'And the Lord called unto Moses, and spake unto him out
of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, 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. 3. If his offering be a burnt-sacrifice of
the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall
offer it of his own voluntary will, at the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord. 4. And he
shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering;
and it shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for
him. 5. And he shall kill the bullock before the Lord:
and the priests, Aaron's sons, shall bring the blood,
and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that
is by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
6. And he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into
his pieces. 7. And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put
fire upon the altar, and lay the wood in order upon the
fire: 8. And the priests, Aaron's sons, shall lay the
parts, the head, and the fat, in order upon the wood that
is on the fire which is upon the altar: 9. But his inwards
and his legs shall he wash in water: and the priest shall
burn all on the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice, an
offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.'
--LEV. i. 1-9.
In considering the Jewish sacrificial system, it is important to
distinguish the symbolical from the typical value of the sacrifices.
The former could scarcely be quite unnoticed by the offerers; but the
latter was only gradually made plain, was probably never very generally
seen, and is a great deal clearer to us, in the light of Christ, the
Antitype, than it could ever have been before His coming. As symbols,
the sacrifices expressed great eternal truths as to spiritual worship
and communion, its hindrances, requisites, manner, and blessings. They
were God's picture-book for these children in religious development. As
types, they shadowed the work of Jesus Christ and its results.
The value of the sacrifices in either aspect is independent of modern
questions as to their Mosaic origin; for at whatever period the
Priest's Code was promulgated, it equally bears witness to the ruling
ideas of the offerings, and, in any case, it was long before Christ
came, and therefore its prophecy of Him is as supernatural, whether
Moses or Ezra were its author. I make this remark, not as implying that
the new theory is not revolutionary, but simply as absolving a student
of the religious significance of the sacrificial system from entering
here on questions of date.
The 'burnt offering' stands first in Leviticus for several reasons. It
was derived from patriarchal times; it was offered twice daily, besides
frequently on other occasions; and in its significance it expressed the
complete consecration which should be the habitual state of the true
worshipper. Its name literally means 'that which ascends,' and refers,
no doubt, to the ascent of the transformed substance of the sacrifice
in fire and smoke, as to God. The central idea of this sacrifice, then,
as gathered from its name and confirmed by its manner, is that of the
yielding of the whole being in self-surrender, and borne up by the
flame of intense consecration to God. Very beautiful is the variety of
material which was permitted. The poor man's pair of pigeons went up
with as sweet an odour as the rich man's young bull. God delights in
the consecration to Him of ourselves and our powers, no matter whether
they be great or small, if only the consecration be thorough, and the
whole being be wrapped in the transforming blaze.
It is worth while to try to realise the strange and to our eyes
repulsive spectacle of the burnt offering, which is veiled from us by
its sacred associations. The worshipper leads up his animal by some
rude halter, and possibly resisting, to the front of the Tabernacle,
the courts of which he dared not tread, but which was to him the
dwelling-place of God. There by the altar he stands, and, first
pressing his hand with force on the victim's head, he then, with one
swift cut, kills it, and as the warm blood spouts from the mangled
throat, the attendant priest catches it in a basin, and, standing at
the two diagonally opposite corners of the altar in turn, dashes, with
one dexterous twist, half of the contents against each, so as to wet
two sides of the altar with one throw, and the other two with the
other. The offerer then flays the reeking carcase, tossing the gory
hide to the priest as his perquisite, and cuts up the sacrifice
according to a fixed method. His part of the work is done, and he
stands by with bloody hands while the priests arrange the pieces on the
pile on the altar; and soon the odour of burning flesh and the thick
smoke hanging over the altar tell that the rite is complete. What a
scene it must have been when, as on some great occasions, hundreds of
burnt offerings were offered in succession! The place and the
attendants would look to us liker shambles and butchers than God's
house and worshippers.
Now, if we inquire into the significance of the offering, it turns on
two points--expiation and burning. The former it has in common with
other bloody sacrifices, though it presents features of its own, even
in regard to expiation. But the latter is peculiar to it, and must
therefore be taken to be its special teaching. The stages in the whole
process are five: the presentation, laying on of hands, slaughter,
sprinkling of blood, and burning of the whole carcase. The first three
are alike in this and other sacrifices, the fourth is modified here,
and the last is found here only. Each has its lesson. The offerer has
himself to bring the animal to the door of the Tabernacle, that he may
show his willing surrender of a valuable thing. As he stands there with
his offering, his thoughts would pass into the inner shrine, where God
dwelt; and he would, if he were a true worshipper, feel that while God,
on His part, already dwelt in the midst of the people, he, on the other
hand, can only enter into the enjoyment of His presence by sacrifice.
The offering was to be 'a male without blemish'; for bodily defect
symbolising moral flaw could not be tolerated in the offerings to a
holy God, who requires purity, and will not be put off with less than a
man's best, be it ox or pigeon. 'The torn and the lame and the sick,'
which Malachi charged his generation with bringing, are neither worthy
of God to receive nor of us to offer. When he pressed his hand on the
head of the sacrifice, what was the worshipper meant to think? In all
other instances where hands are laid on, some transference or
communication of gifts or qualities is implied; and it is natural to
suppose that the same meaning attaches to the act here, with such
modifications as the case requires. We find that it was done in other
bloody sacrifices, accompanied with confession. Nothing is said of
confession here; but we cannot dismiss the idea that the offerer laid
his sins on the victim by that striking act, especially as the very
next clause says 'it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for
him.' The atonement was made, as we shall see, by the application of
the blood to the altar; but the possibility of the victim's blood
atoning for the offerer depended on his having laid his hands on its
head. We may perhaps go farther than 'transference of sins.' Might we
not widen the expression, and say 'identification,' or, to use a word
which has become so worn by religious controversy that it slips through
our fingers unnoticed, 'substitution'? Did not the offerer say in
effect, by that act, 'This is I? This animal life shall die, as I ought
to die. It shall go up as a sweet savour to Jehovah, as my being
should.'
