of thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the Most High; and call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify Me."
Of which language the plain teaching is this: If the sacrifices are called in the law "the bread of God," God asks not this bread from Israel in any material sense, or for any material need. He asks that which the offerings symbolise; thanksgiving, loyal fulfilment of covenant engagements to Him, and that loving trust which will call on Him in the day of trouble. Even so! Gratitude, loyalty, trust! this is the "food of God," this the "bread" which He desires that we should offer, the bread which those Levitical sacrifices symbolised. For even as man, when hungry, craves food, and cannot be satisfied without it, so God, who is Himself Love, desires our love, and delights in seeing its expression in all those offices of self-forgetting and self-sacrificing service in which love manifests itself. This is to God even as is food to us. Love cannot be satisfied except with love returned; and we may say, with deepest humility and reverence, the God of love cannot be satisfied without love returned. Hence it is that the sacrifices, which in various ways symbolise the self offering of love and the fellowship of love, are called by the Holy Ghost "the food," or "bread of God."
And yet we must, on no account, hasten to the conclusion, as many do, that therefore the Levitical sacrifices were only intended to express and symbolise the self offering of the worshipper, and that this exhausts their significance. On the contrary, the need of infinite Love for this "bread of God" cannot be adequately met and satisfied by the self offering of any creature, and, least of all, by the self offering of a sinful creature, whose very sin lies just in this, that he has fallen away from perfect love. The symbolism of the sacrifice as "the food of God," therefore, by this very phrase points toward the self offering in love of the eternal Son to the Father, and in behalf of sinners, for the Fathers sake. It was the sacrifice on Calvary which first became, in innermost reality, that "bread of God," which the ancient sacrifices were only in symbol. It was this, not regarded as satisfying Divine justice (though it did this), but as satisfying the Divine love; because it was the supreme expression of the perfect love of the incarnate Son of God to the Father, in His becoming "obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."
And now, keeping all this in view, we may venture to say even more than at first as to the meaning of this phrase, "the bread of God," applied to these offerings by fire. For just as the free activity of man is only sustained in virtue of and by means of the food which he eats, so also the love of the God of love is only sustained in free activity toward man through the self offering to the Father of the Son, in that atoning sacrifice which He offered on the cross, and in the ceaseless service of that exalted life which, risen from the dead, Christ now lives unto God forever. Thus already, this expression, so strange to our ears at first, as descriptive of Jehovahs offerings made by fire, points to the person and work of the adorable Redeemer as its only sufficient explication.
But, again, we find another expression, Lev_17:11, which is of no less fundamental consequence for the interpretation of the bloody offerings of Leviticus. In connection with the prohibition of blood for food, and as a reason for that prohibition, it is said: "The life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh atonement,"-mark the expression; not, as in the received version, "for the soul," which were mere tautology, and gives a sense which the Hebrew cannot have, but, as the Revised Version has it, -"by reason of the life," or "soul" (margin). Hence, wherever in this law we read of a sprinkling of blood upon the altar, this must be held fast as its meaning, whether it be formally mentioned or not; namely, atonement made for sinful man through the life of an innocent victim poured out in the blood. There may be, and often are, other ideas, as we shall see, connected with the offering, but this is always present. To argue, then, with so many in modern times, that because, not the idea of an atonement, but that of a sacrificial meal given by the worshipper to God, is the dominant conception in the sacrifices of the ancient nations, therefore we cannot admit the idea of atonement and expiation to have been intended in these Levitical sacrifices, is simply to deny, not only the New Testament interpretation of them, but the no less express testimony of the record itself.
But it is, manifestly, in the nature of the case "impossible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." Hence, we are again, by this phrase also, constrained to look beyond this Levitical shedding of sacrificial blood, for some antitype of which the innocent victims slain at that altar were types; one who, by the shedding of his blood, should do that in reality, which at the door of the tent of meeting was done in symbol and shadow.
