Sacrifice

VIEW:18 DATA:01-04-2020

Every sacrifice was assumed to be vitally connected with the spirit of the worshipper. Unless the heart accompanied the sacrifice God rejected the gift (Isa_1:11; Isa_1:13). Corban included all that was given to the Lord's service, whether firstfruits, tithes (Lev_2:12; Lev_27:30), and gifts, for maintaining the priests and endowing the sanctuary (Num_7:3; Num_31:50), or offerings for the altar. The latter were:
1. Animal
(1) burnt offerings,
(2) peace offerings,
(3) sin offerings.
2. Vegetable:
(1) meat and drink offerings for the altar outside,
(2) incense and meat offerings for the holy place within.
Besides there were the peculiar offerings, the Passover lamb, the scape-goat, and the red heifer; also the chagigah peace offering during the Passover. (See PASSOVER.) The public sacrifice as the morning and evening lamb, was at the cost of the nation. The private sacrifice was offered by the individual, either by the ordinance of the law or by voluntary gift. Zebach is the general term for "a slaughtered animal", as distinguished from minchah, "gift," a vegetable offering, our "meat (i.e. food) offering." 'Owlah is the "burnt offering", that which ascends (from 'alah) or "is burnt"; also kaleel, "whole," it all being consumed on the altar; "whole burnt sacrifice." Shelem is the "peace offering". Todah the "thank offering". Chattath ("sin and punishment") the "sin offering". 'Asham, "trespass offering", accompanied by pecuniary fine or forfeit, because of injury done to some one (it might be to the Lord Himself) in respect to property. The burnt offering was wholly burnt upon the altar; the sin offering was in part burnt upon the altar, in part given to the priests, or burnt outside the camp. The peace offering was shared between the altar, the priests, and the sacrificer.
The five animals in Abraham's sacrifice of the covenant (Gen_15:9) are the five alone named in the law for sacrifice: the ox, sheep, goat, dove, and pigeon. They fulfilled the three legal conditions: (1) they were clean; (2) used for food; (3) part of the home property of the sacrificers. They must be without spot or blemish; but a disproportioned victim was allowed in a free will peace offering (Lev_7:16-17; Lev_22:23). The age was from a week to three years old; Jdg_6:25 is exceptional. The sacrificer (the offerer generally, but in public sacrifice the priests or Levites) slew the victim at the N. side of the altar. The priest or his assistant held a bowl under the cut throat to receive the blood. The sacrificial meal was peculiar to the peace offering. The priest sprinkled the blood of the burnt offering, the peace offering, and the trespass offering "round about upon the altar."
But in the sin offering, for one of the common people or a ruler, he took of the blood with his finger and put it upon the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and poured out what blood remained at the bottom of the altar; in the sin offering for the congregation and for the high priest he brought some of the blood into the sanctuary and sprinkled it seven times before the veil, and put some on the horns of the altar of incense (Lev_4:3; Lev_4:6; Lev_4:25; Lev_4:30). The "sprinkling" (hizah) of the blood of the sin offering with the finger or hyssop is distinct from the "casting abroad" (as the Hebrew zarak expresses) with the bowl in which the victim's blood was received as it flowed. The Mishna says the temple altar was furnished with two holes at the S.W. corner, through which the blood made its way down to Kedron. The Hebrew for burning (hiktir) on the altar means to send up or make to ascend in smoke, rather than to consume (Lev_1:9). The offering was one of sweet smelling savour sent up in flame to Jehovah, not merely consumed.
The fat burned on the altar was mainly "sweet fat" or suet, cheleb (Exo_29:13; Exo_29:22; Lev_3:4; Lev_3:10; Lev_3:15; Lev_4:9; Lev_7:4), distinct from mishman or shameen (Num_12:20). The cheleb, as the blood, was not to be eaten (Lev_3:17); the other fat might be eaten (Neh_8:10). A different word, peder, denotes the fat of the burnt offering, not exclusively selected for the altar as the cheleb of the other sacrifices (Lev_1:8; Lev_1:12; Lev_8:20). The significance of its being offered to Jehovah was that it is the source of nutriment of which the animal economy avails itself on emergency, so that in emaciation or atrophy it is the first substance that disappears; its development in the animal is a mark of perfection. The shoulder belonging to the officiating priest was "heaved," the breast for the priests in general was "waved" before Jehovah.
The wave offering (tenuphah) was moved to and fro repeatedly; applied to the gold and bronze, also to the Levites, dedicated to Jehovah. The heave offering (terumah) was lifted upward once; applied to all the gifts for the construction of the tabernacle. Abel offered "a more excellent sacrifice than Cain" because in "faith" (Heb_11:4). Now faith must have some revelation from God on which to rest. The revelation was doubtless God's command to sacrifice animals ("the firstlings of the flock") in token of man's forfeiture of life by sin, and a type of the promised Bruiser of the serpent's head (Gen_3:15), Himself to be bruised as the one sacrifice. This command is implied in God's having made coats of skins for Adam and Eve (Gen_3:21); for these must have been taken from animals slain in sacrifice (for it was not for food they were slain, animal food not being permitted until after the flood; nor for clothing, as clothes might have been made of the fleeces, without the needless cruelty of killing the animal).
A coat of skin put on Adam from a sacrificed animal typified the covering or atonement (kaphar) resulting from Christ's sacrifice ("atone" means to cover). Wycliffe translated Heb_11:4 "a much more sacrifice," one which partook more largely of the true virtue of sacrifice (Magee). It was not intrinsic merit in "the firstling of the flock" above "the fruit of the ground." It was God's appointment that gave it all its excellency; if it had not been so it would have been presumptuous will worship (Col_2:23) and taking of a life which man had no right over before the flood (Gen_9:2-4). Fire was God's mode of "accepting" ("turn to ashes" margin Psa_20:3) a burnt offering. Cain in unbelieving self righteousness presented merely thank offering, not like Abel feeling his need of the propitiatory sacrifice appointed for sin. God "had respect (first) unto Abel, and (then) to his offering" (Gen_4:4). Our works are not accepted by God, until our persons have been so, through faith in His work of grace.
The general prevalence of animal sacrifice among the pagan with the idea of expiation, the victim's blood and death removing guilt and appeasing divine wrath, is evidently a relic from primitive revelation preserved by tradition, though often encrusted over with superstitions. The earliest offering recorded as formally commanded by Jehovah, and of the five animals prescribed, is that of Abraham (Gen_15:9-17). The intended sacrifice of Isaac and substitution of a ram vividly represented the one only true sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, in substitution for us (Genesis 22). (See ISAAC.) Jacob's sacrifices at Mizpeh when parting with Laban, and at Beersheba when leaving the land of promise, were peace offerings (Gen_31:54; Gen_46:1). That sacrifice was known to Israel in Egypt appears from Moses alleging as a reason for taking them out of Egypt that they might hold a feast and sacrifice to Jehovah (Exo_3:18; Exo_5:1; Exo_5:3; Exo_5:8; Exo_5:17).
Jethro's offering burnt offerings and peace offerings when he met Israel shows that sacrifice was common to the two great branches of the Semitic stock (Exo_18:12). Balaam's sacrifices were burnt offerings (Num_23:2-3; Num_23:6; Num_23:15); Job's were also (Job_1:5; Job_42:7-8). Thus the oldest sacrifices were burnt offerings. The fat is referred to, not the blood. The peace offering is later, answering to a more advanced development of social life. Moses' order of the kinds of sacrifices in Leviticus answers to this historical succession. Therefore, the radical idea of sacrifice is in the burnt offering; figuring THE ASCENT of the reconciled, and accepted creature to Jehovah: "'olah" (Lev_1:9): his self-sacrificing surrender wholly of body, soul, and spirit to Jehovah. In the sacrifice of Job (Job_1:5; Job_42:7-8; Lev_1:4) atonement is connected with the burnt offerings, mediation for the guilty resting on the sacrifice. The blood symbolized the life of the offerer represented by the victim's blood, the material vehicle of life. In contrast with flesh and bones it represents the immaterial principle which survives death (Lev_17:11).
The Passover lamb's sprinkled blood represented its life substituted for the people's life, which therefore escaped (Exo_12:7; Exo_12:22-23). The first mention of throwing the blood upon the altar (the established mode afterward in the burnt offerings, peace offerings, and trespass offering, but not the sin offering) was when Moses "threw (so Hebrew) half of the blood on the altar" (Exo_24:4-8), and after reading the covenant, and after that the people assented, he took the blood in the basins and "threw it on them, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words" (Heb_9:19-20; Heb_13:20).
In the sin offering, on the contrary, part of the blood was offered to Jehovah by being put on the horns of the altar, and on certain occasions by being sprinkled within the tabernacle, while the rest was poured at the altar base (Lev_4:6-7; Lev_4:17-18; Lev_4:25, etc.; Lev_16:18, etc.). In Moses' consecration of the people the blood represented their collective life consecrated to Jehovah; so in the priests' consecration with the ram's blood, and in the blood thrown on their persons, the consecrated life was given back to them to be devoted to Jehovah's service. The Mosaic law accords remarkably with modern research: "the blood is the fountain of life, the first to live, the last to die, the primary seat of the animal soul; it lives, and is nourished of itself and by no other part of the human body" (Harvey); "all other parts of the frame are formed and nourished by it" (John Hunter).
The sin offering was first introduced by the law, the province of which is to awaken in man the consciousness of sin. Every sacrifice was Based on atonement, and at the same time included the idea of the burnt offering, a portion ascending up to Jehovah in the flame (Lev_1:4). The order of the law was: (1) the sin offering, (2) the burnt offering, (3) the peace offering (Lev_8:14-22; Lev_9:8-22; Lev_12:8; Lev_14:19-20). So the spiritual order; the sinner needs
(1) atonement expressed in the sin offering; then
(2) he could in the burnt offering offer himself accepted as a sweet savour (Psa_51:19) ascending to God; in virtue of this acceptanc
(3) he enjoyed communion with Jehovah and with God's people in the peace offering.
The burnt offering came before the sin offering in the princes' offerings in dedicating the altar and in reconsecrating the Nazarite, where personal holiness was subordinate to the idea of national consecration (Num_6:14; Num_7:15, etc.; Eze_45:17). The additions to sacrificial ritual made by the law were the one altar and the national priesthood and the details peculiar to the sin offering and the trespass offering. The law showed that sin must be removed before the sinner can be accepted. Bringing his victim to the tabernacle door he presented it before the Lord, and slew and cut it in pieces. Then his need of a mediator appeared in the priest's taking the victim from the worshipper, sprinkling of the blood within the tabernacle, and putting some upon the horns (the highest part toward heaven) of the altar, also placing in the altar fire some of the fat a "sweet savour" to Jehovah (Lev_4:31). Thus the priest "made atonement for him."
Except the parts assigned to the altar, the whole flesh of the sin offering (as being "most holy," i.e. by its blood consecrated for making atonement) was eaten by the priests only within the sacred precincts (Lev_6:25-30; Lev 17: 11). (Note that Hebrew chay, Greek zoee, means life opposed to death. Nephesh, psuchee (Greek), anima (Latin), is the soul distinguished from the body, the life in man or beast: Gen_2:7. Ruach, pneuma (Greek), is the spirit opposed to the flesh: Rom_8:4-6; Gal_5:17; 1Pe_3:18; distinguished from "the life of the flesh," it is man's highest part, holding communion with God. See Mat_6:25; Mat_10:28; Mat_10:39; Mat_16:25-26; Mar_8:35; Luk_12:22-23; 1Co_15:44; 1Th_5:23; Heb_4:12.)
The offerer's sin, and the victim's freedom from blemish, and the priest's atoning for him, all pointed to the spotless Saviour, at once the perfect Victim and Priest, so entering into God's presence for us as a sweet savour (Lev_4:20; Lev_4:26; Lev_5:6; Lev_6:7; Lev_12:8; Heb_10:19-21; Eph_5:2). The offering of innocent animals in substitution for man is no arbitrary invention; it is founded on man's close connection with animals. He could not offer his own forfeited life to divine justice, but in the life of the innocent fellow creature was found a suitable typical representative. Jesus Himself is called "the Lamb of God," "the Firstborn of every creature." The propitiatory, dedicatory, and eucharistic elements combine to give the perfect idea of sacrifice. Anyone divorced from the other two would convey a wrong idea. The propitiatory alone would give the idea of atonement without consequent repentance, faith, and thankful loving obedience.
Dedication alone would ignore God's holy justice, between which and our sin there must be an insuperable barrier without atonement. Thanksgiving alone would make gifts the essence of God's service, as the pagan bribe their gods by vows and offerings. The prophets take for granted sacrificial propitiation, and add that self-dedicating obedience which the Bunt offering taught is what the worshippers must spiritually aim at, else their sacrifice is vain (1Sa_15:22; Isa_1:10-20; Jer_7:22-23; Eze_20:39-44; Hos_6:6; Amo_5:21-27; Mic_6:6-8; Psa_40:8-11; Psa_50:13-14; Psa_51:16-17).
The sacrifice had no intrinsic efficacy, and could never "make him that did the service perfect as pertaining to the conscience" (Heb_9:9; Heb_10:1; Heb_10:11); but they vividly typified "Christ who through the eternal Spirit offering Himself without spot to God purges the conscience front dead works to serve the living God" (Heb_9:14); so that we can "draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience" (Heb_10:22). Their need of repetition implies their intrinsic incompleteness (Heb_10:1-3); also "bulls" and "goats" are so much inferior to man that "it is not possible their blood could take away sins" (Heb_10:4). Christ's atonement was made and accepted in God's foreordaining before the foundation of the world (1Pe_1:20; Rev_13:8), so that penitent and believing offerers of sacrifices in the Old Testament were accepted on the ground of it.
Their victims were arbitrary and inadequate representatives of the offerer; but He is one with man the offerer, and one with God the Accepter of the sacrifice, so our true and only mediating Priest, representative Offerer, and Victim (Heb_5:1-4), ordained by God with an oath a High Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, "tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin," yet as Son of God above all creatures, ever living to intercede for us, opening once for all access into the holiest by a new and living way (not by dead sacrifce: Heb_10:19-22; Heb_4:14-16). His vicarious sacrifice is asserted (Isa_53:6), "the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all"; (Isa_53:12) "He bore the sin of many." Mat_20:28, "a ransom (lutron, apolutroosis; Rom_3:25; 1Co_1:30) for (anti, substituted for) many."
He is the Atonement for sinners as such, still enemies to God (Rom_5:6-8); the Propitiation (hilasmos, hilasteerion; Rom_3:24; 1Jn_2:2), changing God's relation to man from estrangement to union from wrath to love (Isa_12:1-2) only remember it was God's love that first provided this sacrifice to make scope for love being harmonized with His unchangeable hatred of sin. (Compare Heb_9:7-12 on the typical sin offering on the day of atonement; the inauguration of the Mosaic covenant, Heb_9:13-23; the Passover, 1Co_5:7; the burning of the public or priestly sin offerings without the camp, Heb_13:10-13; the altar of sacrifice typifying His passion, which "we have" as a present and us" though He "knew no sin," 2Co_5:21). His self-dedicating obedience, answering to the burnt offering, is our pattern next after having appropriated the Atonement (Heb_2:10; Heb_5:7-9; Heb_10:7-9).
As He removed our guilt by His death, so by His obedience He fulfills all which the first Adam left undone (Rom_5:19, though His "obedience" in this verse includes His atoning death; Php_2:8; Joh_10:18). Our obedience is as necessary a complement of our faith in His atonement as the burnt offering was of the sin offering and Christ's self dedicating obedience was of His atoning sacrifice (Rom_6:6; Rom_12:1; Gal_2:20; 2Co_1:5; Col_1:24; 1Jn_3:16; 2Ti_4:6; Php_2:17). Christ's sin offering was made once for all, rending the veil between man and heaven; our continual burnt offering is accepted now through the mediation of our ever living Intercessor within the veil; the incense of tits merits makes our prayers a sweet savour unto God (Rev_8:4; Heb_9:24-28; Heb_4:14-16; Heb_6:19-20; Heb_7:25).
Our peace offerings are sacrifices of praise, almsgiving, and love (Php_4:18; Heb_13:15-16). Atonement by Christ's sacrifice as substitute for the penalty of God's broken law was necessary in the interests of God's moral government of the universe, to show His displeasure against sin. "It is the blood that maketh atonement by means of (Hebrew) the soul" (Lev_17:11). The ceremonies of sacrifice were:
(1) the victim's presentation at the altar;
(2) the laying on of hands, signifying consecration to death (Lev_24:14);
(3) slaughtering, being the completion of the penal death, whereby the blood became the medium of expiation;
(4) the sprinkling of the blood against the altar, completing the expiation;
(5) the burning of the flesh;
(6) the sacrificial meal at the sanctuary.
That sacrifices were offered for moral as well as for ceremonial transgressions appears in Lev_6:2-7; Lev_19:20; Lev_19:22. The vicarious nature of sacrifice appears in Lev_1:4; Lev_16:21-22; Isa_53:4-6; Isa_53:8;Isa_53:10-12. Hebrew nasa' (compare Lev_5:1; Lev_5:17; Lev_17:16; Lev_20:19-20; Lev_24:15; Lev_10:17) implies He not only entered into the fellowship of our sufferings, but took upon Himself the sufferings which we had to bear in order to take them away. Mat_8:17; He bore their punishment and atoned for them. So more explicitly cabal (compare 1Pe_2:25).
In Mat_26:28 Christ declares His blood not merely ratifies the new testament or covenant, but was "shed for many for the remission of sins," referring back to the Old Testament (Exo_24:5-8; Heb_9:18-21). John the Baptist calls Him "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world" (Joh_1:29). The flocks passing the ford where John baptized, on their way to Jerusalem; suggested the image the Lamb led to the "slaughter," not merely the shearing (Isa_53:7). The Passover was near (Joh_2:13); Christ combined the Passover lamb, the atonement scape-goat (Lev_16:21), and the morning and evening sacrifice of a lamb. The time of John's pointing to the Lamb of God was about "the tenth hour," just after the evening sacrifice (Joh_1:39; Rev_5:8-12), a coincidence connecting Him with the typical daily sacrifice. The Passover was sacrificial: for it is called
(1) qorban (Num_9:7), an offering to Jehovah, and
(2) zebach, the special designation of a bloody sacrifice. (See PASSOVER.)
(3) Philo and Josephus confirm Mar_14:12 margin and 1Co_5:7, that it is a sacrifice.
(4) It had the notes of a sacrifice; the blood was poured out and sprinkled on the altar (Exo_23:18; Exo_34:25; 2Ch_30:15; 2Ch_35:11.
(5) The Mishna and Karaite Jews, who reject all tradition not founded on Scripture, say the fat and entrails were burnt on the altar.
(6) Priests offered it at Hezekiah's Passover.
Other leading passages representing Christ's death as a sacrifice are 1Co_15:3; Heb_1:3 (Greek "made purgation of (our) sins"); Heb_9:12-13; Heb_9:14-28; Heb_10:10; Heb_10:12; Heb_10:18; 1Pe_1:18-20, "not redeemed with silver but ... lamb," etc., i.e. not with the daily offered lamb purchased with the half-shekel soul-redemption money of every Israelite (Exo_30:12-16), but, etc. As "Christ offered Himself to God" He was a real priest, having "somewhat to offer" (Heb_8:3); but if He had only a figurative sacrifice to offer He would have no superiority to the Aaronic priests (Rev_1:5; Rev_1:8-9; Rev_1:12). The Aaronic sacrifices were allusions to Christ's one atonement, not His to them. The epistle to the Hebrew makes the legal sacrifices to have no inherent efficacy, but Christ's sacrifice on the contrary to be intrinsically efficacious. The analogy between the Aaronic sacrifices and Christ's does not mean that both are empty figures, or that they exactly resemble one another, but that they have similarity in their relations.
(1) Sacrifice restored an Israelite to his status in the theocracy, forfeited by sin; it was his public confession of guilt, satisfaction of the law, and means of removing legal disability, i.e. "sanctifying to the purifying of the flesh."
(2) Offering sacrifice in penitence and faith he received atonement or reconciliation with God, on the ground of the foreordained sacrifice of Christ.
This second effect must have pertained to John's sacrifice who had no status in the Hebrew theocracy to fall from or be restored to. Christ's death was not only a sacrifice for sin, but a substitution, propitiation, and ransom to God for us: Mat_20:28 (anti); Mar_10:45; Eph_1:7; 1Ti_2:6; 1Co_7:23; Gal_3:13; 2Pe_2:1. There was a claim against man, Christ's death met that claim, therefore we are freed froth it. God Himself provided the ransom (Joh_3:16; 2Co_5:19), so that He is not only "just" but also "the justifier of him that believes in Jesus" (Rom_3:26). Christ's work has that excellency which God's unerring justice has seen to be an actual doing of that which was requisite to compensate for the injury perpetrated, and to restore the moral harmony which had been violated; so it is rightly called a "satisfaction" (Pye Smith), though the term is not in Scripture.
Christ did not need to undergo the very penalty we incurred, namely, eternal death, but such a penalty as, taking into account Who and what He was, He on our behalf must suffer. The fact of God's appointment of Him as our atonement guarantees that His death is an amply sufficient satisfaction. There was a real and intrinsic worthiness in Jesus' propitiation which was the reason of the divine appointment and justifies it. We cannot define the value of Christ's death, nor its exact mode of satisfying divine justice, but we know it was "precious blood" in God's sight, and therefore appointed as the propitiation adequate to atone for our sin (1Pe_1:19; 1Co_6:20; Rom_8:32; Heb_9:14). God's just wrath against sin is as real as His love to us (Psa_7:11; Joh_3:36). The sacrificial atonement or reconciliation covers sin out of God's sight, so that wrath is removed, and He "who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity" sees us in Christ at peace with Him (Isa_12:1-3; Psa_32:1; Rom_3:24-25). (See ATONEMENT; RECONCILIATION; PROPITIATION.)
Christ's sacrifice did not make God placable, but was God's own appointed means through which to bestow mercy (Heb_2:17; 1Jn_1:7; 1Jn_2:2; 1Jn_4:10), and to produce reconciliation between God and man (Rom_5:10-11; Col_1:20; Eph_2:16). At-one may be from two at variance becoming at one, or from German aussohnen, "to expiate." It is objected that it is opposed to God's justice that the innocent should suffer for the guilty; but in the daily experience of life and the course of nature the innocent often suffer, sometimes voluntarily, oftener involuntarily, for the guilty; philanthropists, patriots, and missionaries voluntarily. Christ's knowing and voluntary suffering in our stead is palpably no injustice (Joh_10:17-18; Psa_40:6-8). The vast benefit to be gained for man vindicates it as lawful, as certainly it was in His power, to lay down His life for us. It is objected guilt cannot be transferred, it is purely personal. True: Jesus was personally innocent, but it is just Because He was so, and therefore free, which other men through sin are not, that He could atone for sin.
The animal sacrifice similarly was innocent and spotless, but appointed to die for the guilty. The transfer of guilt to the Saviour was only legal, not moral; imputation, not pollution; He took the penalty, not the moral consciousness of our guilt, not the stain but the liability to suffer, the obligation to die. A solvent man, generously paying for an insolvent, does not become insolvent himself, but takes the obligation that really belongs to the debtor. Christ became "sin" and a "curse" for us (i.e. took on Him sin's penal consequences), but not a sinner (2Co_5:21; Gal_3:13). Hence the serpent of brass lifted up by Moses was the type of Christ, for it had the form of the animal cursed above all beasts of the field, but not the venom; harmless in itself, but resembling the deadly serpent of the wilderness. So Christ was "made in the likeness of sinful flesh," but not in sinful flesh. He died "for sin," all our sin being laid on Him, though no sin was in Him (Num_21:9; Joh_3:14; Rom_8:3). It is also objected that the atonement is opposed to God's love and goodness.
But in the moral and physical world we see daily sure punishment following violation of its laws; this attests what Scripture asserts, namely, the reality of God's judicial anger. The flood that destroyed the antediluvians, and the fire that consumed Sodom, contradict the notion that punishment's sole end is the sinner's reformation. Since then God's benevolence is consistent with punishment following sin, it cannot be inconsistent with His appointing His Son's voluntary, sacrificial, substitutional, atoning death to be the means of harmonizing divine justice with mercy to the sinner, and besides of effectively renewing and reforming the sinner, just because His death was of that atoning, redeeming nature. It is objected also that the atonement is unfavourable to virtue, and leads men to trust in another's work, instead of amending their lives. But God's wrath against sin, so awfully shown in Christ's death, never leads men, really believing in it, to trifle with sin; and His love first to us, when felt, constrains us to love Him in turn and try to obey Him.
Others object we are taught to forgive because God has forgiven us, but if the atonement be true we ought to imitate God in exacting from our brother the uttermost farthing. We answer: the atonement is the act of God as a holy Judge, but the pardon comes to us perfectly gratuitous; in this its effect, viewed from our human standpoint, God's forgiving mercy to us is our model for forgiving others. The judge's and magistrate's duly is often not to forgive but punish; only in our private relations to fellow men is forgiveness our duty, as opposed to personal revenge. The Socinian view derogates from the love of God: for if Christ were mere man, His death was His own act, not God's; just as any virtuous deed or death of a good man for others. Suffering lighting on an innocent man can give no declaration of God's readiness to pardon the guilty on repentance. No view but that of His death being expiatory can make it a manifestation of God's love (1Jn_4:9-10).
If love be estimated by the greatness of its gifts, God's gift of His divine Son to die in our stead is an infinitely greater manifestation of love than that of His allowing a good man to die in self sacrifice. Socinianism sacrifices God's justice, and so lowers His moral character of holiness of which His justice is one phase, and confounds the eternal distinctions of right and wrong. A human judge who lets criminals escape punishment is counted unjust, however merciful criminals might call him. Love of right is not a whit more virtuous than hatred of evil. A being without anger against wrong would be morally imperfect (Mar_3:5). If God, moreover, were a God of benevolence only, one cannot see why Christ should have been allowed by God to die at all. If it be unjust to punish the innocent for the guilt of others, must it not be much more unjust to punish him for no guilt whatever?
Again, if the object of His death was only to show an example of fortitude, patience, and self denial, since there is nothing of this kind in the sacrificial ritual of the Old Testament, there is no analogy between the sacrifices and Christ's death, and the sacrificial Old Testament language applied to Christ's death is meaningless. The Homily of Salvation truly says "reason is satisfied by God's great wisdom in this mystery of our redemption, who hath so tempered His justice and mercy together, that He would neither by His justice condemn us unto the everlasting captivity of the devil and his prison of hell, remediless forever without mercy, nor by His mercy deliver us clearly without justice or payment of a just ransom; but with His endless mercy He joined His most upright and equal justice." See Hollywood's admirable "Bishop Jeune's Prize Essay on the Atonement," from which the latter part of the above is mainly condensed.
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.

