Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Leviticus 17:1
And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying,
This chapter, in its immediate bearing on the daily life of the Israelites, stands as the first of four Lev. 1720 which set forth practical duties, directing the Israelites to walk, not in the way of the pagan, but according to the ordinances of Yahweh.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER XVII
The people are commanded to bring all the cattle they intend to
kill to the door of the tabernacle, where they are to be made
an offering to the Lord; and those who disobey are to be cut
off, 1-5.
The priest is to sprinkle the blood, 6.
They are forbidden to offer sacrifices to devils, 7.
The injunction to bring their offerings to the door of the
tabernacle is repeated, 8, 9.
The eating of blood is solemnly forbidden, 10.
It is the life of the beast, and is given to make an atonement
for their souls, 11, 12.
If a bird or beast be taken in hunting, its blood must be
poured out and covered with dust, for the reasons before
assigned, 13, 14.
None shall eat an animal that dies of itself, or is torn by
beasts; if any act otherwise he must bathe his clothes and his
flesh, or bear his iniquity, 15, 16.
NOTES ON CHAP. XVII.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
And the Lord spake unto Moses,…. After he had given him the law about the day of atonement, and the rites belonging to it:
saying; as follows.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The directions are given to “Aaron and his sons, and all the children of Israel,” because they were not only binding upon the nation generally, but upon the priesthood also; whereas the instructions in ch. 18-20 are addressed to “the children of Israel,” or “the whole congregation” (Lev 18:2; Lev 19:2; Lev 20:2), just as special laws are laid down for the priests in ch. 20 and 21 with reference to the circumstances mentioned there.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Directions Concerning Sacrifices. | B. C. 1490. |
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2 Speak unto Aaron, and unto his sons, and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto them; This is the thing which the LORD hath commanded, saying, 3 What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp, 4 And bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer an offering unto the LORD before the tabernacle of the LORD; blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people: 5 To the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they offer in the open field, even that they may bring them unto the LORD, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, unto the priest, and offer them for peace offerings unto the LORD. 6 And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the LORD at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and burn the fat for a sweet savour unto the LORD. 7 And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations. 8 And thou shalt say unto them, Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers which sojourn among you, that offereth a burnt offering or sacrifice, 9 And bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer it unto the LORD; even that man shall be cut off from among his people.
This statute obliged all the people of Israel to bring all their sacrifices to God’s altar, to be offered there. And as to this matter we must consider,
I. How it stood before. 1. It was allowed to all people to build altars, and offer sacrifices to God, where they pleased. Wherever Abraham had a tent he built an altar, and every master of a family was a priest to his own family, as Job i. 5. 2. This liberty had been an occasion of idolatry. When every man was his own priest, and had an altar of his own, by degrees, as they became vain in their imaginations, they invented gods of their own, and offered their sacrifices unto demons, v. 7. The word signifies rough or hairy goats, because it is probable that in the shape the evil spirits often appeared to them, to invite their sacrifices and to signify their acceptance of them. For the devil, ever since he became a revolter from God and a rebel against him, has set up for a rival with him, and coveted to have divine honours paid him: he had the impudence to solicit our blessed Saviour to fall down and worship him. The Israelites themselves had learned in Egypt to sacrifice to demons. And some of them, it should seem, practised it even since the God of Israel had so gloriously appeared for them, and with them. They are said to go a whoring after these demons; for it was such a breach of their covenant with God as adultery is of the marriage covenant: and they were as strongly addicted to their idolatrous worships, and as hard to be reclaimed from them, as those that have given themselves over to fornication, to work all uncleanness with greediness; and therefore it is with reference to this that God calls himself a jealous God.
II. How this law settled it. 1. Some think that the children of Israel were by this law forbidden, while they were in the wilderness, to kill any beef, or mutton, or veal, or lamb, or goat, even for their common eating, but at the door of the tabernacle, where the blood and the fat were to be offered to God upon the altar, and the flesh to be returned back to the offerer to be eaten as a peace-offering, according to the law. And the statute is so worded (Lev 17:3; Lev 17:4) as to favour this opinion, for it speaks generally of killing any ox, or lamb, or goat. The learned Dr. Cudworth puts this sense upon it, and thinks that while they had their tabernacle so near them in the midst of their camp they ate no flesh but what had first been offered to God, but that when they were entering Canaan this constitution was altered (Deut. xii. 21), and they were allowed to kill their beasts of the flock and herd at home, as well as the roebuck and the hart; only thrice a year they were to see God at his tabernacle, and to eat and drink before him there. And it is probable that in the wilderness they did not eat much flesh but that of their peace-offerings, preserving what cattle they had, for breed, against they came to Canaan; therefore they murmured for flesh, being weary of manna; and Moses on that occasion speaks as if they were very sparing of the flocks and the herds,Num 11:4; Num 11:22. Yet it is hard to construe this as a temporary law, when it is expressly said to be a statute for ever (v. 7); and therefore, 2. It should seem rather to forbid only the killing of beasts for sacrifice any where but at God’s altar. They must not offer sacrifice, as they had done, in the open field (v. 5), no, not to the true God, but it must be brought to the priest, to be offered on the altar of the Lord: and the solemnity they had lately witnessed, of consecrating both the priests and the altar, would serve for a good reason why they should confine themselves to both these that God had so signally appointed and owned. This law obliged not only the Israelites themselves, but the proselytes or strangers that were circumcised and sojourned among them, who were in danger of retaining an affection to their old ways of worship. If any should transgress this law, and offer sacrifice any where but at the tabernacle, (1.) The guilt was great: Blood shall be imputed to that man; he hath shed blood, v. 4. Though it was but a beast he had killed, yet, killing it otherwise than God had appointed, he was looked upon as a murderer. It is by the divine grant that we have the liberty to kill the inferior creatures, to the benefit of which we are not entitled, unless we submit to the limitations of it, which are that it be not done either with cruelty or with superstition, Gen 9:3; Gen 9:4. Nor was there ever any greater abuse done to the inferior creatures than when they were made either false gods or sacrifices to false gods, to which the apostle perhaps has special reference when he speaks of the vanity and bondage of corruption to which the creature was made subject, Rom 8:20; Rom 8:21, and compare Lev 1:23; Lev 1:25. Idolatrous sacrifices were looked upon, not only as adultery, but as murder: he that offereth them is as if he slew a man, Isa. lxvi. 3. (2.) The punishment should be severe: That man shall be cut off from among his people. Either the magistrate must do it if it were manifest and notorious, or, if not, God would take the work into his own hands, and the offender should be cut off by some immediate stroke of divine justice. The reasons why God thus strictly ordered all their sacrifices to be offered at one place were, [1.] For the preventing of idolatry and superstition. That sacrifices might be offered to God, and according to the rule, and without innovations, they must always be offered by the hands of the priests, who were servants in God’s house, and under the eye of the high priest, who was ruler of the house, and took care to see every thing done according to God’s ordinance. [2.] For the securing of the honour of God’s temple and altar, the peculiar dignity of which would be endangered if they might offer their sacrifices any where else as well as there. [3.] For the preserving of unity and brotherly love among the Israelites, that meeting all at one altar, as all the children of the family meet daily at one table, they might live and love as brethren, and be as one man, of one mind in the Lord.
III. How this law was observed. 1. While the Israelites kept their integrity they had a tender and very jealous regard to this law, as appears by their zeal against the altar which was erected by the two tribes and a half, which they would by no means have left standing if they had not been satisfied that it was never designed, nor should ever be used, for sacrifice or offering, Josh. xxii. 12, c. 2. The breach of this law was for many ages the scandalous and incurable corruption of the Jewish church, witness that complaint which so often occurs in the history even of the good kings, Howbeit the high places were not taken away and it was an inlet to the grossest idolatries. 3. Yet this law was, in extraordinary cases, dispensed with. Gideon’s sacrifice (Judg. vi. 26), Manoah’s (Judg. xiii. 19), Samuel’s (1Sa 7:9; 1Sa 9:13; 1Sa 11:15), David’s (2 Sam. xxiv. 18), and Elijah’s (1 Kings xviii. 23), were accepted, though not offered at the usual place: but these were all either ordered by angels or offered by prophets; and some think that after the desolation of Shiloh, and before the building of the temple, while the ark and altar were unsettled, it was more allowable to offer sacrifice elsewhere.
IV. How the matter stands now, and what use we are to make of this law. 1. It is certain that the spiritual sacrifices we are now to offer are not confined to any one place. Our Saviour has made this clear (John iv. 21), and the apostle (1 Tim. ii. 8), according to the prophecy, that in every place incense should be offered, Mal. i. 11. We have now no temple nor altar that sanctifies the gift, nor does the gospel unity lie in one place, but in one heart, and the unity of the spirit. 2. Christ is our altar, and the true tabernacle (Heb 8:2; Heb 13:10); in him God dwells among us, and it is in him that our sacrifices are acceptable to God, and in him only, 1 Pet. ii. 5. To set up other mediators, or other altars, or other expiatory sacrifices, is, in effect, to set up other gods. He is the centre of unity, in whom all God’s Israel meet. 3. Yet we are to have respect to the public worship of God, not forsaking the assemblies of his people, Heb. x. 25. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob, and so should we; see Ezek. xx. 40. Though God will graciously accept our family offerings, we must not therefore neglect the door of the tabernacle.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
LEVITICUS- CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Verses 1-7:
This text does not refer to the slaughtering of animals for food. It denotes a change of dispensation. Prior to the Mosaic Law, the father was the high priest for his family. He could offer sacrifices wherever he chose. But with the institution of the Mosaic Law, the tribe of Levi is designated as the priestly tribe, on behalf of the nation. The Aaronic priesthood replaced the patriarchal system, and all sacrifices were to be brought to the Tabernacle, to be offered by Aaron’s sons.
Another reason for this text is: it would serve to bind Israel as a nation into one body spiritually.
Another factor: God specified certain parts of the sacrificial animals as offerings. Precise instructions accompanied each sacrifice. If the sacrifices were allowed away from the appointed place, there was a real danger that these instructions would not be followed.
Any deviation from Divine law, however small it may be or how expedient it may appear in its inception, inevitably leads to greater violations.
“Devils,” sair, “hairy one, goat.” The term occurs 59 times in the Old Testament, and is translated “goat” 52 times. It is translated “satyr” in Isa 13:21; 34:14. This suggests that the Israelites borrowed from the Egyptians a pagan worship of goat-like creatures. Herodotus describes the depraved worship of the false god worshipped in this form. The Greek deity Pan had the form of a goat-like creature.
Paul refers to the worship of demon spirits by the Gentiles. Israel frequently adopted this practice. God describes it as spiritual fornication.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
The Sanctity of the Blood
SUGGESTIVE READINGS
Lev. 17:4.And bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle. A captious mind will ask. Why is not sacrifice acceptable to God wherever offered? Surely it is in the spirit of the offerer, rather than in the circumstances of the offering, that piety consists. Wherefore, then, this insistance on mere conditions, and importance attached to the place of sacrifice? But God meets such contention of thought with absolute interdict; He is the authority in human life and sacred regulations; and who art thou that repliest against God? Even when your ways are not my ways (Isa. 55:8), the LORD must be obeyed, and His terms of dealing with sinful creatures be observed as absolute Yet more. There was wisdom in those requirements; for the Israelites had been so trained to superstitious and heathenish ideas in Egypt as to need this fencing about in order to restrain them from lapsing, all but unconsciously, into the snares of familiar idolatrous practices. Our God is gracious in all His ways; His commandments are not grievous; but, knowing our tendencies to err, He arrests us at the first symptoms of erring, and shows us the path of safety, the plan of acceptance.
Lev. 17:5.The sacrifices which they offer in the open field. [See Addenda to chap., Sacrifices unto devils.] They had learned this from the Egyptians, who peopled the scenes of nature with deities (Lev. 17:7), and Israel continually fell into this old habit, and sacrificed in groves and on high places; it was the snare of their whole after history. We may be redeemed from our spiritual bondage, and become pilgrims to Canaan, yet all the journey through the power of old habits pursues us, and would reassert itself upon us. Therefore the urgency with which Gods Word prohibits any and every concession to the former lusts in our ignorance. We must shun lurking perils.
Lev. 17:8.Whatsoever men there be. It was an inflexible regulation, binding upon the house of Israel, and also upon strangers that sojourn among you. For evil may be introduced by the society we entertain, the guests who visit us. And hospitality was to be restricted by divine laws. How ensnaring often becomes the courtesy which we think due to strangers! There is a tendency to relax from steadfast principles of righteousness and lofty habits of piety at such times as guests are staying in our homes. This is to lower Gods standard in accommodation to men. It must not be; strangers in godly homes must conform to the godly laws which are there supreme; the children of God must never yield to unhallowed customs of their guests; hospitality must be no excuse for impiety.
Lev. 17:10.I will set my face against that soul that eateth blood. God claimed the blood as being the life of the creature. He has ownership in all His creatures, and we should acknowledge Him therein. But this law has emphasized the value of blood as the symbol also of atonement (Lev. 17:11). And He would have every act, even of eating and drinking, testify of the atonement required by sinners. The table could not be spread for strangers (Lev. 17:12), nor could any one, Israelite or stranger, seek recreation and pleasure in hunting even, but the significance and sacredness of the blood must be recognised. We have reason, indeed, to regard as most suggestive and precious the blood of atonement. It leads our thoughts to Him whose death has gathered into itself all virtue for redemption. How dreadful the consequences of counting that blood of the covenant an unholy thing! (Heb. 10:29).
SECTIONAL HOMILIES
Topic: THE SOLEMNITY OF SACRIFICE PUBLICLY RECOGNISED (Lev. 17:1-10)
Jehovahs concern for solemnity and purity in apparently trifling things revealed His intense hatred for sin, His supreme love for holiness. The demand for purity extended to private individual acts no less than to public national observances. The blood of all beasts slain for food or sacrifice was to be presented at the door of the tabernacle, to check the people from wanton destruction of animal life; to remind them that all life is from the Lord; its destruction under His cognizance. This injunction would
I. PREVENT IDOLATRY. The idolatrous practices of the Egyptians, among whom Israel had lived, would have implanted a tendency in the people to relapse into heathenish superstitions during their encampment in the wilderness. The Egyptians sacrificed to the goats, or field devilssupposed to inhabit the wildernessto avert their wrath, and secure their favour. To ensure that no idolatrous sacrifice should be offered in the camp the blood of every slain animal was to be presented before the Lord, as an acknowledgement that Jehovah was the sovereign King in Israel. God is the proprietor of all life, to Him all ought to be solemnly dedicated.
II. STIMULATE OBEDIENCE. Probably the Hebrews could not see the reason for so rigid a command, it was for them to render unquestioning obedience believing in the wisdom of their great Lawgiver, in the righteousness of His precepts. When enactments seemed meaningless, and ceremonies superfluous, the human was always and in every case to be subordinated to the divine will. Thus the discipline of the Jewish economy educated loyal and implicit surrender of all the faculties of heart and mind. Under the gospel dispensation we are saved by faith, which is the gift of God; yet, faith without works is dead. Faith and love must prove their existence and genuineness by obedience to the commands of Christ.
III. PERPETUATE ALLEGIANCE. These arrangements were to continue in force through succeeding generations. In coming constantly to the door of the tabernacle, and making its services the constant theme of attention, the Israelites would be carrying out the first great injunction of the decalogue, Thou shalt have none other gods but me. Identifying the tabernacle with the domestic acts of life, with acts performed to provide material food, would tend to keep in vivid remembrance the fact that everything was to be done to the glory of God. It is still so; every meal should become a sacrament, all we do should be done devoutly and heartily as unto the Lord.
IV. AWAKEN GRATITUDE. Coming so frequently to the door of the tabernacle with the blood of animals slain for food or sacrifice would remind the Hebrews how constantly they were indebted to Jehovah for all the temporal and spiritual blessings they enjoyed. They would thus trace their mercies to the Source from which all good and perfect gifts flow to man.
V. PROMOTE HOLINESS. Such constant reference to the tabernacle would keep the Lord perpetually before the people, and act as a solemn restraint upon their conduct. In common as well as sacred meals, in the tent as well as in the tabernacle, Holiness to the Lord was to be inscribed above all. As the Israelites presented the blood at the door of the tabernacle they would be reminded of the sacredness of life; have suggested to their minds the necessity of complete self-surrender to Jehovah The New Testament has no diviner injunction than this, Be ye holy, for I am holy.
VI. BEGET REVERENCE. As the people drew nigh to the door of the tabernacle they would be reminded of the august authority of God in demanding such obedience and annexing such penalties to disobedience The justice and jealousy of God would fill every devout worshipper with profound religious awe. In all Christian worship godly fear should have its place, for our God is a consuming fire.
VII. INDICATE RECONCILIATION. The fact that the people were permitted thus frequently to approach the tabernacle proved that Jehovah was propitious, and delighted in mercy. He had come to dwell with men because He delighted in their company and fellowship. If those who drew near to God only fulfilled the conditions He saw fit to lay down, there was no need for slavish fear or apprehensions of disapproval. That God expects us to live in His favour and fear denotes the fact that He is reconciled to us, and that the only thing that hinders our bliss here and hereafter is unwillingness to be reconciled to Him.F. W. B.
Topic: THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE (Lev. 17:8-9)
1. God has a right to say where and how He will be worshipped, and He has exercised the right. He has told us the way in which He will be approached.
2. The way to life may be narrow, but there is no one, with the Word of Truth in his hand, who may not discover it and follow it.
3. Of old God gave minute and ample instruction to His people; they were to approach Him by sacrifice, and that sacrifice was to be offered on the altar of burnt offering: there shalt thou offer (Deu. 12:13-14). It mattered not in what the offering consisted, expiatory or eucharistic, the requirements as to the place of presentation was the samethe place which the Lord had chosen and made His habitation.
Even those animals which were slain for food in the wilderness were brought to the door of the tabernacle, and there killed, and their blood sprinkled on the altar. If an Israelite did not bring the animal which he intended for food to the door of the tabernacle, but killed it elsewhere, God declared that blood should be imputed to him (Bonar on Leviticus, chap 17).
A. WHAT ADMONITORY PURPOSE WAS THEREBY SERVED.
1. The people were indellibly impressed with their need of atonement. Every time an intelligent Israelite took away life he must have felt his own life was forfeited to God, and that by the blood of sacrifice only could it be redeemed. The very preparation of his food impressed him with the truth that life is the gift of God. But if this is Old Testament truth, it is New Testament truth also (see Joh. 6:51; Joh. 3:36).
ii. Idolatry was the root sin of the ancient nations; and the head of every family, as priest in his own house, might sacrifice to whatever god he pleased. To correct this in Israel was one of the admonitory purposes of this enactment that all sacrifices should be offered at the house of God.
B. WHAT SACRED AND EVANGELICAL DOCTRINE UNDERLAYS THIS REGULATION.
i. The tabernacle was a type of the Lord Jesus; and just as the Israelite could only worship God by sacrifice at His own dwelling, so we can only present our offerings to Him through Christ. By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise continually, etc. (Heb. 13:15; Col. 3:17).
ii. The altar of brass was the place of sacrifice (Lev. 17:6), on which burned the inextinguishable fire, symbol of divine holiness and endless propitiation. It stood between the door of the tabernacle and the Skekinah within the veil. An interposing sacrificial altar, the Cross of Jesus stands between the human offerer and the Holy God. Had not Christ, our Atonement, put Himself between us and what we deserved wrath had fallen upon us.