What the New Testament teaches on this point is known to everyone. Christ Jesus was the Antitype, to whose all-sufficient sacrifice each insufficient sacrifice of every Levitical victim pointed. John the Baptist struck the keynote of all New Testament teaching in this matter, when, beholding Jesus, he cried, {Joh_1:29} "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Jesus Christ declared the same thought again and again, as in His words at the sacramental Supper: "This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." Paul expressed the same thought, when he said {Eph_5:2} that Christ "gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, for an odour of a sweet smell"; and that "our redemption, the forgiveness of our trespasses," is "through His blood". {Eph_1:7} And Peter also, speaking in Levitical language, teaches that we "were redeemed with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ"; to which he adds the suggestive words, of which this whole Levitical ritual is the most striking illustration, that Christ, although "manifested at the end of the times," "was foreknown" as the Lamb of God "before the foundation of the world". {1Pe_1:18-20} John, in like manner, speaks in the language of Leviticus concerning Christ, when he declares {1Jn_1:7} that "the blood of Jesus cleanseth us from all sin"; and even in the Apocalypse, which is the Gospel of Christ glorified, He is still brought before us as a Lamb that had been slain, and who has thus "purchased with His blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation," "to be unto our God a kingdom and priests". {Rev_5:6; Rev_5:9-10}
In this clear light of the New Testament, one can see how meagre also is the view of some who would see in these Levitical sacrifices nothing more than fines assessed upon the guilty, as theocratic penalties. Leviticus itself should have taught such better than that. For, as we have seen, the virtue of the bloody offerings is made to consist in this, that "the life of the flesh is in the blood"; and we are told that "the blood makes atonement for the soul," not in virtue of the monetary value of the victim, in a commercial way, but "by reason of the life" that is in the blood, and is therewith poured out before Jehovah on the altar, -the life of an innocent victim in the stead of the life of the sinful man.
No less inadequate, if we are to let ourselves be guided either by the Levitical or the New Testament teaching, is the view that the offerings only symbolised the self offering of the worshipper. We do not deny, indeed, that the sacrifice-of the burnt offering, for example-may have fitly represented, and often really expressed, the self-consecration of the offerer. But, in the light of the New Testament, this can never be held to have been the sole, or even the chief, reason in the mind of God for directing these outpourings of sacrificial blood upon the altar.
We must insist, then, on this, as essential to the right interpretation of this law of the offerings, that every one of these bloody offerings of Leviticus typified, and was intended to typify, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. The burnt offering represented Christ; the peace offering, Christ; the sin offering, Christ; the guilt, or trespass offering, Christ. Moreover, since each of these, as intended especially to shadow forth some particular aspect of Christs work, differed in some respects from all the others, while yet in all alike a victims blood was shed upon the altar, we are by this reminded that in our Lords redemptive work the most central and essential thing is this, that, as He Himself said, {Mat_20:28} He "came to give His life a ransom for many."
Keeping this guiding thought steadily before us, it is now our work to discover, if we may, what special aspect of the one great sacrifice of Christ each of these offerings was intended especially to represent.
Only, by way of caution, it needs to be added that we are not to imagine that every minute circumstance pertaining to each sacrifice, in all its varieties, must have been intended to point to some correspondent feature of Christs person or work. On the contrary, we shall frequently see reason to believe that the whole purpose of one or another direction of the ritual is to be found in the conditions, circumstances, or immediate intention of the offering. Thus, to illustrate, when a profound interpreter suggests that the reason for the command that the victim should be slain on the north side of the altar, is to be found in the fact that the north, as the side of shadow, signifies the gloom and joylessness of the sacrificial act, we are inclined rather to see sufficient reason for the prescription in the fact that the other three sides were already in a manner occupied: the east, as the place of ashes; the. south, as fronting the entrance; and the west, as facing the tent of meeting and the brazen laver.
THE RITUAL OF THE BURNT OFFERING
In the law of the offerings, that of the burnt offering comes first, though in the order of the ritual it was not first, but second, following the sin offering. In this order of mention we need, however, seek no mystic meaning. The burnt offering was very naturally mentioned first, as being the most ancient, and also in the most constant and familiar use. We read of burnt offerings as offered by Noah and Abraham; and of peace offerings, too, in early times; while the sin offering and the guilt offering, in Leviticus treated last, were now ordered for the first time. So also the burnt offering was still, by Divine ordinance, to be the most common. No day could pass in the tabernacle without the offering of these. Indeed, except on the great day of atonement for the nation, in the ritual for which, the sin offering was the central act, the burnt offering was the most important sacrifice on all the great feast days.
