With the establishment of the Mosaic law, there was an added emphasis
laid on the sacredness of blood, which had been insisted on in the
Noachic covenant; and many new illustrations were divinely given of
the possibilities of an ultimate union with God through inter-flowing
blood, and of present communion with God through the sharing of the
substitute flesh of a sacrificial victim.
“Ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or beast, in
any of your dwellings. Whosoever it be that eateth any blood, that
soul shall be cut off from his people.”[508] “Whatsoever man there be
of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them,
that eateth any manner of blood; I will set my face against that soul
that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For
the life [the soul] 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 by reason of the life [by reason of its
being the life]. Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul
of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that is among you
eat blood.”[509] “For as to the life of all flesh, the blood thereof
is all one with the life thereof; therefore I said unto the children
of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life
of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut
off.”[510]
Because of sin, death has passed upon man. Man can have new life
only from the Author of life. A transfusion of life is, as it were, a
transfusion of blood; for, “of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one
with the life thereof.” If, indeed, the death-possessed man could enter
into a blood-covenant with the Author of life,--could share the life of
him who is Life,--then the dead might have new life in a new nature;
and the far separated sinner might be brought into oneness with God;
finding atonement in the cleansing flow of the new blood thus applied.
So it pleased God to appoint substitute blood upon the altar of
witness between the sinner and Himself, as a symbol of that atonement
whereby the sinner might, through faith, become a partaker of the
divine nature. “The wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is
eternal life”[511]--in that foreshadowed divine blood, which the blood
of beasts, offered on the altar, can, for a time, typify. Blood--even
the blood of beasts--thus made sacred, as a holy symbol, must never be
counted as a common thing; but it must be held, ever reverently, as
a token of that life which is the sinner’s need; and which is God’s
grandest gift and God’s highest prerogative.
In the line of this teaching, the command went forth: “What man soever
there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat
in the camp, or that killeth it without the camp, and hath not brought
it unto the door of the tent of meeting, to offer it [with its blood]
as an oblation unto the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord: blood
shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood [improperly]; and
that man shall be cut off from among his people: to the end that the
children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they sacrifice
in the open field, even that they may bring them unto the Lord, unto
the door of the tent of meeting, unto the priest, and sacrifice them
for sacrifices of peace-offering unto the Lord. And the priest shall
sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tent
of meeting; and burn the fat for a sweet savour unto the Lord.”[512]
The children of Israel were, at all times and everywhere, to reach out
after communion and union with God, through the surrender of their
personal selves in the surrender of their substitute blood--with its
divinely appointed symbolism of communion and union with God “in the
blood of the eternal covenant” of divine friendship.[513]
And again: “Whatsoever man there be of the children of Israel, or of
the strangers that sojourn among them, which taketh in hunting any
beast or fowl that may be eaten; he shall pour out the blood thereof,
and cover it with the dust.”[514] If he be at a distance from the
tabernacle, so that he cannot bring the blood for an oblation at the
altar, he must, at all events, reverently pour out the blood as unto
God, and cover it as he would a human body in a grave. And to this day
this custom prevails widely throughout the East; not among Jews alone,
but among Christians and Muhammadans, as also among those of other
religions.[515]
Under the Mosaic ritual, the forms and the symbolisms of sacrifice were
various. But through them all, where blood was an element,--in the
sin-offering, in the trespass-offering, in the burnt-offering, in the
peace-offering,--blood always represented life, never death. Death was
essential to its securing; but, when secured, blood was life. Death,
as the inevitable wages of sin, had already passed unto all men; and
“death reigned from Adam to Moses”; but, with the full disclosure
of the law, in Moses, which made sin apparent, there came, also, a
disclosure of an atonement for sin, and of a cure for its consequences.
Death was already here; now came the assurance of an attainable life.
The sinner, in the very article of death, was shown that he might turn,
in self-surrender and in loving trust, with a proffer of his own life,
by substitute blood, to God; and that he might reach out hopefully
after inter-union with God, by the sharing of the divine-nature in
the unfailing covenant of divine-human blood-friendship. Thus “not as
the trespass [with its mere justice of punishment; but] so also [and
‘much more,’ of grace alone,] is the free gift [of life to the justly
dead].”[516]
All the detailed requirements of the Mosaic ritual, and all the
specific teachings of the Rabbis, as well, go to show the preeminence
of the _blood_ in the sacrificial offerings; go to show, that it is
the _life_ (which the blood is), and not the _death_ (which is merely
necessary to the securing of the blood), of the victim, that is the
means of atonement; that gives the hope of a sinner’s new inter-union
with God.
