The Lord calls to Moses out of the tabernacle, and gives him directions concerning burnt-offerings of the beeve kind, Leviticus 1:1, Leviticus 1:2. The burnt-offering to be a male without blemish, Leviticus 1:3. The person bringing it to lay his hands upon its head, that it might be accepted for him, Leviticus 1:4. He is to kill, flay, and cut it in pieces, and bring the blood to the priests, that they might sprinkle it round about the altar, Leviticus 1:5, Leviticus 1:6. All the pieces to be laid upon the altar and burnt, Leviticus 1:7-9. Directions concerning offerings of the Smaller Cattle, such as sheep and goats, Leviticus 1:10-13. Directions concerning offerings of Fowls, such as doves and pigeons, Leviticus 1:14-17.

(Leviticus 1:1, Leviticus 1:2) The offerings.

(Leviticus 1:3-9) From the herds.

(Leviticus 1:10-17) From the flocks, and of fowls.

I. Laws and Ordinances Determining the Covenant Fellowship Between the Lord and Israel - Leviticus 1-16

The Laws of Sacrifice - Leviticus 1-7

When the glory of the Lord had entered the tabernacle in a cloud, God revealed Himself to Moses from this place of His gracious presence, according to His promise in Exodus 25:22, to make known His sacred will through him to the people (Leviticus 1:1). The first of these revelations related to the sacrifices, in which the Israelites were to draw near to Him, that they might become partakers of His grace.

(Note: Works relating to the sacrifices: Guil. Outram de sacrificiis libri duo, Amst. 1688; Bhr, Symbolik des mos. Cultus ii. pp. 189ff.; Kurtz on the Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament (Clark, 1863); and Oehler, in Herzog's Cyclopaedia. The rabbinical traditions are to be found in the two talmudical tractates Sebachim and Menachoth, and a brief summary of them is given in Otho lex. rabbin. philol. pp. 631ff.)

The patriarchs, when sojourning in Canaan, had already worshipped the God who revealed Himself to them, with both burnt-offerings and slain-offerings. Whether their descendants, the children of Israel, had offered sacrifices to the God of their fathers during their stay in the foreign land of Egypt, we cannot tell, as there is no allusion whatever to the subject in the short account of these 430 years. So much, however, is certain, that they had not forgotten to regard the sacrifices as a leading part of the worship of God, and were ready to follow Moses into the desert, to serve the God of their fathers there by a solemn act of sacrificial worship (Exodus 5:1-3, compared with Leviticus 4:31; Leviticus 8:4, etc.); and also, that after the exodus from Egypt, not only did Jethro offer burnt-offerings and slain-offerings to God in the camp of the Israelites, and prepare a sacrificial meal in which the elders of Israel took part along with Moses and Aaron (Exodus 18:12), but young men offered burnt-offerings and slain-offerings by the command of Moses at the conclusion of the covenant (Exodus 24:5). Consequently the sacrificial laws of these chapters presuppose the presentation of burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, and slain-offerings as a custom well known to the people, and a necessity demanded by their religious feelings (Leviticus 1:2-3, Leviticus 1:10, Leviticus 1:14; Leviticus 2:1, Leviticus 2:4-5, Leviticus 2:14; Leviticus 3:1, Leviticus 3:6, Leviticus 3:11). They were not introduced among the Israelites for the first time by Moses, as Knobel affirms, who also maintains that the feast of the Passover was the first animal sacrifice, and in fact a very imperfect one. Even animal sacrifices date from the earliest period of our race. Not only did Noah offer burnt-offerings of all clean animals and birds (Genesis 8:20), but Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock an offering to the Lord (Genesis 4:4).

(Note: When Knobel, in his Commentary on Leviticus (p. 347), endeavours to set aside the validity of these proofs, by affirming that sacrificial worship in the earliest times is merely a fancy of the Jehovist; apart altogether from the untenable character of the Elohistic and Jehovistic hypothesis, there is a sufficient proof that this subterfuge is worthless, in the fact that the so-called Elohist, instead of pronouncing Moses the originator of the sacrificial worship of the Hebrews, introduces his laws of sacrifice with this formula, "If any man of you bring an offering of cattle unto the Lord," and thus stamps the presentation of animal sacrifice as a traditional custom. Knobel cannot adduce any historical testimony in support of his assertion, that, according to the opinion of the ancients, there were no animal sacrifices offered to the gods in the earliest times, but only meal, honey, vegetables, and flowers, roots, leaves, and fruit; all that he does is to quote a few passages from Plato, Plutarch, and Porphyry, in which these philosophers, who were much too young to answer the question, express their ideas and conjectures respecting the rise and progress of sacrificial worship among the nations.)

The object of the sacrificial laws in this book was neither to enforce sacrificial worship upon the Israelites, nor to apply "a theory concerning the Hebrew sacrifices" (Knobel), but simply to organize and expand the sacrificial worship of the Israelites into an institution in harmony with the covenant between the Lord and His people, and adapted to promote the end for which it was established.