The first law, which applies to bloody offerings in general, was this: that the victim shall be "of the cattle, even of the herd and of the flock" (Lev_1:2); to which is added, in the latter part of the chapter (Lev_1:14), the turtledove or young pigeon. The carnivora are all excluded; for these, which live by the death of others, could never typify Him who should come to give life. And among others, only clean beasts could be taken. Israel must not offer as "the food of God" that which they might not eat for their own food; nor could that which was held unclean he taken as a type of the Holy Victim of the future. And, even among clean animals, a further selection is made. Only domestic animals were allowed; not even a clean animal was permitted, if it were taken in hunting. For it was fitting that one should offer to God that which had become endeared to the owner as having cost the most of care and labour in its bringing up. For this, also, we can easily see another reason in the Antitype. Nothing was to mark Him more than this: that He should be subject and obey, and that not of constraint, as the unwilling captive of the chase, but freely and unresistingly.
And now follow the special directions for the burnt offering. The Hebrew word so rendered means, literally, "that which ascends." It thus precisely describes the burnt offering in its most distinctive characteristic. Of the other offerings, a part was burned, but a part was eaten; in some instances, even by the offerer himself. But in the burnt offering all ascends to God in flame and smoke. For the creature is reserved nothing whatever.
The first specification in the law of the burnt offering is this: "If his oblation be a burnt offering of the herd, he shall offer it a male without blemish" (Lev_1:3). It must be a "male," as the stronger, the type of its kind; and "without blemish," that is, ideally perfect.
The reasons for this law are manifest. The Israelite was thereby taught that God claims the best that we have. They needed this lesson, as many among us do still. At a later day, we find God rebuking them by Malachi, {Mal_1:6; Mal_1:13} with indignant severity, for their neglect of this law: "A son honoureth his father: if then I be a Father, where is My honour? Ye have brought that which was taken by violence, and the lame, and the sick; should I accept this of your hand? saith the Lord." And as pointing to our Lord, the command was no less fitting. Thus, as in other sacrifices, it was foreshadowed that the great Burnt Offering of the future would be the one Man without blemish, the absolutely perfect Exemplar of what manhood should be, but is not.
And this brings us now to the ritual of the offering. In the ritual of the various bloody offerings we find six parts. These are:
(1) the Presentation;
(2) the Laying on of the Hand;
(3) the Killing of the Victim; in which three the ritual was the same for all kinds of Offerings.
The remaining three are:
(4) the Sprinkling of Blood;
(5) the Burning;
(6) the Sacrificial Meal.
In these, differences appear in the various sacrifices, which give each its distinctive character; and, in the burnt offering, the sacrificial meal is omitted, -the whole is burnt upon the altar.
First is given the law concerning
THE PRESENTATION OF THE VICTIM
"He shall offer it at the door of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the Lord." (Lev_1:3)
In this it was ordered, first, that the offerer should bring the victim himself. There were parts of the ceremony in which the priest acted for him; but this he must do for himself. Even so, he who will have the saving benefit of Christs sacrifice must himself bring this Christ before the Lord. As by so doing, the Israelite signified his acceptance of Gods gracious arrangements concerning sacrifice, so do we, bringing Christ. in our act of faith before the Lord, express our acceptance of Gods arrangement on our behalf; our readiness and sincere desire to make use of Christ, who is appointed for us. And this no man can do for another.
And the offering must be presented for a certain purpose; namely that he may be accepted before the Lord; and that, as the context tells us, not because of a present made to God, but through an atoning sacrifice. And so now it is not enough that a man make much of Christ, and mention Him in terms of praise before the Lord, as the One whom He would imitate and seek to serve. He must in his act of faith bring this Christ before the Lord, in such wise as to secure thus his personal acceptance through the blood of the Holy Victim.