C. WHAT PRACTICAL OBLIGATION THIS RESTRICTED SCENE OF SACRIFICE ENJOINS ON US NOW.
i. The altar was the one way of approach; even so, Christ is the one way to the Father (Joh. 14:6).
ii. Excellencies in the offerer or the offering could not neutralize the necessity for coming in this only way to God. The Jews sacrifice might be, in itself, all that was required, but offered elsewhere than at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation it was refused. Though we be generous in disposition, upright in walk, reverent in manner, not for these, but for Christs sake, can we be accepted.
iii. But contact with that altar imparted sanctity. Whatsoever toucheth the altar shall be holy (Exo. 29:37). The first touch of Christ by faith delivers from guilt.
iv. At the cross God is to be found and enjoyed. Only at the cross will He be merciful to our unrighteousness, and only in Christ meet us in grace. [Comp., The Gospel in Leviticus.J. FLEMING, D.D.].
Topic: BLOOD PROHIBITED AS FOOD (Lev. 17:10-12)
This divine enactment forbidding blood as food was much older than the tabernacle ordinances: was given to Noah directly after the flood (Gen. 9:4). Reiterated now to the Israelites (Lev. 3:17; Lev. 7:26); and the reason for the statute is now assigned: the blood is the life of the flesh, and is given to man to make an atonement for his soul. [See Addenda to chap., Life in the Blood.]
I. BLOOD SACREDNESS: solemnly appointed by God for a most gracious purpose. Instances from the Old Testament:
Abels offering of the firstlings of his flock (Gen. 4:3-5), securing emphatic approbation over Cains fruits of the ground.
Noahs altar sacrifices after the flood (Gen. 8:20-21).
Jobs patriarchial offerings of sacrifices for propitiation and thanksgiving (Job. 1:5).
Moses entire system was atoning and sacrificial by means of blood. No remission of sins without the shedding of blood.
The blood was to be used for no other purpose.
The New Testament testimony.
Prophecy had foretold that Messiah would redeem Israel (Psa. 130:8), and make an end of sins (Dan. 9:24); and it should be done by blood: wounded for our transgressions (Isa. 53:5; Isa. 53:10).
At the Eucharistic Supper Jesus took the cup and said, This is my blood of the New Testament which is shed for many for the remission of sins (Mat. 26:28).
The apostles testify to the same truth: We have redemption through his blood (Col. 1:14; Col. 1:20).
The cry of the Church on earth and in heaven tells the sacred truth, Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood (Rev. 1:5; Rev. 5:9).
God has given to us the blood for the atonement of the soul.
II. BLOOD APPROPRIATION: emphatically restricted by God for this one sacred purpose.
It is refused for food, and its mal-appropriation protected by penalties of a very appalling nature.
1. It would lower the dignity and defile the sanctity of blood if allowed for common uses. All serious regard for the atonement virtue which lay in the blood would have left their minds had it not been thus exclusively reserved. There is no less danger of irreverent minds counting the blood of the covenant an unholy thing and doing despite to the Spirit of grace (Heb. 10:29). In this prohibition of a familiar use of solemn things God sought to fence His people from a sin easily besetting them. God would have us touch sanctities with awe.
2. It would perpetuate in their thoughts their need of atonement to have blood thus interdicted for all other purposes. Atonement would confront them as their daily necessity, even at their meals. And it should be ever before us that we are sinners needing the atonement of Christ; it is gracious for God to make us daily see and realise our case and the urgency of our need of that precious blood of Christ.
3. It would lead on their hopes to the effectual and final sacrifice which Messiah would present. The very weariness of this continual presentation of blood in sacrifice would deepen the longing for Messiahs sacrifice; which should end all provisional offerings. A tired traveller hails sight of each sign-post as it tells him home is near.
All the ancient types pointed men onwards: God would concentrate human desire on the promised Saviour.
Now He makes all teaching and experience of man point human hope and faith backwards, on the finished work of redemption, on the One Sacrifice of JesusWhom God hath set forth to be a propitiation for sin through faith in his blood (Rom. 3:25).
A WARNING: Christ must be used as an Atonement. His blood must be recognised as of infinite urgency and value for sinful men. Whoso dares take Christ as his food, refusing His sacrificial work, seeking to appropriate and enjoy Jesus as a Teacher, Example, Friend, but repudiating him as a Sin Offering, a Redeemer of the ruined soul, he falls under the menaces of these words of God, Christs blood must be realised as a supreme necessity for man, as an atonement for his soul.
Topic: HOLY BLOOD (Lev. 17:10-11)
With stern command God sets a fence around all blood. All reverence enshrines it. An awful sanctity exempts it from the food of man.
What if offence occur, if rash hands bring it to the board for food? Then penalty frowns terribly, wrath darkens, excluding judgments follow.
But why is blood thus sanctified?
I. IS NOT BLOOD THE ALTARS FOOD?
Yes: there is its constant flow: it is the stream from expiring victims. It reminds of death as the desert of sin, and bears witness that remission of sin is prepared. Then it is linked with expiating grace. Thus:
II. IT POINTS TO CALVARYS CROSS
It shadows forth the wrath-sustaining death of Gods co-equal Son. It introduces Jesus bleeding that souls may live. It is the symbol of redemptions price; emblem of the one atoning Lamb.
Hence till Jesus came the same forbidding voice was heard: Touch not the blood! It is devoted to God. It is most holy unto Him. It pictures out redeeming suffering. It is atonement for the soul.
We live in gospel light; the wondrous death is no more veiled in mystic types. We gaze with open vision on the blood-stained cross; may approach the fountain opened in the Saviours side; may there wash our every sin away.
Shall we, thus privileged, fall short in reverence? Think of the grand antitype, Christs blood; ponder its worth, its use, its mighty power, its unspeakable results.
i. Its glorious worth. Enter the Garden. The Sufferer seems a lowly man. Man verily He is, or He could possess no human blood. But in that lowly body Deity dwells. He is the Mighty God. It is the blood of God (Act. 20:28).
ii. Its gracious use. The sinner is justly sentenced to woe. Nothing but boundless substitution can release. Jesus is God, and He brings blood divinely efficacious. He is an able Saviour, for blood flows in the channel of omnipotence.
iii. Its effectual power. It is the ransom price of all the saved Their number baffles number. Each was defiled with darkest stains of guilt. But now behold them. Robes white; not one stain spoils; penalties all paid. The blood has saved.
iv. Its precious results.
1. It is the peace of all believing souls. The day of awakened conscience was one of bitter woe. The thundering law denounced, the wrath of God menaced. But the Spirit led the trembler to the cross. Faith heard the assurance, Though your sins, etc. (Isa. 1:18); faith gazed, and found full repose.
2. It is the source of sanctifying grace. He must flee sin whose eye is fixed on the blood. Can he love that which gave those wounds to Christ? The sight of calvary slays the love of sin.
(a) Make it your study. For every thought here is food. Angels gaze and they adore. But they glean no advantage from it. To you it is salvations price; the gate of heaven.
(b) Love it. It is proof of Gods love, that Jesus loves you better than Himself. That mind is rock which is not melted by such flame.
(c) Praise it. All lips commend the charms of beauty and heroic deeds. But what so beauteous as grace leading Jesus to the cross? Where is noble act like His surrender of Himself for you?
(d) Use it. Every hour, when temptations darts are flying round; it will quench the fiery darts. When you seek light from scriptures pages; those lines are brightest in which blood is seen. Use it in prayer; it is the plea of pleas. In sanctuary rites: the service is cast out which is not hallowed with blood. Use it in all holy work for God: it consecrates the motive, way, end; and harvests grow from seeds sown in blood. And when death draws near use it: it ensures heaven, where it may be the eternal theme.DEAN LAW.
Topic: A DIVINE PROHIBITION (Lev. 17:10-16)
Of all the sacrifices offered in the Tabernacle, the expiatory were the most important; that offered on the Day of Atonement the climax of all. The virtue and worth of the offering were symbolised in the blood of the victims; to it, therefore, peculiar solemnity and sanctity were attached. Noah and his descendants were forbidden to partake of flesh with the blood: thus, the way was prepared for the strict prohibition of this chapter. In putting a guard around the seat of animal life Jehovah taught the Hebrews
I. THAT BLOOD WAS TO BE REGARDED AS A SACRED THING. Not because it was unwholesome, or unclean, or repulsive, was blood not to be partaken of, but because by it atonement was made for the sins of the soul. From the earliest history of our race God had taught that life must be given for life; and that without shedding of blood there could be no remission of sins. Thus blood became
(a) The means of expiation.
(b) The symbol of reconciliation.
(c) The type of the one great vicarious sacrifice; by virtue of which all the Mosaic offerings were efficacious and accepted.
There was nothing so precious on earth, in the estimation of God, as life; upon it, therefore, He set His most solemn seal; to it He attached rigid regulations; and around it He erected His righteous restraint.
II. THAT, BEING A SACRED THING, BLOOD WAS NOT TO BE SHED HEEDLESSLY; or to be, under any circumstances, partaken of.
Acting under such prohibitions, Israel would be distinguished from the heathen nations, who recklessly shed blood, and who not only offered it to their gods but partook of it themselves. Jehovah, as the sovereign Lord of all life, reserved the symbol of it to Himself; it was to be in no way degraded, not left anywhere carelessly exposed, but treated with profound deference. A check was thus put upon indiscriminate slaughter, and in every creature slain for food, or sacrifice, the operator, by the divine restriction he was under, would be reminded of the absolute sovereignty of the Lord.
III. THAT DISREGARD TO THESE PROHIBITIONS WOULD INCUR THE RIGHTEOUS DISPLEASURE OF THE PROPRIETOR OF ALL LIFE.
Disobedience would not only displease God but incur excommunication from His presence. The enactments may seem severe, but they were needed under the circumstances of the wilderness, and taught lessons of circumspection and moral purity, calculated to lift the people from depraved and degrading practices. The guilt of taking life could only be atoned for by the sacrifice of life. Thus, in the fulness of time, Christ, by shedding His precious blood, by offering His divine infinite life a ransom for the souls of men, satisfied the claims of divine justice, opened the way to heaven for every man. Figuratively, and by faith, we are to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of God, but care must be taken that the acts are not performed unworthily, nor must the blood of the covenant be trampled under foot and counted an unholy thing. Those who persist in abusing or despising the precious blood of Christ will wonder and perish in the day when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed.F. W. B.
ILLUSTRATIVE ADDENDA TO CHAPTER 17
SACRIFICES UNTO DEVILS (Lev. 17:7)
The word Seirim, here translated devils, literally means hairy or shaggy goats, and then goat-like deities, or demons.
The Egyptians, and other nations of antiquity, worshipped goats as gods. Not only was there a celebrated temple in Thmuis, the capital of the Mendesian Nomos in Lower Egypt, dedicated to the goat image Pan, whom they called Mendes, and worshipped as an oracle and as the fertilising principle in nature, but they erected statues to him everywhere. Hence the Pan Silenus, satyrs, fawns, and woodland gods found among the Greeks and Romans; and hence, too, the goat-like forms of the devil, with a tail, horns, and cloven feet, which obtain in Medieval Christianity, and which may still be seen in some European cities.
The terror in which the devil, appearing in this Pan-like form, created in those who were thought to have seen him, has given rise to our expression panic.Ellicotts Commentary.
LIFE IN THE BLOOD
This statement (Lev. 17:14) that the life of the flesh is in the blood had stood in the Mosaic Scriptures for 3,600 years before philosophers, scientists and anatomists had found their way to this physical truism.
That the blood holds the vitality of the entire bodily structure is given here as a fact of revelation; and it lay in the Bible for nearly 4,000 years before anatomists discovered the fact by their research. Now it is acknowledged as a principle confirmed by elaborate and accurate experiments.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
II. CONTINUANCE IN COMMUNION WITH GOD 17:126:46
A. HOLINESS ON THE PART OF THE PEOPLE 17:120:27
1. HOLINESS IN REGARD TO FOOD 17:116
a. EVERY MEAL A SACRIFICE 17:19
TEXT 17:19
1
And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying,
2
Speak unto Aaron, and unto his sons, and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto them: This is the thing which Jehovah hath commanded, saying,
3
What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it without the camp,
4
and hath not brought it unto the door of the tent of meeting, to offer it as an oblation unto Jehovah before the tabernacle of Jehovah: blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people:
5
to the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they sacrifice in the open field, even that they may bring them unto Jehovah, unto the door of the tent of meeting, unto the priest, and sacrifice them for sacrifices of peace-offerings unto Jehovah.
6
And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of Jehovah at the door of the tent of meeting, and burn the fat for a sweet savor unto Jehovah.
7
And they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices unto the he-goats, after which they play the harlot. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations.
8
And thou shalt say unto them, Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that offereth a burnt-offering or sacrifice,
9
and bringeth it not unto the door of the tent of meeting, to sacrifice it unto Jehovah; that man shall be cut off from his people.
THOUGHT QUESTIONS 17:19
373.
Moses is instructed to include many more in his instructions from God than usual. Why?
374.
What a very severe penalty for only killing an animal in the wrong place! Is this all that is involved?
375.
God solved the problem of idolatry and harlotry in one action. Explain that action.
376.
Why specify a peace offering? Why not a burnt offering or a sin offering? Surely a trespass offering would have been appropriate.
377.
Are we to understand from Lev. 17:7 that every meal of beef, lamb or goat was first slain at the temple throughout the history of Israel? Discuss.
378.
Was it reasonable to ask strangers and sojourners to also observe this law?
379.
This chapter begins the second section of the book. It is not the same as the first. What is the difference?
PARAPHRASE 17:19
The Lord gave to Moses these additional instructions for Aaron and the priests and for all the people of Israel: Any Israelite who sacrifices an ox, lamb, or goat anywhere except at the Tabernacle is guilty of murder and shall be excommunicated from his nation. The purpose of this law is to stop the people of Israel from sacrificing in the open fields, and to cause them to bring their sacrifices to the priest at the entrance of the Tabernacle, and to burn the fat as a savor the Lord will appreciate and enjoy. For in this way the priest will be able to sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the entrance of the Tabernacle, and to burn the fat as a savor the Lord will appreciate and enjoyinstead of the peoples sacrificing to evil spirits out in the fields. This shall be a permanent law for you, from generation to generation. I repeat: Anyone, whether an Israelite or a foreigner living among you who offers a burnt offering or a sacrifice anywhere other than at the entrance of the Tabernacle, where it will be sacrificed to the Lord, shall be excommunicated.
COMMENT 17:19
Lev. 17:1-5 We begin in these verses the second major section of the Book of Leviticus. All the previous chapters discussed the public or national sacrifices made by the priests on behalf of the peopleor attendant matters. In chapters 17 to 26 we will consider the daily life of these children of Jacob. Perhaps it is because of the personal content of what follows that as God spoke to Moses He included not only Aaron but all the children of Israel. The problem of these verses does not appear until Lev. 17:5. Sad and strange as it may seem the worship of idols and immorality was so widespread that God had to claim possession of the meat used for daily food. The reason being that if He didnt claim it, it would be offered to the demon gods in the open fields. The three potential sacrificial animals, i.e.: ox, lamb or goat, must not be killed in the open field or even in the outer court of the tabernacle, but only at the door of the tent of meeting on the north side of the altar of burnt offering. Even if such animals were going to be used for the common meal they must first be offered as a sacrifice to God. Under penalty of death this commandment must be kept. When God can control our diet under penalty of death He is going to have a large claim on our lives.
Lev. 17:6-9 The use of the little phrase no more offer their sacrifices to goat-like gods or demons in Lev. 17:7 indicates the already serious nature of their sin. How difficult it is for us to understand the faithlessness of these people. These animal deities were obvious carry-overs from Egypt. Had they not yet learned the emptiness and meaninglessness of these gods? When sex orgies are associated with the worship of such deities such strong desires would not be easy to ignore. Even if many did not associate the miraculous with their worship they would be drawn to the shrine to meet the prostitute or to become one. We do wonder about the demons or supposed demons involved. What or who were they? Ginsburg supplies quite a study on this subject. He says:
The word (seirim) here translated devils, literally denotes hairy or shaggy goats, and then goat-like deities, or demons. The Egyptians, and other nations of antiquity, worshipped goats as gods. Not only was there a celebrated temple in Thmuis, the captial of the Mendesian Nomos in Lower Egypt, dedicated to the goat-image Pan, whom they called Mendes, and worshipped as the oracle, and as the fertilizing principle in nature, but they erected statues of him everywhere. Hence the Pan, Silenus, satyrs, fauns, and the woodland gods among the Greeks and Romans; and hence, too, the goat-like form of the devil, with a tail, horns, and cloven feet, which obtain in medieval Christianity, and which may still be seen in some European cities. The terror which the devil, appearing in this Pan-like form, created among those who were thought to have seen him, has given rise to our expression panic. This is the form of idolatrous worship which the Jews brought with them from Egypt, and to which reference is continually made. (See Jos. 24:14; Eze. 20:7; Eze. 23:3, etc.; and especially 2Ch. 11:15.) The expression and they shall no more offer shows that the Israelites were hitherto in the habit of first dedicating their ordinary food to these deities; whilst the words gone a whoring indicate the orgies connected with this form of idol worship. It has been urged that the demand to offer up, in so confined a space as the entrance of the sanctuary, the domestic animals intended for the daily consumption of more than 600,000 people, imposed a task upon the people which it was impossible for them to carry out. Hence it has been urged that the injunction here (Lev. 17:2-7) must refer to sacrifices. But this difficulty arises from importing our modern notions into the ancient mode of living. The ancient Israelites, like the modern Orientals, especially the nomadic tribes, ate very little flesh meat apart from the seasons of sacrifice, which were the occasions of feasting. Besides, those who urge this difficulty ignore the fact that the injunction before us is restricted to the three kinds of animals; that none of the wild clean guadrupeds, as stags, roes, etc., nor any of the feathered tribes, as pigeons, turtle-doves, etc., which formed an essential part of the daily diet, is here included; and that even the three kinds of sacrificial quadrupeds only come within this restriction when they are qualified by age, which was within two years, and by physical condition, which demanded that it should have no external defect.
FACT QUESTIONS 17:19
383.
What is the one distinctive difference in the two major divisions of Leviticus?
384.
Why was it necessary to make every meal an act of worship?
385.
Why hadnt Israel yet learned that an idol is nothing?
386.
There was a strong attraction to idol worship. What was it?
387.
Pan was worshipped as a god. Discuss how and why.
388.
How answer the objection that 600,000 people could not bring their sacrifices to the door of the tent of meeting?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XVII.
(1) And the Lord spake unto Moses.The Day of Atonement was instituted to purge, in an especial manner, the whole community from all their sins, and present them a holy nation before the Lord once a year. Hence it is now followed by regulations concerning every-day life, the observance of which is to foster the holiness secured on that particular day.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE PLACE OF SLAYING DOMESTIC ANIMALS FOR FOOD, Lev 17:1-6.