But although sacrifice in general reaches up to the earliest times of man's history, and is met with in every nation, it was not enjoined upon the human race by any positive command of God, but sprang out of a religious necessity for fellowship with God, the author, protector, and preserver of life, which was as innate in man as the consciousness of God itself, though it assumed very different forms in different tribes and nations, in consequence of their estrangement from God, and their growing loss of all true knowledge of Him, inasmuch as their ideas of the Divine Being so completely regulated the nature, object, and signification of the sacrifices they offered, that they were quite as subservient to the worship of idols as to that of the one true God. To discover the fundamental idea, which was common to all the sacrifices, we must bear in mind, on the one hand, that the first sacrifices were presented after the fall, and on the other hand, that we never meet with any allusion to expiation in the pre-Mosaic sacrifices of the Old Testament. Before the fall, man lived in blessed unity with God. This unity was destroyed by sin, and the fellowship between God and man was disturbed, though not entirely abolished. In the punishment which God inflicted upon the sinners, He did not withdraw His mercy from men; and before driving them out of paradise, He gave them clothes to cover the nakedness of their shame, by which they had first of all become conscious of their sin. Even after their expulsion He still manifested Himself to them, so that they were able once more to draw near to Him and enter into fellowship with Him. This fellowship they sought through the medium of sacrifices, in which they gave a visible expression not only to their gratitude towards God for His blessing and His grace, but also to their supplication for the further continuance of His divine favour. It was in this sense that both Cain and Abel offered sacrifice, though not with the same motives, or in the same state of heart towards God. In this sense Noah also offered sacrifice after his deliverance from the flood; the only apparent difference being this, that the sons of Adam offered their sacrifices to God from the fruit of their labour, in the tilling of the ground and the keeping of sheep, whereas Noah presented his burnt-offerings from the clean cattle and birds that had been shut up with him in the ark, i.e., from those animals which at any rate from that time forward were assigned to man as food (Genesis 9:3). Noah was probably led to make this selection by the command of God to take with him into the ark not one or more pairs, but seven of every kind of clean beasts, as he may have discerned in this an indication of the divine will, that the seventh animal of every description of clean beast and bird should be offered in sacrifice to the Lord, for His gracious protection from destruction by the flood. Moses also received a still further intimation as to the meaning of the animal sacrifices, in the prohibition which God appended to the permission to make use of animals as well as green herbs for food; viz., "flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat" (Genesis 9:4-5), that is to say, flesh which still contained the blood as the animal's soul. In this there was already an intimation, that in the bleeding sacrifice the soul of the animals was given up to God with the blood; and therefore, that by virtue of its blood, as the vehicle of the soul, animal sacrifice was the most fitting means of representing the surrender of the human soul to God. This truth may possibly have been only dimly surmised by Noah and his sons; but it must have been clearly revealed to the patriarch Abraham, when God demanded the sacrifice of his only son, with whom his whole heart was bound up, as a proof of his obedience of faith, and then, after he had attested his faith in his readiness to offer this sacrifice, supplied him with a ram to offer as a burnt-offering instead of his son (Genesis 22). In this the truth was practically revealed to him, that the true God did not require human sacrifice from His worshippers, but the surrender of the heart and the denial of the natural life, even though it should amount to a submission to death itself, and also that this act of surrender was to be perfected in the animal sacrifice; and that it was only when presented with these motives that sacrifice could be well-pleasing to God. Even before this, however, God had given His sanction to the choice of clean or edible beasts and birds for sacrifice, in the command to Abram to offer such animals, as the sacrificial substratum for the covenant to be concluded with him (Genesis 15).

Now, though nothing has been handed down concerning the sacrifices of the patriarchs, with the exception of Genesis 46:1., there can be no doubt that they offered burnt-offerings upon the altars which they built to the Lord, who appeared to them in different places in Canaan (Genesis 12:7; Genesis 13:4, Genesis 13:18; Genesis 26:25; Genesis 33:20; Genesis 35:1-7), and embodied in these their solemn invocation of the name of God in prayer; since the close connection between sacrifice and prayer is clearly proved by such passages as Hosea 14:3; Hebrews 13:15, and is universally admitted.

(Note: Outram (l. c. p. 213) draws the following conclusion from Hosea 14:3 : "Prayer was a certain kind of sacrifice, and sacrifice a certain kind of prayer. Prayers were, so to speak, spiritual sacrifices, and sacrifices symbolical prayers.")

