Lamb Of God

VIEW:36 DATA:01-04-2020

LAMB OF GOD.?The Iamb was the most common victim in the Jewish sacrifices, and the most familiar type to a Jew of an offering to God. The title ?the lamb of God? (i.e. the lamb given or provided by God; cf. Gen_22:8) is applied by John the Baptist to Jesus in Joh_1:29; Joh_1:38. The symbolism which the Baptist intended can be inferred from the symbolic allusions to the lamb in the OT. Thus in Jer_11:19 the prophet compares himself to a lamb, as the type of guilelessness and innocence. Again, in Isa_53:7 (a passage which exercised great influence on the Messianic hope of the Jews, and is definitely referred to Christ in Act_8:32) the lamb is used as the type of vicarious suffering. It seems beyond doubt that these two ideas must have been in the Baptist?s mind. It is also quite possible to see in the phrase a reference to the lamb which formed part of the daily sacrifice in the Temple; and also, perhaps, an allusion to the Paschal lamb which would soon be offered at the approaching Passover (Joh_2:18), and which was the symbol of God?s deliverance. Certainly this is the idea underlying the expressions in Joh_19:36 and 1Pe_1:19. Thus all these strata of thought may be traced in the Baptist?s title, viz. innocence, vicarious suffering, sacrifice, redemption.
The lamb is used 27 times in the Apocalypse as the symbol of Christ, and on the first introduction of the term in Rev_5:6 the writer speaks specifically of ?a Iamb as though it had been slain.? The term used in the Greek original is not the same as that found in the Baptist?s phrase, but the connexion is probably similar. It seems most likely that the sacrificial and redemptive significance of the lamb is that especially intended by the Apocalyptic author.
The specific title ?the Iamb of God? may be an invention of the Baptist?s own, which he used to point an aspect of the Messianic mission for his hearers? benefit, or it may have been a well-known phrase currently employed to designate the Messiah; we have no trace of such an earlier use, but it may have existed (see Westcott on Joh_1:29).
A. W. F. Blunt.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909

Lamb Of God
(ἀμνὸς Θεοῦ, Joh_1:29; Joh_1:36; so of the Messiah, Test. xii Patr. pages 724, 725, 730), a title of the Redeemer (compare Act_8:32; 1Pe_1:19, where alone the term ἀμνός is elsewhere employed, and with a like reference). This symbolical appellation applied to Jesus Christ, in Joh_1:29; Joh_1:36, does not refer merely to the character or disposition of the Savior, inasmuch as he is also called "the Lion of the tribe of Judah" (Rev_5:5). Neither can the appellation signify the most excellent lamb, as a sort of Hebrew superlative. The term lamb is simply used, in this case, to signify the sacrifice, i.e., the sacrificial victim, of which the former sacrifices were typical (Num_6:12; Lev_4:32; Lev_5:6; Lev_5:18; Lev_14:12-17). So the prophet understood it: "He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter" (Isa_53:7); and Paul: "For even Christ, our Passover," i.e., our Passover lamb, "is sacrificed for us" (1Co_5:7; comp. Peter 1:18, 19). As the lamb was the symbol of sacrifice, the Redeemer is called "the Sacrifice of God," or the divine Sacrifice (Joh_1:14; comp. 1Jn_2:28; Act_20:28; Rom_9:5, 1Ti_3:16; Tit_2:13). As the Baptist pointed to the divinity of the Redeemer's sacrifice, he knew that in this consisted its efficacy to remove the sin of the world. The dignity of the Sacrifice, whose blood alone has an atoning efficacy for the sin of the world, is acknowledged in heaven. In the symbolic scenery, John beheld "a LAMB, as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God," i.e., invested with the attributes of God, omnipotence and omniscience, raised to the throne of universal empire, and receiving the homage of the universe (1Co_15:25, Php_2:9-11; 1Jn_3:8; Heb_10:5-17; Rev_5:8-14). See the monographs on this subject cited by Volbeding, Index Programmatum, page 52.
In the Romish Church the expression is blasphemously applied in its Latin form to a consecrated wax or dough image bearing a cross, used as a charm by the superstitious. SEE AGNUS DEI.

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

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