Sacrifice. The peculiar features of each kind of sacrifice are referred to under their respective heads.
I. (A) Origin of Sacrifice. The universal prevalence of sacrifice shows it to have been primeval, and deeply rooted in the instincts of humanity. Whether it was first enjoined by an external command, or whether it was based on that sense of sin and lost communion with God, which is stamped by his hand on the heart of man, is a historical question which cannot be determined.
(B) Ante-Mosaic History of Sacrifice. In examining the various sacrifices recorded in Scripture, before the establishment of the law, we find that the words specially denoting expiatory sacrifice are not applied to them. This fact does not at all show, that they were not actually expiatory, but it justified the inference that this idea was not then the prominent one in the doctrine of sacrifice. The sacrifices of Cain and Abel are called minehah, and appear to have been Eucharistic. Noah's, Gen_8:20, and Jacob's at Mizpah, were at the institution of a covenant; and may be called federative. In the Burnt Offerings of Job for his children, Job_1:5, and for his three friends, Job_42:8 , we, for the first time, find the expression of the desire of expiation for sin. The same is the case in the words of Moses to Pharaoh. Exo_10:26. Here the main idea is at least deprecatory.
(C) The Sacrifices of the Mosaic Period. These are inaugurated by the offering of the Passover, and the sacrifice of Exo_24:1. The Passover, indeed, is unique in its character, but it is clear that the idea of salvation from death by means of sacrifice is brought out in it with a distinctness before unknown. The law of Leviticus now unfolds distinctly, the various forms of sacrifice:
(a) The Burnt Offering: Self-dedicatory.
(b) The Meat [Meal] Offering: (unbloody): Eucharistic.
(c) The Sin Offering; the Trespass Offering: Expiatory. To these may be added,
(d) The incense offered after sacrifice in the Holy Place, and (on the Day of Atonement), in the Holy of Holies, the symbol of the intercession of the priest, (as a type of the great High Priest), accompanying and making efficacious, the prayer of the people.
In the consecration of Aaron and his sons, Lev_8:1, we find these offered in what became, ever afterward, their appointed order. First came the Sin Offering, to prepare access to God; next came the Burnt Offering, to mark their dedication to his service; and third came the Meat [Meal] Offering of thanksgiving. Henceforth, the sacrificial system was fixed in all its parts, until he should come whom it typified.
(D) Post-Mosaic Sacrifices. It will not be necessary to pursue, in detail, the history of the Poet Mosaic sacrifice, for its main principles were now fixed forever. The regular sacrifices in the Temple service were
(a) Burnt offerings.
1, The daily Burnt Offerings, Exo_29:38-42;
2, The double Burnt Offerings on the Sabbath, Num_28:9-10;
3, The Burnt Offerings at the great festivals; Num_26:11; Num_29:39.
(b) Meat [Meal] offerings.
1, The daily Meat [Meal] Offerings accompanying the daily Burnt Offerings, Exo_29:40-41;
2, The shewbread, renewed every Sabbath, Lev_24:6; Lev_24:9]
3, The special Meat [Meal] Offerings at the Sabbath, and the great festivals, Num_28:1; Num_29:1;
4, The first-fruits, at the Passover, Lev_23:10-14; at Pentecost, Lev_23:17-20; the firstfruits of the dough and threshing-floor at the harvest time. Num_15:20-21; Deu_26:1-11.
(c) Sin offerings.
1, Sin offering each new moon, Num_28:15;
2, Sin offerings at the Passover, Pentecost, Feast of Trumpets, and Feast of Tabernacles, Num_28:22; Num_28:30; Num_29:5; Num_29:16; Num_29:19; Num_29:22; Num_29:25; Num_29:28; Num_29:31; Num_29:34; Num_29:38;
3, The offering of the two goats for the people and of the bullock for the priest himself, on the Great Day of Atonement. Lev_16:1;
(d) Incense.
1, The morning and evening incense Exo_30:7-8;
2, The incense on the Great Day of Atonement. Lev_16:12.
Besides these public sacrifices, there were offerings of the people for themselves individually.
II. By the order of sacrifice, in its perfect form, as in Lev_8:1, it is clear that the Sin Offering occupies the most important place; the Burnt Offering comes next, and the Meat [Meal] Offering or Peace Offering comes last of all. The second could only be offered after the first had been accepted; the third was only a subsidiary part of the second. Yet, in actual order of time, it has been seen that the patriarchal sacrifices partook much more of the nature of the Peace Offering and Burnt Offering, and that under the Law, by which was "the knowledge of sin," Rom_3:20, the Sin Offering was, for the first time, explicitly set forth. This is but natural that the deepest ideas should be the last in order of development.
The essential difference between heathen views of sacrifice, and the scriptural doctrine of the Old Testament, is not to be found in its denial of any of these views. In fact, it brings out clearly and distinctly, the ideas which in heathenism were uncertain, vague and perverted. But the essential points of distinction are two.
First, that whereas the heathen conceived of their gods as alienated in jealousy or anger, to be sought after and to be appeased by the unaided action of man, Scripture represents God himself as approaching man, as pointing out and sanctioning the way by which the broken covenant should be restored.
The second mark of distinction is closely connected with this, inasmuch, as it shows sacrifice to be a scheme proceeding from God, and in his foreknowledge, connected with the one central fact of all human history.
From the prophets and the Epistle to the Hebrews, we learn that the Sin Offering represented that covenant as broken by man, and as knit together again, by God's appointment through the shedding of the blood, the symbol of life, signified that the death of the offender was deserved for sin, but that the death of the victim was accepted for his death by the ordinance of God's mercy. Beyond all doubt, the Sin Offering distinctly witnessed that sin existed in man. That the "wages of that sin was death," and that God had provided an atonement by the vicarious suffering of an appointed victim.
The ceremonial and meaning of the Burnt Offering were very different. The idea of expiation seems not to have been absent from it, for the blood was sprinkled round about the altar of sacrifice; but the main idea is the offering of the whole victim to God, representing as the laying of the hand on its head shows, the devotion of the sacrificer, body and soul. To him, Rom_12:1, the death of the victim was, so to speak, an incidental feature.
The meat [or, more properly, the meal] offering, the peace or thank offering, the firstfruits, etc., were simply offerings to God of his own best gifts, as a sign of thankful homage, and as a means of maintaining his service and his servants.
The characteristic ceremony in the Peace Offering was the eating of the flesh by the sacrificer. It betokened the enjoyment of communion with God. It is clear from this that the idea of sacrifice is a complex idea, involving the propitiatory, the dedicatory and the Eucharistic elements.
Any one of these, taken by itself, would lead to error and superstition. All three, probably, were more or less implied, in each sacrifice. Each element predominating in its turn. The Epistle to the Hebrews contains the key of the whole sacrificial doctrine. The object of the Epistle is to show the typical and probationary character of sacrifices, and to assert that, in virtue of it alone, they had a spiritual meaning. Our Lord is declared, (see 1Pe_1:20, "to have been foreordained" as a sacrifice, "before the foundation of the world," or, as it is more strikingly expressed in Rev_13:8, "slain from the foundation of the world."
The material sacrifices represented this great atonement as already made and accepted in God's foreknowledge; and to those who grasped the ideas of sin, pardon and self-dedication symbolized in them, they were means of entering into the blessings which the one true sacrifice alone procured. They could convey nothing in themselves, yet as types they might, if accepted by a true though necessarily imperfect faith, be means of conveying, in some degree, the blessings of the antitype. It is clear that the atonement in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as in the New Testament generally, is viewed in a twofold light.
On the one hand, it is set forth distinctly as a vicarious sacrifice, which was rendered necessary by the sin of man, and in which the Lord "bare the sins of many." It is its essential characteristic that, in it, he stands absolutely alone offering his sacrifice, without any reference to the faith or the conversion of men. In it, he stands out alone as the mediator between God and man; and his sacrifice is offered once for all, never to be imitated or repeated. Now, this view of the atonement is set forth in the Epistle as typified by the Sin Offering.
On the other hand, the sacrifice of Christ is set forth to us, as the completion of that perfect obedience to the will of the Father, which is the natural duty of sinless man. The main idea of this view of the atonement is representative, rather than vicarious. It is typified by the Burnt Offering. As without the Sin Offering of the cross, this, our Burnt Offering, would be impossible, so also, without the Burnt Offering, the Sin Offering will, to us, be unavailing.
With these views of our Lord's sacrifice on earth, as typified in the Levitical sacrifices on the outer alter, is also to be connected, the offering of his intercession for us in heaven, which was represented by the incense. The typical sense of the Meat [Meal] Offering, or Peace Offering, is less connected, the sacrifice of Christ himself , than with those sacrifices of praise, thanksgiving, charity and devotion which we, as Christians, offer to God, and "with which he is well pleased,"
Heb_13:15-16, as with "an odor of sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God." Php_4:18.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863

properly so called, is the solemn infliction of death on a living creature, generally by the effusion of its blood, in a way of religious worship; and the presenting of this act to God, as a supplication for the pardon of sin, and a supposed means of compensation for the insult and injury thereby offered to his majesty and government. Sacrifices have, in all ages, and by almost every nation, been regarded as necessary to placate the divine anger, and render the Deity propitious. Though the Gentiles had lost the knowledge of the true God, they still retained such a dread of him, that they sometimes sacrificed their own offspring for the purpose of averting his anger. Unhappy and bewildered mortals, seeking relief from their guilty fears, hoped to atone for past crimes by committing others still more awful; they gave their first-born for their transgression, the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul. The Scriptures sufficiently indicate that sacrifices were instituted by divine appointment, immediately after the entrance of sin, to prefigure the sacrifice of Christ. Accordingly, we find Abel, Noah, Abraham, Job, and others, offering sacrifices in the faith of the Messiah; and the divine acceptance of their sacrifices is particularly recorded. But, in religious institutions, the Most High has ever been jealous of his prerogative. He alone prescribes his own worship; and he regards as vain and presumptuous ever pretence of honouring him which he has not commanded. The sacrifice of blood and death could not have been offered to him without impiety, nor would he have accepted it, had not his high authority pointed the way by an explicit prescription.
Under the law, sacrifices of various kinds were appointed for the children of Israel; the paschal lamb, Exo_12:3; the holocaust, or whole burnt- offering, Lev_7:8; the sin-offering, or sacrifice of expiation, Lev_4:3-4; and the peace-offering, or sacrifice of thanksgiving, Lev_7:11-12; all of which emblematically set forth the sacrifice of Christ, being the instituted types and shadows of it, Heb_9:9-15; Heb_10:1. Accordingly, Christ abolished the whole of them when he offered his own sacrifice. Above, when he said, Sacrifice, and offering, and burnt- offerings, and offering for sin, thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein, which are offered by the law; then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ once for all, Heb_10:8-10; 1Co_5:7. In illustrating this fundamental doctrine of Christianity, the Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, sets forth the excellency of the sacrifice of our great High Priest above those of the law in various particulars. The legal sacrifices were only brute animals, such as bullocks, heifers, goats, lambs, &c; but the sacrifice of Christ was himself, a person of infinite dignity and worth, Heb_9:12-13; Heb_1:3; Heb_9:14; Heb_9:26; Heb_10:10. The former, though they cleansed from ceremonial uncleanness, could not possibly expiate sin, or purify the conscience from the guilt of it; and so it is said that God was not well pleased in them, Heb_10:4-5; Heb_10:8; Heb_10:11. But Christ, by the sacrifice of himself, hath effectually, and for ever, put away sin, having made an adequate atonement unto God for it, and by means of faith in it he also purges the conscience from dead works to serve the living God, Heb_9:10-26; Eph_5:2. The legal sacrifices were statedly offered, year after year, by which their insufficiency was indicated, and an intimation given that God was still calling sins to his remembrance, Heb_10:3; but the last required no repetition, because it fully and at once answered all the ends of sacrifice, on which account God hath declared that he will remember the sins and iniquities of his people no more.
The term sacrifice is often used in a secondary or metaphorical sense, and applied to the good works of believers, and to the duties of prayer and praise, as in the following passages: But to do good, and to communicate, forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased, Heb_13:16. Having received of Epaphroditus the things which ye sent, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God,
Php_4:18. Ye are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ, 1Pe_2:5. By him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually; that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name,
Heb_13:15. I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, Rom_12:1. There is a peculiar reason, says Dr. Owen, for assigning this appellation to moral duties; for in every sacrifice there was a presentation of something unto God. The worshipper was not to offer that which cost him nothing; part of his substance was to be transferred from himself unto God. So it is in these duties; they cannot be properly observed without the alienation of something that was our own,our time, ease, property, &c, and a dedication of it to the Lord. Hence they have the general nature of sacrifices. The ceremonies used in offering the Jewish sacrifices require to be noticed as illustrative of many texts of Scripture, and some points of important doctrine. See ATONEMENT, See OFFERINGS, See EXPIATION, See PROPITIATION, See RECONCILIATION, and See REDEMPTION.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.