In a commentary on a Talmudic tract, on The Day of Atonement, Rabbi
Obadiah of Barttenora, notes the fact,[517] that in the choice by
lot, of the priests who were to have a part in the daily sacrifice,
the priest _first_ selected “obtained the right [of priority], and
sprinkled the blood upon the altar, after he had received it in the
vessel for the purpose; for he who sprinkled the blood [is the one who
had] received the blood. The _next_ priest to him killed the sacrifice,
and this notwithstanding [the fact] that the slaying preceded the
receiving of the blood; because _the office of sprinkling was higher
than that of slaying_; for the slaying was lawful if done by a
stranger; which was not the case with the sprinkling.” The death of the
victim was a minor matter: it was the victim’s life,--its blood which
was its life,--that had chief value and sacredness.
On this same point Dr. Edersheim says:[518] “The Talmud declares the
offering of birds, so as to secure the blood [so as to secure that
which was preeminently precious] to have been the most difficult part
of a priest’s work. For the _death_ of the [victim of the] sacrifice
was only a means towards an end; that end being the shedding and
sprinkling of the _blood_, by which the atonement was really made. The
Rabbis mention a variety of rules observed by the priest who caught
up the blood--all designed to make the best provision for its proper
sprinkling. Thus, the priest was to catch up the blood in a silver
vessel pointed at the bottom, so that it could not be put down; and to
keep it constantly stirred, to preserve the fluidity of the blood. In
the sacrifice of the red heifer, however, the priest caught the blood
directly in his left hand, and sprinkled it with his right towards the
Holy Place: while in that of the leper, one of the two priests received
the blood in the vessel; the other [received it] in his hand, from
which he anointed the purified leper.”
Recognizing the truth that in the sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual,
“consecration by blood is consecration in a living union with Jehovah,”
Professor W. Robertson Smith observes,[519] that, “in the ordinary
atoning sacrifices, the blood is not applied to the people [it is
merely poured out Godward, as if in sign of life surrender]; but in the
higher forms, as in the sacrifice for the whole congregation (Lev.
4 : 13 _seq._), the priest at least dips his hand in it, and so puts the
bond of blood between himself, as the people’s representative, and the
altar, as the point of contact with God.”[520] And so, on the basis
of the root-idea of the primitive rite of the covenant of blood, an
inter-union is symbolized between the returning sinner and his God.
The aim of all the Mosaic sacrifices was, a restored communion with
God; and the hope which runs through them all is of a divine-human
inter-union through blood. “The one purpose which is given after
every sacrifice in the first chapters of Leviticus,”[521] says
Stanley,[522] “is, that it ‘shall make a sweet savour unto the Lord’.”
And Edersheim says,[523] of all the various sacrifices of the ritual:
“These, were, then, either sacrifices of communion with God, or else
[were] intended to restore that communion when it had been disturbed
or dimmed through sin and trespass: sacrifices _in_ communion, or
[sacrifices] _for_ communion, with God. To the former class belong the
burnt and the peace-offerings; to the latter, the sin and the trespass
offerings.”[524]
The sin-offering, of that ritual, was, in a sense, the basis of
the whole system of sacrifices. The chief feature of that offering,
was the out-flowing of its blood Godward. The offering itself was a
substitute-offering, for an individual or for the entire people. Its
blood was sprinkled upon the horns of the altar of burnt-offering,
or poured out at the base of that altar,[525]--the altar of personal
consecration; or, it was sprinkled within the Holy Place toward the
Most Holy Place,[526]--the symbolic dwelling-place of Jehovah: and
again it was made to touch the horns of the altar of incense, which
sent up its sweet savor to God: in every case, it was the outreaching
of the sinner toward inter-union with God, in a covenant of blood.
The whole burnt-offering, of the Mosaic ritual, symbolised the entire
surrender to God, of the individual or of the congregation, in covenant
faithfulness; the giving of one’s self in unreserved trust to Him
with whom the offerer desired to be in loving oneness. It was an
indication of a readiness to enter fully into that inter-union, which
the blood-covenant brought about between two who had been separated,
but who were henceforth to be as one. This offering also must be
made with blood; for it is blood--which is the life--that gives the
possibility of inter-union. All the outpoured blood of this offering,
however, went directly to the altar upon which the offering itself
was laid;[527] not toward the Most Holy Place, of the Lord’s symbolic
presence. This offering was not, indeed, understood as in itself
compassing inter-union; it indicated rather a desire and a readiness
for inter-union--anew or renewed: so, both the substitute-body and the
substitute-blood were offered at the altar of typical surrender and
consecration. When other sacrifices were brought, the burnt-offering
followed the sin-offering, but preceded the peace-offering;[528]
again, it might be offered by itself. He who was of the blood-covenant
stock of Abraham, thereby sought restoration to the full privileges of
that covenant, to which he had not been wholly true; and even he who
was not of that stock might in this way show his desire to share in
its privileges; “for the burnt offering was the only sacrifice which
non-Israelites were permitted to bring”[529] to the altar of Jehovah.