The animal invested with this representative character is next to be
slain by the offerer, not by the priest, who only performed that part
of the ritual in the case of national or public sacrifices. That was
distinctly a vicarious death; and, as inflicted by the hand of the
person represented by the animal, he thereby acknowledged that its
death was the wages of his sin, and allowed the justice of his
condemnation, while he presented this innocent life--innocent because
not that of a moral being--as his substitute. So far the worshipper's
part goes. But now, when the act of expiation is to be symbolically
represented, and, so far as outward sacrifice could, is to be
accomplished, another actor appears. The priest comes forward as
mediator between God and man, and applies the blood to the altar. The
difference between the sprinkling of the blood, in the burnt offerings
and in the other sacrifices, which had expiation for their principal
object, in some of which it was smeared on the horns of the altar, and,
in the most solemn of all, was carried into the holiest place, and
sprinkled on the mercy-seat, suggests that the essential character of
the burnt offering was not expiatory, though expiation was the
foundation on which alone the essential character could be reared. The
application of the blood was the formal act by which atonement was
made. The word rendered 'to make atonement' means 'to cover'; and the
idea conveyed is that the blood, which is the life of the sacrifice,
covers the sins of the offerer, so as to make them powerless to dam
back the love or to precipitate the wrath of God.
With this act the expiatory portion of the ritual ends, and we may here
pause to look back for a moment on it as a whole. We have pointed out
the double bearings of the Mosaic ritual as symbolical and as typical
or prophetic. In the former aspect, the emphatic teaching of this rite
is that 'the wages of sin is death,' that 'without shedding of blood
there is no remission,' that God has appointed sacrifice as the means
of entering into fellowship with Him, and that substitution and
vicarious penalty are facts in His government. We may like or dislike
these thoughts; we may call them gross, barbarous, immoral, and the
like, but, at all events, we ought not to deny that they are ingrained
in the Mosaic sacrificial system, which becomes unmeaning elaboration
of empty and often repulsive ceremonies, if they are not recognised as
its very centre. Of course, the meaning of the sacrifices was hidden
from many a worshipper. They became opaque instead of transparent, and
hid the great truth which they were meant to reveal. All forms labour
under that disadvantage; but that they were significant in design, and
largely so to devout hearts in effect, admits of no reasonable doubt.
That which they signified was chiefly the putting away of sin by the
sacrifice of innocent life, which stood in the place of the guilty. Of
course, too, their benefit was symbolical, and the blood of bulls and
goats could never put away sin; but, under the shelter of the outward
forms, a more spiritual insight gradually grew up, such as breathes in
many a psalm, and such as, we cannot doubt, filled the heart of many a
worshipper, as he stood by the bleeding sacrifice on which his own
hands had laid the burden that had weighed so heavy on himself. How far
the prophetic aspect of the sacrifices was discerned, is a more
difficult question. But this at least we know--that the highest level
of evangelical prophecy, in Isaiah's wonderful fifty-third chapter, is
reached from this vantage-ground. It is the flower of which these
ordinances are the root. We need not enlarge upon the prophetic aspect
of the sacrifice. The mere negative sinlessness of the victim points to
the 'Lamb without blemish and without spot,' on whom, as Isaiah says,
in language dyed through and through with sacrificial references, 'the
Lord hath made to meet the iniquity of us all,' and who Himself makes
'His soul an offering for sin.' The modern tendency to bring down the
sacrificial system to a late date surely sins against the sacred and
all-explaining law of evolution, in the name of which it is attempted,
inasmuch as it is an unheard-of thing for the earlier stages of a
religion to be less clogged with ceremonial than the later. Psalmist
and prophet first, and priest afterwards, is not the order of
development.
The remaining part of the ritual was, as we have pointed out, peculiar
to the burnt offering. In it alone the whole of the sacrifice was
consumed on the altar, with the exceptions of the skin, which was given
to the priest, and of the contents of the intestines. Hence it was
sometimes called 'a whole burnt offering.' The meaning of this
provision may be apprehended if we note that the word rendered 'burn,'
in verse 9, is not that which simply implies destruction by fire, but
is a peculiar word, reserved for sacrificial burnings, and meaning 'to
cause to ascend in smoke or vapour.' The gross flesh was, as it were,
refined into vapour and odour, and went up to God as 'a sweet savour.'
It expressed, therefore, the transformation of the sinful human nature
of the worshipper, by the refining power of the fire of God, into
something more ethereal and kindred with the heaven to which it rose.
Or, to put the thought in plainer words, on the basis of expiation, the
glad surrender of the whole being is possible and will ensue; and when
a man yields himself in joyful self-surrender to the God who has
forgiven his sins, then the fire of the divine Spirit is shed abroad in
his heart, and kindles a flame which lays hold on all the gross,
earthly elements of his being, and changes them into fire, kindred with
itself, which aspires, in ruddy tongues of upward-leaping light, to the
God to whom the heart has been surrendered, and to whom the whole being
tends.
This is the purpose of expiation; this is the summit of all religion.
One man has realised to the full, in his life, what the burnt offering
taught as the goal for all worshippers. Jesus has lived in the constant
exercise of perfect self-surrender, and in the constant unmeasured
possession of 'the Spirit of burning,' with which He has come to
baptize us all. If we look to Him as our expiation, we should also find
in Him the power to yield ourselves 'living sacrifices,' and draw from
Him the sacred and refining fire, which shall transform our grossness
into His likeness, and make even us 'acceptable to God, through Jesus
Christ.'