Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS

The phenomenon of sacrifice cannot be appreciated apart from the mythic notion that the temple serves as the very house of God. In order to concretize the fact of this physical or sacramental encounter, biblical law took special care to outline the responsibilities that accompanied it. Chief among these were the requirements to attend to the daily needs of this resident deity and to dispose of material which the deity found offensive. The former concern resulted in the sacrificial system, whereas the latter led to the concern for purity.

The laws of sacrifice presume a sacramental mentality that believes that God makes his presence manifest within the confines of the material world (Exod. 20:24). Rituals such as sacrifice evolved to help concretize the manner in which the deity was truly present in the human community. Though God is beyond nature and history, through the medium of his temple he makes his presence manifest. But this presence cannot be merely stated; it must be lived and experienced. Thus — following through with this logic — if the deity assumes residence in this temple, then he must be revered and honored with the proper trappings of such a setting. These would include an elaborate throne room, finely crafted paneling, handsome vestments for his servants, and most importantly sumptuous food for his consumption. What holds together all of these images is the notion of God’s assuming and maintaining residence within a particular place. Sacrifice, considered here as the provisioning of the deity’s banquet table, is simply one among a number of ritual acts that symbolize the miraculous availability of the deity within the temple and allow this reality to be lived and experienced by the human community.

Within the biblical narratives, the act of sacrifice is the single most important feature of the liturgical life of the temple. The tremendous importance of the sacrificial system is certainly related to the fact that it — unlike most other dimensions of temple life — requires daily maintenance and upkeep by the community of worshippers. In other words, this mode of affording honor and reverence toward the deity is unique in so far as it requires constant human attention. It should cause no surprise that the same word for service (Heb. ʿăḇōḏâ) is also the term for [divine] worship. For in the act of providing a sacrifice the Israelite was not only providing a service to the deity, but also setting himself in a position of subservience to that very deity.

The performative role of sacrifice has long been a topic of reflection among anthropologists. This role has sometimes been caricatured as nothing more than the secondary application of the fundamental principle of secular mercantile exchange: do ut des, “I have given [a gift to the god], so grant me [a blessing in return].” Though no one would doubt that an aspect of exchange is present in the sacrificial act — people do present sacrifices in hope of gaining a blessing in return — recent thinking on the topic of sacrifice has suggested a more subtle aspect to the type of exchange that is envisioned. For gift exchange among unequal partners is never a purely mercantile affair; that is one party giving merely with intention of securing a future benefit. Rather, the very act of exchange itself serves to embody and communicate the relative status of the partners in question. Thus, when a person offers a mere animal in the hope that God will in turn grant him a child, the unequal nature of the items exchanged cannot help but create within the person a feeling of dependency and gratitude. Understood in this manner, do ut des could well be translated as “I have given [so precious little], and yet may you grant [so very much].” In this view, the exchange that has taken place is hardly a crude bargain oriented at “twisting the arm” of the deity, but rather a cultic “realization” of the absolute dependence of the human giver upon the graces of his God. Sacrifice is an essential vehicle for establishing and expressing this relationship of God to mankind; it could hardly be considered optional.

Priestly Source

Sinai Narrative

When one first looks at the P source in its entirety, the laws of sacrifice seem to be ordered in a rather haphazard way. Beginning at Exod. 25 and continuing to the end of Numbers, the sacrificial laws of P are interwoven among the various narrative materials of J and E. It is difficult, especially in Numbers, to understand the editorial function of this structure. Yet there are clear signs of editorial design within this larger framework. One might note the structure of Exod. 25–Lev. 9. Exod. 25–40 describes the delivery of the architectural plans for the tabernacle to Moses (chs. 25–31) and the subsequent execution of those plans (chs. 35–40). This particular section comes to a climax with the appearance of the divine presence (“glory of the Lord”) in the tabernacle (Exod. 30:34-38). After the tabernacle has been revealed, the laws of sacrifice are laid out in a very general way (Lev. 1–7). Then follows the narrative of the ordination of Aaron and the ceremony of the eighth day (Lev. 8–9). This section concludes with the first appearance of the Lord to the entire gathered throng of Israelites (Lev. 9:23-24).