Following the communion-seeking, or the union-seeking, sin-offering
(with its connected, or related, trespass-offering, or guilt-offering),
and the self-surrendering burnt-offering, there came the joyous
communion-symbolizing peace-offering, with its type of completed
union,[530] in the sharing, by the sinner and his God, of the
flesh of the sacrificial victim at a common feast. And this
banquet-sacrifice[531] corresponds with the feast of inter-communion
which commonly follows the primitive rite of blood-covenanting, and
which marks the completion of the inter-union thereby sought after.
All the other sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual follow in the line of
these three classes. Even those which are in themselves offered without
blood, presuppose the individual’s share in the blood-covenant, by the
rite of circumcision, and through the high priest’s sin-offering for
the entire congregation. “The Rabbis attach ten comparative degrees
of sanctity to sacrifices; and it is interesting to mark, that of
these the first belonged to the blood of the sin-offering; the second
to the burnt-offering; the third to the sin-offering itself; and the
fourth to the trespass-offering.”[532] The blood which is to secure
the covenant-union--anew or renewed--is of preeminent importance.
Then comes the symbol of self-surrendering devotedness. First, the
possibility of inter-union; next, the expression of readiness and
desire for it. After this, the other sacrifices range themselves
according to their signification, until the culmination of the series
is reached in the joyous inter-communion feast of the peace-offering.
But, with all the suggestions of the rite of blood-covenanting, in
the sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual, there were limitations in the
correspondences of that rite in those sacrifices, which mark the
incompleteness of their symbolism, and which point to better things
to come. In the primitive blood-covenant rite itself, both parties
receive, and partake of, the blood which becomes common to the two.
In all the outside religions of the world, where men reach out after
a divine-human inter-union through substitute-blood, the offerer
drinks of the sacrificial blood, or of something which stands for it;
and so he is supposed to share the nature of the God with whom he
thus covenants and inter-unites. In the Mosaic ritual, however, all
drink-offerings of blood were forbidden to him who would enter into
covenant with God; he might not taste of the blood. He might, it is
true, look forward, by faith, to an ultimate sharing of the divine
nature; and in anticipation of that inter-union, he could enjoy a
symbolic inter-communion with God, by partaking of the peace-offerings
at the table of his Lord; but as yet the sacrificial offering which
could supply to his death-smitten nature the vivifying blood of an
everlasting covenant, was not disclosed to him.[533]
Even the substitute blood which he presented at the altar, as he came
with his outreaching after a blood-covenant union with the Lord, did
not secure to him direct personal access to the symbolic earthly
dwelling-place of the Lord. That blood could be poured out at the base
of the altar of consecration, or it could be sprinkled upon its horns.
That blood could, on occasions be sprinkled before the veil of the Most
Holy Place; or could touch the horns of the altar of sweet incense. But
that blood could never pass that veil which guarded the place of the
Lord’s symbolic presence, save once in a year when the high-priest, all
by himself, and that not without a show of his own unfitness for the
mission, went in thither, to sprinkle the substitute blood before the
mercy-seat; “the Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the Holy
Place hath not yet been manifest[534]”; that the substitute “blood of
bulls and of goats”[535] cannot be a means of man’s inter-union with
God.
Lest, indeed, the Israelite should believe that a blood-covenant
union was really secured with God, rather than typified, through these
prescribed symbolic sacrifices and their sharing, he was repeatedly
warned against that fatal error, and was taught that his true
covenanting must be by a faith-filled recognition of the symbolism of
these substitute agencies; and by the implicit surrender of himself,
in loving trust, to Him who had ordained them as symbols. Thus in the
Psalms:
“Hear, O my people, and I will speak;
O Israel, and I will testify unto thee:
I am God, even thy God.
I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices;
And thy burnt-offerings are continually before me....
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.
“But unto the wicked, God saith:
What hast thou to do to declare my statutes,
And that thou hast taken my covenant in thy mouth?
Seeing thou hatest instruction,
And castest my words behind thee.”[536]
Again, in the prophecy of Isaiah:
“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?
Saith the Lord:
I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts;
And I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of
he-goats.