3. In the camp In addition to the ceremonial, there were doubtless sanitary grounds for the requirement that all slaughter in the camp be in one place, where there was doubtless some way of disposing of the blood without endangering the public health. See Introduction, (6.) The private slaughter of domestic animals was doubtless forbidden as a safeguard against the propensity to idol offerings, which the people brought with them out of Egypt. The suggestion has weight, that since the herds were scanty, the requirement to bring animals for slaughter to the tabernacle was also designed to act as a check against too great a reduction of their number. Only the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half of Manasseh seem to have had what might be called large herds. Numbers 32. There can be little doubt, that during the forty years in the wilderness oxen and sheep were rarely used as food, whence it was flesh that Israel so greatly lusted after.
Out of the camp The inconvenience of this requirement, when Israel was widely scattered in the wilderness for pasturage, is greatly mitigated by the fact that they were miraculously fed with manna. Their disgust for this, and clamour for animal food, (Num 11:6,) indicates that they rarely slew any animal of their flocks for food. But when the manna had ceased, and the tabernacle was fixed in one place, this prohibition was repealed in advance by Moses, (Deu 12:13-15,) so far as animals intended for food are concerned, and the people were permitted to kill and eat in all their gates.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘And Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,’
Again it is stressed that we have here God’s word to Moses.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Animals to be Slain by Priests
v. 1. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, v. 2. Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto them: This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded, saying, v. 3. What man soever there be of the house of Israel that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, v. 4. and bringeth it not unto the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation to offer an offering unto the Lord before the Tabernacle of the Lord, v. 5. to the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, v. 6. And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation, and burn the fat for a sweet savor unto the Lord. v. 7. And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a-whoring. v. 8. And thou shalt say unto them, Whatsover man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers which sojourn among you, that offereth a burnt offering or sacrifice, v. 9. and bringeth it not unto the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation to offer it unto the Lord,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
This chapter finds its natural place here as the supplement of all that has gone before. The first part of the book contains the institution or regulation of the sacrificial system (chapters 1-7). This chapter, therefore, which gives injunctions as to the place where all sacrifices are to be offered, might well, as Knobel has remarked, have taken its place as Lev 8:1-36. The second part contains the institution of the hereditary priesthood (chapters 8-10). This chapter, therefore, which forbids for the future all offering of sacrifices in the open fields, and commands that they shall be brought “unto the priest, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation,” would still more fitly find its place after Lev 10:1-20. But the first two sections of the third part (chapters 11-16) contain the laws and rules respecting cleansing from ceremonial defilement, and this cleansing is to be mainly effected by the means of sacrifice. Therefore the rule as to the place where sacrifice shall be offered is most naturally given here, where it is found (Lev 17:1-16), forming a close not only to Parts I and II, but also to the two sections of Part III, which contain the regulations as to purification by sacrifice. It is altogether a mistake to make a Second Book begin with Lev 17:1-16, as is clone by Lange and Keil.
The first injunction contained in the chapter (Lev 17:2-7) is very generally understood to mean that while the Israelites lived in the wilderness, all animals fit for sacrifices which were slain for food should be so far regarded as sacrifices that they should be brought to the door of the tabernacle and slain in the court, an offering of the blood and fat being made to the Lord. Thus the ordinary slaughtering of domestic animals, it is said, became sanctified, and the dignity of life made clear: God is the Lord of life; he gave it, and it must not be taken away unless the blood, which is the vehicle of life, be offered to him by being presented sacrificially on his altar, or, where this is not possible, as in the case of wild animals, by being reverently covered with earth. Such a rule as this respecting the slaughtering of domestic animals, difficult to carry out in any case, would become impossible to obey after the camp had been expanded into a nation, and it is therefore supposed that it is by anticipation repealed in Deu 12:15, while the regulations as to restricting the offering of sacrifice to the court of the temple, and as to pouring blood on the earth, are there emphatically enforced. This view of the text is erroneous, and must be rejected. The injunction dues not refer to the ordinary slaughter of domestic animals for food, but only to sacrifices. Hitherto it had been the right and the duty of the head of each family to offer sacrifice for his household, and this he did wherever he thought proper, according to the ancient patriarchal practice, and most naturally in the open fields. This duty and liberty is now abolished. The Aaronic priesthood has superseded the older priestly system, and henceforth every sacrifice is to be offered in the court of the tabernacle, and by the hand of Aaron’s sons. The change was most momentous, but it could not but be made after the consecration of Aaron and his sons for an hereditary priesthood. A second reason for the change being made was the immediate danger to which a rude and superstitious people was exposed, of offering the parts which they were bound to set aside for the altar of God to some other deity, if God’s priests and altar were not at hand. The imaginations of the Israelites, corrupted by their stay in Egypt, peopled the fields with beings answering to the Pan and the satyrs of the Greeks; and to these the sacred portions of the animals slaughtered elsewhere than at the tabernacle were offered.
Lev 17:3
What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat. The use of the word killeth, instead of sacrificeth, is one of the chief causes of the error referred to above, which represents this command as applying to the slaughter of domestic animals. But it is always permissible to use a generic in place of a specific term, and its use proves nothing. Probably the sacred writer uses it as a less sacred term, and therefore more suitable to sacrifices offered to the spirits of the fields and woods. If ordinary slaughtering were meant, there is no reason why pigeons and turtle-doves should not be added to the ox, or lamb, or goat. That every ox, or lamb, or goat, to be killed in the camp, or out of the camp, for the food of more than 600,000 men, should be brought to so confined a space as the court of the tabernacle for slaughter, where the animals for the daily, weekly, annual, and innumerable private sacrifices were also killed, appears almost credible in itself. How would the drivers have made their way into it? and what would have soon been the state of the court? It is true that animal food was not the staple sustenance of the Israelites in the wilderness; but not unfrequently, after a successful war or raid, there must have been a vast number of cattle killed for feasting or reserved for subsequent eating.
Lev 17:4
In case a man offers a sacrifice elsewhere than at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, blood shall be imputed unto that man; that is, it shall no longer be regarded as a sacrifice at all, but an unjustifiable shedding of blood, for which he is to be cut off from among his people, that is, excommunicated.
Lev 17:5
To the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices. This passage tells us the purpose of the previous command: it is to prevent sacrifices being sacrificed (the word is twice used in the original) in the open field, or anywhere else than in the court of the tabernacle. It follows that the command refers to sacrifice, not to mere slaughtering. Clark, taking the opposite view of the command, is obliged to change the translation, sacrifices which they offer in the open field, into “beasts for slaughter which they now slaughter in the open field” (‘Speaker’s Commentary’); but he has no authority for doing so. Zabach means always, in the Pentateuch, to slay in sacrifice. These field sacrifices, when offered to the Lord in the proper place and with the proper ceremonies, would become peace offerings unto the Lord.
Lev 17:6
The priest, that is, the Levitical priest, is henceforth to sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord and burn the fat for a sweet savour, which were the two parts of the sacrifice which were essentially priestly in their character. The old priestly function of the head of the family is disallowed.
Lev 17:7
And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. The word rightly translated devils means, literally, shaggy goats (see 2Ch 11:15; Isa 13:21; Isa 34:14; where the word occurs). It is generally supposed that the Israelites borrowed their worship of the goat-like spirits of the woods and fields from Egypt. That goat-worship prevailed there in a very foul shape we know (Herod; 2:42), but sacrifices in the open fields are rather a Persian habit (Herod; 1:132). Pan-worship, however, was common to most if not to all agricultural nations. The injunction which follows, This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations, which cannot be confined to the last few words or verses, shows that the command of Lev 17:3 refers to sacrifices, not to ordinary slaughtering. Had slaughtering been meant, the statute could not have been intended to be more than temporary in its obligation. The importance attributed to the regulation is further shown by the declaration previously made, that whoever transgressed it should be cut off from among his people, or excommunicated. In fact, it makes an era in the history of the chosen people. The old patriarchal priesthood having ceased, and the Aaronic priesthood substituted for it, the tabernacle is appointed to serve as a religious centre to the race. Whenever, from this time onwards, sacrifices were offered, without offense, elsewhere than in the court of the tabernacle or temple, as by Samuel (see 1Sa 13:8), and by Elijah (1Ki 18:32), it was done by the direct order or dispensation of God.
Lev 17:8, Lev 17:9
So essential is the regulation to the maintenance of the Israelitish polity, that it is extended to the strangers which sojourn among them, not confined to those who were of the house of Israel; and the penalty of excommunication is appointed for both classes alike in case of disobedience. It may be noticed that this verse assumes that burnt offerings and peace offerings are offered by the strangers that sojourn among them, as well as by the Israelites by race.
Lev 17:10, Lev 17:11
The appointment made just above, that the blood of all animals slain in sacrifice should be offered to the Lord on his altar in the court of the tabernacle, leads naturally to a reiteration of the prohibition of the eating of blood, and a statement of the reason of that prohibition. “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat,” was given as a command to Noah (Gen 9:4). It has already been repeated twice in the Book of Leviticus (Lev 3:17; Lev 7:26), and it is still again found in Lev 19:26; Deu 12:16; Deu 15:23. The present is the locus classicus which explains the earnestness with which the rule is enforced. It begins with an extension of the obligation from the Israelites to the sojourners among them, and with a solemn declaration that, in case of transgression, God will take into his own bands the punishment of the offenders; not only is he to be cut off or excommunicated by political or ecclesiastical authority, but God himself will set his face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people, by death, or such means as he chooses to adopt. Then follows the reason for the prohibition. For the life of the flesh is in the blood. The blood may not be eaten because it is the vehicle of life, literally, the soul of the flesh, that is, it is the seat of the animal life of the body. “It is the fountain of life,” says Harvey; “the first to live, the last to die, and the primary seat of the animal soul; it lives and is nourished of itself, and by no other part of the human body.” In consequence of possessing this character, it is to be reserved, to make an atonement for your souls upon the altar; for thus only blood became qualified for the purpose of atonement. The clause, for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul, should be translated, for the blood maketh atonement by means of the soul, i.e; by means of the life which it contains. It is because the blood is the vehicle of the animal’s life, and represents that life, that it serves to cover, or make atonement for, the soul of the offerer of the sacrifice, who presents it instead of his own life.
Lev 17:12
This verse emphatically restates that the atoning power of the blood, as being the seat of life, is the reason that the eating of it is forbidden, and the same statement is repeated in a different connexion in Lev 17:14.
Lev 17:13, Lev 17:14
Negatively, it has been ordered that blood shall not be eaten; positively, that it is to be offered to God. But there may be cases where the latter command cannot be caused out, as when animals are killed in hunting. On such occasions the man who kills the animal, whether he be an Israelite or a sojourner, is to pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with dust, regarding it as a sacred thing.
Lev 17:15, Lev 17:16
There is still another possible case. The blood of an animal may not have been shed, or not shed in such a way as to make it flow abundantly, as when the animal has died a natural death, or been killed by wild beasts. In this case, as the blood still remains in the body, the flesh may not be eaten without defilement. The defilement may be cleansed by the unclean man washing his clothes and bathing, but if he neglect to do this, he shall bear his iniquity, that is, undergo the consequence of his transgression, which he would not have undergone had he been ceremonially cleansed (cf. Exo 22:30; Exo 11:1-10 :39; Deu 14:21). The prohibition of the eating of blood was continued by the Council of Jerusalem, but the observance of the regulation was no longer commanded as a duty binding on all men, but as a concession to Jewish feelings, enabling Jewish and Gentile converts to live together in comfort (see 1Sa 14:32; Eze 33:1-33 :35; Act 15:20).
HOMILETICS
Lev 17:1-9
Sacrifice is not in itself enough;
there must be uniformity in the manner in which it is offered, and identity of place in which it is made. The seven first chapters of the Book of Leviticus have given a minute statement of the ceremonies which are always to be unfailingly observed. Incidentally, it had been taught in these chapters that the place of sacrifice was the court of the tabernacle, but now every other place of sacrifice is stringently forbidden.
I. THE TABERNACLE AND AFTERWARDS THE TEMPLE WERE THE CENTRE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH, AND THEREFORE OF THE JEWISH STATE. Every community which is to be permanent must have a central idea, and that idea must be embodied in some formula, or still better in some institution. The tabernacle or the temple was such an institution to the Jew. It summed up in itself, and was the symbol to the Jew of all that he valued. It was the rallying point of the nation, the thing that each citizen was willing to live for and die for, whatever other differences might divide him from his fellows. This gave a strength and unity to the different tribes, which would otherwise have probably all fallen apart, and though it was not strong enough to prevent the great schism, Jeroboam’s plan of supplying its place by an unreal substitute showed its force; it survived the destruction of the material temple by Nebuchadnezzar, preserved the exiled fragments of the nation during the Captivity, and inspired courage to return to Jerusalem and rebuild what they had lost. Nay, even now its memory keeps together the scattered members of a dispersed nation, and forms them into one people.
II. THE TABERNACLE OR TEMPLE WAS THE EFFECTIVE SIGN OF UNITY TO THE JEWS BECAUSE IT CONTAINED THE ARK. The ark was the visible symbol of the presence of God among his chosen people. Therefore the hearts of the people went out towards the sanctuary with adoration and love. Therefore all the sacrificial rites had to be performed before the door of the sanctuary, not only while they lived in the wilderness, but when they were settled in Canaan. The journeys up to Jerusalem at the three great festivals intensified their love for the temple, and made them feel their union and communion with one another and with God. Nor did the institution of synagogues throughout the land interfere with this feeling, as the worship conducted in them was recognized as being of an inferior description to that which could be celebrated at the temple alone. The temple was, in the estimation of the Jew, the local abiding-place of God upon earth. Even when the ark and the mercy-seat were gone, it retained this character above every other spot.
III. THE IDEA OF A LOCAL PRESENCE OF GOD IN ANY GIVEN PLACE ON EARTH IS ABOLISHED. “Believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (Joh 4:21-24). “For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my Name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my Name, and a pure offering: for my Name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts” (Mal 1:11). There is no local or material centre to the Christian Church; no one city holy because it contains the temple; no one temple holy because it contains the visible presence of God; no one high priest on earth holy because alone privileged to enter into that presence. The spiritual has superseded the material.
IV. THE UNITY OF THE CHRISTIAN BODY IS TO BE OTHERWISE MAINTAINED. Its unity is commanded and prayed for by Christ: “Holy Father, keep through thine own Name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.” “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one” (Joh 17:11, Joh 17:20-23). And it is enjoined by the apostle, “Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3). So far and at such times as Judaical and materializing views have prevailed in the Church, attempts have been made to preserve this unity in the Jewish manner, by making an earthly head of the Church, round which the members might gather.
V. THE TRUE BONDS OF UNITY IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
1. The common possession of the” one Spirit ” (Eph 4:4), who unites all the members by the internal cohesion of unanimity and love.
2. The common possession of the “one Lord” (Eph 4:5), the invisible Head of the body, from whom there flows down into the members a life shared by all alike.
3. The common possession of the “one God and Father of all” (Eph 4:6), whose Fatherhood makes us all brethren.
4. The common possession of” one faith” (Eph 4:5), “once (for all) delivered to the saints” (Jud Lev 1:3).
5. The common possession of” one hope” (Eph 4:4) of eternal life.
6. The common possession of “one baptism” (Eph 4:5), by which we were made members of the “one body” (Eph 4:4).
7. The common possession of the other sacrament appointed to continue “till he come” (1Co 11:26).
8. The common possession of the ministry instituted “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: that we may grow up into him in all things, which is the bead, even Christ” (Eph 4:12-15).
VI. THE NATIONALITY AND INDEPENDENCE OF CHURCHES NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH CATHOLIC UNITY. if there were one visible head of the Church on earth, or one divinely constituted earthly centre of Christendom, there could be no such thing as an independent or a National Church. But this conception of the Church Catholic, partly Judaical, partly feudal, is wholly false. The possession of the above-named qualifications makes a particular Church partaker in Catholic unity, the ideal Christian Church consisting of a federal union of such Churches in union and communion one with another, agreeing in their belief, but not necessarily uniform in their ceremonies and rites (Art. 34).
Lev 17:10-13
The eating of blood is strictly prohibited;
Therefore our Lord’s words must have sounded so much the more strange in the ears of the Jews, when he said, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (Joh 6:53). The reason why blood may not be eaten is that the life of the flesh is its blood (Lev 17:11). Eating the blood was the same thing as eating the life of the animal. Therefore his Jewish auditors would understand our Lord to mean by the words, “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (Joh 6:54), that whoso became a partaker of his life, would thereby become a possessor of eternal life, and, possessing that, would share in its privilegesresurrection and immortality (see Wordsworth, ad loc.) There is an eating and drinking of Christ’s flesh and blood, that is, a partaking of his life and Spirit, which may be accomplished without any outward act whatever; but no doubt a special method of performing this mysterious act was instituted when “Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Mat 26:27, Mat 26:28). It may well be questioned whether a Church which forbids its members to drink of that cup does not shut them out from a full partaking of the life of Christ, so far as that blessing is imparted by that ordinance.
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR
Lev 17:1-16
Grace before meat.
Cf. 1Co 10:31. From the perfect atonement God provides, we are invited next to turn to the morality he requires. And no better beginning can be made than the acknowledgment of God in connection with our food. The beautiful way the Lord secured his own recognition as the bountiful Giver was by enacting that blood, since it is the means used in atonement, must be devoted to no meaner use. Hence it was to be carefully put away, either by the priest at the tabernacle, or by the huntsman in the dust of the wilderness, and the animal used as a peace offering before God (1Co 10:5). What we have consequently in this chapter is the religious use of food, or, as we have put it, “Grace before meat.” In this connection let us observe
I. THAT GOD HAS IMPLANTED SOME MEMENTO OF HIMSELF IN ALL OUR FOOD. Vegetable as well as animal life, of which we are reminded at every meal, is the sign manual of the living God. It is worse than stupidity not to recognize in the food we eat the gifts of his bounteous hand. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (Jas 1:17). Why personify nature into a giver as a mere subterfuge for gross ingratitude? The Divine hand is behind the whole, and an honest heart can see it and will bless it as the source of all!
II. GOD REMINDS US AT EVERY MEAL OF ATONEMENT AS THE PRELIMINARY TO PEACE AND FELLOWSHIP, For all our food once thrilled with organic life. There is literally the sacrifice of life, vegetable and animal, in every meal. Vegetarians sacrifice microscopic life, after all their efforts to sacrifice nothing but vegetable life. Thus our race is reminded of the first principle of atonement, every time we sit down at the table which a bounteous providence has spread. In fact, it is our own fault if every feast be not in a certain sense sacramental. The Supper of the New Testament, as well as the Passover of the Old, embodies the sacrifice of life in order to the support of man. It is on this principle that the world is constituted. If, then, we listened to the voice of Nature as we ought to do, we would hear her calling in every feast for the grateful recognition of that principle in atonement to which we have referred. Peace and communion arc really based in the order of nature upon the sacrifice of life. “Vicarious sacrifice” is a principle of vast range, and the atonement of Jesus is but a single application of it.