To the burnt-offering there was added, in the course of time, the slain-offering, which is mentioned for the first time in Genesis 31:54, where Jacob seals the covenant, which has been concluded with Laban and sworn to by God, with a covenant meal. Whilst the burnt-offering, which was given wholly up to God and entirely consumed upon the altar, and which ascended to heaven in the smoke, set forth the self-surrender of man to God, the slain-offering, which culminated in the sacrificial meal, served as a seal of the covenant fellowship, and represented the living fellowship of man with God. Thus, when Jacob-Israel went down with his house to Egypt, he sacrificed at Beersheba, on the border of the promised land, to the God of his father Isaac, not burnt-offerings, but slain-offerings (Genesis 46:1), through which he presented his prayer to the Lord for preservation in covenant fellowship even in a foreign land, and in consequence of which he received the promise from God in a nocturnal vision, that He, the God of his father, would go with him to Egypt and bring him up again to Canaan, and so maintain the covenant which He had made with his fathers, and assuredly fulfil it in due time. The expiatory offerings, properly so called, viz., the sin and trespass-offerings, were altogether unknown before the economy of the Sinaitic law; and even if an expiatory element was included in the burnt-offerings, so far as they embodied self-surrender to God, and thus involved the need of union and reconciliation with Him, so little prominence is given to this in the pre-Mosaic sacrifices, that, as we have already stated, no reference is made to expiation in connection with them.

(Note: The notion, which is still very widely spread, that the burnt-offerings of Abel, Noah, and the patriarchs were expiatory sacrifices, in which the slaying of the sacrificial animals set forth the fact, that the sinner was deserving of death in the presence of the holy God, not only cannot be proved from the Scriptures, but is irreconcilable with the attitude of a Noah, an Abraham and other patriarchs, towards the Lord God. And even Kahnis's explanation, "The man felt that his own ipse must die, before it could enter into union with the Holy One, but he had also his surmises, that another life might possibly bear this death for him, and in this obscure feeling he took away the life of an animal that was physically clean," is only true and to the point so far as the deeper forms of the development of the heathen consciousness of God are concerned, and not in the sphere of revealed religion, in which the expiatory sacrifices did not originate in any dim consciousness on the part of the sinner that he was deserving of death, but were appointed for the first time by God at Sinai, for the purpose of awakening and sharpening this feeling. There is no historical foundation for the arguments adduced by Hoffmann in support of the opinion, that there were sin-offerings before the Mosaic law; and the assertion, that sin-offerings and trespass-offerings were not really introduced by the law, but were presupposed as already well known, just as much as the burnt-offerings and thank-offerings, is obviously at variance with Leviticus 4 and 5.)

The reason for this striking fact is to be found in the circumstance, that godly men of the primeval age offered their sacrifices to a God who had drawn near to them in revelations of love. It is true that in former times God had made known His holy justice in the destruction of the wicked and the deliverance of the righteous (Genesis 6:13., Leviticus 18:16.), and had commanded Abraham to walk blamelessly before Him (Genesis 17:1); but He had only manifested Himself to the patriarchs in His condescending love and mercy, whereas He had made known His holiness in His very first revelation to Moses in the words, "Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes," etc. (Exodus 3:5), and unfolded it more and more in all subsequent revelations, especially at Sinai. After Jehovah had there declared to the people of Israel, whom He had redeemed out of Egypt, that they were to be a holy nation to Him (Exodus 19:6), He appeared upon the mountain in the terrible glory of His holy nature, to conclude His covenant of grace with them by the blood of burnt-offerings and slain-offerings, so that the people trembled and were afraid of death if the Lord should speak to them any more (Exodus 20:18.). These facts preceded the laws of sacrifice, and not only prepared the way for them, but furnished the key to their true interpretation, by showing that it was only by sacrifice that the sinful nation could enter into fellowship with the holy God.

The laws of sacrifice in ch. 1-7 are divisible into two groups. The first (ch. 1-5) contains the general instructions, which were applicable both to the community as a whole and also the individual Israelites. Ch. 1-3 contain an account of the animals and vegetables which could be used for the three kinds of offerings that were already common among them, viz., the burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, and slain-offerings; and precise rules are laid down for the mode in which they were to be offered. In ch. 4 and 5 the occasions are described on which sin-offerings and trespass-offerings were to be presented; and directions are given as to the sacrifices to be offered, and the mode of presentation on each separate occasion. The second group (ch. 6 and 7) contains special rules for the priests, with reference to their duties in connection with the different sacrifices, and the portions they were to receive; together with several supplementary laws, for example, with regard to the meat-offering of the priests, and the various kinds of slain or peace-offering. All these laws relate exclusively to the sacrifices to be offered spontaneously, either by individuals or by the whole community, the consciousness and confession of sin or debt being presupposed, even in the case of the sin and trespass-offerings, and their presentation being made to depend upon the free-will of those who had sinned. This is a sufficient explanation of the fact, that they contain no rules respecting either the time for presenting them, or the order in which they were to follow one another, when two or more were offered together. At the same time, the different rules laid down with regard to the ritual to be observed, applied not only to the private sacrifices, but also to those of the congregation, which were prescribed by special laws for every day, and for the annual festivals, as well as to the sacrifices of purification and consecration, for which no separate ritual is enjoined.