From earliest times people expressed their devotion to God through presenting to him offerings and sacrifices. Some sacrifices expressed thanks, as people presented to God the best of their crops or animals (Gen_4:4; Gen_8:20). Others emphasized fellowship, both with God and with others, as the offerers ate part of the sacrifice in a meal with relatives and friends (Gen_31:54). Other sacrifices were for forgiveness of sins, a slaughtered animal bearing the penalty that the offerers, because of their sins, should have suffered (Job_42:8). These basic elements of the sacrifices were later developed in the ceremonial law of Israel.
Offerers and their offerings
Whether before or after the institution of Israels ceremonial law, the heart attitude of the worshipper was always more important than his gifts. Abel offered his sacrifice in humble faith and God accepted it. Cain offered his sacrifice in a spirit of arrogance and God refused it. Even if Cains sacrifice, like Abels, had involved the shedding of blood, it would still have been unacceptable to God, because Cain himself was ungodly and unrepentant (Gen_4:2-5; Gen_4:7; Heb_11:4; 1Jn_3:12).
The Bibles first specific statement concerning the particular significance of blood did not come till the time of Noah. The first clear revelation of the value of blood for atonement had to wait till the time of Moses (Gen_9:3-6; Lev_17:11).
God revealed his purposes progressively as people were able to understand them, but always his acceptance of the offering depended on the spiritual condition of the offerer. The sacrificial system of Israel did not ignore this principle; rather it had this principle as its basis. Therefore, when people carried out the rituals mechanically, without corresponding faith and uprightness, the prophets condemned their sacrifices as worthless (Isa_1:13-20; Amo_5:21-24; Mic_6:6-8).
Gods gift of the blood of atonement
The Passover in Egypt marked an important stage in Gods revelation of the special significance of blood. Blood was a symbol of life; shed blood was therefore a symbol of death; in particular, death through killing (Gen_9:4-6; Num_35:19; Num_35:33; see BLOOD). In the original Passover, the blood of the lamb was important, not because of any chemical property in the blood itself, but because it represented the animals death. The blood around the door showed that an animal had been killed instead of the person under judgment (Exo_12:13).
In Israels sacrificial system God provided a way of atonement through the shed blood of animals. Through sin people were separated from God and under the penalty of death, and there was nothing they could do to save themselves. There could be no forgiveness of their sin, no releasing them from its consequences, apart from death. God, however, provided a way of salvation through the blood (that is, the death) of a guiltless substitute. The blood of atonement was not an offering people made in the hope of squeezing pardon from an unwilling God. On the contrary it was the merciful gift of a God who was eager to forgive (Lev_17:11). The escaping of divine punishment was not something that sinners brought about, but was due to God himself (see PROPITIATION).
Although an animal substitute had to bear the death penalty so that the sinner could be forgiven (Heb_9:22), the blood of an animal could not itself take away sins (Heb_10:4). Nevertheless, it enabled the sinner to see that God, in forgiving sins, was not ignoring those sins but dealing with them. The only blood that can bring forgiveness of sins is the blood of Jesus his death on the cross. God knew of Jesus atoning death even though it had not yet occurred (1Pe_1:18-20), and because of that he was able to pass over, temporarily, the sins of believers of former generations. He forgave them, one might say, on credit, for their sins could not be actually removed till Christ died (Rom_3:25-26; Heb_9:15).
The sacrificial system helped people see what salvation involved, but it was not in itself a means of salvation. Under the old covenant, as under the new, people were saved not through their works, but through the grace of a merciful God. The repentant sinner could do nothing but accept Gods salvation by faith (Rom_4:13; Rom_4:16; Rom_4:22; Gal_3:17-19; Eph_2:8-9). The benefit of the sacrificial system was that it gave people a means of communication with God, by which they could demonstrate their faith and seek Gods forgiveness (1Sa_1:3; Isa_56:7).
Ritual requirements
God set out the legal requirements for the various sacrifices in great detail, and these details should have helped the Israelites understand the meaning of what they were doing. The sacrificial animal, for instance, had to be without defects, to symbolize that it was free from condemnation and therefore fit to be the guiltless substitute for the guilty sinner (Lev_1:3; Lev_1:10; see LAMB).
No matter what people offered, it had to be their own property, so that it had meaning as part of them personally, so to speak. As an offering, it was a personal possession they gave. As a sacrifice, it cost them something. It impressed upon them that they could not treat the removal of sin lightly. Devotion to God was not to be treated cheaply.
At the same time God did not want to drive people into poverty. In many cases he therefore allowed grades of offerings, so that people could make offering that were suited to their varying financial capacities (Lev_1:3; Lev_1:10; Lev_1:14; Lev_5:7-13).
By laying their hands on the animals head, offerers indicated that it bore their guilt and they wanted God to accept it on their behalf (Lev_1:4; Lev_16:21). The unpleasant task of killing the animal (which was carried out beside the altar, not on it) reminded them of the horror of sin (Lev_1:11). The priest collected the blood in a basin to apply to various places as a visible sign that a life had been taken to bear the curse and penalty of sin. Unused blood was poured out on the ground beside the altar (Lev_1:5; Lev_4:7; Lev_16:14).
Some burning occurred with all the sacrifices, though the amount that was burnt varied. The parts to be burnt were usually burnt on the altar of sacrifice, though in some cases they were burnt in an isolated place away from the central camp (Lev_1:9; Lev_2:2; Lev_3:3-5; Lev_4:10-12; Lev_4:35; Lev_7:5). The portions not burnt were eaten, sometimes by the worshippers and the priests (including the priests families) and sometimes by the priests alone (Lev_2:3; Lev_2:10; Lev_6:26; Lev_7:15-17; Lev_7:32; Lev_22:11).
Five main offerings
Israels sacrificial system had five main categories of sacrifice, though there were variations of these on certain occasions. The major categories were the burnt offering (Leviticus 1; Lev_6:8-13), the cereal (or grain) offering (Leviticus 2; Lev_6:14-23), the peace (or fellowship) offering (Leviticus 3; Lev_7:11-38), the sin offering (Lev_4:1-5; Lev_4:13; Lev_6:24-30) and the guilt (or repayment) offering (Lev_5:14-19; Lev_6:1-7; Lev_7:1-10). Although the different types of sacrifices were for different purposes, elements of atonement and devotion were associated with them all (Lev_1:5; Lev_2:2; Lev_3:2; Lev_3:5; Lev_4:5-7; Lev_5:18).
The burnt offering, so called because the whole animal was burnt upon the altar, indicated the complete consecration, or self-dedication, of the offerer to God (Lev_1:9; cf. Gen_8:20; Gen_22:2; Exo_10:25; Rom_12:1). A burnt offering, offered on behalf of the entire nation, was kept burning on the altar constantly, as a symbol of the nations unbroken dedication to God (Exo_29:38-42).
The cereal (or grain) offering and its associated wine (or drink) offering demonstrated thanks to God for his daily provision of food. Cereal and wine offerings were not offered alone, but always with burnt offerings or peace offerings. The wine was poured over the animal sacrifice on the altar, and a handful of cereal was burnt with it (Lev_2:4-10; Lev_23:13; Lev_23:18; Num_15:1-10).
The peace offering expressed fellowship, a truth demonstrated in the meal that accompanied it. After initial blood ritual, burning ritual and presentation of a portion to the priest, the worshipper joined with his family, friends, the poor and the needy in eating the remainder of the animal in a joyous feast (Lev_7:11-18; Deu_12:7; Deu_12:12; 1Sa_9:12-13).
The sin offering was compulsory for those who became aware that they had broken one of Gods laws. In cases of sin by priests or the nation as a whole, the priests sprinkled the animals blood inside the Holy Place, burnt parts of the animal on the altar of sacrifice, and burnt the remainder outside the camp (Lev_4:7; Lev_4:10; Lev_4:12). In cases of sin by private citizens, the priests sprinkled the blood at the altar of sacrifice, burnt parts of the animal on the altar, and ate what remained (Lev_4:27-30; Lev_6:26; Lev_6:30).
The guilt offering was offered in those cases where the persons wrongdoing could be given a monetary value. Such wrongdoing would include forgetting to pay tithes, causing damage to property, or failing to pay for goods (Lev_5:15; Lev_6:1-5). The person presented an offering (similar to the sin offering for a private citizen) and repaid the loss, along with a fine of one fifth of its value (Lev_5:16; Lev_6:5).
Limitations of the offerings
In general, the sacrifices detailed in the Israelite law were available only for unintentional sins. None of the five categories of sacrifice set out a procedure to deal with deliberate sin, even though that is the sin that most troubles the repentant sinner (Lev_4:2; Lev_4:13; Lev_4:22; Lev_4:27; Lev_5:15; Lev_5:17; Num_15:30). The sacrificial system demonstrated that no system could solve the problem of sin or provide automatic cleansing. Sinners had no right to forgiveness. They could do nothing except turn to God and cast themselves on his mercy (2Sa_24:14; Psa_51:1-2; Psa_51:16-17).
This does not mean that the sacrifices were useless or could be ignored. They still provided a means of communication by which repentant sinners could approach God, express their repentance and ask Gods forgiveness. The sacrifices pointed beyond themselves to something higher, the merciful love of God (Mic_7:18-20).
Cleansing and response
Animal sacrifices could not in themselves remove sin (Heb_10:1-4), but they at least showed that sacrificial death was necessary for the removal of sin (Heb_9:22). The one sacrificial death that has achieved what all the Old Testament sacrifices could not achieve is the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ (Heb_10:11-14; Heb_10:17-18). Unlike the animal sacrifices, Christs sacrifice removes sin, cleanses the conscience, brings total forgiveness and secures eternal redemption (Heb_9:9-14; Heb_9:25-26; Heb_10:14-18).
The book of Hebrews goes to some length to display the perfection of Christs work, presenting him as both priest and sacrifice. In particular, it contrasts his sacrificial work with the sacrificial work of the Israelite high priest on the Day of Atonement (Heb_9:6-7; Heb_9:11-12; Heb_9:25-26; see DAY OF ATONEMENT; PRIEST).
Besides being the only way of atonement, the sacrifice of Christ is an example to Christians of the sort of life they should live. Christs sacrifice was a willing sacrifice, an act of obedience and love. God wants his people to show their obedience and love by willingly sacrificing themselves for the sake of others (Eph_5:2; Eph_5:25; cf. Joh_15:12-13; Rom_5:8; Heb_10:7; Heb_10:10).
The sacrifices of Christians, then, are spiritual sacrifices, which are offered in response to Gods love and mercy (1Pe_2:5). They are not atoning sacrifices, for Christs one sacrifice has already brought complete release from sins penalty (Heb_10:17-18). Christians offer to God the sacrifices of worship, praise and service (Rom_15:16; Php_4:18; Heb_13:15). But they will be able to present such sacrifices properly only when they have first given themselves to God as living sacrifices (Rom_12:1; 2Co_8:5).
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.

sak?ri-fı̄s, sak?ri-fı̄z:

In the Old Testament
I. TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
II. ORIGIN AND NATURE OF SACRIFICES
1. Theory of a Divine Revelation
2. Theories of a Human Origin
(1) The Gift-Theory
(2) The Magic Theory
(3) The Table-Bond Theory
(4) The Sacramental Communion Theory
(5) The Homage Theory
(6) The Piacular Theory
(7) Originating Religious Instincts
III. CLASSIFICATION OF SACRIFICES
1. Maimonides
2. W.R. Smith and Others
3. Oehler
4. Paterson and Others
5. H.M. Wiener
IV. SACRIFICES IN THE PRE-MOSAIC AGE
1. In Egypt
2. In Babylonia
3. Nomads and Tribes of Arabia and Syria
4. The Offerings of Cain and Abel
5. Of Noah
6. Of Abraham
7. Of Job
8. Of Isaac
9. Of Jacob
10. Of Israel in Egypt
11. Of Jethro
12. Summary and Conclusions
V. THE MOSAIC SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM
1. The Covenant Sacrifice
2. The Common Altars
3. The Consecration of Aaron and His Sons
4. Sacrifices before the Golden Calf
5. The Law of the Burnt Offering ('Olah)
(1) Ritual for the Offerer (Leviticus 1:3-17)
(2) Ritual for the Priest (Leviticus 1:3-17)
(3) General Laws for the Priest
(4) Laws in Deuteronomy 12:6, 13, 14, 27; 27:6
6. The Law of the Meal Offering (Minchah)
(1) Ritual for the Offerer (Leviticus 2:1-16)
(2) Ritual for the Priest (Leviticus 2:1-16)
(3) General Laws for the Priest (Leviticus 6:14-18), etc.)
7. The Law of the Peace Offering
(1) Ritual for the Offerer (Leviticus 3:1-17)
(2) Ritual for the Priest (Leviticus 3:1-17)
(3) General Laws for the Priest (Leviticus 6:12; 7:1 ff)
8. The Law of the Sin Offering
(1) At the Consecration of Aaron and His Sons (Exodus 29:10 ff)
(2) The Law of the Sin Offering (Leviticus 4:1-35; 24-30, etc.)
(a) The Occasion and Meaning
(b) Ritual for the Offerer (Leviticus 4:1-5, 13, etc.)
(c) Ritual for the Priest (Leviticus 4:1-5, 13, etc.)
(d) General Laws for the Priest (Leviticus 6:24-30)
(e) Special Uses of the Sin Offering
(i) Consecration of Aaron and His Sons
(ii) Purifications from Uncleanness
(iii) On the Day of Atonement
(iv) Other Special Instances
9. The Guilt Offering
(1) The Ritual (Leviticus 5:14 through 6:7)
(2) Special Laws: Leper, Nazirite, etc.
10. The Wave Offering
11. The Heave Offering
12. Drink Offerings
13. Primitive Nature of the Cult
VI. SACRIFICES IN THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL
1. The Situation at Moses' Death
2. In the Time of Joshua
3. The Period of the Judges
4. Times of Samuel and Saul
5. Days of David and Solomon
6. In the Northern Kingdom
7. In the Southern Kingdom to the Exile
8. In the Exilic and Post-exilic Periods
9. A Temple and Sacrifices at Elephantine
10. Human Sacrifices in Israel's History
11. Certain Heathen Sacrifices
VII. THE PROPHETS AND SACRIFICES
VIII. SACRIFICE IN THE ?WRITINGS?
1. Proverbs
2. The Psalms
IX. THE IDEA AND EFFICACY OR SACRIFICES
1. A Gift of Food to the Deity
2. Expression of Adoration and Devotion, etc.
3. Means of Purification from Uncleanness
4. Means of Consecration to Divine Service
5. Means of Establishing a Community of Life between Worshipper and God
6. View of Ritschl
7. The Sacramental View
8. Symbol or Expression of Prayer
9. View of Kautzsch
10. Vicarious Expiation Theory; Objections
11. Typology of Sacrifice
LITERATURE

I. Terms and Definitions.
זבח, zebhaḥ, ?sacrifice?; עולה, ‛ōlāh, ?burnt offering?; חטאה, ḥătā'āh, חטּאת, ḥaṭṭā'th, ?sin offering?; אשׁם, 'āshām, ?guilt? or ?trespass offering?: שׁלם, shelem, שׁלמים, shelāmı̄m, ?peace offerings?; מנחה, minḥāh, ?offering,? ?present?; שׁלמים זבח, zebhaḥshelāmı̄m, ?sacrifice of peace offerings?; התּודה זבח, zebhaḥ ha-tōdhāh, ?thank offerings?; נדבה זבח, zebhaḥ nedhābhāh, ?free-will offerings?; נדר זבח, zebhaḥ nedher, ?votive offerings?; תּנוּפה, tenūphāh, ?wave offering?; תּרוּמה, terūmāh, ?heave offering?; קרבּן, ḳorbān, ?oblation,? ?gift?; אשּׁה, 'ishsheh, ?fire offering?; נסך, neṣekh, ?drink offering?; כּליל, kālı̄l, ?whole burnt offering?; חג, ḥagh, ?feast?; לבונה, lebhōnāh, ?frankincense?; קטורה, ḳetōrāh, קטורת, ḳetōreth, ?odor,? ?incense?; מלח, melaḥ, ?salt?; שׁמן, shemen, ?oil?:
Zebhaḥ: a ?slaughtered animal,? a ?sacrifice,? general term for animals used in sacrifice, including burnt offerings, peace offerings, thank offerings, and all sacrifices offered to the Deity and eaten at the festivals. More particularly it refers to the flesh eaten by the worshippers after the fat parts had been burned on the altar and the priest had received his portion.
‛Olāh: a ?burnt offering,? sometimes whole burnt offering. Derived from the verb ‛ālāh, ?to go up.? It may mean ?that which goes up to the altar? (Knobel, Wellhausen, Nowack, etc.), or ?that which goes up in smoke to the sky? (Bahr, Delitzsch, Dillmann, etc.); sometimes used synonymously with kālı̄l (which see). The term applies to beast or fowl when entirely consumed upon the altar, the hide of the beast being taken by the priest. This was perhaps the most solemn of the sacrifices, and symbolized worship in the full sense, i.e. adoration, devotion, dedication, supplication, and at times expiation.
Ḥătā'āh, ḥattā'th: a ?sin offering,? a special kind, first mentioned in the Mosaic legislation. It is essentially expiatory, intended to restore covenant relations with the Deity. The special features were: (1) the blood must be sprinkled before the sanctuary, put upon the horns of the altar of incense and poured out at the base of the altar of burnt offering; (2) the flesh was holy, not to be touched by worshipper, but eaten by the priest only. The special ritual of the Day of Atonement centers around the sin offering.
'Āshām: ?guilt offering,? ?trespass offering? (King James Version; in Isa_53:10, the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) ?an offering for sin,? the American Revised Version margin ?trespass offering?). A special kind of sin offering introduced in the Mosaic Law and concerned with offenses against God and man that could be estimated by a money value and thus covered by compensation or restitution accompanying the offering. A ram of different degrees of value, and worth at least two shekels, was the usual victim, and it must be accompanied by full restitution with an additional fifth of the value of the damage. The leper and Nazirite could offer he-lambs. The guilt toward God was expiated by the blood poured out, and the guilt toward men by the restitution and fine. The calling of the Servant an 'āshām (Isa_53:10) shows the value attached to this offering.
Shelem, shelāmı̄m: ?peace offering,? generally used the plural, shelāmı̄m, only once shēlem (Amo_5:22). These were sacrifices of friendship expressing or promoting peaceful relations with the Deity, and almost invariably accompanied by a meal or feast, an occasion of great joy. They are sometimes called zebhāḥim, sometimes zebhaḥ shelāmı̄m, and were of different kinds, such as zebhaḥ ha-tōdhāh, ?thank offerings,? which expressed the gratitude of the giver because of some blessings, zebhaḥ nedhābhāh, ?free-will offerings,? bestowed on the Deity out of a full heart, and zebhaḥ nedher, ?votive offerings,? which were offered in fulfillment of a vow.
Minḥāh: ?meal offering? (the Revised Version), ?meat offering? (the King James Version), a gift or presentation, at first applied to both bloody and unbloody offerings (Gen_4:5), but in Moses' time confined to cereals, whether raw or roast, ground to flour or baked and mixed with oil and frankincense. These cereals were the produce of man's labor with the soil, not fruits, etc., and thus represented the necessities and results of life, if not life itself. They were the invariable accompaniment of animal sacrifices, and in one instance could be substituted for them (see SIN OFFERING). The term minḥāh describes a gift or token of friendship (Isa_39:1), an act of homage (1Sa_10:27; 1Ki_10:25), tribute (Jdg_3:15, Jdg_3:17 f), propitiation to a friend wronged (Gen_32:13, Gen_32:18 (Hebrew 14:19)), to procure favor or assistance (Gen_43:11 ff; Hos_10:6).
Ṭenūphāh: ?wave offering,? usually the breast, the priest's share of the peace offerings, which was waved before the altar by both offerer and priest together (the exact motion is not certain), symbolic of its presentation to Deity and given back by Him to the offerer to be used in the priests' service.
Ṭenūmāh: ?heave offering,? something lifted up, or, properly, separated from the rest and given to the service of the Deity. Usually the right shoulder or thigh was thus separated for the priest. The term is applied to products of the soil, or portion of land separated unto the divine service, etc.
Ḳorbān: ?an oblation,? or ?offering?; another generic term for all kinds of offerings, animal, vegetable, or even gold and silver. Derived from the verb ḳārabh, ?to draw near,? it signifies what is drawn or brought near and given to God.
'Ishsheh: ?fire offering,? applied to offerings made by fire and usually bloody offerings, but at times to the minḥāh, the sacred bread and frankincense placed on the tables as a memorial, part of which was burned with the frankincense, the bulk, however, going to the priest. The gift was thus presented through fire to the Deity as a sort of etherealized food.
Neṣekh: ?drink offering,? or ?libation,? a liquid offering of wine, rarely water, sometimes of oil, and usually accompanying the ‛ōlāh, but often with the peace offerings.
Kālı̄l: ?whole burnt offering,? the entire animal being burned upon the altar. Sometimes used synonymously with ‛ōlāh. A technical term among the Carthaginians.
Ḥagh: a ?feast,? used metaphorically for a sacrificial feast because the meat of the sacrifices constituted the material of the feast.
Lebhōnāh: ?frankincense,? ?incense,? used in combination with the meal offerings and burnt offerings and burned also upon the altar in the holy place. See INCENSE.
Ḳetōrāh, ḳetōreth: ?smoke,? ?odor of sacrifice,? or incense ascending as a sweet savor and supposed to be pleasing and acceptable to God.
Melaḥ: ?salt,? used in all sacrifices because of its purifying and preserving qualities.
Shemen: ?oil,? generally olive oil, used with the meal offerings of cakes and wafers, etc.
Sacrifice is thus a complex and comprehensive term. In its simplest form it may be defined as ?a gift to God.? It is a presentation to Deity of some material object, the possession of the offerer, as an act of worship. It may be to attain, restore, maintain or to celebrate friendly relations with the Deity. It is religion in action - in early times, almost the whole of religion - an inseparable accompaniment to all religious exercises. Few or many motives may actuate it. It may be wholly piacular and expiatory, or an Offering of food as a gift to God; it may be practically a bribe, or a prayer, an expression of dependence, obligation and thanksgiving. It may express repentance, faith, adoration, or all of these combined. It was the one and only way of approach to God. Theophrastus defines it as expressing homage, gratitude and need. Hubert and Mauss define it as ?a religious act which by the consecration of the victim modifies the moral state of the sacrificer, or of certain material objects which he has in view, i.e., either confers sanctity or removes it and its analogue, impiety.?