III. THE RECOGNITION OF GOD IN EVERY PLEASURE WILL MAKE IT DOUBLY DELIGHTFUL.
It is evident that God contemplated hunting as something which might be enjoyed religiously. The blood of the animal was to be carefully covered with dust in the hunting-field. Such a recognition of God may be carried into all legitimate enjoyment. As Charles Lamb suggests saying grace before entering upon new books, as something more fitting than a formal grace before gluttony, let us by all means carry the good custom into everything. We may develop our muscular powers in a religious spirit. Let us have religion in bodily exercise, religion in our social enjoyments, religion in business, religion in politics, religion in all things. “Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” We should recognize a “muscular Christianity,” and a mercantile Christianity, and a Christianity “which doth not behave itself unseemly” in society; in a word, the adaptability of the religious spirit to all lawful relations. The sooner we recognize and realize this, the better.R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY J.A. MACDONALD
Lev 17:1-16
Statutes concerning blood.
The sacredness of blood is everywhere marked in Scripture. The chapter before us contains some of the more important statutes concerning it.
I. IN RESPECT TO THE BLOOD OF SACRIFICE.
1. It must be brought to the door of the tabernacle.
(1) This requisition does not apply to animals ordinarily killed for food (comp. Deu 12:15, Deu 12:21).
(2) It applies to the blood of sacrifices.
(a) To the blood of those offered at the door of the tabernacle. As a matter of course, the bleed of such sacrifices would be sprinkled and poured out at the altar.
(b) To the blood of those also offered outside the camp (Lev 17:3, Lev 17:5). Sacrifices were formerly offered wherever the providence of God might indicate (Gen 12:8; Job 1:5). God still reserved to himself the right to sanction the offering of sacrifices where he pleased (see Jdg 6:26; Jdg 13:19; 1Sa 7:9; 2Sa 24:18; 1Ki 18:23). Without such sanction, the altar of the tabernacle is the one place appointed for the shedding of sacrificial blood.
(3) Public worship is encouraged by this law (Heb 10:25).
2. The penalty of disobedience is excision.
(1) The statute was enacted to prevent idolatry. Sacrificing elsewhere, they might be tempted to sacrifice to devils (Lev 17:7). The heathen thought the spirit of their god resided in his idol; such spirits are here called “devils.” All idolatry is from Satan, and is devilish (1Co 10:20). The word () here translated “devils” is elsewhere rendered “goats.” Perhaps the idols in which these spirits of devils were supposed to reside were of the goat-like form. Goats were worshipped in Egypt, and probably also in Canaan.
(2) Blood is imputed to him that sheds blood in sacrifice elsewhere than at the altar of the tabernacle (Lev 17:4). To bring the blood to the door of the tabernacle taught the worshipper to discern Christ, through whose blood we enter heaven. To miss this lesson was to degenerate into abominable and fatal idolatry (see Isa 66:3). This law applied to proselytes as well as to native Israelites (Lev 17:8, Lev 17:9). There is but one way to God for the Jew and Greek (Rom 3:30). “He that believeth not shall be damned” (see Lev 17:4).
II. IN RESPECT TO FOOD.
1. Blood as food is absolutely forbidden.
(1) The prohibition is among the Noachian precepts. He who reserved the tree of knowledge of good and evil in his grant of vegetables to man for food, reserved blood in his grant of animals (Gen 9:4, Gen 9:5). Being a Noachian precept, this law is obligatory upon the human family at large.
(2) The prohibition of blood was formally incorporated into the Levitical code (see Lev 17:10; also Le Lev 3:17; Lev 7:26; Deu 12:25). The abrogation of the Levitical Law, however, does not repeal the Noachian precept. Unless, therefore, it can be shown that the Noachian precept is abrogated, it is still unlawful both to Jew and Gentile to eat blood.
(3) So far from being repealed, this precept is re-enforced under the gospel (Act 15:28, Act 15:29). This “burden” our Lord still lays upon the Churches, even after the destruction of Jerusalem (see Rev 2:14-24). The significance of this term “burden” must not be overlooked (comp. Act 15:28 with Rev 2:24).
2. Two reasons for the prohibition are assigned. These are:
(1) That “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” This is philosophically true. Cut a nerve, you paralyze a member, but it lives; cut off the blood, the member mortifies. Blood flows to a wound, becomes vascular there, knits the living parts, and it heals. The vitality of the blood is seen in its power of maintaining its temperature against the extremes of heat and cold. The lesson of this reason is to teach us the value of life. Hence in connection with the Noachian precept prohibiting the eating of blood, we have also the law guarding the life of man by the penalty of death to the murderer.
(2) That “it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Lev 17:11). That should not be treated as a common thing which is the principle of atonement, and the type of the precious blood of Christ.
(3) For these reasons also things strangled are forbidden, things which died alone, or were torn; things not so killed as to let the blood properly flow from them. Thus the slaying of every animal used for food in the sacrificial way would remind the eater of the necessity of sacrifice for sin (see 1Co 10:31).
3. The penalty here also is excision
(1) If things strangled were eaten, the transgressor became unclean (see 1Sa 14:32, 1Sa 14:33). He must wash his clothes, for his profession hath been polluted. He must wash his flesh, for his person is defiled. If he neglect this repentance and purification, he shall bear his iniquity; he is obnoxious to excision (Lev 17:16; Le Lev 5:17; Num 9:13).
(2) What, then, can be said for a Church which professes literally to drink the blood of Christ in the cup of the Mass? Is not that Church thereby guilty of outraging the law of all the dispensations? It would evade this impeachment by impudently authorizing the eating of blood. But no impudence can evade the penalty: “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood of your lives will I require.” Does not this plainly say that God will require the blood of the life of the blood-eater .9 David abhors the practice of the Syrians, who made libations of blood to their gods, and prophetically denounces and rejects our antichristian idolaters (see Psa 16:4). Drunk as she is with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus, God will give her blood to drink, for she is worthy.J.A.M.
HOMILIES BY S.R. ALDRIDGE
Lev 17:1-7
One place of sacrifice.
It is of the essence of law to be impartial. Its precepts apply to all without distinction. “Aaron and his sons and all the children of Israel” are here included in the scope of the Divine commands. Let none deem himself too humble or too exalted to incur displeasure by infraction of the Law.
I. We see that A LAWFUL ACTION MAY BE UNLAWFULLY PERFORMED. A wrong time or place may vitiate a deed otherwise permissible. Animals were given to man as food, and to slaughter and eat them was not in itself sin, but after the issue of this prohibition it became sin to do so without presenting them at the tabernacle. “Blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood.” So the homicide justifiable in war becomes murder, and the intercourse of matrimony fornication, and the “word spoken in season” a casting of pearls before swine, by reason of impropriety of person or season.
II. THE PEOPLE OF GOD MUST EXPECT RESTRICTIONS TO BE PLACED UPON THEIR LIBERTY. The nations may follow their own devices and desires, the chosen people are under a covenant to obey the commands of the Legislator. They are assured that his wisdom and kindness will prevent the adoption of unnecessary and inequitable prohibitions. For all his precepts there are the best possible reasons, and therefore obedience is cheerfully rendered. Note the noble reply which Milton puts into the mouth of the seraph Abdiel, to the taunts of Satan (‘Paradise Lost,’ book 6:170-181). Whilst the Israelites were in the wilderness, and the tabernacle abode in the midst of the camp, no hardship was involved in attending to this injunction, and it restrained them from evil practices, disciplining them against the time that they should enter the land of promise and have the injunction removed. Besides, animal food was scarce in the wilderness, as we learn from the complaints of the people.
III. TO RECOGNIZE GOD IN OUR COMMON ACTIONS AND ENJOYMENTS HALLOWS LIFEMAKES IT A RELIGIOUS SERVICE. The slain animal is consecrated as a peace offering, its blood being sprinkled on the altar, the fat burnt for a “sweet savour unto the Lord,” and the remainder partaken of with gratitude and joy. God is honoured and man profited. Alas! that so many can continually receive God’s mercies without acknowledgment, no blessing invoked, and no emotion of holy gladness sweetening the repast! The Christian ideal is to do all in the Name of Jesus and to the glory of God.
IV. TO REFUSE TO GOD HIS RIGHTS IS TO COMMIT IDOLATRY. The Israelites were certain to turn the slaughter of an animal into a festival, and the question was, to whom should the feast be dedicated? Homage to the demons of the field could not be sanctioned, it was a breach at once of the first and seventh commandments. It is frequently forgotten that a neutral attitude in respect of God is impossible; we are either on his side or against him. Intellectualism, materialism, scientificism, agnosticism, it matters not by what name our rejection of the claims of religion is covered, it really designates the setting up of an idol upon the throne of the heart, and we adore the enemy of God.
V. THE PROBATIONARY CHARACTER OF MANY OF GOD‘S REQUIREMENTS IS HERE MADE VISIBLE. In Deu 12:1-32 the precept of the text is repealed as relating to the settled condition of life in Palestine, when it would manifestly be difficult to comply with the law. By that period the precept had served its purpose in training the Israelites to abstain from evil practices, and to honour Jehovah with all their substance. And we today have our wilderness system of probation and training, many rules designed to meeten us for the society of just men made perfect. The injunction of the text pointed to the transitory nature of the Law as a whole. It has been abrogated by the gospel, the dispensation of promise, the land of liberty and rest. Yet, as in their residence in Palestine, the Israelites continued to observe the spirit of the repealed Law, so do we, under the gospel, retain the principles that underlay the Mosaic legislation. To acknowledge God in every meal and mercy, to hallow the secular and to promote it to the sacred, this, as it is the object of Christian endeavour, is the spirit of the command we have been considering in Leviticus. And equally so, the principles and spirit of our Christian earthly life will be recognizable in the higher worship and service of heaven. The accident changes, the essence alters not.S.R.A.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
Lev 17:1-7
Features of Christian service.
It is open to question whether the prohibition (Lev 17:3, Lev 17:4) extends to all animals killed for feed, or only to those slain in sacrifice. The former view is, in my judgment, the correct one; for
(1) the instruction is explicit enough (Lev 17:3, Lev 17:4), and without qualification;
(2) the limitation is afterwards allowed in consideration of the change of circumstance (Deu 12:20, Deu 12:21); and
(3) the difficulty in the case is less on consideration than it at first appears. It is objected that this would be a burdensome prohibition; but
(a) it only lasted (see above) while they were in the camp, near to one another, and all near to the tabernacle; and
(b) much less flesh was eaten there and then than is eaten here and now. A more largely vegetable diet would probably be wholesome for us; it was undoubtedly so in the desert of Arabia. When we more carefully consider this precept, we see its beneficent character; we perceive
I. A FATAL EVIL, FROM WHICH IT WAS DESIGNED TO SAVE THEM. The practices of Egypt clung to them; among these was demon-worship (Lev 17:7). They had gone after those demons, and offered sacrifices to them. If any animal might be killed anywhere for food, and the blood of it might not be eaten (Lev 3:17; Lev 7:26), there would be a strong temptation to the superstitious to pour it out in sacrifice to those demons of whose malignant interposition they were afraid. This temptation must, at all cost, be guarded against. It would introduce or foster that idolatrous usage from which it was the supreme object of all these statutes to keep Israel free. And if no animal might be slain save at the tabernacle door, there would be no danger of this disastrous lapse into Egyptian superstition.
II. THE GOOD IT WAS DESIGNED TO DO THEM. It would confer a threefold boon upon them.
1. It would bring them often to the tabernacle, and so to the near presence and worship of God; it would multiply their sacrifices (Lev 17:5, Lev 17:6).
2. It would lead them to associate their material blessings with the Divine hand; presenting them unto the Lord, they could not fail to be reminded that they were his gifts.
3. It would help them to look on Jehovah as their Divine Friend. These became peace offerings (Lev 17:5), and the essential thought of such offering was human fellowship with God.
We detect here some useful suggestions as to the true character of Christian service.
1. We must not make our Christian worship too deprecatory in its character. There is something painfully and dangerously like demon-worship in the devotion of some men; they seldom rise above the deprecatory in their thought, as if God were a being so stern and so reluctant to forgive that his people should spend all their devotional breath in deprecating his wrath. Surely to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ we should bring, beside this, our adoration, praise, gratitude, trust, love, consecration, etc.
2. We must learn to connect daily blessings with the Divine hand. We should, in thought though not in act, bring everything we have to “the door of the tabernacle,” trace each good thing we enjoy to the generous Giver of all, to his heart of love as well as to his hand of bounty.
3. We should bless God for revealing himself to us as our Divine Friend, in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has taught us to think and feel that we are the friends and guests of God (Joh 15:14, Joh 15:15; Joh 14:23; Rev 3:20).C.
Lev 17:10-16
Atoning death.
We have here a repetition of a law which had already been twice delivered (Lev 3:17; Lev 7:23-26). Its full and formal restatement is very significant, and this the more because of the emphatic utterance of Divine displeasure in the event of disobedience. “I will even set my face against that soul and will cut him off,” etc. (Lev 17:10). Obviously, the highest importance was attached by God to the observance of this injunction not to eat “any manner of blood.” We regard
I. THE PRIMARY SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS LAW. This is clearly indicated in Lev 17:11 and Lev 17:12. We shall understand it if we consider the subject thus:
1. Happy and harmonious relations between Jehovah and his people were maintained by continual sacrifices at his altar.
2. In these sacrifices the life of the slain animal was accepted by God as an atonement for the forfeited life of the human transgressor.
3. But the blood of the animal was regarded as the seat and source of its life. When its blood was shed its life was taken, and the shed blood was sprinkled before the vail or poured on the altar (Lev 2:6, Lev 2:7), as standing for the life which had been offered by man, and been accepted by God. “The blood of bulls and of goats,” therefore, however insufficient of itself for the high purpose of atonement for human sin, was yet the outward and visible means which the Holy One of Israel was pleased to appoint for reconciliation between himself and his people. Therefore it was to be held sacred; the idea of it must not be vulgarized, as it would inevitably be if blood were used as common food at ordinary meals. Its sanctity must be carefully fenced. Men must associate with it, in their minds, nothing but the forfeited life, the atonement, with which it was so closely connected. All their domestic and social customs (Lev 17:13, Lev 17:15, Lev 17:16) must be so ordered that the blood of animals, anywhere and anywise slain, should speak of those sacrifices at the altar in which the erring souls of men sought and found the mercy and the favour of their God.
II. ITS SIGNIFICANCE TO OURSELVES. It suggests to us the truth that, as the disciples of Jesus Christ, we also should count very sacred in our esteem the thought of atoning blood.
1. For we, too, are redeemed by “precious blood” (see 1Pe 1:18, 1Pe 1:19; Eph 1:7; Heb 9:12-14; Rev 5:9). It may not have been needful that, in the literal sense, the blood of the Son of man should flow, but it was needful that his life, of which the blood is the source and the symbol, should be laid down.
2. Our Lord has given us a permanent institution, the object of which is to keep before our minds the shedding of his blood for our sins (Mat 26:28; 1Co 11:26).
3. By their words, he and his apostles laid the greatest stress on his atoning death as the source of our life and hope (Joh 12:32; Joh 6:53; Luk 24:46, Luk 24:47; Heb 9:14; 1Jn 1:7, etc.).
4. His atoning death was the object of our soul’s trust when we entered our Christian course, and will be at the hour when we shall complete it.
5. It is the will of Christ that we should keep it continually in view throughout our life. It is our wisdom as well as our duty so to do, inasmuch as the contemplation of his death for our sins will minister
(1) to our humility;
(2) to our gratitude;
(3) to a consecrated life of cheerful obedience and submission.C.
HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD
Lev 17:1-9
Sanctity of animal life.
All God’s people commanded to observe restrictions as to the shedding of blood. Door of the tabernacle connected with the sphere of common life; thus religion and its duty threw sacredness over all things.
I. THE DOMINION OF MAN OVER THE LOWER CREATION.
1. Appointed by God (see Gen 1:26 and Psa 8:1-9).
2. Limited in its extent, by necessity, humanity of feeling, provision for the higher purposes of human life.
3. Capable of being blended with the Law of the sanctuary. We should afford all creatures dependent on us, as much as possible our own sabbath of bodily rest. We should make it a religious duty to protect them from injury and suffering. In so far as we use them for food, an offering of them should not be to the god of sensuality, but to him whose Law requires temperance, self-restraint, and reverence for the lower nature, that it may support the higher. All with thanksgiving.
II. POWER OF LIFE AND DEATH IS IN AND FROM GOD. As entrusted to man, whether over the lower animals or over his fellows, it is a power to be exercised as in the sight of God and at the door of his house.
1. Shedding of blood a solemn responsibility. In common life, lest we be guilty of cruelty and destruction of a true and valuable element in the world’s welfare. In execution of law, lest we give to that which represents the Divine will the appearance of injustice and wantonness. Even in healthy sport, care must be taken lest there be an overbalance of the mind towards shedding of blood or disregard of suffering. In all questions of difficulty, bring the matter to the door of the tabernacle.
2. The sacredness of blood points to atonement. The devoted and slaughtered animal was received back again as a Divine gift for the use of the offerer, thus lifting up death into life. Sacrifice is not God’s delight in death, but his promise of salvation. The sanctity attached to the blood of victims prepared the way to the higher sanctity attached to the blood of Christ. The Old and New Testaments explain one another.
III. PRESERVATION FROM IDOLATRY AND FALSE WORSHIP IN THE POSITIVE REGULATIONS OF THE LAW. Mistake of supposing that mere negative religion will purify men from corruption. Against the worship of devils we are never sate except as we are engaged in the worship of the true God.R.
Lev 17:10-16
Lev 17:11, “The life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”
I. THE NATURAL BASIS OF ATONEMENT.
1. The preciousness of life. The blood is the seat of life.
2. The exchange of the altar, blood for life, a lower for a higher, requires a supplementary value, which is represented by the altar itself.
3. The law proclaimed at the first against the shedding of blood taken up into the higher law of redemption; righteousness becoming at the altar of God the refuge of man.
II. ATONEMENT FOR THE SOUL PROVIDED BY DIVINE LOVE. “I have given it you to make an atonement.”
1. All atonement must proceed from Divine love, otherwise it will be heathenish as effecting a change in God. Christ is set forth a propitiation.
2. Atonement is made, i.e; by being offered, the blood shed at the tabernacle door, offered upon the altar. Thus the sacrifice is a revelation and consecration of the bond of union in the covenant relation between God and man.
3. The blood, while representing the life, also represents the obedience active and passive of Christ, which was both a rendering up to God of a perfect humanity, and an exaltation of the Law in the sufferings and death of Calvary; the old man crucified, the new man glorified.
4. All human merit is excluded: “I have given it you.” No amount of sacrifice would be of any avail except it be according to the will of God. We give back to him of his own. Hence the difference between the Jewish sacrifices and those of pagan nations, and between the morality which is founded on the sacrifice of Christ, and that which proceeds from mere self-will or an unjustifiable and false exaltation of human nature as it is. He that is not clean as God makes him clean shall “bear his iniquity.” Necessity of insisting on this doctrine of atonement in the present day. Falsehood as to humanity, in the way of all true progress. Those who boast are not those who make sacrifices to elevate man. “Survival of the fittest” a cruel remedy for the world’s miseries. Christ’s doctrine is elevation of the lowest. Atonement for your souls is the beginning of all true life.R.
HOMILIES BY S.R. ALDRIDGE
Lev 17:11
The sanctity of the atoning blood.