1. General Rules for the Sacrifices - Leviticus 1-5

The common term for sacrifices of every kind was Corban (presentation; see at Leviticus 1:2). It is not only applied to the burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, and slain or peace-offerings, in Leviticus 1:2-3, Leviticus 1:10, Leviticus 1:14; Leviticus 2:1, Leviticus 2:4., Leviticus 3:1-6, etc., but also to the sin-offerings and trespass-offerings in Leviticus 4:23, Leviticus 4:28, Leviticus 4:32; Leviticus 5:11; Numbers 5:15, etc., as being holy gifts (Exodus 28:38 cf. Numbers 18:9) with which Israel was to appear before the face of the Lord (Exodus 23:15; Deuteronomy 16:16-17). These sacrificial gifts consisted partly of clean tame animals and birds, and partly of vegetable productions; and hence the division into the two classes of bleeding and bloodless (bloody and unbloody) sacrifices. The animals prescribed in the law are those of the herd, and the flock, the latter including both sheep and goats (Leviticus 1:2-3, Leviticus 1:10; Leviticus 22:21; Numbers 15:3), two collective terms, for which ox and sheep, or goat (ox, sheep and goat) were the nomina usitatis (Leviticus 7:23; Leviticus 17:3; Leviticus 22:19, Leviticus 22:27; Numbers 15:11; Deuteronomy 14:4), that is to say, none but tame animals whose flesh was eaten (Leviticus 11:3; Deuteronomy 14:4); whereas unclean animals, though tame, such as asses, camels, and swine, were inadmissible; and game, though edible, e.g., the hare, the stag, the roebuck, and gazelle (Deuteronomy 14:5). Both male and female were offered in sacrifice, from the herd as well as the flock (Leviticus 3:1), and young as well as old, though not under eighty days old (Leviticus 22:27; Exodus 22:29); so that the ox was offered either as calf (Leviticus 9:2; Genesis 15:9; 1-Samuel 16:2) or as bullock, i.e., as young steer or heifer (Leviticus 4:3), or as full-grown cattle. Every sacrificial animal was to be without blemish, i.e., free from bodily faults (Leviticus 1:3, Leviticus 1:10; Leviticus 22:19.). The only birds that were offered were turtle-doves and young pigeons (Leviticus 1:14), which were presented either by poor people as burnt-offerings, and as a substitute for the larger animals ordinarily required as sin-offerings and trespass-offerings (Leviticus 5:7; Leviticus 12:8; Leviticus 14:22, Leviticus 14:31), or as sin and burnt-offerings, for defilements of a less serious kind (Leviticus 12:6-7; Leviticus 15:14, Leviticus 15:29-30; Numbers 6:10-11). The vegetable sacrifices consisted of meal, for the most part of fine flour (Leviticus 2:1), of cakes of different kinds (Leviticus 2:4-7), and of toasted ears or grains of corn (Leviticus 2:14), to which there were generally added oil and incense, but never leaven or honey (Leviticus 2:11); and also of wine for a drink-offering (Numbers 15:5.).