Laws for Sacrifice

The Torah has both general rules for the performance of individual sacrifices and particular applications for the individual sacrifices or sets of sacrifices. General rules for all of the sacrificial types are found primarily in one location, Lev. 1–7. These general rules provide full details about how to administer the burnt offering: where to bring the animal, how to lay on hands, where to kill it, how to handle its blood, how to prepare the altar, and what to burn on the altar. The section closes with the statement: “This is the law of the holocaust, the cereal offering, of the purification offering, of the reparation offering, of the consecration offering, and of the peace-offering which the Lord commanded Moses on Mt. Sinai” (Lev. 7:37-38).

Yet it is only on the rarest of occasions that an Israelite would offer only a holocaust or cereal offering. Israelite rituals usually required a specific combination of these individual types in order to be efficacious. Thus the rest of the laws of sacrifice in the Pentateuch can be viewed as the specific ritual application of the rather abstract and general rules of Lev. 1–7 (excluding the doublets to Lev. 1–7; e.g., Num. 5:5-8; 15:22-31). The specific applications of the general rules of Lev. 1–7 can be grouped into three categories:

1. foundational sequences: ordination of priests and Levites (Lev. 8–9; Num. 8), dedication of the tabernacle (Num. 7);

2. festival laws and the tāmîḏ, “daily burnt offering” (Lev. 16, 23; Num. 28–29); and

3. specific rituals pertaining to the life cycle of the individual: e.g., childbirth (Lev. 12), “leprosy” (Lev. 13–14), vows of the Nazirite (Num. 6), impurity from discharge (Lev. 15:13-15), corpse defilement (Num. 19).

Basic Types of Animal Sacrifice

Burnt offering. At its most basic level, the ʿôlâ was considered a gift to the deity, which the deity consumes as a “soothing odor.” The burnt offering constituted the daily food for the deity (cf. Exod. 29:38-42; Num. 28:3-8). These sacrifices took place in the morning and the evening and were offered along with a cereal and drink offering.

Peace offering (Lev. 3). In the P source the šĕlāmîm sacrifice is broken down into three subtypes: the “thanksgiving” sacrifice, the “vowed sacrifice,” and the “freewill offering” (Lev. 7:11-18). The šĕlāmîm sacrifice is primarily a sacrifice intended for human festivity and consumption. This role helps to explain why the ʿôlâ and the šĕlāmîm are routinely paired in biblical ritual. The ʿôlâ was the sacrifice that constituted the basic nourishment for the deity, while the šĕlāmîm in turn nourished the people.

Purification offering (Lev. 4). The traditional translation of Heb. ḥaṭṭāʾṯ has been “sin offering” (e.g., Lev. 4:1–5:13; Num. 15:22-31). This translation, followed by the LXX, is based on etymological considerations. The term would better be understood as referring to the process of purification.

Atonement and Sacrifice. The purification function of the ḥaṭṭāʾṯ challenges us to reconsider its role in rituals that seem to have an atoning function. Can these rituals also be understood in a purificatory sense? In order to understand this role one must pay particular attention to the role of blood manipulation in each of the rituals described here, for it is the blood itself which acts as the purging agent. In light of this, it is significant to note that the blood is never placed upon the individual. If the individual himself was being cleansed then one would expect the blood to be placed on him or her. Instead the blood is placed on various cultic appurtenances. Even more telling is the variability of this blood ritual with respect to the status of the sinner. Lev. 4 makes very careful distinctions between the status of various classes of people. The inadvertent sins of the priest and community as a whole are more serious than the sins of the individual, whether a commoner or a ruler. Most serious of all are the advertent offenses of any kind. In each of these cases, as the seriousness of the sin becomes more pronounced, the blood is brought closer to the very inner sanctum of the holy of holies. Thus the blood used for the commoner is placed on the altar of the holocaust outside the sanctuary per se (Lev. 4:30). The blood used for the sin of the priest or of the community as a whole is placed within the sanctuary itself. It is sprinkled on the veil separating the holy of holies from the outer chamber and placed on the incense altar. Finally, the blood of the purification offering on the Day of Atonement, which atones for advertent sins (so would seem the sense of Heb. pešaʿ in Lev. 16:16), is sprinkled “in front of the mercy seat” within the holy of holies itself (v. 14).