And, finally, the place of presentation is prescribed. It must be "at the door of the tent of meeting." It is easy to see the original reason for this. For, as we learn from other Scriptures, the Israelites were ever prone to idolatry, and that especially at places other than the appointed temple or tent of meeting, in the fields and on high places. Hence the immediate purpose of this order concerning the place, was to separate the worship of God from the worship of false gods. There is now, indeed, no law concerning the place where we may present the great Sacrifice before God. At home, in the closet, in the church, on the street, wherever we will, we may present this Christ in our behalf and stead as a Holy Victim before God. And yet the principle which underlies this ordinance of place is no less applicable in this age than then. For it is a prohibition of all self-will in worship. It was not enough that an Israelite should have the prescribed victim; it is not enough that we present the Christ of God in faith, or what we think to be faith. But we must make no terms or conditions as to the mode or condition of the presentation, other than God appoints. And the command was also a command of publicity. The Israelite was therein commanded to confess publicly, and thus attest, his faith in Jehovah, even as God will now have us all make our confession of Christ a public thing.
The second act of the ceremonial was
THE LAYING ON OF THE HAND
It was ordered:
"He shall lay his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him." (Lev_1:4)
The laying on of the hand was not, as some have maintained, a mere declaration of the offerers property in that which he offered, as showing his right to give it to God. If this were true, we should find the ceremony also in the bloodless offerings; where the cakes of corn were no less the property of the offerer than the bullock or sheep of the burnt offering. But the ceremony was confined to these bloody offerings.
It is nearer the truth when others say that this was an act of designation. It is a fact that the ceremony of the laying on of hands in Scripture usage does indicate a designation of a person or thing, as to some office or service. In this book, {Lev_24:14} the witnesses are directed to lay their hands upon the blasphemer, thereby appointing him to death. Moses is said to have laid his hands on Joshua, thus designating him in a formal way as his successor; and, in the New Testament, Paul and Barnabas are set apart to the ministry by the laying on of hands. But, in all these cases, the ceremony symbolised more than mere designation; namely, a transfer or communication of something invisible, in connection with this visible act. Thus, in the New Testament the laying on of hands always denotes the communication of the Holy Ghost, either as an enduement for office, or for bodily healing. The laying of the hands of Moses on Joshua, in like manner, signified the transfer to him of the gifts, office, and authority of Moses. Even in the case of the execution of the blaspheming son of Shelomith, the laying on of the hands of the witnesses had the same significance. They thereby designated him to death, no doubt; but therewith thus symbolically transferred to the criminal the responsibility for his own death.
From the analogy of these cases we should expect to find evidence of an ideal transference of somewhat from the offerer to the victim here. And the context does not leave the matter doubtful. It is added (Lev_1:4), "It shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him." Hence it appears that while, indeed, the offerer, by this laying on of his hand, did dedicate the victim to death, the act meant more than this. It symbolised a transfer, according to Gods merciful provision, of an obligation to suffer for sin, from the offerer to the innocent victim. Henceforth, the victim stood in the offerers place, and was dealt with accordingly.
This is well illustrated by the account which is given {Numbers 8} of the formal substitution of the Levites in the place of all the firstborn of Israel, for special service unto God. We read that the Levites were presented before the Lord; and that the children of Israel then laid their hands upon the heads of the Levites. who were thus, we are told. "offered as an offering unto the Lord," and were thenceforth regarded and treated as substitutes for the firstborn of all Israel. Thus the obligation to certain special service was symbolically transferred, as the context tells us, from the firstborn to the Levites; and this transfer of obligation from all the tribes to the single tribe of Levi was visibly represented by the laying on of hands, And just so here: the laying on of the hand designated, certainly, the victim to death; but it did this, in that it was the symbol of a transfer of obligation.
This view of the ceremony is decisively confirmed by the ritual of the great day of atonement. In the sin offering of that day, in which the conception of expiation by blood received its fullest symbolic expression, it was ordered {Lev_16:21} that Aaron should lay his hands on the head of one of the goats of the sin offering, and "confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel." Thereupon the iniquity of the nation was regarded as symbolically transferred from Israel to the goat; for it is added, "and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land." So, while in this ritual for the burnt offering there is no mention of such confession, we have every reason to believe the uniform Rabbinical tradition, that it was the custom to make also upon the head of the victim for the burnt offering a solemn confession of sin, for which they give the form to be used.
Such then was the significance of the laying on of hands. But the ceremony meant even more than this. For the Hebrew verb which is always used for this, as the Rabbis point out, does not merely mean to lay the hand upon, but so to lay the hand as to rest or lean heavily upon the victim. This force of the word is well illustrated from a passage where it occurs, in Psa_88:7, "Thy wrath lieth hard upon me." The ceremony, therefore, significantly represented the offerer as resting or relying on the victim to procure that from God for which he presented him, namely, atonement and acceptance.