II. Origin and Nature of Sacrifices.
The beginnings of sacrifice are hidden in the mysteries of prehistoric life. The earliest narrative in Genesis records the fact, but gives no account of the origin and primary idea. The custom is sanctioned by the sacred writings, and later on the long-established custom was adopted and systematized in the Mosaic Law. The practice was almost universal. The Vedas have their elaborate rituals. Some Semitic peoples, Greeks, Romans, Africans, and Indians of Mexico offered human sacrifices. It is unknown in Australia, but even there something akin to it exists, for some natives offer a portion of a kind of honey, others offer a pebble or a spear to their god. For this practically universal habit of the race, several solutions are offered.

1. Theory of a Divine Revelation:
One view maintains that God Himself initiated the rite by divine order at the beginnings of human history. Such a theory implies a monotheistic faith on the part of primitive man. This theory was strongly held by many of the Reformed theologians, and was based mainly on the narrative in Gen_4:4 f. Abel offered an acceptable sacrifice, and, according to Heb_11:4, this was because of his faith. Faber makes a strong plea as follows: Since faith was what made the sacrifice acceptable to God, this faith must have been based upon a positive enactment of God in the past. Without this divine positive enactment to guarantee its truthfulness, faith, in Abel, would have been superstition. In other words, faith, in order to be truly based and properly directed, must have a revelation from God, a positive expression of the divine will. Fairbairn, in his Typology, goes further and holds that the skins wherewith Adam and Eve were clothed were from animals which had been slain in sacrifices. This is entirely without support in the narrative. The theory of a divine order cannot be maintained on the basis of the Biblical narrative. Moreover, it involves certain assumptions regarding the nature of faith and revelation which are not generally held in this age. A revelation is not necessarily a positive divine command, an external thing, and faith may be just as real and true without such a revelation as with it. That there may have been such a revelation cannot be denied, but it is not a necessary or probable explanation.

2. Theories of a Human Origin:
(1) The Gift-Theory.
By this it is held that sacrifices were originally presents to the deity which the offerer took for granted would be received with pleasure and even gratitude. Good relations would thus be established with the god and favors would be secured. Such motives, while certainly true among many heathen people, were obviously based upon low conceptions of the deity. They were either. Nature-spirits, ancestral ghosts or fetishes which needed what was given, and of course the god was placed under obligations and his favor obtained. Or, the god may have been conceived of as a ruler, a king or chief, as was the custom in the East.
Cicero vouches for such a view when he says: ?Let not the impious dare to appease the gods with gifts. Let them hearken to Plato, who warns them that there can be no doubt what God's disposition to them will be, since even a good man will refuse to accept presents from the wicked? (HDB, IV, 331a). This view of sacrifice prevails in classical literature. Spencer therefore thinks it is self-evident that this was the idea of primitive man. Tylor and Herbert Spencer also find the origin of sacrifices in the idea of a gift, whether to the deity or to dead ancestors, food being placed for them, and this afterward comes to be regarded as a sacrifice. Such a view gives no account of the peculiar value attached to the blood, or to the burnt offerings. It may account for some heathen systems of sacrifice, but can help in no degree in understanding the Biblical sacrifices.

(2) The Magic Theory.
There are two slightly variant forms of this: (a) that of R.C. Thompson (Semitic Magic, Its Origins and Developments, 175-218), who holds that a sacrificial animal serves as a substitute victim offered to a demon whose activity has brought the offerer into trouble; the aim of the priest is to entice or drive the malignant spirit out of the sick or sinful man into the sacrificial victim where it can be isolated or destroyed; (b) that of L. Marillier, who holds that sacrifice in its origin is essentially a magical rite. The liberation of a magical force by the effusion of the victim's blood will bend the god to the will of the man. From this arose under the ?cult of the dead? the gift-theory of sacrifice. Men sought to ally themselves with the god in particular by purifying a victim and effecting communion with the god by the application of the blood to the altar, or by the sacrifice of the animal and the contact of the sacrificer with its blood. Such theories give no account of the burnt offerings, meal offerings and sin offerings, disconnect them entirely from any sense of sin or estrangement from God, and divest them of all piacular value. They may account for certain depraved and heathen systems, but not for the Biblical.

(3) The Table-Bond Theory.
Ably advocated by Wellhausen and W.R. Smith, this view holds that sacrifices were meals which the worshippers and the god shared, partaking of the same food and thus establishing a firmer bond of fellowship between them. Sykes (Nature of Sacrifices, 75) first advocated this, holding that the efficacy of sacrifices ?is the fact that eating and drinking were the known and ordinary symbols of friendship and were the usual rites in engaging in covenants and leagues.? Thus sacrifices are more than gifts; they are deeds of hospitality which knit god and worshipper together. W.R. Smith has expounded the idea into the notion that the common meal unites physically those who partake of it. Though this view may contain an element of truth in regard to certain Arabian customs, it does not help much to account for Bible sacrifices. As A.B. Davidson says, ?It fails utterly to account for the burnt offering, which was one of the earliest, most solemn and at times the most important of all the sacrifices.?

(4) The Sacramental Communion Theory.
This is a modification of the table-bond theory. The basis of it is the totemistic idea of reverencing an animal which is believed to share with man the divine nature. On certain solemn occasions this animal would be sacrificed to furnish a feast. At this meal, according to men's savage notions, they literally ?ate the god,? and thus incorporated into themselves the physical, the intellectual and the moral qualities which characterized the animal. If the divine life dwelt in certain animals, then a part of that precious life would be distributed among all the people (RS2, 313). In some cases the blood is drunk by the worshippers, thus imbibing the life. Sometimes, as in the case of the sacred camel, they devoured the quivering flesh before the animal was really dead, and the entire carcass was eaten up before morning.
The brilliant work of W. R. Smith has not been universally accepted. L. Marillier has criticized it along several lines. It is by no means certain that totemism prevailed so largely among Semites and there is no evidence of its existence in Israel. Also, if an original bond of friendship existed between the god and the kin, there is no need to maintain it by such sacrificial rites. There is no clear instance of this having been done. If on the other hand there was no common bond between the god and the people but that of a common meal, it does not appear that the god is a totem god. There is no reason why the animal should have been a totem. In any case, this idea of sacrifice could hardly have been anything but a slow growth, and consequently not the origin of sacrifice. Hubert and Mauss also point out that W. R. Smith is far from having established the historical or the logical connection between the common meal and the other kinds of sacrifices. Under piacula he confuses purification, propitiation and expiations. His attempts to show that purifications of magical character are late and not sacrificial do not succeed. Smith's theory is mainly the sacramental, though he does recognize the honorific and piacular element. The theory may be applicable to some of the heathen or savage feasts of the Arabs, but not to the practices of the Hebrews (see Encyclopedia Brit, XXIII, 981).

(5) The Homage Theory.
This has been advocated by Warburton and F. D. Maurice. The idea is that sacrifices were originally an expression of homage and dependence. Man naturally felt impelled to seek closer communion with God, not so much from a sense of guilt as from a sense of dependence and a desire to show homage and obedience. In giving expression to this, primitive man had recourse to acts rather than words and thoughts. Thus sacrifice was an acted prayer, rather than a prayer in words. It was an expression of his longings and aspirations, his reverence and submission. There is much truth in this view; the elements of prayer - dependence and submission - enter into some sacrifices, the burnt offerings in particular; but it does not account for all kinds of offerings.

(6) The Piacular Theory.
This holds that sacrifices are fundamentally expiatory or atoning, and the death of the beast is a vicarious expiation of the sins of the offerer. Hubert and Mauss admit that in all sacrifices there are some ideas of purchase or substitution, though these may not have issued from some primitive form. The unifying principle in all sacrifices is that the divine is put in communication with the profane by the intermediary - the victim - which may be piacular or honorific. It is thus a messenger, a means of divination, a means of alimenting the eternal life of the species, a source of magical energy which the rite diffuses over objects in its neighborhood. Westermarck (Origin of Moral Ideas) makes the original idea in sacrifice a piaculum, a substitute for the offerer.
This view is the most simple, the most natural, and the only one that can explain certain sacrifices. Man felt himself under liability to punishment or death. The animal was his, it had life, it was of value, and perchance the god would accept that life in place of his. He felt that it would be accepted, and thus the animal was sacrificed. The offerer in a sense gives up part of himself. The beast must be his own; no sacrifice can be made of another person's property (2Sa_24:24). The true spirit of sacrifice appears in a willingness to acknowledge God's right to what is best and dearest (Gen 12).
Objection is raised to this by A. B. Davidson (Old Testament Theology), Paterson (HDB, IV, 331) and others, on the ground that such an origin represents too advanced a stage of ethical thought and reflection for primitive man. We question seriously whether this be an advanced stage of moral reflection. On the contrary, it represents a very simple and primitive stage. The feeling that sin of some kind is never absent from human life, and that its true penalty is death, has been inseparable from the human heart's sense of sin. What could be more simple and natural than to take an innocent animal and offer it in place of himself, hoping that the Deity would accept it instead? Nor is there much force in Professor Paterson's objection that sacrifices were preponderantly joyous in character and therefore could not be offered as an expiation. This joyous character belongs to such sacrifices as peace offerings and thank offerings, but does not belong to the ‛ōlāh and others. In most cases the joyous feast followed the killing of the animal by which the expiation was accomplished, and the feast was joyous because atonement had been made. In fact, many sacrifices were of the most solemn character and represented the deepest and most serious emotions of the heart.

(7) Originating in Religious Instincts.
Neither theory of an objective divine revelation, nor of a human origin will account for the universality and variety of sacrifices. The truth lies in a proper combination of the two. The notion of offering a gift to the Deity arose out of the religious instincts of the human heart, which in an early period had a consciousness of something wrong between itself and God, and that this something would mean death sooner or later. Added to these true instincts was the Omnipresent Spirit to guide men in giving expression. What could be more simple and primitive than to offer something possessing life? Of course the notion originated in simple and childlike ideas of God, and its real motive was not to gratify God by sharing a meal with Him, or to gain His favor by a bribe, but to present Him with something that represented a part of the offerer which might be accepted in his stead. Thus sacrifices became the leading features of the religious life of primitive man. Naturally other ideas would be added, such as a gift of food by fire to the Deity, the peace offerings, etc., to celebrate the friendly relations with God, the thank offerings, the sin offerings, etc., all of which naturally and logically developed from the primitive idea. It might be expected that there would be many corruptions and abuses, that the sense of sin would be obscured or lost among some peoples, and the idea of sacrifice correspondingly degraded. Such has been the case, and as well might we try to understand man at his best by studying the aboriginal tribes of Africa and Australia, or the inmates of asylums and penitentiaries, as to attempt to understand the Bible ideas in sacrifices by studying the cults of those heathen and savage tribes of Semites, etc.

III. Classification of Sacrifices.
1. Maimonides:
Maimonides was among the first to classify them, and he divided them into two kinds:
(1) Those on behalf of the whole congregation, fixed by statute, time, number and ritual being specified. This would include burnt, meal and peace offerings with their accompaniments. (2) Those on behalf of the individual, whether by virtue of his connection with the community or as a private person. These would be burnt offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings with their accompaniments.

2. W. R. Smith and Others:
Others, such as W. R. Smith, classify them as: (1) honorific, or designed to render homage, devotion, or adoration, such as burnt, meal and peace offerings; (2) piacular, designed to expiate or make atonement for the errors of the people, i.e. burnt offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings; (3) communistic, intended to establish the bond between the god and the worshipper, such as peace offerings.

3. Oehler:
Oehler divides them into two classes, namely: (1) those which assume that the covenant relation is undisturbed, such as peace offerings; (2) those intended to do away with any disturbance in the relation and to set it right, such as burnt, sin and guilt offerings.

4. Paterson and Others:
Professor Paterson and others divide them into three: (1) animal sacrifices, burnt offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings; (2) vegetable sacrifices, meal offerings, shewbread, etc.; (3) liquid and incense offerings; wine, oil, water, etc.

5. H. M. Wiener:
H. M. Wiener offers a more suggestive and scientific division (Essays on Pentateuchal Criticism, 200 f): (1) customary lay offerings, such as had from time immemorial been offered on rude altars of earth or stone, without priest, used and regulated by Moses and in more or less general use until the exile, namely, burnt offerings, meal offerings, and peace offerings; (2) statutory individual offerings, introduced by Moses, offered by laymen with priestly assistance and at the religious capital, i.e. burnt offerings, peace offerings, meal offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings; (3) statutory national offerings introduced by Moses and offered by the priest at the religious capital, namely, burnt, meal, peace and sin offerings.

IV. Sacrifices in the Pre-Mosaic Age.
Out of the obscure period of origins emerged the dimly lighted period of ancient history. Everywhere sacrifices existed and sometimes abounded as an essential part of religion. The spade of the archaeologist, and the researches of scholars help us understand the pre-Mosaic period.
1. In Egypt:
In Egypt - probably from the beginning of the 4th millennium BC - there were sacrifices and sacrificial systems. Temples at Abydos, Thebes, On, etc., were great priestly centers with high priests, lower priests, rituals and sacrifices in abundance. Burnt, meal and peace offerings predominated. Oxen, wild goats, pigs, geese were the chief animals offered. Besides these, wine, oil, beer, milk, cakes, grain, ointment, flowers, fruit, vegetables were offered, but not human beings. In these offerings there were many resemblances to the Hebrew gifts, and many significant exceptions. Moses would be somewhat familiar with these practices though not with the details of the ritual. He would appreciate the unifying power of a national religious center. It is inconceivable that in such an age a national leader and organizer like Moses would not take special care to institute such a system.