No act was more strongly denounced than that of eating any manner of blood. The man guilty of that deed, whether an Israelite or a stranger sojourning in the land, was threatened with the displeasure of God and severest penalty. It seemed to partake of the nature of a ceremonial rather than a moral offense, yet it must be remembered that violations of ritual become moral transgressions when they are committed against the known will of the recognized Legislator. This is especially the case when, as here, the Lawgiver condescends to explain the reason upon which the prohibition is founded. Such explanation ought to secure intelligent observance of the enactment. And that enactment was but the reissue of the former decree that gave animals to man for food, but annexed a prohibition against tasting the blood (Gen 9:4).
I. The fact stated, that THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD CONSTITUTES AS ATONEMENT. Illustrated by the numerous sacrifices of the patriarchs, and the provisions of the Law that sacrifices should form a part of all national and individual festivals, as well as of all offerings to wipe away inadvertent transgression. See it in the sprinkling of the book and vessels and people at the ratification of the covenant. It is confirmed by the well-nigh universal practice of heathen nations, and is proved by direct Scripture statements in the Old and New Testaments. “Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb 9:22). It typified, therefore, the offering of Jesus Christ, whose blood redeems us “from our vain manner of life” (1Pe 1:18). “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” This Mosaic way of speaking is ingrained in the apostles, showing how they regarded the death of Jesus as the fulfilment of the types of the Law.
II. The truth implied that THE CHIEF VIRTUE OF BLOOD AS AN ATONEMENT IS DERIVED FROM GOD‘S APPOINTMENT. “I have given it unto you” indicates that the blood of animals had no intrinsic efficacy to atone for sin. And the same truth is shadowed forth in the words, “upon the altar.” There was no difference in itself between blood ordinarily spilt and that presented before God, but the presentation constituted the difference. To sprinkle the blood upon the altar was to bring it emblematically into the very presence of the Deity. “God set forth” Christ Jesus “to be a propitiation, through faith, by his blood.”
III. The reason afforded for the selection of BLOOD, that it IS THE VEHICLE OF LIFE. Physiology, and especially recent investigations with the microscope, confirm the dictum of Scripture, that “the blood is the life.” It nourishes and sustains the whole physical frame; if it deteriorate in quality the body weakens, if it diminish in quantity power is lessened.
1. By such an atonement God is recognized as Lord of life and of all its consequences. He gave and takes away, to him alone should life be offered. Thus the sanctity of life was enforced. Man was not to feast upon that which was God’s prerogative; blood must be poured upon the ground like water, thus returning to the earth.
2. The enormity of sin is represented, as enacting the utmost for an atonement that can be rendered. “Life is the most cherished of possessions, since man is powerless to create or to restore it.” The crowning proof of Christ’s compassion was that he gave “his life”a ransom for the many, and the gift revealed the awfulness of sin to require such a redemption.
3. It represents the substitution of one life for another, death being the sentence pronounced upon the sinner. “When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin” was Isaiah’s prediction of the sacrifice of Christ. It may be observed that the word in the text translated “soul” and “life” is the same, corresponding to the use made of the equivalent Greek word in Mat 16:25, Mat 16:26. That but for the death of Jesus Christ we must have been subject to eternal death, is the plain import of many passages in the Word of God.
IV. THE FUTURE ADVENT TYPIFIED OF ONE WHO SHOULD BY HIS OFFERING: FULFIL ALL THE CONDITIONS OF A PERFECT ATONEMENT. Every Israelite might not perceive in the insufficiency of his sacrifices a prediction of the Lamb of God, but there it was portrayed visibly enough. An innocent, holy, human victim, a voluntary offering, being himself the Lawgiver, and by incarnation subjecting himself to the Law, making adequate acknowledgment of the righteousness of God and of the ill deserts of God’s rebellious sinful children, revealing to man at once the loving heart of God and the hatefulness of sin which had estranged man from his Father in heaven, by his death exhibiting the length to which sin will go, and the willingness of Divine holiness and love to submit to extreme degradation and anguish in order that the curse might be removed and man’s heart won,this is the atonement of truest efficacy, a mighty moral power with God and man. This is the death that gives life to the world, the blood that cries out, not for vengeance, but for mercy, that sanctifies not merely to the purifying of the flesh, but to the purging of the conscience from dead works to serve the living God. And the shedding of the blood of Christ was the signal for release from the ceremonies and restrictions imposed by the Mosaic Law. The prohibition of the text had served its purpose.
CONCLUSION. With what rejoicing should we approach our altar, the cross of Christ (Heb 13:10)! And what guilt we incur if we slight the blood of Christ as little available for salvation, or, though professing to believe, yet by conduct show that we count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing!S.R.A.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
BOOK II
OF CONTINUANCE IN COMMUNION WITH GOD
Leviticus 17-26
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The keeping holy of the consecrated relations of the life of Israel, of the whole round of sacrifice, and of the round of typical holiness, by the putting aside of the sins of obduracy (Cherem). Chaps. 1727Lange.
PART I. HOLINESS ON THE PART OF THE PEOPLE
Leviticus 17-20
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FIRST SECTION
The keeping holy of all animal slaughter as the basis of all sacrifice, of the blood as the soul of all sacrifice, and of animal food as the foundation of all food, of all feasting.Lange.
Holiness in Regard to Food
Lev 17:1-16
1And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 2Speak unto Aaron, and unto his sons, and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto them: This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded, saying, 3What man soever there be of the house of Israel1 that killeth an ox, or lamb [sheep2], or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp, 4and bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the [om. the] congregation, to offer an offering unto the Lord before the tabernacle [the dwelling place3] of the Lord;4 blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people: 5to the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they offer [sacrifice5] in the open field, even that they may bring them unto the Lord, unto the door of the tabernacle of the [om. the] congregation, unto the priest, and offer them for peace offerings unto the Lord. 6And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the [om. the] congregation, and burn the fat for a sweet savour unto the Lord. 7And they shall no more offer [sacrifice5] their sacrifices unto devils [demons6], after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations.
8And thou shalt say unto them, Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers which sojourn among you, that offereth a burnt offering or sacrifice, 9and bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the [om. the] congregation to offer it unto the Lord; even that man shall be cut off from among his people.
10And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people. 11For the life [soul7] of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for [by means of8] the soul. 12Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourneth among you eat blood.
13And whatsoever man there be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, which hunteth and catcheth any beast9 or foul that may be 14eaten; he shall even pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with dust. For it is the life [of it is the soul8] of all flesh: the blood of it is for the life [soul7] thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life [soul10] of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.
15And every soul that eateth that which died of itself, or that which was torn with beasts, whether it be one of your own country, or a stranger, he shall both wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even: then shall he be clean. 16But if he wash them not, nor bathe his flesh; then he shall bear his iniquity.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lev 17:3. The LXX. here, as in the text in Lev 17:8; Lev 17:10, inserts the clause or of the strangers which sojourn among you.
Lev 17:3. . See Textual Note5 on Lev 3:7.
Lev 17:4. . See Textual Note8 on Lev 15:31. There is especial reason for a change in the rendering here as the has just occurred in the previous clause.
Lev 17:4. This ver. is largely interpolated in the Sam. and LXX. to offer a burnt offering or a peace offering [for your atonement Sam.] acceptable unto the Lord for an odor of a sweet savor. And whosoever shall kill without, and shall not bring it to the door of the tabernacle of testimony, that he may offer an offering to the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord; blood shall be, etc. The purpose of this interpolation is supposed to be to bring this passage into harmony with Deu 12:25; but the difficulty, if any can be considered to exist, is not avoided by this repetition.
Lev 17:5. . The same word occurring twice in the same clause should surely have the same translation. is the technical word for killing in sacrifice, and although in the later books it is rarely used for slaughtering in the more general sense, it is never applied in the Pentateuch to anything else than sacrifice. See preliminary note on sacrifice. It cannot, therefore (with Clark) be here taken of simply slaughtering for food.
Lev 17:7. lit. to buck-goats. See Exeg. The A. V. has, however, undoubtedly expressed the sense, except that here, as frequently in the New Testament and sometimes in the Old (as in the translation of the same word in 2Ch 11:15). it uses the plural devils; but one is recognized in Scripture, and evil spirits in the plural are expressed by or . It is better therefore to substitute demons. Vulg. dmones, LXX. . In the A. V. in Isa 13:21; Isa 34:14 it is rendered Satyrs.
Lev 17:11; Lev 17:14. is here equivalent to and is so rendered in the LXX. In English the life of the A. V. may be understood in the same way, but so also may soul, and it is better in this very important passage to keep a uniform rendering of the Heb. word. All the ancient versions retain the same rendering throughout, so do several modern versions and almost all recent expositors.
Lev 17:11. = maketh an atonement by means of the soul. with has only a local or instrumental signification (Lev 6:23; Lev 16:17; Lev 16:27; also Lev 7:7; Exo 29:33; Num 5:8). Accordingly, it was not the blood as such, but the blood as the vehicle of the soul, which possessed expiatory virtue. Keil, following Knobel. Similarly Bhr, Kurtz, and others. So also Von Gerlach and Clark. The A. V. is singularly infelicitous in that it refers the final to the soul of man, instead of to the soul of the victim; nevertheless, it follows the LXX., the Targums, and the Vulg.; and so also Luther.
Lev 17:13. See note1 on Lev 11:2.
Lev 17:14. Comp. Lev 17:11. occurs three times in this verse, each time rendered in the A. V. life, but the uniform translation soul is better. In the expression the blood of it is the soul thereof, is to be taken as a predicate in its meaning, introduced with beth essentiale. It is only as so understood that the clause supplies a reason at all in harmony with the context. Keil. With this most modern commentators concur, as well as the ancient and several recent versions.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The whole of Langes Exegetical is here given. 1. With our chapter begins the second half of the Book of Leviticus. The book as a whole treats of the priestly presentation of the typical holiness of Israel, of the people of the holy Jehovah. In the first part, Leviticus 1-16, the various forms of the purification or sanctification of the impure and unholy people are set forth; in the second part, from Leviticus 17 to the end, the various ways of keeping holy the people and their common life are now prescribed, and that too by the punishment of Cherem, as far as the profanations are wittingly committed (with uplifted hand). Profanations from impulse on the other hand, must place the backsliding Israelite under the law of purification, which has found its culmination in the holiness of Israel through the great sacrifice of atonement.
How much this organic completeness of the whole book can be mistaken, Knobel shows most remarkably when he says: The section has, in its expression, much in common with the Elohist, but yet it cannot have come from him, since (a) he would have attached it to Leviticus 1-7, where it fits best (!); or, on account of Lev 17:15, at least to Leviticus 11-15; but would not have placed it here, beyond the law of the Day of Atonement, etc.
[This chapter, like all the Divine communications in the remainder of Leviticus, is addressed to Moses; indeed this is the case throughout the whole book, except when Moses and Aaron are addressed together in regard to acts which depended upon an exercise of priestly judgment, and also except the single instance (Lev 10:8-11) in which the prohibition of the priestly use of strong drink is addressed to Aaron alone. Still, several of these communications to Moses are to be immediate y communicated by him, as in the present chapter, unto Aaron, and unto his sons, and unto all the children of Israel, as alike binding upon them all. A slight difference in the arrangement of this portion of Leviticus is occasioned by treating the concluding chapter (27) as an appendix, which seems to be required by the formula of conclusion at the end of Leviticus 26. The other ten chapters are arranged as follows: 1720, holiness in matters which concern the people generally, the last chapter (20) being occupied chiefly with the punishments for the violation of this holiness; 21, 22, holiness in matters concerning the priests and offerings; 2325, sanctification of the various feasts, including also that of the holy lamps and shew-bread (Lev 24:1-9), and a short historical section giving the account of the punishment of a blasphemer (Lev 24:10-23); 26 forms the conclusion of the whole book, consisting of promises and threats; and to this is added an appendix (27) on vows. This portion of the law of Leviticus is arranged, therefore, in the same systematic way as the former portion, and the two parts stand also in systematic relation to one another. As the former part relates to the birth of the nation as a spiritual commonwealth, so the present part relates to the progress of their social life as the people of God. Murphy. Necessarily there are details common to both portions, and this sometimes occasions certain slight repetitions; but such repetitions were unavoidable if the systematic character of the legislation above pointed out was to be preserved. Thus the present chapter, on a superficial view, might seem as Knobel has suggested, to be connected with the law of sacrifice; but on examination it will be at once seen that the subject here is the sanctification of animal food, and to this sacrifice, although generally necessary, is only incidental. Or, as Knobel also suggests, it might seem to be connected with the laws of clean and unclean food of Leviticus 11; but the purpose is wholly different,there the question is what may be eaten; here, how it shall be eaten. In both cases, the former chapters have for their main point, the laying down of the conditions under which Israel may enter into communion with God; these that follow deal with the conduct of the daily life, by means of which they may continue in that communion. The eating of animal food naturally comes first into consideration, as the act which must be continually repeated and continually thrust upon the attention.F. G.].
2. Our section begins with the most intimately connected ways of preserving holiness: (a) of the slaying, (b) of the blood, (c) of the use of the flesh.
3. Every slaying of a clean animal designed for food must take place before the door of the tabernacle of congregation quite without exception, whether the slayer was within or without the camp. That is every slaying of an animal was put in relation with the peace offering, and thus also was a sort of sacrifice. [It does not appear from the text that the slaying itself took place at the door of the tabernacle, but only the offering, as in the case of all other sacrifices. The animal was probably slain where the other victims were slain, this being passed over in the text as already provided for in the law of sacrifice. These slayings for food were in every particular, not merely like, but actual peace offerings, unless a distinction should be sought in the fact that there is here no especial provision forgiving a portion to the priests; but that, like the place of slaying, has already been provided for in the law of sacrifice. That the meaning of this passage is, that all sacrificial animals killed for food must first be offered as victims in sacrifice, is plain from the removal of the restriction in Deu 12:15; Deu 12:20-21. It is also shown by the use of instead of in Lev 17:3, a distinction carefully observed in the killeth of the A. V. From S. Augustine and Theodoret down, however, there has always been a difference of opinion upon this point among interpreters; most modern commentators, however (as Rosenmller, Knobel, Keil, Kalisch, Clark, etc.) agree that the law must relate to all killing of animals for food. Not much animal food was used in the wilderness, as is evidenced by the various murmurings of the people, the manna forming their chief support. It is to be remembered that this part of the law, as far as Lev 17:7, is made obligatory only upon the Israelites, and even for them was in force only during the life in the wilderness; while the rest of the chapter includes also the stranger in its requirements.F. G.]. The offering, indeed, consisted in this, that the animal was brought to the Tabernacle of congregation, and placed before the priest, and that the priest sprinkled the blood of the same on the altar, and burned the fat for a sweet savour. The same rule was obligatory for the strangers not of Israel, if they wished not only to slay, but with their slaying to bring also a burnt or peace offeringthey might offer only before the door of the tabernacle of congregation; for the public worship of false gods was forbidden in Israel (Exo 23:32-33). [This law, in regard to sacrificing, is made obligatory upon the strangers, as well as upon the house of Israel in Lev 17:8-9; but the previous part of the law (Lev 17:1-7) applies only to the Israelites. Both were restrained from offering sacrifices elsewhere; but only the latter were obliged to make offerings of all animals slain for food.F. G.]. The opposite, which was at the same time to be avoided by the Israelites, reads thus: they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to the he-goats (Luther: the field-devils), as to those which they who are in the snare whore after. Thus we understand the expression in reference to this, not as a reproach: which they whore after hitherto, or are inclined to whore after. [The Heb. is , which seems sufficiently well expressed in the A. V., and this is sustained (either in the present or the past tense) by all the ancient versions.F. G.]. Rightly the Egyptian worship of the he goat was remembered, which was a deification of the generative desire, and consequently of sensuality, and the biblical expression to whore after applies in this connection with double force. It can thus be perceived that the offering of the slain flesh, besides the religious idea, had also the moral purpose of hindering unrestrained luxury. But with the sacrifice of the slain animal, the fact was at the same time declared, that in truth every animal enjoyed in the fear of God was offered to the Lord; that the man who must offer himself to Jehovah must also place his slaying of an animal under the aspect of giving it up to Jehovah, if he wished to keep it holy. Therefore also the transgression is treated as a blood-guiltiness, and would be visited upon them by Jehovah as a murder. Since man has the right to shed the blood of an animal only from Jehovah, and in relation to Jehovah (to whom everything, with this, must revert as a sacrifice), a reckless slaying of an animal appears in the text as the beginning of a criminal blood-shedding, which on a descending path, may end in the murder of man. [Lev 17:1-7. Lev 17:4. Blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood. This does not mean that murder is to be imputed to the offender, but that the blood of the animal which he has actually shed is to be reckoned to his charge. The reason of both this precept and that against the eating of blood is given in Lev 17:11 : Blood had been divinely appointed as a means of atonement. If now the animal slain was one allowable for sacrifice, and its blood was not used for atonement, the offender was guilty of a misuse of that which God had appointed for this purpose, and he must be held responsible for the wasted blood. By analogy, the blood of animals that were not sacrificial (Lev 17:13-14) must also be treated with respect. It is important to note this meaning of the passage, for nowhere in Scripture is anything ever said to be imputed to a man by God which does not really belong to him.That man shall be cut off from among his people.The slighting of the Divinely appointed means of atonement was a sin which struck so deeply at the root of the theocratic and typical law that it was inconsistent with membership among the holy people. The offender must be excommunicated. Lev 17:5. A further reason is here given for the law of Lev 17:4. It is only applied to peace offerings, for this was the only kind of sacrifice that could be used by the people for food, the subject of this paragraph. This reason is further developed in Lev 17:7. It would seem that the Israelites, very lately come out of Egypt, were more or less in the habit, so common among all nations of antiquity (comp. 1 Corinthians 8; 1Co 10:25-28), of consecrating all animal food by first offering the animal to the Deity; and this custom, if allowed to be carried out by the people at their own pleasure, would become, and indeed had already become (Lev 17:7) a fruitful source of idolatry. Entirely to cut off this, it is provided that all such offerings must be brought first unto the door of the tabernacle, the place of the sole worship of Jehovah; and second, unto the priest, as His representative, and the mediator between Him and the people. The custom of sacrificing in the open field also prevailed among the nations of classic antiquity, and was so inveterate among the Israelites as to be spoken of by both Hosea (Hos 12:11) and Jeremiah (Jer 13:27). Jer 17:7. Unto demons.The Hebrew word, as noted under Textual, is the same as that for he-goats,. Onkelos has , the same word as is used in Deu 32:17, meaning demons. It is doubtful whether the word is used of an actual worship of a false god under the form of a goat, or only figuratively. Certainly at a later date there was in Thmuis, the capital of the Mendesian nome in lower Egypt, and therefore near the residence of the Israelites, a horrible and licentious worship of the fertilizing principle in nature, represented by a he-goat (Joseph. c. Ap. ii. 7; Herod. ii. 42, 46; Diod. Sic. i. 18; Strabo, lib. xvii. c. 19, 802; c. 40, 813); it may be doubted whether this, in its full development, existed as early as the time of Moses; but very likely it may have already been known in its germ, and have been communicated to the Israelites (comp. Hengstenberg Eg. and the Books of Moses, Am. Ed., p. 216). The strong tendency of the Israelites to adopt idolatrous forms of worship borrowed from Egypt had already been shown in the instance of the golden calf; and we find again (2Ch 11:15) this very worship of the he-goat (A. V. devils) mentioned along with the calves of Jeroboam, who had sojourned so long in Egypt before ascending his throne.This shall be a statute forever does not refer to the sacrificing of animals designed for food, which was revoked with the termination of the life in the wilderness; but to the worship of demons, which is the immediate subject.F. G.]