This part of the ceremonial of this and other sacrifices was thus full of spiritual import and typical meaning. By this laying on of the hand to designate the victim as a sacrifice, the offerer implied, and probably expressed, a confession of personal sin and demerit; as done "before Jehovah," it implied also his acceptance of Gods penal judgment against his sin. It implied, moreover, in that the offering was made according to an arrangement ordained by God, that the offerer also thankfully accepted Gods merciful provision for atonement, by which the obligation to suffer for sin was transferred from himself, the guilty sinner, to the sacrificial victim. And, finally, in that the offerer was directed so to lay his hand as to rest upon the victim, it was most expressively symbolised that he, the sinful Israelite, rested and depended on this sacrifice as the atonement for his sin, his divinely appointed substitute in penal death.
What could more perfectly set forth the way in which we are for our salvation to make use of the Lamb of God as slain for us? By faith, we lay the hand upon His head. In this, we do frankly and penitently own the sins for which, as the great Burnt sacrifice, the Christ of God was offered; we also, in humility and self-abasement, thus accept the judgment of God against ourselves, that because of sin we deserve to be cast out from Him eternally; while, at the same time, we most thankfully accept this Christ as "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world," and therefore our sins also, if we will but thus make use of Him; and so lean and rest with all the burden of our sin on Him.
For the Israelite who should thus lay his hand upon the head of the sacrificial victim a promise follows. "It shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him."
In this word "atonement" we are introduced to one of the key words of Leviticus, as indeed of the whole Scripture. The Hebrew radical originally means "to cover," and is used once {Gen_6:14} in this purely physical sense. But, commonly, as here, it means "to cover" in a spiritual sense, that is, to cover the sinful person from the sight of the Holy God, who is "of purer eyes than to behold evil." Hence, it is commonly rendered "to atone," or "to make atonement"; also, "to reconcile," or "to make reconciliation." The thought is this: that between the sinner and the Holy One comes now the guiltless victim; so that the eye of God looks not upon the sinner, but on the offered substitute; and in that the blood of the substituted victim is offered before God for the sinner, atonement is made for sin, and the Most Holy One is satisfied.
And when the believing Israelite should lay his hand with confession of sin upon the appointed victim, it was graciously promised: "It shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him." And just so now, whenever any guilty sinner, fearing the deserved wrath of God because of his sin, especially because of his lack of that full consecration which the burnt sacrifice set forth, lays his hand in faith upon the great Burnt offering of Calvary, the blessing is the same. For in the light of the cross, this Old Testament word becomes now a sweet New Testament promise: "When thou shalt rest with the hand of faith upon this Lamb of God, He shall be accepted for thee, to make atonement for thee."
This is most beautifully expressed in an ancient "Order for the Visitation of the Sick," attributed to Anselm of Canterbury, in which it is written:
"The minister shall say to the sick man, Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved but by the death of Christ? The sick man answereth, Yes. Then let it be said unto him: Go to, then, and whilst thy soul abideth in thee, put all thy confidence in this death alone; place thy trust in no other thing; commit thyself wholly to this death; cover thyself wholly, with this alone And if God would judge thee, say: Lord! I place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between me and Thy judgment; otherwise I will not contend or enter into judgment with Thee."
"And if He shall say unto thee that thou art a sinner, say: I place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between me and my sins. if He shall say unto thee, that thou hast deserved damnation, say: Lord! I put the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between Thee and all my sins; and I offer His merits for my own, which I should have, and have not."
And whosoever of us can thus speak, to him the promise speaks from out the shadows of the tent of meeting: "This Christ, the Lamb of God, the true Burnt offering, shall be accepted for thee, to make atonement for thee!"
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 1:2-3 When: This word introduces a major category (the…
1:2-3 When: This word introduces a major category (the process of presenting an offering), followed by a series of conditions introduced by if (1:3, 10, 14). This when/if pattern is generally followed through all the major offerings described in 1:2–6:7. • offering (Hebrew qorban; see study note on Mark 7:11) is a general term referring to all kinds of offerings and gifts, including the various offerings described in Lev 1–7.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.