The bleeding sacrifices were divided into four classes: viz., (1) burnt-offerings (Leviticus 1), for which a male animal or pigeon only was admissible; (2) peace-offerings (slain-offerings of peace, Leviticus 3), which were divisible again into praise-offerings, vow-offerings, and freewill-offerings (Leviticus 7:12, Leviticus 7:16), and consisted of both male and female animals, but never of pigeons; (3) sin-offerings (Leviticus 4:1-5:13); and (4) trespass-offerings (Leviticus 5:14-19). Both male and female animals might be taken for the sin-offerings; and doves also could be used, sometimes independently, sometimes as substitutes for larger animals; and in cases of extreme poverty meal alone might be used (Leviticus 5:11). But for the trespass-offerings either a ram (Leviticus 5:15, Leviticus 5:18; Leviticus 19:21) or a lamb had to be sacrificed (Leviticus 14:12; Numbers 6:12). All the sacrificial animals were to be brought "before Jehovah," i.e., before the altar of burnt-offering, in the court of the tabernacle (Leviticus 1:3, Leviticus 1:5, Leviticus 1:11; Leviticus 3:1, Leviticus 3:7, Leviticus 3:12; Leviticus 4:4). There the offerer was to rest his hand upon the head of the animal (Leviticus 1:4), and then to slaughter it, flay it, cut it in pieces, and prepare it for a sacrificial offering; after which the priest would attend to the sprinkling of the blood and the burning upon the altar fire (Leviticus 1:5-9; Leviticus 6:2., Leviticus 21:6). In the case of the burnt-offerings, peace-offerings, and trespass-offerings, the blood was swung all round against the walls of the altar (Leviticus 1:5, Leviticus 1:11; Leviticus 3:2, Leviticus 3:8, Leviticus 3:13; Leviticus 7:2); in that of the sin-offerings a portion was placed upon the horns of the altar of burnt-offering, and in certain circumstances it was smeared upon the horns of the altar of incense, or sprinkled upon the ark of the covenant in the most holy place, and the remainder poured out at the foot of the altar of burnt-offering (Leviticus 4:5-7, Leviticus 4:16-18, Leviticus 4:25, Leviticus 4:30). In the case of the burnt-offering, the flesh was all burned upon the altar, together with the head and entrails, the latter having been previously cleansed (Leviticus 1:8, Leviticus 1:13); in that of the peace-offerings, sin-offerings, and trespass-offerings, the fat portions only were burned upon the altar, viz., the larger and smaller caul, the fat upon the entrails and inner muscles of the loins, and the kidneys with their fat (Leviticus 3:9-11, Leviticus 3:14-16; Leviticus 4:8-10, Leviticus 4:19, Leviticus 4:26, Leviticus 4:31, Leviticus 4:35; Leviticus 7:3-5). When a peace-offering was presented, the breast piece and right leg were given to Jehovah for the priests, and the rest of the flesh was used and consumed by the offerer in a sacrificial meal (Leviticus 7:15-17, Leviticus 7:30-34). But the flesh of the trespass-offerings and sin-offerings of the laity was boiled and eaten by the priests in a holy place, i.e., in the court of the tabernacle (Leviticus 6:19, Leviticus 6:22; Leviticus 7:6). In the sin-offerings presented for the high priest and the whole congregation the animal was all burnt in a clean place outside the camp, including even the skin, the entrails, and the ordure (Leviticus 4:11-12, Leviticus 4:21). When the sacrifice consisted of pigeons, the priest let the blood flow down the wall of the altar, or sprinkled it against it; and then, if the pigeon was brought as a burnt-offering, he burnt it upon the altar after taking away the crop and faeces; but if it was brought for a sin-offering, he probably followed the rule laid down in Leviticus 1:15 and Leviticus 5:8.

The bloodless gifts were employed as meat and drink-offerings. The meat-offering (minchah) was presented sometimes by itself, at other times in connection with burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. The independence of the meat-offering, which has been denied by Bhr and Kurtz on insufficient grounds, is placed beyond all doubt, not only by the meat-offering of the priests (Leviticus 6:13.) and the so-called jealousy-offering (Numbers 5:15.), but also by the position in which it is placed in the laws of sacrifice, between the burnt and peace-offerings. From the instructions in Numbers 15:1-16, to offer a meat-offering mixed with oil and a drink-offering of wine with every burnt-offering and peace-offering, the quantity to be regulated by the size of the animal, it by no means follows that all the meat-offerings were simply accompaniments to the bleeding sacrifices, and were only to be offered in connection with them. On the contrary, inasmuch as these very instructions prescribe only a meat-offering of meal with oil, together with a drink-offering of wine, as the accompaniment to the burnt and peace-offerings, without mentioning incense at all, they rather prove that the meat-offerings mentioned in Leviticus 2, which might consist not only of meal and oil, with which incense had to be used, but also of cakes of different kinds and roasted corn, are to be distinguished from the mere accompaniments mentioned in Numbers 15. In addition to this, it is to be observed that pastry, in the form of cakes of different kinds, was offered with the praise-offerings, according to Leviticus 7:12., and probably with the two other species of peace-offerings as well; so that we should introduce an irreconcilable discrepancy between Numbers 15 and Leviticus 2, if we were to restrict all the meat-offerings to the accompaniments mentioned in Numbers 15, or reduce them to merely dependent additions to the burnt and peace-offerings. Only a portion of the independent meat-offerings was burnt by the priest upon the altar (Leviticus 2:2, Leviticus 2:9, Leviticus 2:16); the rest was to be baked without leaven, and eaten by the priests in the court, as being most holy (Leviticus 6:8-11): it was only the meat-offering of the priests that was all burned upon the altar (Leviticus 6:16). - The law contains no directions as to what was to be done with the drink-offering; but the wine was no doubt poured round the foot of the altar (Ecclus. l. 15. Josephus, Ant. iii. 9, 4).

The great importance of the sacrifices prescribed by the law may be inferred to a great extent, apart from the fact that sacrifice in general was founded upon the dependence of man upon God, and his desire for the restoration of that living fellowship with Him which had been disturbed by sin, from the circumstantiality and care with which both the choice of the sacrifices and the mode of presenting them are most minutely prescribed. But their special meaning and importance in relation to the economy of the Old Covenant are placed beyond all question by the position they assumed in the ritual of the Israelites, forming as they did the centre of all their worship, so that scarcely any sacred action was performed without sacrifice, whilst they were also the medium through which forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with the Lord were obtained, either by each individual Israelite, or by the congregation as a whole. This significance, which was deeply rooted in the spiritual life of Israel, is entirely destroyed by those who lay exclusive stress upon the notion of presentation or gift, and can see nothing more in the sacrifices than a "renunciation of one's own property," for the purpose of "expressing reverence and devotion, love and gratitude to God by such a surrender, and at the same time of earning and securing His favour."