Knobel thinks this statute forever was abolished later, when the animals were no longer brought to the Tabernacle or to the Temple; but the principal thought is the consecration to Jehovah, the religious slaying, and in this the statute (the husk of an idea) remains among the Jews continually, even to this day. But the idea itself remains continually in the Christian community. From this type it follows also that that use of animal food was sacrilegious in which the distinction between the nature of man and of animals was obliterated.
4. Most solemnly is the use of blood forbidden. There follows immediately the menace of punishment in the strongest terms for the stranger as well as for the Israelite: I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people [Lev 17:10]. The reason is this: the soul or life of the flesh, its soul-like life-principle, is in the blood. But the blood belongs, as does all life, to Jehovah, and He has given it to the Israelites only for a definite purpose, that they may with it atone for, or cover, their souls. The blood is the atonement for the life, since in the blood the life is given over to the judgment of Jehovah for deliverance and for pardon. Therefore the prohibition is here repeated, as it has also been already expressed. Even to the blood of beasts that man slays in the chase, to the very birds, this prohibition applies, although this blood was not offered; it was to be poured out and covered with earthit was to be buried. The burial is generally analogous to the sprinkling of the blood upon the altar, as the earth is an altar in the widest senseit is a symbol of the atonement of the life, which lies in the resignation of the life. As physiology confirms the proposition that the blood is the especial source of life in living creatures, so do justice and the philosophy of religion confirm the proposition that death atones for the guilt of lifeso far as it is on this side of death (Rom 6:7). And the use of blood must appear wicked as long as blood was the means of atonement. But the analogue for this guilt, for all times, is the making common of life, of death, of blood, the self-willed invasion of the destiny of man. [Lev 17:10-14. Lange has not here called attention especially to Lev 17:8-9, which show that the stranger was allowed to offer both the burnt offering and the sacrifice (i.e. the peace offering); only in so doing he must conform to the law in offering it at the door of the tabernacle. This command is given here because the previous statute being only applicable to the Israelite, and the stranger not being required to offer as sacrifices the animals he might kill for food, he might have claimed the liberty also of offering sacrifices at his own pleasure. The penalty of Lev 17:9, since it applies equally to the stranger, cannot be restricted to excommunication, but must be understood either of banishment from the land or else of the punishment of death. The object, as already noticed, and as is evident from the amplification of the law in Deuteronomy 12, was at once to prevent idolatrous sacrifices, and also to keep up the idea of the sacrifice as having only a typical and not an intrinsic efficacy, since it could only be allowed at all when its blood was sprinkled on the altar by the appointed priest. The other injunctions that follow in this chapter, equally with the present one, are applicable to strangers as well as Israelites. In Lev 17:10 the expression set my face against means that God will take the punishment of the offence into His own hands; He will oppose and reject the offender. In Lev 17:11 the vicarious character of the atonement effected by means of the sacrifices is very clearly brought out; the soul, the , the principle of animal life, is in the blood, and for that reason the soul of animals was given to man to make an atonement for his own soul; by the giving up of the life of the animal the life of man was spared. Nothing is said here of the higher spiritual principle in man, becauseeven if the people could have understood such a distinctionthere was nothing answering to this in the brute. Nothing in the victim could be a vicarious substitute for this; that want could be met only by the sacrifice of Calvary. Meantime, however, this was symbolized and set forth, as far as the nature of the case allowed, by the substitution of the animal life of the victim for the animal life of man. The blood, therefore, maketh an atonement by means of the soul which is in it. See Textual note 8. The statement is not here, that the blood makes atonement for the soul, as in the A. V.; this idea has already been expressed in the previous clause, and now is added the statement of how this is effected, lest there should seem to be a virtue in the mere blood itself as such. With this exposition of the meaning of the passage itself must be connected the whole typical significance of sacrifice; and in view of this there is truth in the explanation of Theodoret, of the Jewish expositors, and of the great mass of commentators, that the animal life of the victims was accepted in place of the rational soul of man; the former died that the latter might live. But that this sense can only be held in view of the connection of the type with the Antitype was long ago seen by St. Augustine (Qust. 57 in Hept.). In Lev 17:13 the particular is put for the general; as during the life of the wilderness most animals used for food which were not sacrificial were taken in the chase, this stands for all such animals. But afterward (Deu 12:15-16; Deu 12:22-24) the same direction of pouring out the blood upon the earth is applied to all animals slain for food. The object of the command to cover the blood was probably double; first, simply to prevent the desecration of the blood as the vehicle of the animal soul; second, to avoid any abuse of it to superstitious and idolatrous uses. Lev 17:14 once more repeats with emphasis the prohibition of the eating of the blood, and for the same reasonbecause the blood is the soul, i.e., the vehicle of the animal life.F. G.]
5. The use of unclean flesh (Lev 17:15) could not be placed on an equality with the foregoing sins, since it might take place through many forms of thoughtlessness; but nevertheless it was prevented through the natural loathing. Hence the offender, in the first instance, fell only into the first grade of the law of purification; but if he neglected this, he had to make expiation for his misdeed.
Keil (following Baumgarten) entitles the section chap. 1720 the holiness of the daily life of the Israelites, and chap. 17 particularly the holiness of food. Certainly the sanctification of the eating of flesh leads to the sanctification of food generally. On the oneness of soul and blood, see Keil, p. 126. [Trans. pp. 40910. See also Clarks note II. at the end of this chapter. The prohibition of flesh that had not been properly slaughtered evidently rests on the fact that its blood had not been poured out. Still, as even in this case most of the blood would be collected in the larger vessels of the body, and would not appear as blood in the flesh that was eaten, there is less stringency in the prohibition. The defilement, however, was still considerable, and involved alike for the Israelite and the stranger, the washing of the clothes and the bathing of the person, and remaining unclean until the evening (Lev 17:15). That which died of itself, or that which was torn, are here classed together, as also in Lev 22:8. In Exo 22:31 the latter is commanded to be given to the dogs, and in Deu 14:21 the former is allowed to be given to the stranger, or sold to an alien. There appears to have been a certain degree of distinction between the two, although both are forbidden to the Israelite. That which died of itself was also forbidden to the stranger during the intimate association of Israelite and stranger in the camp life of the wilderness, but this law was relaxed in Deuteronomy in view of the better separated life in the land of Canaan. Such food, however, was always considered polluting to the Israelite (Eze 4:14; Eze 44:31), and its touch, as has already been seen (Lev 11:39) communicated defilement. At the council of Jerusalem (Act 15:29) the prohibition of things strangled is still continued in connection with the prohibition of blood.F. G.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
I. The command that all sacrifices should be offered in one place was plainly a part of that educational law which had been added because of transgressions. There had been no such restriction laid upon the patriarchs; and under the law itself, it was often dispensed with by Divine command, or with the Divine approval, as in the case of Samuel, of David, of Solomon, an 1 of Elijah. Its purpose was to teach symbolically the Divine unity, and to prevent the worship of false gods. When this lesson had been sufficiently taught came the hour when neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, men should worship the Father (Joh 4:21).
II. When the Israelites sacrificed otherwise than at the tabernacle, though the idols to which they professed to offer might be nothing yet really they sacrificed to demons. So St. Paul teaches it was with the sacrifices of the heathen in his time (1Co 10:19-20), and he warns Christians that by partaking of those sacrifices they came into fellowship with demons, and this was incompatible with partaking of the cup of the Lord. The same consequences must in all ages attend the offering of the homage of the heart elsewhere than to God.
III. This unfaithfulness to God is represented here, as so constantly in the later Scriptures, by conjugal infidelity. As husband and wife are no longer twain, but one flesh, so are the faithful united to their Head in one body, and any giving of superior allegiance to another is as the sin of marriage unfaithfulness.
IV. The blood and the soul, or animal life (), are here connected together, and the same word is used of the sacrifice of Christ, Isa 53:10, and the corresponding Greek word () repeatedly by our Lord Himself (Mat 20:28; Joh 10:11, etc.). He gave His life () for us. In view of the connection established in this chapter between this and the blood, a fresh significance attaches to His words of institution of the Lords Supper (Mat 26:27-28). The drinking of the cup which He gave, is the communion in His sacrifice for the remission of sins.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Lange: That animal food as used by man, was to be kept holy by a religious consecration and slaying, excludes the use of flesh that is unhallowed or has been offered to demons. Man was to have a feeling for the suffering of the animal, for the sacrificial particular of the act of slaying, for the religio-moral duty of thankful and moderate use of flesh. Hence there is an element of truth also in the dogma of the vegetarians. But all blood must be reserved as an offering to Jehovah; for Jehovah alone is the Author of life, the God of all souls, and it is a crime to encroach greedily upon His domain. But how does the eating of blood in Christendom agree with this, as the council of the Apostles (Acts 15) have forbidden it, and as it is still forbidden in the Oriental Church? The New Testament thought is the holiness and inviolability of everything living in itself, since a creative breath of life dwells in it. If man, without an object, sheds blood or destroys life, he destroys the sanctuary of Divine goodness. The outline of the legal prescription disappears behind these thoughts. Men may be very careful, as in Byzantium and in Russia, to avoid the eating of blood, and still be in many ways criminally careless with life, even with the life of man. Connected with the eating of flesh, the eating of the flesh of an animal that has died of itself, or been torn by wild beasts, is also forbidden, even if in a slighter degree. In the fact that such a use of flesh has in itself something savage, and is a source of many sicknesses, lies the permanent thought of this legal command.
Calvin notes that the command to sacrifice in one place was to avoid corruption of the sacrifices, and the direction to bring the offering to the priest was to direct the people to the One Mediator to come. Thus everywhere the law is our school-master to point us to Christ. No offering acceptable to God can be offered except through Him, and all enjoyment of daily life must be made holy through His mediation.
God does not impute to man the fault which is not his; but the fault which is really his may be far more serious than he supposes. The killing of an animal otherwise than God allowed, was the shedding of bloodof blood which had been given for mans atonement; and so now, many sins which seem upon the surface mere sins of frivolity and thoughtlessness, will prove on closer examination to be deep offences against the love of Him who shed His blood for us on the cross.
Any offering of sacrifice otherwise than in the way of Gods appointment, became to the Israelites a sacrificing to demons; so any giving to other objects of the supreme affection He requires for Himself, becomes to us idolatry. Comp. Eph 5:5; Col 3:5.
Strangers must in many respects come under the laws given to the people of God. Men do not escape the responsibility of obedience by refusing to acknowledge allegiance, and to be numbered with His people.
In the treatment of the blood of the wild animal is taught the general principle of congruity in matters which are not the subject of direct precepts. Man should order all his ways in harmony with the conduct which in certain things is directly commanded. Especially under the Christian dispensation is this principle of wide application. Here principles are given rather than detailed precepts, to guide our conduct, and we must largely be governed by the congruity and fitness of things, and their harmony with what which is commanded.
Footnotes:
[1]Lev 17:3. The LXX. here, as in the text in Lev 17:8; Lev 17:10, inserts the clause or of the strangers which sojourn among you.
[2]Lev 17:3. . See Textual Note5 on Lev 3:7.
[3]Lev 17:4. . See Textual Note8 on Lev 15:31. There is especial reason for a change in the rendering here as the has just occurred in the previous clause.
[4]Lev 17:4. This ver. is largely interpolated in the Sam. and LXX. to offer a burnt offering or a peace offering [for your atonement Sam.] acceptable unto the Lord for an odor of a sweet savor. And whosoever shall kill without, and shall not bring it to the door of the tabernacle of testimony, that he may offer an offering to the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord; blood shall be, etc. The purpose of this interpolation is supposed to be to bring this passage into harmony with Deu 12:25; but the difficulty, if any can be considered to exist, is not avoided by this repetition.
[5]Lev 17:5. . The same word occurring twice in the same clause should surely have the same translation. is the technical word for killing in sacrifice, and although in the later books it is rarely used for slaughtering in the more general sense, it is never applied in the Pentateuch to anything else than sacrifice. See preliminary note on sacrifice. It cannot, therefore (with Clark) be here taken of simply slaughtering for food.
[6]Lev 17:7. lit. to buck-goats. See Exeg. The A. V. has, however, undoubtedly expressed the sense, except that here, as frequently in the New Testament and sometimes in the Old (as in the translation of the same word in 2Ch 11:15). it uses the plural devils; but one is recognized in Scripture, and evil spirits in the plural are expressed by or . It is better therefore to substitute demons. Vulg. dmones, LXX. . In the A. V. in Isa 13:21; Isa 34:14 it is rendered Satyrs.
[7]Lev 17:11; Lev 17:14. is here equivalent to and is so rendered in the LXX. In English the life of the A. V. may be understood in the same way, but so also may soul, and it is better in this very important passage to keep a uniform rendering of the Heb. word. All the ancient versions retain the same rendering throughout, so do several modern versions and almost all recent expositors.
[8]Lev 17:11. = maketh an atonement by means of the soul. with has only a local or instrumental signification (Lev 6:23; Lev 16:17; Lev 16:27; also Lev 7:7; Exo 29:33; Num 5:8). Accordingly, it was not the blood as such, but the blood as the vehicle of the soul, which possessed expiatory virtue. Keil, following Knobel. Similarly Bhr, Kurtz, and others. So also Von Gerlach and Clark. The A. V. is singularly infelicitous in that it refers the final to the soul of man, instead of to the soul of the victim; nevertheless, it follows the LXX., the Targums, and the Vulg.; and so also Luther.
[9]Lev 17:13. See note1 on Lev 11:2.
[10]Lev 17:14. Comp. Lev 17:11. occurs three times in this verse, each time rendered in the A. V. life, but the uniform translation soul is better. In the expression the blood of it is the soul thereof, is to be taken as a predicate in its meaning, introduced with beth essentiale. It is only as so understood that the clause supplies a reason at all in harmony with the context. Keil. With this most modern commentators concur, as well as the ancient and several recent versions.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
The substance of this chapter, respects the appointed method of making the offerings. The blood of all slain beasts, must be presented at the door of the tabernacle. The blood is not to be eaten, neither must the flesh of what dieth alone, or is torn by beasts, be taken for food.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
It is delightful, even in our most common concerns, to trace somewhat of the ever-blessed JESUS. And it is delightful to the true believer in CHRIST, to trace in the church’s history in the wilderness, that the faithful in those days were taught of GOD the HOLY GHOST, to be doing somewhat in all their transactions, that had either a near or remote view to him. As the children of Israel were enjoined to bring their slaughtered animals unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, unto the priest; was not this in express reference to JESUS, who is the true tabernacle which the LORD pitched, and not man? Heb 8:2 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Blood of Christ (for Good Friday and Easter)
Lev 17:11
The thoughts of Easter and of Good Friday must keep close together. They are, of course, at first sight, poles apart. And yet they are two sides of one great event. Consider this by help which God Himself has given us in the Old Testament.
The precious Blood of Christ, that certainly is a Good Friday thought, but yet that Blood is at the centre of our Easter feast. It is the power of eternal lite. In it are washed the robes of the redeemed. The text from the old law gives us the clue to understanding this.
I. In the sacrifices of the Jewish Temple, meant to prepare for and point to Christ, the Blood was the most important thing. It was offered to God; with it the holy place and the altar were sprinkled. With it the leper was touched. The high priest once a year carried it into the holiest before the mercy seat. It was the symbol of God’s own presence. And the reason of this was in the belief that the Blood is the life: ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood’. To us carnage and blood-shedding mean the same, and speak only of the ghastly incidents of death. To the Jew blood-shedding meant release of life. The innocent animal gave its life for a high and Divinely ordered purpose. A wonderful mystery indeed. It declared the power of life that had passed through death. The ox or the goat could only die in its own time, but there was one way in which it could, as we see, give its life before its time by its owner’s free will and at his cost. The animal stood, and was at least partly understood by the Jew to stand, for the man that offered it, and then the meaning begins to come clear. The life in man must die with the death of the body, and see corruption, and be no more, unless some stainless life for the Temple victims had to be without spot or blemish could be freely given up to pass out through death as an offering to God, and then it would bless and reconcile and purify. This it is which we, in its wonderful fulfilment, have been allowed to see.
Good Friday shows the slaughter, the inhuman and cruel murder of the Holy One and the Just. It is a day of tragedy and gloom. All the same, there was done there the noblest thing ever done on earth, and it shines with glory amidst the darkness. For the life slaughtered was also a life laid down. The death which darkens the earth is also the coming out of the life, free, powerful, new, and quickening, as the glory of the Resurrection follows to prove. The death had to be, but it is the life that remains, and it sprinkles, and cleanses, and quickens. Unlike the coarse natural blood of the old sacrifices, this life can still, in rite and symbol, give itself as blood to be drunk and to be consumed. ‘The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.’ It enters into us, and we live with a double life, our own, and His, and in the power of that life we can approach to God, having boldness to enter into the holiest by the Blood of Jesus.
II. We have here the truth, at once severe and splendid, which Good Friday and Easter should leave with us. We have, like the animals slain of old in the Temple, our natural life in us which must die. If we live by the flesh, we must die; but the Cross shows us a way of using death which makes it to be a power of life. We can make a sacrifice of life. It has its opportunities and chances, its dangers and risks, its sorrows and joys, its temptations, and through all we can carry the spirit of sacrifice. So we can do in small ways that which Jesus did through life, and completed on Calvary. We can mortify our members which are on the earth, we can die unto sin, we can be united with Jesus by His death. But such dying is really life. Like the slaughter of the victim, it sets free the blood which is the true life; like the sacrifice of the Cross, it opens into the glory of the Resurrection. We are to reckon ourselves alive, not with the old life that must die, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus with the new life that cannot die. That is the mystery of Easter, gathering up all the sorrow and severity of Good Friday into its joy, and it sheds a glory over all life. This present life is not a thing merely to be despised and cast away. The body of the victim slain, slain to yield the blood, was not treated as a worthless carcass to be cast aside, but as holy food upon which the offerer might feed. The Body of the Redeemer, from which the Blood was shed upon the Cross, was a holy thing, and when He makes His Sacrament, it is not of the Blood only that He takes, but also: ‘The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life’. The earthly life which has in it the spirit of sacrifice, gains already on earth a fuller strength and truer beauty. Thus it is, too, that even the bodies of Christians partake of the glory. The spirituality which despises them is not the spirituality of Scripture or of Christ. Our bodily natures may be sanctified by the sacrifice of disciplined, sober, and thankful use as well as by the sacrifice of surrender. It must be for each as God appoints, and He calls.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
VII
THE LAW OF HOLINESS
Leviticus 17-22
This chapter covers Leviticus 17-22. The theme is the law of holiness. I will treat it catechetically.
1. Where must animals for food be brought and slain and why?
Ans. In such a camp as the Israelites camp, with 3,000,000 of people, the question of food was a grave question. The law required that every bullock, every sheep, every beef, every goat, that was to be eaten, be brought to one place to be slain, and that one place was the gate, or the door, of the tabernacle, the outer court of the tabernacle; and the reason for the law was that the priest had to inspect and approve of the method of slaughtering animals, for both sanitary and spiritual reasons. The first part, the sanitary reason, is employed today in the city regulations concerning slaughterhouses. The wisest precautions must be adopted with reference to cleanliness, to avoid the breeding of pests or pestilences.