When ye come to appear before me,
Who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?
Bring no more vain oblations;
Incense is an abomination unto me....
Wash you, make you clean;
Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes;
Cease to do evil:
Learn to do well;
Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed;
Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.”[537]
And with this very warning against a false reliance on the symbols
themselves, the same prophet gives assurance of better things in store
for all those who are in true blood-covenant with God; even though they
be not of the peculiar people of Abraham’s natural descent. Foretelling
the future, when the types of the sacrifice shall be realized, he says:
“And in this mountain shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all peoples
A feast of fat things,
A feast of wine on the lees;
Of fat things full of marrow,
Of wines on the lees well refined.”[538]
The feast of inter-communion shall be sure, when the blood-covenant of
inter-union is complete.
Again, by Jeremiah:
“Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel:
Add your burnt-offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat ye flesh.
[But remember that that is not the completion of a covenant with me].
For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them,
In the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt,
Concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices.
[As if burnt offerings and sacrifices were the all important thing];
But this thing I commanded them, saying,
Hearken unto my voice,
And I will be your God,
And ye shall be my people;
And walk ye in all the way that I command you,
That it may be well with you.”[539]
Once more, by Hosea:
“O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee?
O Judah, what shall I do unto thee?
For your goodness is as a morning cloud,
And as the dew that goeth early away....
For I desire mercy and not sacrifice;
And the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings.
But they like Adam have transgressed the covenant:
[or, as the Revisers’ “margin” would render it,
“But they are as men that have transgressed a covenant”:]
There have they dealt treacherously against me”[540]
[Therein have they proved unfaithful to the requirements of the
blood-covenant on which they assumed to be resting, in their
sacrifices].
And so, all the way along through the prophets, in repeated emphasis
of the incompleteness of the blood-covenanting symbols in the ritual
sacrifices.
Concerning the very rite of circumcision, which was the token of
Abraham’s covenant of blood-friendship with the Lord, the Israelites
were taught that its spiritual value was not in the formal surrender of
a bit of flesh, and a few drops of blood, in ceremonial devotedness to
God, but in its symbolism of the implicit surrender of the whole life
and being, in hearty covenant with God. “Behold, unto the Lord thy God
belongeth the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all
that therein is. Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love
them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all peoples as
at this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be
no more stiff-necked.”[541] “And it shall come to pass, when all these
things are come upon thee, the blessings and the curse which I have set
before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations,
whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the
Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command
thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with
all thy soul; that then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and
have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all
the peoples, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee.... And the
Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to
love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that
thou mayest live.”[542] And when this has come to pass, the true seed
of Abraham,[543] circumcised in heart,[544] shall be in the covenant of
blood-friendship with God.
So, also, with the phylacteries, as the record of the blood-covenant
of the passover, they had a value only as they represented a
heart-remembrance of that covenant, by their wearers. Says Solomon, in
the guise of Wisdom.
“My son, forget not my law;
But let thine heart keep my commandments....
Let not mercy and truth forsake thee:
Bind them about thy neck;
Write them upon the table of thy heart;
So shalt thou find favor and good understanding
In the sight of God and man.”[545]
“Keep my commandments and live;
And my law as the apple of thine eye.
Bind them upon thy fingers;
Write them upon the table of thine heart.”[546]
And the prophet Jeremiah foretells the recognition of this truth in the
coming day of better things:
“Behold the days come, saith the Lord,
That I will make a new covenant
With the house of Israel and with the house of Judah:
Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers
In the day that I took them by the hand,
To bring them out of the land of Egypt;
[That covenant was the blood-covenant of the passover; of which the
phylacteries were a token.]
Which my covenant they brake,
Although I was an husband unto them [a lord over them] saith
the Lord;
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house
of Israel,
After those days, saith the Lord;
I will put my law in their inward parts,
And in their heart will I write it:
[Instead of its being written as now, outside of them, on their hand
and on their forehead.]
And I will be their God,
And they shall be my people....