Jacob Milgrom has argued that his sequence of the graded usage of blood in respect to the grid of the sacred shrine shows that what is being purged is not the sin from the sinner, but the effects of sin, i.e., cultic impurity, from the sanctums within the sanctuary. Since the blood is understood to be a purging agent, one would expect the sinner to receive this material (if the primary intention of the ritual were to eliminate his sinful condition). Such an understanding would accord well with what is said about the purificatory role of the ḥaṭṭāʾṯ blood in the case of those suffering from discharge: “Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness so that they do not die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst” (Lev. 15:31; cf. Num. 19:13). Impurity, conceived in this fashion, becomes akin to a physical substance which is attracted almost magnetically to the Holy. The purification offering is designed to remove this material from the sanctuary itself. If the impurity is allowed to accumulate, the deity will be forced to leave the sanctuary.

Prophetic Critique

It has been common for scholars to denigrate the enterprise of biblical sacrifice. One scholar went so far as to describe the system as a means of “self-help.” This criticism is certainly supported by such prophetic invective as found in Jeremiah: “. . . I did not speak to [your ancestors in Egypt] or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God . . .’ ” (Jer. 7:21-23). One scholar characterized this prophetic text as a “slap in the face of the Priestly code.” It seems to overturn the Priestly notion that all cultic laws had been part of Mosaic law.

Yet one should be careful about what types of conclusions should be drawn from such a piece of fiery rhetoric. In other prophetic texts one can find both fasting and intercessory prayer condemned. In sum, one should not mistake the prophetic critique of the cult for systematic theology. Prophetic discourse occurs in a highly charged atmosphere. It is a mixture of hyperbole, exalted rhetoric, and even polemic. It would be fairer to say that the Bible contains two models for dealing with human sin. The most prominent would be that of the P code. In P the harmful effect of sins is ameliorated by a system of sacrificial atonement. The sins envisioned to fall within this framework are those acts of disobedience which are committed within the context of a larger covenantal bond. The prophets, by contrast, are concerned with sins of a vastly different nature: sins that represent advertent, gross rebellion against the very fabric of the covenant charter. So heinous are these deeds that the whole covenant framework is called into question. It is not a question of rejecting P, but rather finding oneself in such a radically new context that P’s norms are no longer believed to apply.

Viewed this way, one could argue that the “prophetic” understanding of sacrifice was also a Priestly one. For in a text such as Lev. 26, , one finds a long list of the curses that will fall upon Israel should she neglect her covenantal responsibilities. This chapter moves beyond the concerns of purification and atonement found in Lev. 1–25. Israel’s wanton disobedience, which is foreshadowed here, calls for measures of divine punishment that cannot be altered by the sphere of the cult. The language of judgment found in Lev. 26, , especially the threat to terminate the cultic order itself, is very close to prophetic thought. What is important to note is that within the P code itself are allusions to the type of criticism of the cult that one finds within the prophetic materials. This evidence, in and of itself, should call into question any overly rigid typological distinctions which would isolate Priestly concepts of the cult from those of the prophets. The difference has to do with emphasis and rhetorical purpose rather than with outright contradictory evaluations of Israel’s spiritual heritage.

Bibliography. G. A. Anderson, “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Offerings: Old Testament,” ABD 5:870-86; B. A. Levine, In the Presence of the Lord. SJLA 5 (Leiden, 1974); J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16. AB 3 (New York, 1991).

Gary A. Anderson

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)