The second and most important reason was that the priest should see that the law concerning blood was observed. They were expressly forbidden to eat any animal food from which the blood had not been drained, and this applied to animals where they killed them in the wilderness, as deer and those animals used for food; they must draw the blood off; as soon as the animal was killed, the blood must be drawn.
2. Give Old Testament and New Testament law prohibiting the eating of blood, and why is it now binding?
Ans. The Old Testament law commences with the law of Noah, when he represented the whole race. While they were given permission in that law to eat every moving, living
thing, immediately after (Gen 9:4 ) there is this express stipulation, viz.: that the blood must be drawn out of the body, or it could not be eaten. It was a sin to eat blood when the law applied to the whole world. Now when we come to the New Testament (Act 15 ) we have this law. In the great council that was held in Jerusalem, James in closing that council says in his speech: “Wherefore my judgment is that we trouble not them who from among the Gentiles are turned to God; but that we write unto them to abstain from what is strangled, and from blood.” Now in drawing up the decree later in the same chapter, you have this: “We lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things, that ye abstain from blood, and from things strangled.” That is addressed to the Gentiles and says, “Fornications, from blood and things strangled.”
In Rev 2 , our Lord calls attention to this law, and states that one of the things that he has against one of the seven churches in Asia is that they violate that law. So my decision is that the reason for prohibiting the use of blood for food is not a mere Jewish regulation. We find it binding on the race before there was a Jew, and we find it binding after the kingdom of God was passed to the Gentiles. Two reasons are given, one is that the blood is the life; and another reason is that because it is the life, it is the blood with which expiation for sin is made. Outside of the regulation concerning eating, just described, and which is set forth in chapter 17, we now enlarge the law of holiness with a new question.
3. What is incest?
Ans. That comes in the first part of Lev 18 , and goes down to Lev 18:18 . In this we have a number of things that are classed as incest. I am not going to discuss that on account of the delicacy of the matter. I will say, in general terms, that any offense that violates the law concerning nearness of kindred, comes under the head of incest, no matter what it is. There are many cases of incest mentioned in the Bible.
4. What is the purpose of this law prohibiting incest?
Ans. The purpose of the law is to enforce the sanctity of the family and its relation; and the common sense as well as the common interpretation of all denominations regards that law as binding now, because it does not arise from any particular condition of the Jews, but arises from the nature of the family institution, and is just as applicable to one people as another, and to one time as another. There is nothing temporary in it. We have laws regulating this also: for instance, that a man should not marry his own sister, his own aunt, or his niece, anything that violates the law of kindred. Now incest in that chapter stops with Lev 18:18 .
5. What law prevailed in England to prohibit a man’s marrying his wife’s sister, even after his wife was dead?
Ans. I don’t know that the law is abrogated now, but I know it did prevail. If a man married into a large family, and the wife died, then he could not marry the sister of his wife. Is that law properly derivable from Lev 18:18 ? I will quote it. My judgment is that they misinterpret the Levitical law in embodying any of the law into the common law of England. A great many romances have been written on this subject. Lev 18:18 simply says this: “Thou shalt not take a wife to be a rival of her sister in her lifetime.” Now you see that does not forbid the marrying of the wife’s sister after the wife dies. Yet the English law prohibited it, and not only prohibited it, but counted it as not marriage.
6. What is sodomy?
Ans. You can read that answer to yourself. That is a sin against the law of holiness, and is just as binding now as it ever was. That is, for a man to treat another man as if he were a woman, or a woman to treat another woman as if she were a man; that is sodomy. That was the sin that brought about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and it derives its name from Sodom.
7. What is bestiality?
Ans. From beast we get bestiality, that is, a man treating a beast as if the beast were a woman, and a woman treating a beast as if it were a man.
8. Have we in our statute books any laws against bestiality?
Ans. We certainly have, and with a very sharp penalty. I have known of some convictions under that law, and it left a lasting shame upon the one who committed the offense, besides the punishment by the state. Now that ends everything relating to sodomy, incest, and bestiality. The next question of the law of holiness is embodied in these words, upon which I ask a question: “Thou shall not cause thy seed to pass through the fire to Molech.”
9. What is meant by causing the seed to pass through the fire to Molech?
Ans. The answer is, the offering of one of your own children as a sacrifice to be burned with fire upon the altar of the heathen god, Molech. There is some difference of opinion yet as to whether these children were burned alive or slain before they were burned. The Carthaginians practiced this, and a great many heathen nations with which the Jews had to do practiced this. You find a number of cases of it in the Bible. Now I will give you an old-time description of it. A man would be in great trouble about something, and he felt that an ordinary sacrifice would not remove the curse from him. He would vow to offer his own offspring as a burnt offering to the god, Molech, in order to appease that deity, and remove the curse from his house. A furnace, shaped something like a man, but a most hideous and monstrous man, was built representing Molech, built of iron; it had arms held out, a huge, gigantic image of Molech, and under that furnace was a place for the fire, and that would heat that iron image red-hot, and then they would take the naked babe, and place it in the red-hot arms of the idol; and in order to drown the sounds of its screams of agony, the priests would beat their tom-toms, or huge drums, and the parents, disregarding the screams of the child, would go away believing that they were absolved from the curse that had come upon them.
10. What is the meaning and application of “Thou shalt not build a city in the blood of thy first-born”?
Ans. That originated from the curse pronounced upon the men who should attempt to rebuild Jericho after it had been destroyed. The law was: “Whoever shall rebuild that city shall lose his first-born.” Then comes the great direction “Thou shalt not build the city in the blood of thy first-born.” From that I once deduced a prohibition speech, in the case where the city demanded the retention of the liquor traffic to promote commercial interest. “Thou shalt not build a city in the blood of thy first-born,” I quoted, saying, “You seek to promote commercial prosperity through the liquor traffic. Maybe your son will be the first to perish, maybe your daughter will become the wife of a drunkard, and your grandchild inherit a drunkard’s habits, and you are building a city in the blood of your children.”
11. What is meant by enchantments, and why forbidden?
Ans. The law says, “Thou shalt not use any enchantments.” It means, thou shalt not have recourse to any forms of seeking information or avoiding trouble that bring relief from any source but God. When I was a little boy, I knew an old Negro ninety years old who used enchantments. She would go out and gather herbs on the dark of the moon; she would catch a lizard or a snake, maybe get the eye of a newt, and put them in a pot with the herbs and boil them, compounding the enchantment, and if she could mingle a few drops of that in the water people would drink, she would “hoodoo” them. Those of you who have read Shakespeare’s Macbeth remember how the witch would take the eye of a mole, the toe of a frog, the blind worm’s sting, and boil them in order to concoct the enchantment. A great many Negroes up to the present day carry a rabbit’s foot in their pockets, or hang a horseshoe over the door of a house newly built, to keep off enchantments. The simplest form of enchantment is taking a cup of coffee before it is settled, and pour off the coffee and leave the grounds in the cup; then turning the cup over, the grounds left on the inside of the cup run down, and they forecast what is going to happen from the coffee grounds.
12. The next question is similar to this: What is meant by familiar spirits, and why forbidden?
Ans. This beats the coffee grounds and the enchantments. It has retained its hold over the human mind with more persons, perhaps, than any other sin except fleshly sins. Lots of people in Texas now believe it. “Having a familiar spirit” (Lev 19:31 ) means this: a certain person is a medium; a medium has the power to call up certain spirits from the dead, and obtain from these spirits information, and this information is sometimes conveyed by rapping on the table, one rap meaning “yes,” two raps “no”; then spelling out, one rap A, two raps B, and getting information that way. It has always been a horrible sin; it is just as much a sin today as it ever was. And the main point of the sin is expressed by Isaiah the prophet. In referring to it, he says, “Why seek ye to wizards, that chirp and mutter, and why should the living seek unto the dead? Seek unto me, saith the Lord.”
The sin of it consists, then, in disregarding God’s revelation, and endeavoring to obtain from the spirits of the dead, or from demons, information that God either has not given or withholds. He gives all the information that we need in his Book of Revelation. Sometimes this spiritualism or spirit rapping, or spirit slate-writing, or whatever the form of it, sweeps the country like an epidemic, and the most cultured people, some as a mere matter of curiosity or experiment, some for graver reasons, will go to this medium and endeavor to obtain from the spirits of the dead the messages of the dead, from the husband who has departed, or the child who has departed.
Now you may put this down as settled that if ever you want to do anything for anybody, you must do it while you are living, and while that person is living, and if you wait till the person dies you cannot ameliorate his condition. If you wait until you die, the opportunity to help the other person in any way is gone forever. Our Lord in Luk 16 settles that and many other questions. A rich -man who entered hell wanted the soul of Lazarus to go back and carry the message to his brothers in the other world, and it was forbidden; the rich man wanted the soul of Lazarus to bring him, on the tip of his finger, a drop of water in hell, and it was forbidden. Between the spirits of the righteous and the wicked after death a deep and impassable chasm yawns. One cannot pass to the other. Those are fundamental doctrines.
You can count this as a settled thing that there is no clear case in the Bible where the soul of one who was dead was ever permitted to come back to this earth with a message of any kind. And there are only two cases that have ever been quoted; the most notable one is what seems to have taken place when Saul sought to get information from Samuel through the witch of Endor, and when we come to that case, I will expound it in such a way that you will see that it is no exception. The other is that of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. They appeared unto Christ, but they brought no message to any person on earth. On the contrary, the word to the apostles was: “Hear ye him.” You cannot get anything from Moses and Elijah. That belongs to Christ. The message is: “Revealed things belong to us and our children, but hidden things belong to God.”
13. This question covers Lev 20 : What are the respective penalties for these offenses?
Ans. You have Lev 20 to read, and I want you to answer it as you see it. How many punishable by death, and how many by excommunication that is, cut off from the people? Now we take them as we come to them: Incest, sodomy, bestiality, enchantments, seeking those that have familiar spirits; and from Lev 20 you must answer what the penalties are in each case, and in giving the penalties show how many of the death penalty, and how many of the penalty of being cut off from the people.
14. This covers Leviticus 21-22. These two chapters give the law of holiness as binding on the priesthood. Now these chapters are added, giving the law to the priest, and the question is, What difference in the application to priests, that is, the law of incest, sodomy, and the law of enchantments, seeking this and that from familiar spirits? In other words, what difference do you find between the application of these laws to priests, and to the common people?
Ans. The difference is that the penalty is harder on the priest and the law more stringent. The law is more stringent for a preacher, if he commit a crime; while what he does is the same to him as it is to any other man, yet by virtue of his office the sin is greater. Because of his high rank, he has brought more shame upon the cause of God than if the offense had been committed by a common person. That is the reason for it. Now there is in Leviticus 19 a great variety of special statutes, all of them important, but it is like taking each one of them as a text. It would mean as many texts as there are verses, but I will ask on Lev 19 two questions.
15. Of what are the special statutes in Lev 19 developments?
Ans. They are developments of the Ten Commandments.
16. State in your judgment the most striking of these statutes.
Ans. Read the Lev 19 , and you will see a great variety, and some of them will impress you more than others. I will leave this to you because I want to train your mind to decide some things for yourselves. For instance you will find this: “Thou shall rise up before the hoary head,” and you may just put it down that no man is a gentleman who does not respect an old man or an old woman. He simply isn’t a gentleman, in any consideration. I have seen boys in a streetcar hold a seat, with a tottering old grandmother standing up, holding to a strap. Now a Jew would be an outcast if he did such a thing, and he never does it among his own people. Sometime ago, a distinguished Japanese brought his family to America, and travelled across the continent from New York to San Francisco. He had been here before and knew the difference, but his little boy and girl did not know, and they were perfectly horrified at the irreverence shown in America to parents and old people. It was a most astounding thing to them. I knew of a Jew who lost a trade of great value rather than wake up his old father, who was taking a nap and had the key to the desk in his pocket. He said, “My father is old and his afternoon nap is precious. I will not disturb his afternoon nap in order to make a trade.” And to this day the Jews are ahead of the Americans in deference to the aged. And the Japanese are above us in that; far below us in many things, but ahead of us in that.
17. What is the formal introduction to this law of holiness that I have been discussing?
Ans. The formal introduction is found in the first five verses of Lev 18:1-5 “And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, I am Jehovah your God. After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do; and after the doings in the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do; neither shall ye walk in their statutes, ye shall do my judgments and keep my ordinances, to walk therein; I am the Lord your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments; which if a man do, he shall live in them; I am Jehovah.” That is the formal introduction, that answers the question.
18. What is the application to Israel at this time?
Ans. They had just come out of Egypt. They were just going into Canaan, and they were in covenant with Jehovah. The land they lived in was full of idolatry. The land they were just about to enter reeked with infamy, and the cry of its crimes went up to heaven. God said, “Their cup of iniquity is almost full,” and when it was full he said that he would spew them out of his mouth. Now he wanted his people not to be like them, and he said, “if you do as the Canaanites do, I will blot you out of the land.” And he did.
19. What deductions from these laws?
Ans. While there are many deductions, I call your attention to two:
(1) God holds the nation responsible just as he holds the individual, no matter what the form of government in that nation, an absolute or limited monarchy, aristocracy, or theocracy, or democracy. The government that violates the laws of God, that nation shall not go down to perdition as a whole, but its duration is limited, for Jehovah he is King of kings, and Lord of lords, and the government of the whole world is upon his shoulder, and no nation can long violate the laws of morality, truth and honesty, and survive. Upon the high walls of the city of ancient times was written: “Therefore, saith the Lord, their days are numbered,” and that city, no matter how regal, no matter how high its walls, how great its brazen gates, how strong its fortifications, the “Thus saith the Lord” came upon it on account of the iniquities, crumbled its walls to dust and made the site of that city the habitation of beasts, animals, and birds. As it was said of Babylon, “the lion shall whelp in thy palace.” God governs the nations. It is a great theme, one of the greatest of all. Beecher one time preached a great sermon on the government of God, and a young man asked him how long he was preparing that sermon. He said. “Forty years.”
(2) Now the second deduction: “As righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” It may be an English-speaking nation, it may be an Oriental nation, it may be an Arctic nation, no matter where the people are congregated into nations, righteousness exalteth that nation, and sin is a reproach to that people.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Leviticus Chapter 17
CHAPTER 1.
ISRAEL HOLY TO JEHOVAH.
Lev 17:1-9 .
The great day of atonement occupies the entire previous chapter, Lev 16 . We see its relation to the feasts of Jehovah in Lev 23:26-32 . But it also claims a distinct place, as Jehovah gave a special revelation with ample detail because of its independent importance, not more central in the book of Leviticus than in the ways of God, as shadowing that work of Christ on which, for a lost world as well as a people, all blessing depends, for Jews or Greeks or the church of God, for earth and heaven, for time and eternity.
Having already sought to expound that chapter by itself, however imperfectly but at least with simplicity and for practical use, I may now turn to the scriptures which follow, up to Lev 23 , which may well call for a separate but briefer treatment. Each of these six chapters is devoted to divinely given regulations, to preserve the priests and the people of Israel from defilements to which they were exposed. It is not the offerings, as in Lev. 1 – 7, nor the priests duly established and failing (Lev. 8-10), or discharging their duties as to food, and the natural defilements and purification (11-15), ending with the day of atonement (16). Here it is to guard priest” and people from other defilements.
Let us now look into the portion before us.
” 1 And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, 2 Speak to Aaron, and to his sons, and to all the children of Israel and say to them, This [is] the thing which Jehovah hath commanded, saying, 3 every one of the house of Israel that slaughtereth an ox or sheep or goat in the camp, or that slaughtereth [it] out of the camp, 4 and doth not bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting, to offer [it] as an oblation to Jehovah before the tabernacle of Jehovah, blood shall be reckoned to that man: he hath shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people, 5 to the end that the children of Israel bring their sacrifices which they sacrifice in the open field, that they bring them to Jehovah, to the entrance of the tent of meeting, to the priest, and sacrifice them as sacrifices of peace-offerings to Jehovah. 6 And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of Jehovah, at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and burn the fat for a sweet savour to Jehovah. 7 And they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to demons (or hairy ones, satyrs) after whom they go a whoring. This shall be an everlasting statute to them for their generations. 8 And thou shalt say to them, Every one of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that offereth a burnt-offering or sacrifice, 9 and bringeth it not to the entrance of the tent of meeting, to offer it to Jehovah; that man shall be cut off from his peoples” (vers. 1-9).
When God set the world that now is after the flood on the new condition of responsible government in man’s hand, it was preceded by sacrifice; and the sweet savour was so acceptable, that Jehovah said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake, for the thought of man’s heart is evil from his youth. The very evil of man is the occasion of grace shown by Him, the unchanging God, Who used man’s evil to bring out what He is in Himself, and is therefore incomprehensible save to faith. God thereon laid down that life belonged to God, and that man was bound to own His claim by not eating the blood. This principle was acknowledged by the apostles, elders, and brethren in Jerusalem, at the very assembly which vindicated the liberty of Gentile believers, but insisted on the restriction under Noah.
Here however it is not God dealing with man, but Jehovah instructing His priests and people in their peculiar relationship to Himself. It is the thing which Jehovah commanded every man of the house of Israel and no others; and it is here imposed on their wilderness estate. Whoever there slaughtered an animal for food without the camp must bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting to offer it as an offering to Jehovah before His tabernacle. If not, blood was imputed to him; and because he shed blood without thus acknowledging Jehovah, his own life was forfeited: “that man shall be cut off from his people.” It was an abandonment of Jehovah, and a denial of the ground on which he stood before Him. If he partook of animal food, he was bound to own, what the Gentiles that know not God had forgotten, that life belonged to Jehovah; He demanded the confession of the truth every time one took an animal’s flesh for his food. Nor this only; but as He enjoined, solemnly before His tabernacle. Though for food, it was their duty to bring such to Jehovah and the priest as sacrifices; not of course as a sin-offering, but as expressive of communion with Him, sacrifices of peace-offerings to Jehovah.
Nor was the priest to fail on his side, but to sprinkle the blood upon the altar of Jehovah at the appointed place, and burn the fat for a sweet savour to Jehovah. Hence the profane and selfish wickedness of Eli’s sons at a later day in the land, not only morally but in contempt of the law, even in the formal sacrifices and that which was exclusively Jehovah’s right (1Sa 2:12-25 ). As the people were not to count their part irksome but a privilege as Jehovah’s people, so the priests were called cheerfully to sprinkle the blood and burn the fat on the altar. How due to Him! how happy and good for His people!
It was a needed safe-guard against idolatry too. For so inveterate a snare for man is it to turn aside to strange gods, that even here Jehovah deigns to notice the danger for His erring people. “And they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to the goats (or, satyrs), after whom they go a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever to them throughout their generations.” So now that we as Christians rest on the one perfecting offering of Christ, it is our place and joy, whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do, to do all to God’s glory, to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the Father through Him. It is not only in offering up a sacrifice of praise to God, but as not forgetting to do good and communicate (i.e., to share our goods with others); for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
Verses 8 and 9 take in also the strangers that sojourned among the Israelites and denounce the evil of offering a burnt-offering or a sacrifice except at the one divinely assigned meeting-place with Jehovah. How sad for any in professing to own Jehovah with an offering to disregard His goodness in giving a place, and but one place, of outward access to Himself! How active and wily is the unseen foe in every thing, and not least in the ostensible worship of God to put scorn on the good and acceptable and perfect will of God! So it was in Israel then: so it has ever been, and with not less dismal success, in the church from near the first till our day.