For I will forgive their iniquity,
And their sin will I remember no more.”[547]
The blood-covenant symbols of the Mosaic law, all pointed to the
possibility of a union of man’s spiritual nature with God; but they
did not in themselves either assure or indicate that union as already
accomplished; nor did they point the way to it, as yet made clear. They
were only “a shadow of the things to come.”[548]
Another gleam of the primitive truth, that blood is life and not
death, and that the transference of blood is the transference of life,
is found in the various Mosaic references to the _goel_ (גֹּאֵל),
the person who is authorized to obtain blood for blood as an act of
justice, in the East. And another proof of the prevailing error in
the Western mind, through confounding blood with death, and justice
with punishment, is the common rendering of the term _goel_, as
“avenger,”[549] or “revenger,”[550] in our English Bible, wherever
that term applies to the balancing of a blood account; although
the same Hebrew word is in other connections commonly translated
“redeemer,”[551] or “ransomer.”[552]
Lexicographers are confused over the original import of the word
_goel_;[553] all the more, because of this confusion in their minds
over the import of blood, in its relation to death and to justice. But
it is agreed on all hands, that, as a term, the word was, in the East,
applied to that kinsman whose duty it was to secure justice to the
injured, and to restore, as it were, a normal balance to the disturbed
family relations. Oehler well defines the goel, as “that particular
relative whose special duty it was to restore the violated family
integrity, who had to redeem not only landed property that had been
alienated from the family (Lev. 25 : 25 ff.), or a member of the family
that [who] had fallen into slavery (Lev. 25 : 47 ff.), but also the
blood that had been taken away from the family by murder.”[554] Hence,
in the event of a depletion of the family by the loss of blood--the
loss of a life--the goel had a responsibility of securing to the family
an equivalent of that loss, by other blood, or by an agreed payment for
its value. His mission was not vengeance, but equity. He was not an
avenger, but a redeemer, a restorer, a balancer. And in that light, and
in that light alone, are all the Oriental customs in connection with
blood-cancelling seen to be consistent.
All through the East, there are regularly fixed tariffs for
blood-cancelling; as if in recognition of the relative loss to a
family, of one or another of its supporting members.[555] This idea, of
the differences in ransoming-value between different members of the
family, is recognized, in the Mosaic standards of ritual-ransom;[556]
although the accepting of a ransom for the blood of a blood-spiller
was specifically forbidden in the Mosaic law.[557] This prohibition,
in itself, however, seems to be a limitation of the privileges of the
goel, as before understood in the East. The Qurân, on the other hand,
formally authorizes the settlement of manslaughter damages by proper
payments.[558]
Throughout Arabia, and Syria, and in various parts of Africa,[559] the
first question to be considered in any case of unlawful blood-shedding
is, whether the loss life shall be restored--or balanced--by blood,
or by some equivalent of blood. Von Wrede, says of the custom of the
Arabs, in concluding a peace, after tribal hostilities: “If one party
has more slain than the other, the shaykh on whose side the advantage
lies, says [to the other shaykh]: ‘Choose between blood and milk’
[between life, and the means of sustaining life]; which is as much as
to say, that he may [either] avenge the fallen [take life for life]; or
accept blood-money.”[560] Mrs. Finn says, similarly, of the close of
a combat in Palestine: “A computation is generally made of the losses
on either side by death, wounds, etc., and the balance is paid to the
victors.”[561] Burton describes similarly the custom in Arabia.[562]
It is the same in individual cases, as in tribal conflicts. An
accepted payment for blood fully restores the balance between the
aggrieved parties and the slayer. As Pierotti says: “This charm will
teach the Arab to grasp readily the hands of the slayer of his father
or his son, saying, ‘Such an one has killed my father, but he has paid
me the price of his blood.’”[563] This in itself shows, that it is not
revenge, but restitution, that is sought after by the goel; that he is
not the blood-avenger, but the blood-balancer.
It is true that, still, in some instances, all money payment for blood
is refused; but the avowed motive in such a case is the holding of life
as above price--the very idea which the Mosaic law emphasized. Thus
Burton tells of the excited Bed´ween mother who dashes the proffered
blood-money to the ground, swearing “by Allah, that she will not eat
her son’s blood.”[564] And even where the blood of the slayer is
insisted on, there are often found indications that the purpose of this
choice rests on the primitive belief that the lost life is made good
to the depleted family by the newly received blood.[565] Thus, in the
region of Abyssinia, the blood of the slayer is drunk by the relatives
of the one first slain;[566] and, in Palestine, when the goel has shed
the blood of an unlawful slayer, those who were the losers of blood by
that slayer dip their handkerchiefs in his blood, and so obtain their
portion of his life.[567]
In short, apart from the specific guards thrown around the mission
of the goel, in the interests of justice, by the requirements of the
Mosaic law, it is evident, that the primal idea of the goel’s mission
was to restore life for life, or to secure the adjusted equivalent of
a lost life; not to wreak vengeance, nor yet to mete out punishment.
The calling of the goel, in our English Bible, a “revenger” of blood,
is a result of the wide-spread and deep-rooted error concerning
the primitive and Oriental idea of blood and its value; and that
unfortunate translation tends to the perpetuation of this error.