(Note: This is the view expressed by Knobel in his Commentary on Leviticus, p. 346, where the idea is carried out in the following manner: in the dedication of animals they preferred to give the offering the form of a meal, which was provided for God, and of which flesh formed the principal part, though bread and wine could not be omitted. These meals of animal food were prepared every day in the daily burnt-offerings, just as the more respectable classes in the East eat animal food every day, and give the preference to food of this kind; and the daily offering of incense corresponded to the oriental custom of fumigating rooms, and burning perfumes in honour of a guest. At the same time Knobel also explains, that the Hebrews hardly attributed any wants of a sensual kind of Jehovah; or, at any rate, that the educated did not look upon the sacrifice as food for Jehovah, or regard the festal sacrifices as festal meals for Him, but may simply have thought of the fact that Jehovah was to be worshipped at all times, and more especially at the feasts, and that in this the prevailing and traditional custom was to be observed.)

The true significance of the legal sacrifices cannot be correctly and fully deduced from the term corban, which was common to them all, or from such names as were used to denote the different varieties of sacrifice, or even from the materials employed and the ritual observed, but only from all these combined, and from an examination of them in connection with the nature and design of the Old Testament economy.

Regarded as offerings or gifts, the sacrifices were only means by which Israel was to seek and sustain communion with its God. These gifts were to be brought by the Israelites from the blessing which God had bestowed upon the labour of their hands (Deuteronomy 16:17), that is to say, from the fruit of their regular occupations, viz., agriculture and the rearing of cattle; in other words, from the cattle they had reared, or the produce of the land they had cultivated, which constituted their principal articles of food (viz., edible animals and pigeons, corn, oil, and wine), in order that in these sacrificial gifts they might consecrate to the Lord their God, not only their property and food, but also the fruit of their ordinary avocations. In this light the sacrifices are frequently called "food (bread) of firing for Jehovah" (Leviticus 3:11, Leviticus 3:16) and "bread of God" (Leviticus 21:6, Leviticus 21:8, Leviticus 21:17); by which we are not to suppose that food offered to God for His own nourishment is intended, but food produced by the labour of man, and then caused to ascend as a firing to his God, for an odour of satisfaction (vid., Leviticus 3:11).

In the clean animals, which he had obtained by his own training and care, and which constituted his ordinary live-stock, and in the produce obtained through the labour of his hands in the field and vineyard, from which he derived his ordinary support, the Israelite offered not his victus as a symbolum vitae, but the food which he procured in the exercise of his God-appointed calling, as a symbol of the spiritual food which endureth unto everlasting life (John 6:27, cf. Leviticus 4:34), and which nourishes both soul and body for imperishable life in fellowship with God, that in these sacrificial gifts he might give up to the Lord, who had adopted him as His own possession, not so much the substance of his life, or that which sustained and preserved it, as the agens of his life, or his labour and toil, and all the powers he possessed, and might receive sanctification from the Lord in return. In this way the sacrificial gifts acquire a representative character, and denote the self-surrender of a man, with all his labour and productions, to God. But the idea of representation received a distinct form and sacrificial character for the first time in the animal sacrifice, which was raised by the covenant revelation and the giving of the law into the very centre and soul of the whole institution of sacrifice, and primarily by the simple fact, that in the animal a life, a "living soul," was given up to death and offered to God, to be the medium of vital fellowship to the man who had been made a "living soul" by the inspiration of the breath of God; but still more by the fact, that God had appointed the blood of the sacrificial animal, as the vehicle of its soul, to be the medium of expiation for the souls of men (Leviticus 17:11).