2. In Babylonia:
In Babylonia, from the year 3000 BC or thereabouts, according to E. Meyer (Geschichte des Alterthums), there were many centers of worship such as Eridu, Nippur, Agade, Erech, Ur, Nisin, Larsa, Sippar, etc. These and others continued for centuries with elaborate systems of worship, sacrifices, temples, priesthoods, etc. Considerably over 100 temples and sanctuaries are mentioned on inscriptions, and several hundreds in the literature and tablets, so that Babylonia was studded with temples and edifices for the gods. At all these, sacrifices were constantly offered - animal and vegetable. A long list of the offerings of King Gudea includes oxen, sheep, goats, lambs, fish, birds (i.e. eagles and doves), dates, milk, greens (Jastrow, in HDB, V, 580 f, under the word). The sacrifices provided an income for the priests, as did the Mosaic system at a later time. It had long passed the stage when it was supposed to furnish a meal for the god. A sacrifice always accompanied a consultation with a priest, and was really an assessment for the services rendered. It was not a voluntary offering or ritualistic observance. The priests on their own behalf offered a daily sacrifice, as in the Mosaic Law, and likewise on special occasions, to insure the good will of the gods they served. It seems certain that in some of the larger centers of worship animals were offered up twice a day, morning and evening. At these sacrifices certain portions were consumed on the altar, the rest belonging to the priest. The similarity of much of this to the Mosaic institutions is obvious. That the culture and civilization of Babylon was known to Egypt and Israel with other nations is shown clearly by the Tell el-Amarna Letters. Special sacrifices on special occasions were offered in Babylonia as in Israel. As Jastrow says, ?In the Hebrew codes, both as regards the purely legal portions and those sections dealing with religious ritual, Babylonian methods of legal procedure and of ritual developed in Babylonian temples must be taken into consideration as determining factors.? We do not doubt that Moses made use of many elements found in the Egyptian and Babylonian systems, and added to or subtracted from or purified as occasion required. As sacrificial systems and ritual had been in use more than a millennium before Moses, there is absolutely no need to suppose that Israel's ritual was a thousand years in developing, and was completed after the exile. To do so is to turn history upside down.
3. Nomads and Tribes of Arabia and Syria:
Among the nomads and tribes of Arabia and Syria, sacrifices had been common for millenniums before Moses. The researches of Wellhausen and W. R. Smith are valuable here, whatever one may think of their theories. The offerings were usually from the flocks and herds, sometimes from the spoils taken in war which had been appropriated as their own. The occasions were many and various, and the ritual was very simple. A rude altar of earth or stone, or one stone, a sacred spot, the offerer killing the victim and burning all, or perhaps certain parts and eating the remainder with the clan or family, constituted the customary details. Sometimes wild animals were offered. Babylonians, Phoenicians and Arabs offered gazelles, but the Hebrews did not. Arabs would sometimes sacrifice a captive youth, while the Carthaginians chose some of the fairest of the captives for offerings by night. Assyrian kings sometimes sacrificed captive kings. The Canaanites and others constantly sacrificed children, especially the firstborn.
4. The Offerings of Cain and Abel:
The account of the offerings of Cain and Abel (Gen_4:4 f) shows that the ceremony dates from almost the beginnings of the human race. The custom of offering the firstlings and first-fruits had already begun. Arabian tribes later had a similar custom. Cain's offering was cereal and is called minḥāh, ?a gift? or ?presentation.? The same term is applied to Abel's. There is no hint that the bloody sacrifice was in itself better than the unbloody one, but it is shown that sacrifice without a right attitude of heart is not acceptable to God. This same truth is emphasized by the prophets and others, and is needed in this day as much as then. In this case the altars would be of the common kind, and no priest was needed. The sacrifices were an act of worship, adoration, dependence, prayer, and possibly propitiation.
5. Of Noah:
The sacrifices of Noah followed and celebrated the epochal and awe-inspiring event of leaving the ark and beginning life anew. He offered burnt offerings of all the clean animals (Gen_8:20 ff). On such a solemn occasion only an ‛ōlāh would suffice. The custom of using domestic animals had arisen at this time. The sacrifices expressed adoration, recognition of God's power and sovereignty, and a gift to please Him, for it is said He smelled a sweet savor and was pleased. It was an odor of satisfaction or restfulness. Whether or not the idea of expiation was included is difficult to prove.
6. Of Abraham:
Abraham lived at a time when sacrifices and religion were virtually identical. No mention is made of his offering at Ur or Charan, but on his arrival at Shechem he erected an altar (Gen_12:7). At Beth-el also (Heb_12:8), and on his return from Egypt he worshipped there (Gen_13:4). Such sacrifices expressed adoration and prayer and probably propitiation. They constituted worship, which is a complex exercise. At Hebron he built an altar (Gen_13:18), officiating always as his own priest. In Gen_15:4 ff he offers a ?covenant? sacrifice, when the animals were slain, divided, the parts set opposite each other, and prepared for the appearance of the other party to the covenant. The exact idea in the killing of these animals may be difficult to find, but the effect is to give the occasion great solemnity and the highest religious sanction. What was done with the carcasses afterward is not told. That animals were slain for food with no thought of sacrifice is shown by the narrative in chapter 18, where Abraham had a calf slain for the meal. This is opposed to one of the chief tenets of the Wellhausen school, which maintains that all slaughtering of animals was sacrificial until the 7th century BC. In Genesis 22 Abraham attempts to offer up Isaac as a burnt offering, as was probably the custom of his neighbors. That he attempted it shows that the practice was not shocking to his ethical nature. It tested the strength of his devotion to God, shows the right spirit in sacrifices, and teaches for all time that God does not desire human sacrifice - a beast will do. What God does want is the obedient heart. Abraham continued his worship at Beer-sheba (Gen_21:33).
7. Of Job:
Whatever may be the date of the writing of the Book of Job, the saint himself is represented as living in the Patriarchal age. He constantly offered sacrifices on behalf of his children (Job_1:5), ?sanctifying? them. His purpose no doubt was to atone for possible sin. The sacrifices were mainly expiatory. This is true also of the sacrifices of his friends (Job_42:7-9).
8. Of Isaac:
Isaac seems to have had a permanent altar at Beer-sheba and to have regularly offered sacrifices. Adoration, expiation and supplication would constitute his chief motives (Gen_26:25).
9. Of Jacob:
Jacob's first recorded sacrifice was the pouring of the oil upon the stone at Beth-el (Gen_28:18). This was consecration or dedication in recognition of the awe-inspiring presence of the Deity. After his covenant with Laban he offered sacrifices (zebhāḥim) and they ate bread (Gen_31:54). At Shechem, Jacob erected an altar (Gen_33:20). At Beth-el (Gen_35:7) and at Beer-sheba he offered sacrifices to Isaac's God (Gen_46:1).
10. Of Israel in Egypt:
While the Israelites were in Egypt they would be accustomed to spring sacrifices and spring feasts, for these had been common among the Arabs and Syrians, etc., for centuries. Nabatean inscriptions testify to this. Egyptian sacrifices have been mentioned (see above). At these spring festivals it was probably customary to offer the firstlings of the flocks (compare Exo_13:15). At the harvest festivals sacrificial feasts were celebrated. It was to some such feast Moses said Israel as a people wished to go in the wilderness (Exo_3:18; Exo_5:3 ff; Exo_7:16). Pharaoh understood and asked who was to go (Exo_10:8). Moses demanded flocks and herds for the feast (Exo_10:9). Pharaoh would keep the flocks, etc. (Exo_10:24), but Moses said they must offer sacrifices and burnt offerings (Exo_10:25 f).
The sacrifice of the Passover soon occurs (Exo_12:3-11). That the Hebrews had been accustomed to sacrifice their own firstborn at this season has no support and is altogether improbable (Frazer, Golden Bough3, pt. III, 175 f). The whole ceremony is very primitive and has retained its primitiveness to the end. The choosing of the lamb or kid, the killing at a certain time, the family gathered in the home, the carcass roasted whole, eaten that night, and the remainder, if any, burned, while the feasters had staff in hand, etc., all this was continued. The blood in this case protected from the Deity, and the whole ceremony was ?holy? and only for the circumcised. Frazer in his Golden Bough gives a very different interpretation.
11. Of Jethro:
As a priest of Midian, Jethro was an expert in sacrificing. On meeting Moses and the people he offered both ‛ōlāh and zebhāḥim and made a feast (Exo_18:12).
12. Summary and Conclusions:
From the above it is evident that sacrifices were almost the substance of religion in that ancient world. From hilltops and temples innumerable, the smoke of sacrifices was constantly rising heavenward. Burnt offerings and peace offerings were well known. Moses, in establishing a religion, must have a sacrificial system. He had abundance of materials to choose from, and under divine guidance would adopt such rules and regulations as the pedagogic plans and purposes of God would require in preparing for better things.

V. The Mosaic Sacrificial System.
1. The Covenant Sacrifice:
The fundamental function of Moses' work was to establish the covenant between Israel and God. This important transaction took place at Sinai and was accompanied by solemn sacrifices. The foundation principle was obedience, not sacrifices (Exo_19:4-8). No mention is made of these at the time, as they were incidental - mere by-laws to the constitution. The center of gravity in Israel's religion is now shifted from sacrifices to obedience and loyalty to Yahweh. Sacrifices were helps to that end and without obedience were worthless. This is in exact accordance with Jer_7:21 ff. God did not speak unto the fathers at this time about sacrifices; He did speak about obedience.
The covenant having been made, the terms and conditions are laid down by Moses and accepted by the people (Exo_24:3). The Decalogue and Covenant Code are given, an altar is built, burnt offerings and peace offerings of oxen are slain by young men servants of Moses, not by priests, and blood is sprinkled on the altar (Exo_24:4 ff). The blood would symbolize the community of life between Yahweh and Israel, and consecrated the altar. The Law was read, the pledge again given, and Moses sprinkled the representatives of the people, consecrating them also (Exo_24:7 f). Ascending the mount, they had a vision of God, held a feast before Him, showing the joys and privileges of the new relationship. The striking feature of these ceremonies is the use of the blood. It is expiatory and consecrating, it is life offered to God, it consecrates the altar and the people: they are now acceptable to God and dare approach Him and feast with Him. There is no idea of God's drinking the blood. The entire ritual is far removed from the crass features of common Semitic worship.

2. The Common Altars:
In the Covenant Code, which the people accepted, the customary altars are not abolished, but regulated (Exo_20:24 ff). This law expressly applies to the time when they shall be settled in Canaan. 'In the whole place where I cause my name to be remembered,' etc. (Exo_20:24 margin). No need to change the reading to ?in every place where I cause,? etc., as the Wellhausen school does for obvious reasons. All the land was eligible. On such rude altars sacrifices were allowed. This same law is implied in Deu_16:21, a passage either ignored or explained away by the Wellhausen school (see Wiener, Essays in Pentateuchal Criticism, 200 f). Moses commanded Joshua in accordance with it (Deu_27:5 ff). Joshua, Gideon, Jephthah, Samuel, Saul, David, Elijah and many others used such altars. There were altars at Shechem (Jos_24:1, Jos_24:26), Mizpah in Gilead (Jdg_11:11), Gilgal (1Sa_13:9). High places were chiefly used until the times of Hezekiah and Josiah, when they were abolished because of their corruptions, etc. All such altars were perfectly legitimate and in fact necessary, until there was a central capital and sanctuary in Jerusalem. The customary burnt offerings and peace offerings with the worshipper officiating were the chief factors. Heathen sacrifices and the use of heathen altars were strictly forbidden (Exo_22:20 (Hebrew 19); Exo_34:15)

3. The Consecration of Aaron and His Sons:
The altar used at the consecration of Aaron and his sons was a ?horned? or official altar, the central one. The offerings were a bullock, two rams, unleavened bread, etc. (Exo_29:1-4), and were brought to the door of the sanctuary. The ritual consisted of Aaron laying his hand on the bullock's head, designating it as his substitute (Exo_29:10), killing it before the tent of meeting (Exo_29:11), smearing some blood on the horns of the altar, and pouring the rest at its base (Exo_29:12). The blood consecrated the altar, the life was given as atonement for sins, the fat parts were burned upon the altar as food for God, and the flesh and remainder were burned without the camp (Exo_29:13, Exo_29:14). This is a sin offering - ḥaṭṭā'th - the first time the term is used. Probably introduced by Moses, it was intended to be piacular and to ?cover? possible sin. One ram was next slain, blood was sprinkled round about the altar, flesh was cut in pieces, washed and piled on the altar, then burned as an offering by fire ('ishsheh) unto God as a burnt offering, an odor of a sweet savor (Exo_29:15-18). The naive and primitive nature of this idea is apparent. The other ram, the ram of consecration, is slain, blood is smeared on Aaron's right ear, thumb and great toe; in the case of his sons likewise. The blood is sprinkled on the altar round about; some upon the garments of Aaron and his sons (Exo_29:19-21). Certain parts are waved before Yahweh along with the bread, and are then burned upon the altar (Exo_29:22-25). The breast is offered as a wave offering (tenūphāh), and the right thigh or shoulder as a heave offering (terūmāh). These portions here first mentioned were the priests' portion for all time to come, although this particular one went to Moses, since he officiated (Exo_29:26-30). The flesh must be boiled in a holy place, and must be eaten by Aaron and his sons only, and at the sanctuary. What was left till morning must be burned (Exo_29:31-34). Consecrated to a holy service it was dangerous for anyone else to touch it, or the divine wrath would flame forth. The same ceremony on each of the seven days atoned for, cleansed and consecrated the altar to the service of Yahweh, and it was most holy (Exo_29:35-37). The altar of incense is ordered (Exo_30:1), and Aaron is to put the blood of the sin offering once a year upon its horns to consecrate it.

4. Sacrifices Before the Golden Calf:
When the golden calf was made an altar was erected, burnt offerings and peace offerings were presented. From the latter a feast was made, the people followed the usual habits at such festivals, went to excess and joined in revelry. Moses' ear quickly detected the nature of the sounds. The covenant was now broken and no sacrifice was available for this sin. Vengeance was executed on 3,000 Israelites. Moses mightily interceded with God. A moral reaction was begun; new tables of the Law were made with more stringent laws against idols and idol worship (Ex 32:1-35).

5. The Law of the Burnt Offering ('Olah):
At the setting-up of the tabernacle burnt and meal offerings were sacrificed (Exo_40:29). The law of the burnt offering is found in Lev 1. Common altars and customary burnt offerings needed no minute regulations, but this ritual was intended primarily for the priest, and was taught to the people as needed. They were for the statutory individual and national offering upon the ?horned? altar before the sanctuary. Already the daily burnt offerings of the priests had been provided for (Exo_29:38-42). The burnt offering is here called ḳorbān, ?oblation.?

(1) Ritual for the Offerer (Lev_1:3-17).
This may have been from the herd or flock or fowls, brought to the tent of meeting; hands were laid (heavily) upon its head designating it as the offerer's substitute, it was killed, flayed and cut in pieces. If of the flock, it was to be killed on the north side of the altar; if a fowl, the priest must kill it.

(2) Ritual for the Priest (Lev_1:3-17).
If a bullock or of the flock, the priest was to sprinkle the blood round about the altar, put on the fire, lay the wood and pieces of the carcass, wash the inwards, legs, etc., and burn it all as a sweet savor to God. If a fowl, he must wring the neck, drain out the blood on the side of the altar, cast the crop, filth, etc., among the ashes, rend the wings without dividing the bird and burn the carcass on the altar.

(3) General Laws for the Priest.
The burnt offering must be continued every morning and every evening (Exo_29:38 f; Num_28:3-8). At the fulfillment of his vow the Nazirite must present it before God and offer it upon the altar through the priest (Num_6:14, Num_6:16): on the Sabbath, two lambs (Num_28:9); on the first of the month, two bullocks, one ram and seven lambs (Num_28:11); on the day of first-fruits, the same (Num_28:27); on the 1st day of the 7th month, one bullock, one ram, seven lambs (Num_29:8); on the 15th day, 13 bullocks, two rams, 14 lambs, the number of bullocks diminishing daily until the 7th day, when seven bullocks, two rams, 14 lambs were offered (Nu 29:12-34); on the 22nd day of this month one bullock, one ram and seven lambs were offered (Num_29:35, Num_29:36). Non-Israelites were permitted to offer the ‛ōlāh, but no other sacrifices (Lev_17:8; Lev_22:18, Lev_22:25).

(4) Laws in Deu_12:6, Deu_12:13, Deu_12:14, Deu_12:27; Deu_27:6.
Anticipating a central sanctuary in the future, the lawgiver counsels the people to bring their offerings there (Deu_12:6, Deu_12:11); they must be careful not to offer them in any place (Deu_12:13), but must patronize the central sanctuary (Deu_12:14). In the meantime common altars and customary sacrifices were allowable and generally necessary (Deu_16:21; Deu_27:6).

6. The Law of the Meal Offering (Minchah):
The term ?meal offering? is here confined to offerings of flour or meal, etc. (the King James Version ?meat-offering?), and was first used at the consecration of Aaron and his sons (Exo_29:41). These must not be offered on the altar of incense (Exo_30:9); were used at the completion of the tabernacle (Exo_40:29); and always with the morning and evening burnt offerings.

(1) Ritual for the Offerer (Leviticus 2:1-16).
It must be of fine flour, with oil and frankincense added, and brought to the priest; if baked in the oven, unleavened cakes mingled with oil, or wafers and oil; if of the baking pan, fine flour mingled with oil parted into pieces and oil thereon; if of the frying pan, the same ingredients. Leaven and honey must never be used as they quickly become corrupt. Every offering must be seasoned with salt. If of the first-fruits (bikkūrı̄m), it should consist of grain in the ear, parched with oil and frankincense upon it.

(2) Ritual for the Priest (Leviticus 2:1-16).
This required him to take out a handful with the oil and frankincense thereon and burn it as a memorial upon the altar. The remainder was holy and belonged to the priest. Of the cakes, after bringing them to the altar, he was to take a portion, burn it and appropriate the remainder; the same with the first-fruits.

(3) General Laws for the Priest (Lev_6:14-18 (Hebrew 7-11), etc.).
He might eat his portion without leaven in the holy place. At his anointing Aaron offered his own oblation of fine flour - 1/10 of an ephah, one-half in the morning and one-half in the evening. If baked, it must be with oil. This meal offering must all be burnt; none could be eaten. With the sin offerings and guilt offerings every meal offering baked in any way belongs to the priest (Lev_7:9, Lev_7:10; Lev_10:12; Num_18:9). The meal offerings accompanied the other offerings on all important occasions, such as the consecration of Aaron (Lev_9:4, Lev_9:17); cleansing of a leper (Lev_14:10, Lev_14:20, Lev_14:21, Lev_14:31); feast of first-fruits (Lev_23:13); Pentecost (Lev_23:16); set feasts (Lev_23:37). Special charge was given to Eleazar to care for the continual meal offerings (Num_4:16). The Nazirite must offer it (Num_6:15, Num_6:17). When the tribes presented their offerings, meal offerings were always included (Num_7:13, Num_7:19, etc.); when the Levites were set apart (Num_8:8); with vows of freewill offerings (Num_15:4, Num_15:6); with the sin offerings (Num_15:24); at all the several seasons (Nu 28:5 through 29:39). A special form was the ?showbread? (bread of memorial). Twelve loaves were to be placed in two rows or heaps of six each on a pure table in the holy place, with frankincense on each pile or row. These were to remain for one week and then to be eaten by the priests. They were an offering of food by fire, though probably only the frankincense was actually burned (Lev_24:5 f).

7. The Law of the Peace Offering:
The peace offerings indicated right relations with God, expressing good-fellowship, gratitude and obligation. The common altars were fitted for their use (Exo_20:24), as feasts had been thus celebrated from time immemorial. At the feast before God on the Mount, peace offerings provided the food (Exo_24:5); also before the golden bull (Exo_32:6). The wave offerings and heave offerings were portions of these.

(1) Ritual for the Offerer (Leviticus 3:1-17).
The offering might be a bullock, a lamb, or a goat, either male or female, latitude being allowed in this case. The ritual was the same as in the case of the burnt offering (see above).

(2) Ritual for the Priest (Leviticus 3:1-17).
Blood must be sprinkled on the altar round about, the caul, the liver and the kidneys must be taken away and the fat parts burned on the altar; the fat tail of the lamb must also be burned. These portions were offerings of food by fire to the Deity. The ritual for a goat was the same as for a bullock.

(3) General Laws for the Priest (Lev_6:12 (Hebrew 5); Lev_7:1 ff).
The fat was to be burned on the altar of burnt offering. If it was a thank offering (zebhaḥ ha-tōdhāh), it must have unleavened cakes with oil, cakes mingled with oil and fine flour soaked. Cakes of leavened bread might be offered, and one cake was to be a heave offering to the priest. The flesh was to be eaten that day, none was to be left till morning (Lev_22:30). If it was a votive offering (zebhaḥ nedher) or a freewill offering (zebhaḥ nedhābhāh), it might be eaten on the first and second days, but not on the third day; it should then be an abomination (Lev_7:18 f). If eaten then by anyone, that person was to be cut off from the community. Of all peace offerings the wave-breast and heave-thigh belong to the priest (Lev_7:29-34), the remainder was to be eaten by the worshippers. At Aaron's consecration an ox and a ram were the peace offerings (Lev_9:4, Lev_9:18, Lev_9:22). The priest's portion was to be eaten in a clean place by the priest's family (Lev_10:14). When Israel should have a central sanctuary, all were to be brought there (Lev_17:4, Lev_17:5). When they had no central place, the common altars would suffice. All peace offerings must be made in an acceptable manner (Lev_19:5). Votive offerings must be perfect (Lev_22:18-22), but certain imperfections are allowable in freewill offerings (Lev_22:23). At Pentecost two he-lambs of the first year could be offered as peace offerings (Lev_23:19). The Nazirite at the end of his separation must offer one ram for a peace offering with unleavened bread (Num_6:14, Num_6:17), and the hair shaved from his head must be burned under the peace offerings (Num_6:18). This hair was regarded as a thing having life and offered as a sacrifice by other nations. The various tribes brought peace offerings (Numbers 7, passim), and at the feast of trumpets the people were to rejoice and blow trumpets over the peace offerings (Num_10:10). Some further regulations are given (Num_15:9 f).

8. The Law of the Sin Offering:
The sin offering was a sacrifice of a special kind, doubtless peculiar to Israel and first mentioned at the consecration of Aaron and his sons. It is not then spoken of as an innovation. It was of special value as an expiatory sacrifice.

(1) At the Consecration of Aaron and His Sons (Exo_29:10 ff).
A bullock was killed before the altar, some blood was put upon the horns of the altar by Moses, the rest was poured out at the base. The fat of the inwards was burned upon the altar, the flesh and skin were burned without the camp. Every day during the consecration this was done (Exo_29:36).

(2) The Law of the Sin Offering (Leviticus 4:1-35; 24-30, etc.).
(a) The Occasion and Meaning:
Specifically to atone for unwitting sins, sins of error (sheghāghāh), mistakes or rash acts, unknown at the time, but afterward made known. There were gradations of these for several classes of offenders: the anointed priest (Lev_4:3-12), the whole congregation (Lev_4:13-21), a ruler (Lev_4:22-26), one of the common people (Lev_4:27-35), forswearing (Lev_5:1), touching an unclean thing (Lev_5:2) or the uncleanness of man (Lev_5:3), or rashly sweating in ignorance (Lev_5:4). For conscious and willful violations of the Law, no atonement was possible, with some exceptions, for which provision was made in the guilt offerings (see below).