The verb "to expiate" (כּפּר, from כּפר to cover, construed with על htiw d objecti; see Leviticus 1:4) "does not signify to cause a sin not to have occurred, for that is impossible, nor to represent it as not existing, for that would be opposed to the stringency of the law, nor to pay or make compensation for it through the performance of any action; but to cover it over before God, i.e., to take away its power of coming in between God and ourselves" (Kahnis, Dogmatik, i. p. 271). But whilst this is perfectly true, the object primarily expiated, or to be expiated, according to the laws of sacrifice, is not the sin, but rather the man, or the soul of the offerer. God gave the Israelites the blood of the sacrifices upon the altar to cover their souls (Leviticus 17:11) The end it answered was "to cover him" (the offerer, Leviticus 1:4); and even in the case of the sin-offering the only object was to cover him who had sinned, as concerning his sin (Leviticus 4:26, Leviticus 4:35, etc.). But the offerer of the sacrifice was covered, on account of his unholiness, from before the holy God, or, speaking more precisely, from the wrath of God and the manifestation of that wrath; that is to say, from the punishment which his sin had deserved, as we may clearly see from Genesis 32:20, and still more clearly from Exodus 32:30. In the former case Jacob's object is to reconcile (כּפּר) the face of his brother Esau by means of a present, that is to say, to modify the wrath of his brother, which he has drawn upon himself by taking away the blessing of the first-born. In the latter, Moses endeavours by means of his intercession to expiate the sin of the people, over whom the wrath of God is about to burn to destroy them (Exodus 32:9-10); in other words, to protect the people from the destruction which threatens them in consequence of the wrath of God (see also Numbers 17:11-12; Numbers 25:11-13). The power to make expiation, i.e., to cover an unholy man from before the holy God, or to cover the sinner from the wrath of God, is attributed to the blood of the sacrificial animal, only so far as the soul lives in the blood, and the soul of the animal when sacrificed takes the place of the human soul. This substitution is no doubt incongruous, since the animal and man differ essentially the one from the other; inasmuch as the animal follows an involuntary instinct, and its soul being constrained by the necessities of its nature is not accountable, and it is only in this respect that it can be regarded as sinless; whilst man, on the contrary, is endowed with freedom of will, and his soul, by virtue of the indwelling of his spirit, is not only capable of accountability, but can contract both sin and guilt. When God, therefore, said, "I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls" (Leviticus 17:11), and thus attributed to the blood of the sacrificial animals a significance which it could not naturally possess; this was done in anticipation of the true and perfect sacrifice which Christ, the Son of man and God, would offer in the fulness of time through the holy and eternal Spirit, for the reconciliation of the whole world (Hebrews 9:14). This secret of the unfathomable love of the triune God was hidden from the Israelites in the law, but it formed the real background for the divine sanction of the animal sacrifices, whereby they acquired a typical signification, so that they set forth in shadow that reconciliation, which God from all eternity had determined to effect by giving up His only-begotten Son to death, as a sacrifice for the sin of the whole world.

But however firmly the truth is established that the blood of the sacrifice intervened as a third object between the sinful man and the holy God, it was not the blood of the animal in itself which actually took the place of the man, nor was it the shedding of the blood in itself which was able to make expiation for the sinful man, in such a sense that the slaying of the animal had a judicial and penal character and the offering of sacrifice was an act of judgment instead of an ordinance of grace, as the juridical theory maintains. It was simply the blood as the vehicle of the soul, when sprinkled or poured out upon the altar, that is to say, it was the surrender of an innocent life to death, and through death to God, that was the medium of expiation. Even in the sacrifice of Christ it was not by the shedding of blood, or simply by the act of dying, that His death effected reconciliation, but by the surrender of His life to death, in which He not only shed His blood for us, but His body also was broken for us, to redeem us from sin and reconcile us to God. And even the suffering and death of Christ effect our reconciliation not simply by themselves, but as the completion of His sinless, holy life, in which, through doing and suffering, He was obedient even to the death of the cross, and through that obedience fulfilled the law as the holy will of God for us, and bore and suffered the punishment of our transgression. Through His obedientia activa et passiva in life and death Christ rendered to the holy justice of God that satisfactio et poena vicaria, by virtue of which we receive forgiveness of sin, righteousness before God, reconciliation, grace, salvation, and eternal life. But these blessings of grace and salvation, which we owe to the sacrificial death of Christ, do not really become ours through the simple fact that Christ has procured them for man. We have still to appropriate them in faith, by dying spiritually with Christ, and rising with Him to a new life in God. This was also the case with the sacrifices of the Old Testament. They too only answered their end, when the Israelites, relying upon the word and promise of God, grasped and employed by faith the means of grace afforded them in the animal sacrifices; i.e., when in these sacrifices they offered themselves, or their personal life, as a sacrifice well-pleasing to God. The symbolical meaning of the sacrifices, which is involved in this, is not excluded or destroyed by the idea of representation, or representative mediation between sinful man and the holy God, which was essential to them. It is rather demanded as their complement, inasmuch as, without this, the sacrificial worship would degenerate into a soulless opus operatum, and would even lose its typical character. This symbolical significance is strikingly expressed in the instructions relating to the nature of the sacrificial gifts, and the ritual connected with their presentation; and in the law it comes into the foreground just in proportion as the typical character of the sacrifices was concealed at the time in the wise economy of God, and was only unfolded to the spiritual vision of the prophets (Isaiah 43) with the progressive unfolding of the divine plan of salvation.