(b) Ritual for the Offerer (Lev_4:1-5, Lev_4:13, etc.):
The anointed priest must offer a bullock at the tent of meeting, lay his hands upon it and slay it before Yahweh. The congregation was also required to bring a young bullock before the tent of meeting, the elders were to lay hands upon it and slay it before Yahweh. The ruler must bring a he-goat and do the same. One of the common people might bring a she-goat or lamb and present it in the same manner. If too poor for these, two turtledoves or young pigeons, one for a sin offering and one for burnt offering, would suffice. If too poor for these, the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour without oil or flankincense would suffice.

(c) Ritual for the Priest (Lev_4:1-5, Lev_4:13, etc.):
He must bring the bullock's blood to the tent of meeting, dip his finger into it and sprinkle blood 7 times before the veil of the sanctuary, and put some on the horns of the altar of incense, but most of the blood must be poured out at the base of the altar. The fat must be burned upon the altar, all the rest of the carcass must be carried to a clean place without the camp and burned. In the case of the whole congregation, the ritual is the same. In the case of a ruler, the blood is to be put upon the horns of the altar of burnt offering, not the altar of incense. In the case of one of the common people, the ritual is similar to that of the ruler. In both the latter cases the carcass belonged to the priest. If a bird, the priest must wring off its head, sprinkle some blood on the side of the altar and pour the rest at the base. Nothing is said of the disposal of the carcass. If of fine flour, the priest must take out a handful and burn it upon the altar, keeping the remainder for himself. The use of fine flour for an expiatory sacrifice is evidently exceptional and intended to be so. Though life was not given, yet necessity of life - that which represented life - was offered.

(d) General Laws for the Priest (Lev_6:24-30):
The sin offering was to be slain in the same place as the burnt offering. It was most holy, and the priest alone might eat what was left of the ram, pigeon or flour, in the holy place. Whatever touched it was to be holy, any garment sprinkled with the blood must be washed in a holy place, earthen vessels used must be broken, and brazen vessels thoroughly scoured and rinsed.

(e) Special Uses of the Sin Offering:
(i) Consecration of Aaron and His Sons:
The consecration of Aaron and his sons (Lev_8:2, Lev_8:14, Lev_8:15) was similar to that of Lev_4:11, Lev_4:12, only Moses was to kill the offering and put the blood on the horns of the altar. On the 8th day a bull-calf was offered (Lev_9:2), and the congregation offered a he-goat (Lev_9:3). In this case Aaron performed the ceremony, as in Lev_4:11, Lev_4:12. Moses complained that they had not eaten the flesh of the calf and goat in the sanctuary, since that was requisite when the blood was not brought into the sanctuary (Lev_10:16-20).

(ii) Purifications from Uncleannesses:
Purifications from uncleannesses required after childbirth a young pigeon or turtledove (Lev_12:6-8). The leper must bring a guilt offering (a special kind of sin offering), a he-lamb (Lev_14:12-14, Lev_14:19); if too poor for a lamb, a turtledove or young pigeon (Lev_14:22, Lev_14:31). Special use of the blood is required (Lev_14:25). In uncleanness from issues a sin offering of a turtledove or young pigeon must be offered by the priest (Lev_15:15, Lev_15:30).

(iii) On the Day of Atonement:
On the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:1-28) Aaron must take a bullock for himself and house, two he-goats for the people, present the goats at the sanctuary, cast losts, one for Yahweh, as a sin offering, the other for Azazel, to be sent into the wilderness. The bullock was killed, sweet incense was burned within the rail, blood was sprinkled on the mercy-seat and before it 7 times. The one he-goat was killed and a similar ceremony was performed. Blood must be put on the horns of the altar and sprinkled 7 times about it. The other goat was presented, hands were laid on it, the sins of all confessed and put upon the goat, and it was sent into the wilderness. The carcass of the bullock and he-goat were burned without the camp. At the feast of first-fruits a he-goat was offered (Lev_23:19).

(iv) Other Special Instances:
Other special instances were: in the case of defilement, the Nazirite must offer a turtledove or young pigeon on the 8th day after contraction (Num_6:10 ff); when the days of the separation were fulfilled a ewe-lamb with the other offerings (Num_6:14) was to be offered; the twelve tribes included in each case a he-goat for sin offering (Num_7:16 ff); at the consecration of the Levites a young bullock (Num_8:8, Num_8:12). For unwitting sins of the congregation a he-goat was to be offered (Num_15:24, Num_15:25). If one person erred, a she-goat was permitted (Num_15:27). A sin offering was required at the feast of the new moon (Num_28:15), at the Passover (Num_28:22), at Pentecost (Num_28:30), on the 1st day of the 7th month (Num_29:5), and on the 10th, 15th-22nd days (Nu 29:10-38). The ceremony of the red heifer (Num_19:1-10, Num_19:17) was a special sin offering for purification purposes only. It was of ancient and primitive origin. The young cow was brought without the camp and was slain before the priest's face, blood was sprinkled 7 times before the sanctuary, the entire carcass with cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet was burned, the ashes gathered and laid without the camp in a clean place to be kept for the water of impurity. It was to purify after contact with the dead. In the case of the unknown homicide (Deu_21:1-9) a young unbroken heifer was brought to a running stream, its neck was broken, the elders washed their hands over the heifer in the presence of the priests, declaring their innocence. Thus the bloodshed was expiated. The action was a judicial one, but essentially vicarious and expiatory and had doubtless a primitive origin.

9. The Guilt Offering:
The guilt offering (the King James Version ?trespass offering?) (Lev 5:14 through 6:7) was a special kind of sin offering, always of a private character and accompanied by a fine. It expressed expiation and restitution. The classes of sin requiring a guilt offering with reparation in money are: (1) a trespass in the holy things done unwittingly; (2) anything which the Law forbade depriving God or the priest of their due; (3) dealing falsely, with a neighbor in a deposit, or pledge, or robbery, or oppression; (4) swearing falsely regarding anything lost; (5) seduction of a betrothed bondmaid (Lev_19:20-22). The first two of these are unwitting sins, the others cannot be. The clear statement is made in another place that sins done with a ?high hand,? i.e. in rebellion against the covenant and its provisions, can have no sacrifice (Num_15:30). Is this a contradiction, or a later development when it was found that the more stringent law would not work? (See J. M. P. Smith, et al., Atonement, 47 f.) Neither conclusion is probable. These conscious sins are of a kind that will admit of full reparation because against rights of property or in money matters. The sin offering makes atonement toward God, the restitution with the additional one-fifth makes full reparation to man. No such reparation can be made with such sins described as committed with a ?high hand.? In the case of seduction, rights of property are violated (compare Num_5:5-8; Deu_22:29).

(1) The Ritual (Leviticus 5:14 through 6:7).
A ram proportionate in value to the offense and worth at least two shekels is required. The ritual is probably the same as that of the sin offering, though no mention is made of the laying on of hands, and the blood is not brought into the sanctuary, but sprinkled about the base of the altar, the fat and inside parts being burned, and the flesh eaten by the priests in a holy place.

(2) Special Laws: Leper, Nazirite, etc.
The leper, when cleansed, on the 8th day must bring a guilt offering of two he-lambs and one ewe-lamb; the priest must wave one he-lamb before Yahweh, kill it, and smear blood on the right ear, thum
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.

Heb_13:16 (a) By this word is described any praise or worship rendered to GOD from a grateful heart. (See also 1Pe_2:5). Some of the sacrifices of the Old Testament represented various aspects of the work of CHRIST on the Cross. (See under "OFFERINGS"). Other sacrifices represented various attitudes of the Christian in his relationship to GOD. In some cases the sacrifices represented the attempt of sinners to appease their gods.
Wilson's Dictionary of Bible Types
press 1957.

Sacrifice
properly so called, is the solemn infliction of death on a living creature, generally by effusion of its blood, in a way of religious worship; and the presenting of this act to the Deity as a supplication for the pardon of sin, and a supposed mean of compensation for the insult and injury thereby offered to his majesty and government. Among the Hebrews it was an offering made to God on his altar by the hand of a lawful minister. Sacrifice differed from oblation: in a sacrifice there was a real change or destruction of the thing offered, whereas an oblation was but a simple offering or gift. In the Mosaic economy it was the main public form of worship. SEE SACRIFICIAL OFFERING.
I. Scripture Terms.-The following are the original words used in the Bible to express the sacrificial act:
1. מַנְחָה, minchah, from the obsolete root מָנִה, to give; used in Gen_32:13; Gen_32:20-21, of a gift from Jacob to Esau (Sept. δῶρον); in 2Sa_8:2; 2Sa_8:6 (ξένια), in 1Ki_4:21 (δῶρα), in 2Ki_17:4 (μαναά), of a tribute from a vassal king; in Gen_4:3; Gen_4:5, of a sacrifice generally (δῶρον and θυσία, indifferently); and in Lev_2:1; Lev_2:4-6, joined with the word korban, of an unbloody sacrifice, or meat offering (generally δῶρον θυσία). Its derivation and usage point to that idea of sacrifice which represents it as a eucharistic gift to God our King. SEE MINCHAH.
2. קָרְבָּן, korban (derived from the root קָרִב, to approach, or [in Hiphil] to make to approach); used with minchah in Lev_2:1; Lev_2:4-6 (Sept. δῶρον θυσία), generally rendered δῶρον (see Mar_7:11, κορβᾶν, ὅ ἐστι δῶρον) or προσφορά. The idea of a gift hardly seems inherent in the root. which rather points to sacrifice, as a symbol of communion or covenant between God and man. SEE CORBAN.
3. זֶבִח, zebach (derived from the root זָבִח, to slaughter animals, especially to slay in sacrifice), refers emphatically to a bloody sacrifice, one in which the shedding of blood is the essential idea. Thus it is opposed to nminchah in Psa_40:6 (θυσίαν καὶ προσφοράν), and to olah (the whole burned offering) in Exo_10:25; Exo_18:12, etc. With it the expiatory idea of sacrifice is naturally connected. SEE VICTIM.
4. In the New Test. the comprehensive term is θυσία (from θύω, which seems radically to express the fuming up of the sacrificial smoke), which is used both of the victim offered and of the act of immolation, whether literal or figurative. Distinct from these general terms, and often appended to them, are the words denoting special kinds of sacrifice. SEE OFFERING.
5. עוֹלָה, olah (Sept. generally ὁλοκαύτωμα), the whole burned offering. SEE BURNED OFFERING.
6. שֶׁלֶ ם, shelem (Sept. θυσία σωτηρίου), used frequently with זֶבִה, and sometimes called קָרְבָּן, the peace- or thank offering. See each of these words.
7. חִטָּאת, chattath (Sept. generally περὶ ἁμαρτίας), the sin offering (q.v.).
8. אָשָׁ ם, asham (Sept. generally πλημμελεία), the trespass offering (q.v.).
9. אַשֶּׁה, ishsheh (from אֵשׁ, fire), a sacrifice made by fire; spoken of every kind of sacrifice and offering, as commonly burned (Lev_2:3; Lev_2:10), and even of those not consumed by fire (Lev_14:7; Lev_14:9); but usually in the ritual formula, a sacrifice of sweet odor to Jehovah (Lev_1:9; Lev_1:13; Lev_1:17; Lev_2:2; Lev_2:9; Lev_3:5; comp. Exo_29:41; Lev_8:12; briefly, Exo_29:18; Exo_29:25; Lev_2:16). SEE FIRE.
10. תּוֹדָה, todah, is used in a figurative sense only, a a sacrifice of praise. SEE PRAISE.
11. חָג, chag (from הָגִג, to dance in religious joy), is s properly a festival only; but by metonymy is occasionally used for the sacrificial victims of such occasions (Exo_23:18; Psa_118:27; Mal_2:3). SEE FESTIVAL. The term sacrifice is sometimes used figuratively for deep repentance (Psa_51:17), for the good works of believers (Php_4:18; Heb_13:16), and for the duties of prayer and praise (Rom_12:1; Heb_13:15; 1Pe_2:5).
II. Origin of Sacrifice. Did it arise from a natural instinct of man, sanctioned and guided by God, or was it the subject of some distinct primeval revelation? This is a question the importance of which has probably been exaggerated. There can be no doubt that sacrifice was sanctioned by God's law, with a special typical reference to the atonement of Christ; its universal prevalence, independent of, and often opposed to, man's natural reasonings on his relation to God, shows it to have been primeval, and deeply rooted in the instincts of humanity. Whether it was first enjoined by an external command, or whether it was based on that sense of sin and lost communion with God which is stamped by his hand on the heart of man, is a historical question, perhaps insoluble, probably one which cannot be treated at all, except in connection with some general theory of the method of primeval revelation, but certainly one which does not affect the authority and the meaning of the rite itself. We need not discuss here the theory of the old English deists, such as Blount and Tyndale, that, as cruel men delighted in bloodshed, so they conceived God to be like themselves, and sought to please and appease him by the slaughter of innocent beasts; or the specious improvement of this theory which Spencer (De Leg. Hebr. Rit. 1. 3, diss. 2) framed, that men sacrificed originally because of the savage wildness of their nature, and that God accepted and ratified their grim worship to restrain them from what was worse. The question is now proposed in this form: Did sacrifice arise from the natural religious instinct of man, with or without (for both views are held) an unconscious inspiration of the Divine Spirit, or did it originate in a distinct divine revelation? Those who advocate the former view speak of sacrifice as the free expression of the divinely determined nature of man (Neumann). Man sacrifices because of his inalienable divine likeness, according to which he cannot cease to seek that communion with God for which he was created, even through such an effectual self sacrifice as is exhibited in sacrifice. Sacrifices have thus been as little an arbitrary invention of man as prayer. Like prayer, they have originated in an inner necessity to which man freely surrenders himself (Oehler, in Herzog's Real-Encykl. 10, 617).
1. One recent writer on the subject (Davison, Inquiry into the Origin and Intent of Primitive Sacrifice, 1825) adduces (on the authority of Spencer and Outram) the consent of the fathers in favor of the human origin of primitive patriarchal sacrifice, and alleges that the notion of its divine origin is a mere modern figment, excogitated in the presumptively speculative age of innovating Puritanism. This assertion has, in part, been met by Faber (Treatise on the Origin of Expiatory Sacrifice, 1827), who shows that the only authorities adduced by Outram (De Sacrificiis) and Spencer (De Leg. Hebr.) are Justin Martyr, Chrysostom, the author of the work called Apostolical Constitutions, and the author of the Questions and Answers to the Orthodox, commonly printed with the works of Justin Martyr. Of the early theologians thus adduced, the last three are positive and explicit in their assertion, while the sentiments of Justin Martyr are gathered rather by implication than in consequence of any direct avowal. He says, As circumcision commenced from Abraham, so the Sabbath, and sacrifices, and oblations, and festivals commenced from Moses; which clearly intimates that he considered primitive sacrifice as a human invention until made by the law a matter of religious obligation. The great body of the fathers are silent as to the origin of sacrifice; but a considerable number of them, cited by Spencer (De Leg. Hebr. p. 646 sq.), held that sacrifice was admitted into the law through condescension to the weakness of the people, who had been familiarized with it in Egypt, and, if not allowed to sacrifice ta God, would have been tempted to sacrifice to the idols of their heathen neighbors. The ancient writers who held this opinion are Justin Martyr, Origen, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Cyril of Alexandria, Epiphanius of Salamis, Irenaeus, Jerome, Procopias, Eucherius, Anastatius, and the author of the Apostolical Constitutions.
But out. of the entire number, only the four already mentioned allege incidentally the human origin of primitive sacrifice; the rest are silent on this point. Outram, indeed (De Sacrif. lib. 1, cap. 1, § 6, p. 8, 9), thinks that in giving this opinion they virtually deny the divine origin of sacrifice. But it is fairly answered that the assertion, be it right or be it wrong, that sacrifice was introduced into the law from condescension to the Egyptianizing weakness of the people, furnishes no legitimate proof that the persons entertaining this opinion held the mere human origin of primitive patriarchal sacrifice, and affords no ground for alleging the consent of Christian antiquity in favor of that opinion. Such persons could not but have known that the rite of sacrifice existed anterior to the rise of pagan idolatry; and hence the notion which they entertained leaves the question as to the primitive origin of sacrifice entirely open, so far as they are concerned. Paganism, whether in Egypt or elsewhere merely borrowed the rite from pure patriarchism, which already possessed it; and unless a writer expressly declares such to be his opinion, we are not warranted in concluding that he held the human origin of primitive patriarchal sacrifice, simply because he conceives that a system of sacrificial service had been immediately adopted into the law from paganism out of condescension to the weakness of the people. Besides, some of these very fathers held language with respect to primitive sacrifice not much in favor of the interpretation which has, on this ground, been given to their sentiments. Thus, according to Cyril, God accepted the sacrifice of Abel and rejected the sacrifice of Cain, because it was fitting that posterity should learn from thence how they might blamelessly offer unto God his meet and due honor. If, then, these authorities be taken as neutral on the question, with the four exceptions already indicated, we shall find whatever authority we ascribe to these more than counterbalanced by the testimony of other ancient witnesses in favor of the divine origin of primitive sacrifice. Philo-Judoeus says, Abel brought neither the same oblation as Cain, nor in the sane manner; but, instead of things inanimate, he brought things animate; and instead of later and secondary products, he brought the older and the first: for he offered in sacrifice from the firstlings of his flock, and from their fat, according to the most holy command (De Sacrif. Abelis et Caini in Opp. p. 145). Augustine, after expressly referring the origin of sacrifice to the divine command, more distinctly evolves his meaning by saying, The prophetic immolation of blood, testifying, from the very commencement of the human race, the future passion of the Mediator, is a matter of deep antiquity; inasmuch as Abel is found in Holy Scripture to have been the first who offered up this prophetic immolation (Cont. Faust. Manich. in Opp. 6, 145). Next we come to Athanasius, who, speaking of the consent of the Old Testament to the fundamental doctrines of the New, says: What Moses taught, these things his predecessor Abraham had preserved; and what Abraham had preserved, with those things Enoch and Noah were well acquainted; for they made a distinction between the clean and the unclean, and were acceptable to God. Thus, also, in like manner, Abel bore testimony; for he knew what he had learned from Adam, and Adam himself taught only what he had previously learned from the Lord (Synod. Nicen. contra Hoer. Arian. decret. in Opp. 1, 403). Eusebius of Caesarea, in a passage too long for quotation, alleges that animal sacrifice was first of all practiced by the ancient lovers of God (the patriarchs), and that not by accident, but through a certain divine contrivance, under which, as taught by the Divine Spirit, it became their duty thus to shadow forth the great and venerable victim, really acceptable to God, which was, in time then future, destined to be offered in behalf of the whole human race (Demonst. Evang. 1, 8, 24, 25).
Among the considerations urged in support of the opinion that sacrifice must have originated in a divine command, it has been suggested as exceedingly doubtful whether, independently of such a command, and as distinguished from vegetable oblations, animal sacrifice, which involves the practice of slaughtering and burning an innocent victim, could ever, under any aspect, have been adopted as a rite likely to gain the favor of God. Our own course of scriptural education prevents us, perhaps, from being competent judges on this point; but we have means of judging how so singular a rite must strike the minds of thinking men not in the same degree prepossessed by early associations. The ancient Greek masters of thought not unfrequently expressed their astonishment how and upon what rational principles so strange an institution as that of animal sacrifice could ever have originated; for as to the notion of its being pleasing to the Deity, such a thing struck them as a manifest impossibility (Iamblic. De Vit. Pythag. p. 106-118; Porphyr. De Abstin. p. 96; Theophrast. et Porphyr. ap. Euseb. Proep. Evang. p. 90, 91). Those who do not believe that sacrifices were of divine institution must dispose of this difficulty by alleging that, when men had come to slay animals for their own food, they might think it right to slay them to satisfy their gods; and, in fact, Grotius, who held the human origin of sacrifices, and yet believed that animal food was not used before the Deluge, is reduced to the expedient of contending that Abel's offering was not an animal sacrifice, but only the produce-the milk and wool-of his best sheep. This, however, shows that he believed animal sacrifice to have been impossible before the Deluge without the sanction of a divine command, the existence of which he discredited.
A strong moral argument in favor of the divine institution of sacrifice, somewhat feebly put by Hallet (Comment. on Heb_11:4, cited by Magee, On the Atonement), has been reproduced with increased force by Faber (Prim. Sacrifice, p. 183). It amounts to this:
(1.) Sacrifice, when uncommanded by God, is a mere act of gratuitous superstition; whence, on the principle of Paul's reprobation of what he denominates will-worship, it is neither acceptable nor pleasing to God.
(2.) But sacrifice during the patriarchal ages was accepted by God, and was plainly honored with his approbation.
(3.) Therefore, sacrifice during the patriarchal ages could not have been an act of superstition uncommanded by God.
(4.) If, then, such was the character of primitive sacrifice that is to say, if primitive sacrifice was not a mere act of gratuitous superstition uncommanded by God it must, in that case, indubitably have been a divine, and not a human, institution. If it be held that any of the ancient sacrifices were expiatory, or piacular, the argument for their divine origin is strengthened. as it is hard to conceive the combination of ideas under which the notion of expiatory sacrifice could be worked out by the human mind. This difficulty is so great that the ablest advocates of the human origin of primitive animal sacrifice feel bound also to deny that such sacrifices as then existed were piacular. It is strongly insisted that the doctrine of an atonement by animal sacrifice cannot be deduced from the light of nature or from the principles of reason. If, therefore, the idea existed, it must either have arisen in the fertile soil of a guessing superstition, or have been divinely appointed. Now, we know that God cannot approve of unwarranted and presumptuous superstition; if, therefore, he can be shown to have received with approbation a species of sacrifice undiscoverable by the light of nature, or from the principles of reason, it follows that it must have been of his own institution.
The question of the existence of expiatory sacrifice before the law, however, is more difficult, and is denied by Outram, Ernesti, Doderlin, Davison, and many others, who believe that it was revealed under the law, as well as by those who doubt its existence under the Mosaical dispensation. The arguments already stated in favor of the divine institution of primitive sacrifice go equally to support the existence of piacular sacrifice, the idea of which seems more urgently to have required a divine intimation. Besides, expiatory sacrifice is found to have existed among all nations in conjunction with eucharistic and impetratory sacrifices; and it lies at the root of the principle on which human sacrifices were offered among the ancient nations. The expiatory view of sacrifice is frequently produced by heathen writers: Take heart for heart, fibre for fibre. This life we give you in the place of a better (Ovid, Fasti, 6, 161). This being the case, it is difficult to believe but that the idea was derived, along with animal sacrifice itself, from the practice of Noah, and preserved among his various descendants. This argument, if valid, would show the primitive origin of piacular sacrifice. Now there can be no doubt that the idea of sacrifice which Noah transmitted to the postdiluvian world was the same that he had derived from his pious ancestors, and the same that was evinced by the sacrifice of Abel, to which we are, by the course of the argument, again brought back. Now if that sacrifice was expiatory, we have reason to conclude that it was divinely commanded; and the supposition that it was both expiatory and divinely commanded makes the whole history far more clear and consistent than any other which has been or can be offered. It amounts, then, to this-that Cain, by bringing a eucharistic offering, when his brother brought one which was expiatory, denied virtually that his sins deserved death, or that he needed the blood of atonement. Some go further, and allege that in the text itself God actually commanded Cain to offer a piacular sacrifice. (See this question discussed below.)
2. On the other hand, the great difficulty in the theory which refers it to a distinct command of God is the total silence of Holy Scripture-a silence the more remarkable when contrasted with the distinct reference made in Genesis 2 to the origin of the Sabbath. Sacrifice when first mentioned, in the case of Cain and Abel, is referred to as a thing of course; it is said to have been brought by men; there is no hint of any command given by God. This consideration, the strength of which no ingenuity has been able to impair, although it does not actually disprove the formal revelation of sacrifice, yet at least forbids the assertion of it, as of a positive and important doctrine. See, for example (as in Faber's Origin of Sacrifice), the elaborate reasoning on the translation of חִטָּאת in Gen_4:7. Even supposing the version a sin offering coucheth at the door to be correct, on the ground of general usage of the word, of the curious version of the Sept., and of the remarkable grammatical construction of the masculine participle with the feminine noun (as referring to the fact that the sin offering was actually a male), still it does not settle the matter. The Lord even then speaks of sacrifice as existing, and as known to exist: he does not institute it. The supposition that the skins of beasts in Gen_3:21 were skins of animals sacrificed by God's command is a pure assumption. The argument on Heb_11:4, that faith can rest only on a distinct divine command as to the special occasion of its exercise, is contradicted by the general definition of it given in Heb_11:1. (See below.)
Nor is the fact of the mysterious and supernatural character of the doctrine of atonement, with which the sacrifices of the O.T. are expressly connected, any conclusive argument on this side of the question. All allow that the eucharistic and deprecatory ideas of sacrifice are perfectly natural to man. The higher view of its expiatory character, dependent, as it is, entirely on its typical nature, appears but gradually in Scripture. It is veiled under other ideas in the case of the patriarchal sacrifices. It is first distinctly mentioned in the Law (Lev_17:11, etc.); but even then the theory of the sin offering, and of the classes of sins to which it referred, is allowed to be obscure and difficult; it is only in the N.T. (especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews) that its nature is clearly unfolded. It is as likely that it pleased God gradually to superadd the higher idea to an institution, derived by man from the lower ideas (which must eventually find their justification in the higher), as that he originally commanded the institution when the time for the revelation of its full meaning was not yet come. The rainbow was just as truly the symbol of God's new promise in Gen_9:13-17, whether it had or had not existed as a natural phenomenon before the flood. What God sets his seal to he makes a part of his revelation, whatever its origin may be. It is to be noticed (see Warburton, Div. Leg. 9, c. 2) that, except in Gen_15:9, the method of patriarchal sacrifice is left free, without any direction on the part of God, while in all the Mosaic ritual the limitation and regulation of sacrifice, as to time, place, and material, is a most prominent feature, on which much of its distinction from heathen sacrifice depended. The inference is at least probable that when God sanctioned formally a natural rite, then, and not till then, did he define its method.
See on the question, in addition to the above treatises, Sykes, Essay on the Nature, Origin, and Design of Sacrifices; Taylor, Scripture Doctrine of the Atonement (1758); Ritchie, Criticisms upon Modern Notions of Sacrifices (1761); Magee, Discourses on Atonement and Sacrifices. SEE ATONEMENT.
III. Biblical History of Sacrifice.
1. Ante-Mosaic Instances. In examining the various sacrifices recorded in Scripture before the establishment of the law, we find that the words specially denoting expiatory sacrifice ( חִטָּאת and אָשָׁ ם) are not applied to them. This fact does not at all show that they were not actually expiatory, nor even that the offerers had not that idea of expiation which must have been vaguely felt in all sacrifices; but it justifies the inference that this idea was not then the prominent one in the doctrine of sacrifice.
The sacrifice of Cain and Abel is called minchah. although in the case of the latter it was a bloody sacrifice. (So in Heb_11:4 the word θυσία is explained by the τοῖς δώροις below.) In the case of both it would appear to have been eucharistic, and the distinction between the offerers to have lain in their faith (Heb_11:4). Whether that faith of Abel referred to the promise of the Redeemer and was connected with any idea of the typical meaning of sacrifice, or whether it was a simple and humble faith in the unseen God, as the giver and promiser of all good, we are not authorized by Scripture to decide. SEE CAIN.
The sacrifice of Noah after the flood (Gen_8:20) is called burned offering (olah). This sacrifice is expressly connected with the institution of the covenant which follows in Gen_9:8-17. The same ratification of a covenant is seen in the burned offering of Abraham, especially enjoined and defined by God in Gen_15:9; and is probably to be traced in the building of altars by Abraham on entering Canaan at Bethel (Gen_12:7-8) and Mamre (Gen_12:13; Gen_12:18), by Isaac at Beersheba (v. 26, 25), and by Jacob at Shechem (v. 33, 20), and in Jacob's setting-up and anointing of the pillar at Bethel (Gen_25:18; Gen_35:14). The sacrifice (zebach) of Jacob at Mizpah also marks a covenant with Laban, to which God is called to be a witness and a party. In all these, therefore, the prominent idea seems to have been what is called the federative, the recognition of a bond between the sacrificer and God, and the dedication of himself, as represented by the victim, to the service of the Lord. SEE NOAH. The sacrifice of Isaac (Gen_22:1-13) stands by itself as the sole instance in which the idea of human sacrifice was even for a moment, and as a trial, countenanced by God. Yet in its principle it appears to have been of the same nature as before: the voluntary surrender of an only son on Abraham's part, and the willing dedication of himself on Isaac's, are in the foreground; the expiatory idea, if recognised at all, holds certainly a secondary position. SEE ISAAC.
In the burned offerings of Job for his children (Job_1:5) and for his three friends (Job_42:8), we, for the first time, find the expression of the desire of expiation for sin accompanied by repentance and prayer, and brought prominently forward. The same is the case in the words of Moses to Pharaoh as to the necessity of sacrifice in the wilderness (Exo_10:25), where sacrifice (zebach) is distinguished from burned offering. Here the main idea is at least deprecatory; the object is to appease the wrath and avert the vengeance of God.
2. The Sacrifices of the Mosaic Period. These are inaugurated by the offering of the Passover and the sacrifice of Exodus 24. The Passover, indeed, is unique in its character, and seems to embrace the peculiarities of all the various divisions of sacrifice soon to be established. Its ceremonial, however, most nearly resembles that of the sin offering in the emphatic use of the blood, which (after the first celebration) was poured at the bottom of the altar (see Lev_4:7), and in the care taken that none of the flesh should remain till the morning (see Exo_12:10; Exo_34:25). It was unlike it in that the flesh was to be eaten by all (not burned, or eaten by the priests alone), in token of their entering into covenant with God, and eating at his table, as in the case of a peace offering. Its peculiar position as a historical memorial, and its special reference to the future, naturally mark it out as incapable of being referred to any formal class of sacrifice; but it is clear that the idea of salvation from death by means of sacrifice is brought out in it with a distinctness before unknown. SEE PASSOVER.
The sacrifice of Exodus 24, offered as a solemn inauguration of the covenant of Sinai, has a similarly comprehensive character. It is called a burned offering and peace offering in Exo_24:5; hut the solemn use of the blood (comp. Heb_9:18-22) distinctly marks the idea that expiatory sacrifice was needed for entering into covenant with God, the idea of which the sin and trespass offerings were afterwards the symbols.
The law of Leviticus now unfolds distinctly the various forms of sacrifice:
(a.) The burned offering. Self dedicatory.
(b.) The meat offering (unbloody). Eucharstic.
The peace offering (bloody).
(c.) The sin offering.
The trespass offering. Expiatory.
(d.) The incense offered after sacrifice in the Holy Place, and (on the Day of Atonement) in the Holy of Holies, the symbol of the intercession of the priest (as a type of the Great High priest), accompanying and making efficacious the prayer of the people.
In the consecration of Aaron and his sons (Leviticus 8) we find these offered in what became ever afterwards the appointed order: first came the sin offering, to prepare access to God; next the burned offering, to mark their dedication to his service; and, thirdly, the meat offering of thanksgiving. The same sacrifices, in the same order, with the addition of a peace offering (eaten, no doubt, by all the people), were offered a week after for all the congregation, and accepted visibly by the descent of fire upon the burned offering. Henceforth the sacrificial system was fixed in all its parts, until He should come whom it typified. It is to be noticed that the law of Leviticus takes the rite of sacrifice for granted (see Lev_1:2; Lev_2:1, etc., If a man bring an offering, ye shall, etc.), and is directed chiefly to guide and limit its exercise. In every case but that of the peace offering the nature of the victim was carefully prescribed, so as to preserve the ideas symbolized, but so as to avoid the notion (so inherent in heathen systems, and finding its logical result in human sacrifice) that the more costly the offering, the more surely must it meet with acceptance. At the same time, probably in order to impress this truth on the mind, and also to guard against corruption by heathenish ceremonial, and against the notion that sacrifice in itself, without obedience, could avail (see 1Sa_15:22-23), the place of offering was expressly limited, first to the Tabernacle, afterwards to the Temple. (For instances of infringement of this rule uncensored, see Jdg_2:5; Jdg_6:26; Jdg_13:19; 1Sa_11:15; 1Sa_16:5; 2Sa_6:13; 1Ki_3:2-3. Most of these cases are special, some authorized by special command; but the law probably did not attain to its full strictness till the foundation of the Temple.) This ordinance also necessitated a periodical gathering as one nation before God, and so kept clearly before their minds their relation to him as their national King. Both limitations brought out the great truth that God himself provided the way by which man should approach him, and that the method of reconciliation was initiated by him, and not by them.
In consequence of the peculiarity of the law, it has been argued (as by Outram, Warburton, etc.) that the whole system of sacrifice was only a condescension to the weakness of the people, borrowed, more or less, from the heathen nations, especially from Egypt, in order to guard against worse superstition and positive idolatry. The argument is mainly based (see Warburton, Div. Leg. 4, § 6:2) on Eze_20:25, and similar references in the Old and New Test. to the nullity of all mere ceremonial. Taken as an explanation of the theory of sacrifice, it is weak and superficial; it labors under two fatal difficulties, the historical fact of the primeval existence of sacrifice, and its typical reference to the one atonement of Christ, which was foreordained from the very beginning, and had been already typified, as, for example, in the sacrifice of Isaac. But as giving a reason for the minuteness and elaboration of the Mosaic ceremonial so remarkably contrasted with the freedom of patriarchal sacrifice, and as furnishing an explanation of certain special rites, it may probably have some value. It certainly contains this truth: that the craving for visible tokens of God's presence, and visible rites of worship, from which idolatry proceeds, was provided for and turned into a safe channel by the whole ritual and typical system, of which sacrifice was the centre. The contact with the gigantic system of idolatry which prevailed in Egypt, and which had so deeply tainted the spirit of the Israelites, would doubtless render such provision then especially necessary. It was one part of the prophetic office to guard against its degradation into formalism, and to bring out its spiritual meaning with an ever-increasing clearness.