The leading features of the symbolical and typical meaning of the sacrifices are in their general outline the following. Every animal offered in sacrifice was to be תּמים, ἄμωμος, free from faults; not merely on the ground that only a faultless and perfect gift could be an offering fit for the Holy and Perfect One, but chiefly because moral faults were reflected in those of the body, and to prefigure the sinlessness and holiness of the true sacrifice, and warn the offerer that the sanctification of all his members was indispensable to a self-surrender to God, the Holy One, and to life in fellowship with Him. In connection with the act of sacrifice, it was required that the offerer should bring to the tabernacle the animal appointed for sacrifice, and there present it before Jehovah (Leviticus 1:3), because it was there that Jehovah dwelt among His people, and it was from His holy dwelling that He would reveal Himself to His people as their God. There the offerer was to lay his hand upon the head of the animal, that the sacrifice might be acceptable for him, to make expiation for him (Leviticus 1:4), and then to slay the animal and prepare it for a sacrificial gift. By the laying on of his hand he not only set apart the sacrificial animal for the purpose for which he had come to the sanctuary, but transferred the feelings of his heart, which impelled him to offer the sacrifice, or the intention with which he brought the gift, to the sacrificial animal, so that his own head passed, as it were, to the head of the animal, and the latter became his substitute (see my Archologie i. 206; Oehler, p. 267; Kahnis, i. p. 270). By the slaughter of the animal he gave it up to death, not merely for the double purpose of procuring the blood, in which was the life of the animal, as an expiation for his own soul, and its flesh as fire-food for Jehovah, - for if the act of dying was profoundly significant in the case of the perfect sacrifice, it cannot have been without symbolical significance in the case of the typical sacrifice, - but to devote his own life to God in the death of the sacrificial animal which was appointed as his substitute, and to set forth not only his willingness to die, but the necessity for the old man to die, that he might attain to life in fellowship with God. After this self-surrender the priestly mediation commenced, the priest sprinkling the blood upon the altar, or its horns, and in one instance before Jehovah's throne of grace, and then burning the flesh or fat of the sacrifice upon the altar. The altar was the spot where God had promised to meet with His people (Exodus 29:42), to reconcile them to Himself, and bestow His grace upon them. Through this act of sprinkling the blood of the animal that had been given up to death upon the altar, the soul of the offerer was covered over before the holy God; and by virtue of this covering it was placed within the sphere of divine grace, which forgave the sin and filled the soul with power for new life. Fire was constantly burning upon the altar, which was prepared and kept up by the priest (Leviticus 6:5). Fire, from its inherent power to annihilate what is perishable, ignoble, and corrupt, is a symbol in the Scriptures, sometimes of purification, and sometimes of torment and destruction. That which has an imperishable kernel within it is purified by the fire, the perishable materials which have adhered to it or penetrated within it being burned out and destroyed, and the imperishable and nobler substance being thereby purified from all dross; whilst, on the other hand, in cases where the imperishable is completely swallowed up in the perishable, no purification ensues, but total destruction by the fire (1-Corinthians 3:12-13). Hence fire is employed as a symbol and vehicle of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:3-4), and the fire burning upon the altar was a symbolical representation of the working of the purifying Spirit of God; so that the burning of the flesh of the sacrifice upon the altar "represented the purification of the man, who had been reconciled to God, through the fire of the Holy Spirit, which consumes what is flesh, to pervade what is spirit with light and life, and thus to transmute it into the blessedness of fellowship with God" (Kahnis, p. 272).

It follows from this, that the relation which the sprinkling of the blood and the burning of the flesh of the sacrifice upon the altar bore to one another was that of justification and sanctification, those two indispensable conditions, without which sinful man could not attain to reconciliation with God and life in God. But as the sinner could neither justify himself before God nor sanctify himself by his own power, the sprinkling of blood and the burning of the portions of the sacrifice upon the altar were to be effected, not by the offerer himself, but only by the priest, as the mediator whom God had chosen and sanctified, not only that the soul which had been covered by the sacrificial blood might thereby be brought to God and received into His favour, but also that the bodily members, of which the flesh of the sacrifice was a symbol, might be given up to the fire of the Holy Spirit, to be purified and sanctified from the dross of sin, and raised in a glorified state to God; just as the sacrificial gift was consumed in the altar fire, so that, whilst its earthly perishable elements were turned into ashes and left behind, its true essence ascended towards heaven, where God is enthroned, in the most ethereal and glorified of material forms, as a sweet-smelling savour, i.e., as an acceptable offering. These two priestly acts, however, were variously modified according to the different objects of the several kinds of sacrifice. In the sin-offering the expiation of the sinner is brought into the greatest prominence; in the burnt-offering this falls into the background behind the idea of the self-surrender of a man to God for the sanctification of all his members, through the grace of God; and lastly, the peace-offering culminated in the peace of living communion with the Lord. (See the explanation of the several laws.)

The materials and ritual of the bloodless sacrifices, and also their meaning and purpose, are much more simple. The meat and drink-offerings were not means of expiation, nor did they include the idea of representation. They were simply gifts, in which the Israelites offered bread, oil, and wine, as fruits of the labour of their hands in the field and vineyard of the inheritance they had received from the Lord, and embodied in these earthly gifts the fruits of their spiritual labour in the kingdom of God (see at Leviticus 2).