3. Post-Mosaic Sacrifices. It will not be necessary to pursue, il; detail, the history of Post-Mosaic sacrifice, for its main principles were now fixed forever. The most remarkable instances of sacrifice on a large scale are by Solomon at the consecration of the Temple (1Ki_8:63), by Jehoiada after the death of Athaliah (2Ch_23:18), and by Hezekiah at his great Passover and restoration of the Temple-worship (2Ch_30:21-24). In each case the lavish use of victims was chiefly in the peace offerings, which were a sacred national feast to the people at the table of their Great King.
The regular sacrifices in the Temple service were:
(a.) Burned offerings.
1. The daily burned offerings (Exo_29:38-42).
2. The double burned offerings on the Sabbath (Num_28:9-10).
3. The burned offerings at the great festivals (Num_28:11 to Num_29:39).
(b.) Meat offerings.
1. The daily meat offerings accompanying the daily burned offerings (flour, oil, and wine) (Exo_29:40-41).
2. The shew bread (twelve loaves with frankincense), renewed every Sabbath (Lev_24:5-9).
3. The special meat offerings at the Sabbath and the great festivals (Num_28:29).
4. The first fruits, at the Passover (Lev_23:10-14), at Pentecost (28:17-20), both wave offerings; the first fruits of the dough and threshing floor at the harvest time (Num_15:20-21; Deu_26:1-11), called heave offerings.
(c.) Sin offerings.
1. Sin offering (a kid) each new moon (Num_28:15).
2. Sin offerings at the Passover, Pentecost, Feast of Trumpets, and Tabernacles (Num_28:22; Num_28:30; Num_29:5; Num_29:16; Num_29:19; Num_29:22; Num_29:25; Num_29:28; Num_29:31; Num_29:34; Num_29:38).
3. The offering of the two goats (the goat sacrificed, and the scapegoat) for the people, and of the bullock for the priest himself on the Great Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16).
(d.) Incense.
1. The morning and evening incense (Exo_30:7-8).
2. The incense on the Great Day of Atonement (Lev_16:12). Besides these public sacrifices, there were offerings of the people for themselves individually: at the purification of women (Leviticus 12); the presentation of the firstborn, and circumcision of all male children; the cleansing of the leprosy (ch. 14) or any uncleanness (ch. 15); at the fulfilment of Nazaritic and other vows (Num_6:1-21); on occasions of marriage and of burial, etc., besides the frequent offering of private sinofferings. These must have kept up a constant succession of sacrifices every day, and brought the rite home to every man's thought and to every occasion of human life. SEE SACRIFICIAL OFFERINGS.
IV. Significance of the Levitical Sacrifices. In examining the doctrine of sacrifice, it is necessary to remember that, in its development, the order of idea is not necessarily the same as the order of time. By the order of sacrifice in its perfect form (as in Leviticus 8) it is clear that the sin offering occupies the most important place, the burned offering comes next, and the meatoffering, or peace offering, last of all. The second could only be offered after the first had been accepted; the third was only a subsidiary part of the second. Yet, in actual order of time, it has been seen that the patriarchal sacrifices partook much more of the nature of the peace offering and burned offering; and that, under the law, by which was the knowledge of sin (Rom_3:20), the sin offering was for the first time explicitly set forth. This is but natural, that the deepest ideas should be the last in order of development.
It is also obvious that those who believe in the unity of the Old and New Tests., and the typical nature of the Mosaic covenant, must view the type in constant reference to the antitype, and be prepared, therefore, to find in the former vague and recondite meanings which are fixed and manifested by the latter. The sacrifices must be considered, not merely as they stand in the law, or even as they might have appeared to a pious Israelite, but as they were illustrated by the prophets, and perfectly interpreted in the N.T. (e.g. in the Epistle to the Hebrews). It follows from this that, as belonging to a system which was to embrace all mankind in its influence, they should be also compared and contrasted with the sacrifices and worship of God in other nations, and the ideas which in them were dimly and confusedly expressed.
1. Contrast with Heathenism. It is needless to dwell on the universality of heathen sacrifices (see Magee, Dis. on Sacrifice, vol. 1, dis. 5, and Ernst von Lasaulx, Treatise on Greek and Roman Sacrifice, quoted in notes 23, 26 to Thomson's Bampton Lectures, 1853), and it is difficult to reduce to any single theory the various ideas involved therein. It is clear that the sacrifice was often looked upon as a gift or tribute to the gods; an idea which, for example, runs through all Greek literature, from the simple conception in Homer to the caricatures of Aristophanes or Lucian, against the perversion of which Paul protested at Athens, when he declared that God needed nothing at human hands (Act_17:25). It is also clear that sacrifices were used as prayers to obtain benefits or to avert wrath, and that this idea was corrupted into the superstition, denounced by heathen satirists as well as by Hebrew prophets, that by them the gods' favor could be purchased for the wicked, or their envy be averted from the prosperous. (On the other hand, that they were regarded as thank offerings, and the feasting on their flesh as a partaking of the table of the gods (comp. 1Co_10:20-21), is equally certain. Nor was the higher idea of sacrifice as a representation of the self devotion of the offerer, body and soul, to the god, wholly lost, although generally obscured by the grosser and more obvious conceptions of the rite. But, besides all these, there seems always to have been latent the idea of propitiation; that is, the belief in a communion with the gods, natural to man, broken off in some way, and by sacrifice to be restored. The emphatic shedding of the blood as the essential part of the sacrifice, while the flesh was often eaten by the priests or the sacrificer, is not capable of a full explanation by any of the ideas above referred to. Whether it represented the death of the sacrificer, or (as in cases of national offering of human victims, and of those self devoted for their country) an atoning death for him; still, in either case, it contained the idea that without shedding of blood is no renission, and so had a vague and distorted glimpse of the great central truth of revelation. Such an idea may be, as has been argued, unnatural, in that it could not be explained by natural reason; but it certainly was not unnatural if frequency of existence and accordance with a deep natural instinct be allowed to preclude that epithet.
Now, the essential difference between these heathen views of sacrifice and the scriptural doctrine of the O.T. is not to be found in its denial of any of these ideas. The very names used in it for sacrifice, as is seen above, involve the conception of the rite as a gift, a form of worship, a thank offering, a self devotion, and an atonement. In fact, it brings out, clearly and distinctly, the ideas which, in heathenism, were uncertain, vague, and perverted. But the essential points of distinction are two:
(1.) Whereas the heathen conceived of their gods as alienated in jealousy or anger, to be sought after, and to be appeased by the unaided action of man, Scripture represents God himself as approaching man, as pointing out and sanctioning the way by which the broken covenant should be restored. This was impressed on the Israelites at every step by the minute directions of the law as to time, place, victim, and ceremonial, and by its utterly discountenancing the will worship which in heathenism found full scope, and rioted in the invention of costly or monstrous sacrifices. It is especially to be noted that this particularity is increased as we approach nearer to the deep propitiatory idea; for whereas the patriarchal sacrifices generally seem to have been undefined by God, and, even under the law, the nature of the peace offerings, and, to some extent, the burned offerings, was determined by the sacrificer only, yet the solemn sacrifice of Abraham in the inauguration of his covenant was prescribed to him, and the sin offerings under the law were most accurately and minutely determined (see. for example, the whole ceremonial of Leviticus 16). It is needless to remark how this essential difference purifies all the ideas above noticed from the corruptions which made them odious or contemptible, and sets on its true basis the relation between God and fallen man.
(2.) The second mark of distinction is closely connected with this, inasmuch as it shows sacrifice to be a scheme proceeding from God, and, in his foreknowledge, connected with the one central fact of all human history. It is to be found in the typical character of all Jewish sacrifices, on which, as the Epistle to the Hebrews argues, all their efficacy depended. It must be remembered that, like other ordinances of the law, they had a twofold effect, depending on the special position of an Israelite as a member of the natural theocracy, and on his general position as a man in relation with God. On the one hand, for example, the sin offering was en atonement to the national law for moral offenses:of negligence, which in presumptuous i.e. deliberate and wilful crime was rejected (see Num_15:27-31; and comp. Heb_10:26-27). On the other hand, it had, as the prophetic writings show us, a distinct spiritual significance as a means of expressing repentance and receiving forgiveness, which could have belonged to it only as a type of the great atonement. How far that typical meaning was recognised at different periods and by different persons, it is useless to speculate; but it would be impossible to doubt, even if we had no testimony on the subject, that, in the face of the high spiritual watching of the law and the prophets, a pious Israelite must have felt the nullity of material sacrifice in itself, and so believed it to be availing only as an ordinance of God, shadowing out some great spiritual truth or action of his. Nor is it unlikely that, with more or less distinctness, he connected the evolution of this, as of other truths, with the coming of the promised Messiah. But, however this be, we know that, in God's purpose, the whole system was typical; that all its spiritual efficacy depended on the true sacrifice which it represented, and could be received only on condition of faith; and that, therefore, it passed away when the Antitype had come.
2. The nature and meaning of the various kinds of sacrifice are partly gathered from the form of their institution and ceremonial, partly from the teaching of the prophets, and partly from the N.T., especially the Epistle to the Hebrews.
(1.) Old-Testament Relations. Here all had relation, under different aspects, to a covenant between God and man.
(a.) The sin offering represented that covenant as broken by man, and as knit together again, by God's appointment, through the shedding of blood. Its characteristic ceremony was the sprinkling of the blood before the veil of the sanctuary, the putting some of it on the horns of the altar of incense, and the pouring out of all the rest at the foot of the altar of burned offering. The flesh was in no case touched by the offerer; either it was consumed by fire without the camp, or it was eaten by the priest alone in the holy place, and everything that touched it was holy (קָדוֹשׁ). This latter point marked the distinction from the peace offering, and showed that the sacrificer had been rendered unworthy of communion with God. The shedding of the blood, the symbol of life, signified that the death of the offender was deserved for sin, but that the death of the victim was accepted for his death by the ordinance of God's mercy. This is seen most clearly in the ceremonial of the Day of Atonement, when, after the sacrifice of the one goat, the high priest's hand was laid on the head of the scapegoat which was the other part of the sin offering with confession of the sins of the people, that it might visibly bear them away, and so bring out explicitly what in other sin offerings was but implied. Accordingly, we find (see quotation from the Mishna in Outram, De Sacr. 1, ch. 15:§ 10) that in all cases it was the custom for the offerer to lay his hand on the head of the sin offering, to confess, generally or specially, his sins, and to say, Let this be my expiation. Beyond all doubt, the sin offering distinctly witnessed that sin existed in man, that the wages of that sin was death, and that God had provided an atonement by the vicarious suffering of an appointed victim. The reference of the Baptist to a Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world was one understood and hailed at once by a true Israelite. SEE SIN OFFERING.
(b.) The ceremonial and meaning of the burned offering were very different. The idea of expiation seems not to have been absent from it, for the blood was sprinkled round about the altar of sacrifice; and, before the Levitical ordinance of the sin offering to precede it, this idea may have been even prominent. But in the system of Leviticus, it is evidently only secondary. The main idea is the offering of the whole victim (to God, representing (as the laying of the hand on its head shows) the devotion of the sacrificer, body and soul, to him. The death of the victim was (so to speak), an incidental feature, to signify the completeness of the devotion; and it is to be noticed that, in all solemn sacrifices. no burned offering could be made until a previous sin offering had brought the sacrificer again into covenant with God. The main idea of this sacrifice must have been representative, not vicarious; and the best comment upon it is the exhortation, in Rom_12:1, to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.
(c.) The meat offerings the peace or thank offering, the first fruits, etc. were simply offerings to God of his own best gifts, as a sign of thankful homage, and as a means of maintaining his service and his servants. Whether they were regular or voluntary, individual or national, independent or subsidiary to other offerings, this was still the leading idea. The meat offering, of flour, oil, and wine, seasoned with salt and hallowed by frankincense, was usually an appendage to the devotion implied in the burned offering; and the peace offerings for the people held the same place in Aaron's first sacrifice (Lev_9:22), and in all others of special solemnity. The characteristic ceremony in the peace offering was the eating of the flesh by the sacrificer (after the fat had been burned before the Lord, and the breast and shoulder given to the priests). It betokened the enjoyment of communion with God at the table of the Lord, in the gifts which his mercy had bestowed, of which a choice portion was offered to him, to his servants, and to his poor (see Deu_14:28-29). To this view of sacrifice allusion is made by Paul in Php_4:18; Heb_13:15-16). It follows naturally from the other two. SEE MEAT OFFERING.
It is clear, from this, that the idea of sacrifice is a complex idea, involving the propitiatory, the dedicatory, and the eucharistic elements. Any one of these, taken by itself, would lead to error and superstition. The propitiatory alone would tend to the idea of atonement by sacrifice for sin, as being effectual without any condition of repentance and faith; the self-dedicatory, taken alone, ignores the barrier of sin between man and God, and undermines the whole idea of atonement; the eucharistic, alone, leads to the notion that mere gifts can satisfy God's service, and is easily perverted into the heathenish attempt to bribe God by vows and offerings. All three, probably, were more or less implied in each sacrifice, each element predominating in its turn: all must be kept in mind in considering the historical influence, the spiritual meaning, and the typical value of sacrifice.
Now, the Israelites, while they seem always to have retained the ideas of propitiation and of eucharistic offering, even when they perverted these by half-heathenish superstition, constantly ignored the self dedication which is the link between the two, and which the regular burned offering should have impressed upon them as their daily thought and duty. It is, therefore, to this point that the teaching of the prophets is mainly directed; its key- note is contained in the words of Samuel Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams (1Sa_15:22). So Isaiah declares (as in Isa_50:10-11) that the Lord delights not in the blood of bullocks, or lambs, or goats; that to those who cease to do evil and learn to do well. though their sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Jeremiah reminds them (Jer_7:22-23) that the Lord did not command burned offerings or sacrifices under Moses, but said, Obey my voice, and I will be your God. Ezekiel is full of indignant protests (see Eze_20:39-44) against the pollution of God's name by offerings of those whose hearts were with their idols. Hosea sets forth God's requirements (Hos_6:6) in words which our Lord himself sanctioned: I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burned offerings. Amos (Amo_5:21-27) puts it even more strongly, that God hates their sacrifices, unless judgment run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream. And Micah (Mic_6:6-8) answers the question which lies at the root of sacrifice Wherewith shall I come before the Lord? by the words, What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God? All these passages, and many others, are directed to one object not to discourage sacrifice, but to purify and spiritualize the feelings of the offerers.
The same truth, here enunciated from without, is recognised from within by the Psalmist. Thus he says, in Psa_40:8-11, Sacrifice and meat offering, burned offering and sin offering, thou hast not required; and contrasts with them the homage of the heart Mine ears hast thou bored, and the active service of life Lo! I come to do thy will, O God. In Psalm 1:13, 14, sacrifice is contrasted with prayer and adoration (comp. Psa_141:2): Thinkest thou that I will eat bulls' flesh, and drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows to the Most High: and call upon me in the day of trouble. In Psa_51:16-17, it is similarly contrasted with true repentance of the heart: The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit, a broken and a contrite heart. Yet here also the next verse shows that sacrifice was not superseded, but purified: Then shalt thou be pleased with burned offerings and oblations; then shall they offer young bullocks upon thine altar. These passages are correlative to the others, expressing the feelings, which those others in God's name require. It is not to be argued from them that this idea of selfdedication is the main one of sacrifice. The idea of propitiation lies below it, taken for granted by the prophets as by the whole people, but still enveloped in mystery until the Antitype should come to make all clear. For the evolution of this doctrine we must look to the N.T.; the preparation for it by the prophets was (so to speak) negative, the pointing out the nullity of all other propitiations in themselves, and then leaving the warnings of the conscience and the cravings of the heart to fix men's hearts on the better atonement to come.
(2.) New-Testament Explanation. Without entering directly on the great subject of the atonement (which would be foreign to the scope of this article), it will be sufficient to refer to the connection established in the N.T. between it and the sacrifices of the Mosaic system. To do this, we need do little more than analyze the Epistle to the Hebrews, which contains the key of the whole sacrificial doctrine.
(a.) In the first place, it follows the prophetic books by stating, in the most emphatic terms, the intrinsic nullity of all mere material sacrifices. The gifts and sacrifices of the first tabernacle could never make the sacrificers perfect in conscience (κατὰ συνείδησιν); they were but carnal ordinances, imposed on them till the time of reformation (διορθώσεως) (Heb_9:9-10). The very fact of their constant repetition is said to prove this imperfection, which depends on the fundamental principle that it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin (Heb_10:4). But it does not lead us to infer that they actually had no spiritual efficacy if offered in repentance and faith. On the contrary, the object of the whole epistle is to show their typical and probationary character, and to assert that in virtue of it alone they had a spiritual meaning. Our Lord is declared (see 1Pe_1:20) to have been foreordained as a sacrifice before the foundation of the world; or (as it is more strikingly expressed in Rev_13:8) slain from the foundation of the world. The material sacrifices represented this great atonement as already made and accepted in God's foreknowledge; and to those who grasped the ideas of sin, pardon, and self dedication symbolized in them they were means of entering into the blessings which the one true sacrifice alone procured. Otherwise the whole sacrificial system could have been only a superstition and a snare. The sins provided for by the sin offering were certainly in some cases moral. The whole of the Mosaic description of sacrifices clearly implies some real spiritual benefit to be derived from them, besides the temporal privileges belonging to the national theocracy. Just as Paul argues (Gal_3:15-29) that the promise and covenant to Abraham were of primary, the law only of secondary importance so that men had under the law more than they had by the law so it must be said of the Levitical sacrifices. They could convey nothing in themselves; yet, as types, they might, if accepted by a true, though necessarily imperfect faith, be means of conveying in some degree the blessings of the Antitype. SEE TYPE.
(b.) This typical character of all sacrifice being thus set forth, the next point dwelt upon is the union in our Lord's person of the priest, the offerer, and the sacrifice. SEE PRIEST. The imperfection of all sacrifices, which made them, in themselves, liable to superstition and even inexplicable, lies in this: that, on the one hand, the victim seems arbitrarily chosen to be the substitute for, or the representative of, the sacrificer; and that, on the other, if there be a barrier of sin between man and God, he has no right of approach, or security that his sacrifice will be accepted; that there needs, therefore, to be a mediator, i.e. (according to the definition of Heb_5:1-4), a true priest, who shall, as being one with man, offer the sacrifice, and accept it, as being one with God. It is shown that this imperfection, which necessarily existed in all types, without which indeed they would have been substitutes, not preparations for the antitype, was altogether done away in him: that in the first place he, as the representative of the whole human race, offered no arbitrarily chosen victim, but the willing sacrifice of his own blood; that in the second place he was ordained by God, by a solemn oath, to be a highpriest forever, after the order of Melchisedek, one in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin, united to our human nature, susceptible to its infirmities and trials, yet, at the same time, the true Son of God, exalted far above all created things, and ever living to make intercession in heaven, now that his sacrifice is over; and that, in the last place, the barrier between man and God is by his mediation done away forever, and the most holy place once for all opened to man. All the points in the doctrine of sacrifice which had before been unintelligible were thus made clear.
(c.) This being the case, it next follows that all the various kinds of sacrifices were, each in its measure, representatives and types of the various aspects of the atonement. It is clear that the atonement in this epistle, as in the N.T. generally, is viewed in a twofold light.
(1.) On the one hand, it is set forth distinctly as a vicarious sacrifice which was rendered necessary by the sin of man, and in which the Lord bare the sins of many. It is its essential characteristic that in it he stands absolutely alone, offering his sacrifice without any reference to the faith or the conversion of menoffering it, indeed, for those who were still sinners and at enmity with God. Moreover, it is called a propitiatiols (ἱλασμός or ἱλαστήριον), Rom_3:24; 1Jn_2:2; a ransom (ἀπολύτρωσις), Rom_3:25; 1Co_1:30, etc.; which, if words mean anything, must imply that it makes a change in the relation between God and man, from separation to union, from wrath to love, and a change in man's state from bondage to freedom. In it, then, he stands out alone as the mediator between God and man; and his sacrifice is offered once for all, never to be imitated or repeated.
Now, this view of the atonement is set forth in the Epistle to the Hebrews as typified by the sin offering, especially by that particular sin offering with which the high priest entered the most holy place on the great day of atonement (Heb_9:7-12), and by that which hallowed the inauguration of the Mosaic covenant and cleansed the vessels of its ministration (Heb_9:13-23). In the same way Christ is called our Passover, sacrificed for us (1Co_5:7); and is said, in even more startling language, to have been made sin for us, though he knew no sin (2Co_5:21). This typical relation is pursued even into details, and our Lord's suffering without the city is compared to the burning of the public or priestly sin offerings without the camp (Heb_13:10-13). The altar of sacrifice (θυσιαστήριον) is said to have its antitype in his passion (13:10). All the expiatory and propitiatory sacrifices of the law are now for the first time brought into full light. Although the principle of vicarious sacrifice still remains, and must remain, a mystery, yet the fact of its existence in him is illustrated by a thousand types. As the sin offering, though not the earliest, is the most fundamental of all sacrifices, so the aspect of the atonement which it symbolizes is the one on which all others rest.
(2.) On the other hand, the sacrifice of Christ is set forth to us as the completion of that perfect obedience to the will of the Father which is the natural duty of sinless man, in which he is the representative of all men, and in which he calls upon us, when reconciled to God, to take up the cross and follow him. In the days of his flesh he offered up prayers and supplications... and was heard, in that he feared; though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered: and being made perfect (by that suffering; see 2:10), he became the author of salvation to all them that obey him (5:7, 8, 9). In this view his death is not the principal object; we dwell rather on his lowly incarnation, and his life of humility, temptation, and suffering, to which that death was but a fitting close. In the passage above referred to the allusion is not to the cross of Calvary, but to the agony in Gethsemane, which bowed his human will to the will of his Father. The main idea of this view of the atonement is representative rather than vicarious. In the first view the second Adam undid by his atoning blood the work of evil which the first Adam did; in the second he, by his perfect obedience, did that which the first Adam left undone, and, by his grace making us like himself, calls upon us to follow him in the same path. This latter view is typified by the burned offering; in respect of which the N.T. merely quotes and enforces the language already cited from the O.T., and especially (see Heb_10:6-9) the words of Psa_40:6, etc., which contrast with material sacrifice the doing the will of God. It is one which cannot be dwelt upon at all without a previous implication of the other: as both were embraced in one act, so are they inseparably connected in idea. Thus it is put forth in Rom_12:1, where the mercies of God (i.e. the free salvation, through the sin offering of Christ's blood, dwelt upon in all the preceding part of the epistle) are made the ground for calling on us to present our bodies, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, inasmuch as we are all (see Rom_5:5) one with Christ, and members of his body. In this sense it is that we are said to be crucified with Christ (Gal_2:20; Rom_6:6); to lave the sufferings of Christ abound in us (2Co_1:5); even to fill up that which is behind (τὰ ὑστερήματα) thereof (Col_1:24); and to be offered (σπένδεσθαι) upon the sacrifice of the faith of others (Php_2:17; comp. 2Ti_4:6; 1Jn_3:16). As without the sin offering of the cross this, our burned offering, would be impossible, so also without the burned offering the sin offering will to us be unavailing.
(d.) With these views of our Lord's sacrifice on earth, as typified in the Levitical sacrifices on the outer altar, is also to be connected the offering of his intercession for us in heaven, which was represented by the incense. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, this part of his priestly office is dwelt upon with particular reference to the offering of incense in the most holy place by the highpriest on the great day of atonement (Heb_9:24-28, comp. Heb_4:14-16; Heb_6:19-20; Heb_7:25). It implies that the sin offering has been made once for all to rend asunder the veil (of sin) between man and God, and that the continual burned offering is now accepted by him for the sake of the great interceding High priest. That intercession is the strength of our prayers, and with the smoke of its incense they rise up to heaven (Rev_8:4). SEE INCENSE.
(e.) The typical sense of the meat offering or peaceoffering is less connected with the sacrifice of Christ himself than with those sacrifices of praise, thanksgiving, charity, and devotion which we, as Christians, offer to God, and with which he is well pleased (Heb_13:15-16) as with an odor of sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable to God (Php_4:18). They betoken that through the peace won by the sin offering we have already been enabled to dedicate ourselves to God, and they are, as it were, the ornaments and accessories of that self dedication. SEE PEACE OFFERING.
Such is a brief sketch of the doctrine of sacrifice. It is seen to have been deeply rooted in men's hearts, and to have been, from the beginning, accepted and sanctioned by God, and made by him one channel of his revelation. In virtue of that sanction it had a value, partly symbolical, partly actual, but in all respects derived from the one true sacrifice, of which it was the type. It involved the expiatory, the self dedicatory, and the eucharistic ideas, each gradually developed and explained, but all capable of full explanation only by the light reflected back from the antitype.
Literature. This is very copious, as may be seen from the lists of works cited by Danz (Worterb. s.v. Opfer), Darling (Cyclop. Bibliog. [see Index]), and Malcolm (Theol. Index, s.v.), as also from the references in the following articles. See especially Kurtz, Der alttestam. Oefercultus (Mitau, 1862); transl. Sacrificial Worship of the Old Test. (Edinb. 1863).

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

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