For if there then was the dim and distant unity of the chosen nation urgently maintained when Jehovah brought them into the promised land, and distinctly when the temple was reared, how much more is the unity of God’s family insisted on in the Gospel of John and the one body, the church, in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul! And how sad and humbling when Christians shirk their privileges as well as obligations, asking if it be necessary to salvation. God’s will and Christ’s glory are concerned in it. Is this to be a secondary thing to him for whom God gave His Son? and whom He has sanctified by His Spirit unto obedience? Is not self-will sin? and is it not all the worse because of God’s immense grace to us? If we are His children as born of Him, yea His sons by faith in Christ, it surely becomes us to count no call of His on our subjection grievous. Let us remember that, as we are already through the gift of the Holy Spirit, in possession of our individual relationship to God, we are also brought into the one body of Christ. Let faith working by love act on this as a living and present reality. God has set us in our several place in the church. Our obligation is to recognise this with thanksgiving, and act on it without fear or doubt. “Whose (God’s) house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end” (Heb 3:6 ).
CHAPTER 2.
EATING BLOOD PROHIBITED.
Lev 17:10-16 .
What we have just had before us applies in its fulness only to the wilderness and the tabernacle there, in part even to the strangers that sojourned among them, wholly to the children of Israel as Jehovah’s people of possession. The main prohibition of the closing verses (10-16) has a far wider bearing as the N. T. proves.
” 10 And every one of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn among them, that eateth any manner of blood – I will set my face against the soul that eateth the blood, and I will cut him off from among his people, 11 for the life (or, soul) of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to atone for your souls, for it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul. 12 Therefore have I said to the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall the stranger who sojourneth among you eat blood. 13 And every one of the children of Israel, and of the strangers that sojourn among them, that catcheth in the hunt a beast or fowl which may be eaten, he shall pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with earth; 14 for as to the life of all flesh, its blood is the life in it (or, for its life): and I have said to the children of Israel, Of the blood of no manner of flesh shall ye eat, for the life of all flesh is its blood: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off. 15 And every soul that eateth that which died [of itself] or that which was torn [by beasts, whether he be] home-born or a stranger, shall both wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the even; then he shall be glean. 16 But if he wash them not nor bathe his flesh, he shall also bear his iniquity” (vers. 10-16).
Thus did Jehovah impress on the heedless heart of man, that as human life was forfeited to God through sin, so He forbids the profane levity of turning the blood which is the natural life of earthly creatures into food. So had He enjoined after the deluge when liberty was first given to partake of flesh. The blood was strictly reserved for Himself. Even with natural animals, born to be taken and destroyed, and suitable for food, the claims of God must be maintained. This was long before the law, or even the fathers who had the promises. It was for those rescued from destruction, and standing on what Jehovah saw in the holocaust Noah offered on the altar. But when God thereon blessed Noah and his sons, who began the world that now is, while every moving thing that lived was now given for food as the green herb previously, “flesh with the life (or, blood) ye shall not eat.” Man’s life has a value attached to it never before declared; and the more because now for the first time it was for government responsible to God to vindicate. “And surely your blood, [the blood] of your lives, will I require.” Even if a mere animal with no reasonable soul slew a human creature, this was no reason to pass it by. “At the hand of every animal will I require it; at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man” (Gen 9:3-6 ).
These Noahic precepts were carried out further for the children under law; but they were divinely made known for the post-diluvian world. And when the judaising party in the early days of the church strove to bring the Gentiles under the law, God took care to maintain liberty from the law of Moses for such. The effort was made at Antioch, where the very name of Christian was first heard, by certain men who came down from Juda, and taught that none could be saved, unless circumcised. Paul and Barnabas after no small discussion failed to settle the question, which was carried to the source of the dispute; and all came out before the apostles and elders in Jerusalem. There Peter, giving a witness with no uncertain sound, asks why they tempted God by putting a yoke on the disciples “which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear. But we believe that through the grace of the Lord we shall be saved in like manner as they also,” not merely shall they be saved even as we. Then Barnabas and Paul rehearsed what signs and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them; and James summed up that which became the decree of the apostles and the elders with the whole assembly, nay of the Holy Spirit Himself; to lay upon the Gentile confessors no other burden than these necessary things – “that ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication; from which, if ye keep yourselves, it shall be well with you” (Act 15:28 , Act 15:29 ).
It surprises not a few that non-complicity with idols, and personal purity should be set with abstaining from eating blood and things strangled. The apostles did not reason on the ground of man’s conscience; for grave a monitor as it is, it was then and it might be at any time darkened by public opinion and habits, which among Gentiles made as little of idolatry and personal purity as of using blood and strangled things for food. The revealed will of God is absolute for the believer; and as a fact His face was set against all these indulgences, entirely apart from the peculiar institutions of Israel. They have the full weight of apostolic authority as “necessary things”: what can abrogate this expressly for those of the Gentiles that believe? and in pointed distinction from Levitical ordinances? God’s honour is inviolate, and His sanction of marriage, not of fornication. God insists on the recognition that life belongs to Himself; so that, as He gives to eat of flesh, He reserves the blood and forbids eating of things strangled similarly; and the Christian is in no way to be indifferent even to these last injunctions, but bound to honour Him in both.
In Israel, as we see in these verses, to eat blood was to provoke Jehovah’s jealousy to the cutting off of the offender: Israelites or strangers sojourning among them made no difference. It denied man’s obligation to own the forfeit of life to God: for God was to be owned solemnly, if not on the altar, at least by pouring out the blood on the earth as due to Him, instead of appropriating it to one’s own gratification. Death was a serious thing; and Jehovah would not have it slighted, even when He allowed His people to partake of flesh that had been killed for their food. But He would have them, on penalty of their own death, honour His claim of the blood as the sign of life given up to God, and in no way for man to make his food.
Yet there is marked distinction as ver. 15 shows between eating that which died of itself, or what was torn by beasts, “Whether he be home-born or a stranger, he shall both wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean till even; then he shall be clean.” Here it was not the defiance of Jehovah’s rights, as in deliberately planning to eat the blood which was forbidden; yet was it a want of zeal for God’s word, and of adequate sense of relationship to Him, and uncleanness was incurred, with the command to purge oneself and one’s surroundings before Him in the manner prescribed. If the defiled soul was indifferent to these mild terms of humiliation in the case, Jehovah was not mocked, and the soul which so despised Him “shall bear his iniquity.”
Who that weighs these words can wonder at the shock given to Jewish feeling by our Lord’s words in Joh 6:28 ? “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath life eternal; and I will raise him up at the last day; for my flesh is truly food and my blood is truly drink.” Granted, that His words were symbolical, as so often in this Gospel. Yet what symbol could be more startling? His person, His work, is the key to the truth. To eat blood under the law was to rebel against one’s forfeited place, and to deal with the life that reverts and only belongs to God. But God now gives eternal life in His Son to every believer, and sent Him to die as propitiation for our sins. Grace changes all; and we despise the truth too, if we do not appropriate His death as the food of faith for our souls. But this in no way abrogates the fact that, in the full blaze of the N.T., the apostles under the Spirit’s guidance call us to respect the outward token that life given up belongs to God.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
spake. See note on Lev 5:14.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 17
Now in chapter seventeen, God laid out that there was only to be one place for sacrifice, and that was the temple. They weren’t to just sacrifice anywhere but the tabernacle, and later the temples were to be the only places where sacrifices were to be offered unto the Lord. And that any time you killed any of your animals, you really should bring them. You shouldn’t just butcher your animals anywhere in the field. You should bring them to the temple and offer them as unto the Lord, as a peace offering, or a communion with God.
So that you would offer it and then you would get a part of the meat back for yourself in order that as you ate, it was something that had been offered to God. He having part of it, the fat and all, was burned as a sweet savor unto the Lord. And so you get the meat to eat. As you eat, the idea is I’m communing with God. I’m eating with God. I’m having this fellowship with God, the peace offering. So anytime you were gonna eat meat, anytime you were gonna have a barbecue, you should bring it first to the priest, offer it to the Lord, let it be slain there. You weren’t to just slay the animals anywhere, but let there be that constant reminder of the need that we have for fellowship with God. So offer to God, and realize that I’m eating with God. I’m partaking with God. I’m a part of God and realize that relationship that you have to the Lord.
Then in the latter portion of chapter seventeen the sanctity of the blood, beginning with verse ten,
They are not to eat any manner of blood, nor to allow any stranger in the land to eat any manner of blood; for God will set his face against that person, and will cut him off from among the people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I’ve given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that makes the atonement for the soul. Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourns among you eat blood. And whatsoever man there be of the children of Israel, or the strangers [and so forth] that hunt and catch any beast or fowl that it may be eaten; he shall pour out the blood, and cover it with dust. For it is the life of all flesh; the blood is for the life thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood ( Lev 17:10-14 ):
So the respect for life, and then of course the realization that the blood was that which brings the covering for sins. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Very definite instructions were given to the priests concerning sacrifices. These provided, first, that all sacrifices must be brought to the door of the Tent of Meeting. This provision at once recognized the unification of the nation around the fact of the divine presence It reminded the people that worship is possible only along divinely ordained lines and in no isolated independence; and so by making offering of sacrifice there, the possibility of offering worship to strange gods was eliminated.
Then followed the strictest instructions forbidding the eating of blood under any conditions. The reason for this prohibition was carefully given. Blood is the seat of life and God has set it apart, and therefore it is the medium of atonement. The most precious and essential thing is human life was thus sealed to the sacred and holy work of perpetual testimony to the only way in which it is possible for sinning man to be reconciled to God, that is, sacrifice as symbolized in the shedding of blood. In order that this truth might perpetually be present to the mind of the people, the blood of beast and fowl was forevermore to be held sacred and under no circumstances to be eaten.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
The Life of the Flesh is in the Blood
Lev 17:1-16
Every animal that was slain for food was regarded as a kind of peace-offering, and was therefore slain at the door of the Tabernacle. This law, though it expressed a great principle, was only provisional. It was kept as long as Israel dwelled in the Wilderness, but repealed when they entered the Land of Promise, where their numbers and diffusion would have rendered its strict observance impossible. See Deu 12:15-24.
Very earnest insistence is laid on the prohibition of blood as an article of diet. See Lev 17:10, etc. The reason of this is in the repeated announcement that the life (or soul) is in the blood, Lev 17:11 and Lev 17:14. When we are told that the blood maketh atonement, we learn that it does so because it represents the soul of the victim. Life is given for life, soul for soul.
Thus our Lord gave His blood, i.e., His life or soul, a ransom for many. He poured out His soul unto death. See Isa 53:12. It was His blood, not as it was in His veins, but as poured out, that effected the reconciliation. See Eph 1:7. It is the death of Christ in which the sinner finds peace. Compare Lev 16:30 and 1Jn 1:7.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
2. The Testimony Concerning the Blood
CHAPTER 17
1. Concerning slain animals (Lev 17:1-9)
2. Concerning the eating of blood (Lev 17:10-16)
This chapter needs little comment. Everything in this chapter speaks of the sanctity of the blood, what great value God, to whom life belongs, places upon the blood and with what jealous care He watches over it. The center of all is verse 11: For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. Every slain animal had to bear witness to this fact. Even the hunter had to pour out the blood and cover it with dust. No blood was to be eaten. But in the New Testament we are commanded to eat spiritually of the flesh of the Son of God and to drink spiritually His blood.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
ABOMINATIONS UNTO THE LORD
The underlying thought of this section is in the words of Lev 18:1-5. Israel is redeemed and separated unto God, therefore, she is to live consistently with that fact in all her ways. She is not to do after the heathen peoples round about her.
THE QUESTION OF EATING (Leviticus 17)
It looks as though the opening injunction of this chapter touched once more upon the ceremonial and recurred to a matter considered under the offerings. But in that case the design was to prevent idolatry in connection with worship, and here to prevent it in connection with the preparation of food. It is to be remembered also, that these regulations were for the tent life in the wilderness, and were afterward repealed in Deu 12:15-24, were entering upon the settled habitation of Canaan.
The reasons for the prohibition of blood are clearly stated. It was the life of the flesh and the symbol of that life which was substituted for the guilty in making atonement.
As to the first, modern science is illustrating its wisdom in teaching that the germs of infectious disease circulate in the blood. As to the second, the
relation of the blood to the forgiveness of sins was thus always kept prominently before the mind of the people. There is a great lesson in this thought for us as well as them.
THE QUESTIONS OF CHASTITY (Leviticus 18)
All sexual relationship is prohibited as between a man and his mother, stepmother, sister, granddaughter, stepsister, aunt, daughter-in-law, sister- in-law, a woman and her daughter or her granddaughter, a wifes sister (while the wife is living), a woman at the time specified in Lev 18:19, a neighbors wife, another man, a beast. The Canaanites did these things, which explains their expulsion from their land; and these things were also common with the Egyptians among whom the Israelites had lived.
A few comments follow. For example, the law forbidding such relationship with a brothers wife (Lev 18:16), is qualified in Deu 25:5-10, so far as to permit marriage with the widow of a deceased brother when the latter died without children, in order to perpetuate his family.
The reference to Molech in Lev 18:21 grows out of the connection between some of the licentious practices just mentioned and the worship of the heathen god (compare 2Ki 17:31; Jer 7:31; Jer 19:5). In that worship children were slain like beasts and offered in sacrifice to their god.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER 19
It is difficult to generalize in chapter 19, which seems to contain repetitions of laws already dealt with in other connections.
Among these reference is again made to the Sabbath; the making of molten images; the eating of peace offerings; gleaning of the harvest for the poor; theft, perjury, oppression; the treatment of the blind and deaf; fairness in judgment; talebearing; revenge, hybridity; carnal connection with bondwomen; uncircumcised fruit; enchantment; physical marks of idolatry; honoring the aged, etc.
The first three have to do with reverence for God. The next series, having regard to the poor, was not only a protest against natural selfishness, but an intimation that the land did not belong to the human occupant but to God, and that its husbandman was merely His steward.
In several verses following, God still speaks on behalf of the weak and defenseless, but ere long balances the subject by showing that the rich are no more to be wronged than the poor.
Reaching the middle of the chapter, the commands concerning hybridity among cattle and in the vegetable kingdom are sufficiently clear, but that about the mingling of stuffs in our garments is not. Perhaps this whole section of laws is to cultivate reverence for the order established in nature by God, nature itself being a manifestation of God. In this case the precept about garments would be a symbolic reminder of the duty to a large class who did not so frequently come in contact with the other reminders referred to.
In verses 20-22 we come upon what seems a divine approval of concubinage and slavery, but we are to remember the explanation of it in Mat 19:8.
The uncircumcised fruit (v. 23-25) is as interesting a feature as any in the chapter. The explanation is in the law that the first-fruit always belongs to God. But it must be a perfect offering as well as the first-fruit, and this is not usually true of the fruit of a young tree. During the first three years of its life it is regarded as analogous to the life of a child uncircumcised or unconsecrated to the Lord. It is not until the fourth that its fruit becomes sufficiently perfected to offer unto God, and not until after that is it to be partaken of by the Israelite himself.
The reference to the trimming of the hair and beard is explained by the fact that among heathen peoples to do so visibly marks one as of a certain religion or the worshipper of a certain god. Today certain orders in the Roman Catholic Church are indicated in this manner. But the Israelite was not only to worship God alone, but to avoid even the appearance of worshipping another.
QUESTIONS
1. To what do the contents of these chapters relate?
2. Why was blood prohibited in eating?
3. In what way does God claim ownership of the land of Israel?
4. How does He defend the rich as well as the poor?
5. Can you quote Mat 19:8?
6. What is the meaning of uncircumcised fruit?
7. To what does the trimming of the hair and beard refer?
NEW TESTAMENT APPLICATION
Before pursuing these lessons further we would pause to point out their application to the Christian, and how he should make use of them for his spiritual advancement and Gods glory in this sinful world.
Brooke will once more be our guide:
In chapters 1-10 there is revealed what God is, and does, and gives to His people, but in chapters 11-22 we have what His people should be and do for Him. The first half of these latter chapters, 11-16, show that the life of Gods people is to be clean, while the second half, chapter 17 to practically the close of the book, shows how it is to be holy. There is a difference between the two ideas represented by clean and holy (2Co 7:1).
The word clean, together with unclean, purify and their derivatives, comes from two Hebrew roots, occurring in the sixth chapter over 164 times, thus showing the emphasis God puts upon the thought they express, and impressing us with the fact that a line of separation must be drawn between those who are Gods people through redemption by the blood, and those who are not.
But we are taught that only God Himself can indicate what this line of separation is. Only He can say what is fit and what unfit for His people to think, and be, and do. This is New Testament as well as Old Testament teaching (Php 1:9-11), and means much more than the broad distinction between right and wrong. The people of the world know what these distinctions are, and for worldly reasons endeavor more or less to maintain them; but the people of God know the mind of God, and are expected to follow it in details of which the world is ignorant.
We learn how communion with God may be hindered or promoted by things otherwise exceedingly small, like eating and drinking (1Co 10:31), the way we dress, or keep our dwellings, the physical condition of our bodies, and the like. There are many questions of casuistry, which the full-grown Christian recognizes as essential in order to walk with God, of which other people know nothing. (Compare Deu 14:21; 1Co 2:14; 1Co 10:23; Eph 5:17; 2Ti 2:4.) The Christian cannot say, I may do this for others do it. The others may not be redeemed and separated unto God, and hence he must leave the doubtful things to them who claim not royal birth and come out from among them and be separate (2Co 6:17-18).
Our author distinguishes between the first half of this section of the book, chapters 11-16, and the latter half, 17-22, by speaking of the latter as presenting on the positive what the former presents on the negative side. In illustrating the thought from the New Testament point of view he uses 2Co 7:1 : Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
The two phrases cleanse and perfecting holiness are in different tenses in the Greek. The former is in the aorist, and marks a definite action, something done once for all; but the latter is in the present tense, and implies a continuous line of conduct. When we are bidden to cleanse ourselves, it means that everything marked by God as unclean is to be at once and forever put away; but when we are bidden to be perfect in holiness a lifelong course of action and conduct is in mind.
Reverend Brooke helps us to understand this by his definition of holiness, which in its primary sense does not mean supereminent piety but the relationship existing between God and a consecrated thing. It is in this sense we read of a holy day, a holy place, or a holy animal.
But as soon as this title is given to anyone or anything, the power of it is supposed to begin to work, that is, it immediately demands altered usage or conduct harmonizing with the new relationship to God into which it is brought. As applied to human beings, it is an instant summons to a new line of conduct, and thus passes into the meaning of practical piety. He uses this illustration: If one were rebuking a peer for unworthy conduct he might say, You are a nobleman; you ought to be a noble man. In this sense Paul uses it in 1Co 5:7 : Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened.
These chapters therefore (17-22), bring into startling prominence the breadth and depth of the idea of holiness as God conceives of it. It concerns the table of Gods people, the home, and all their social and business relationships.
It is only as we realize this idea of holiness, and how far we are separated from it by our old nature, that we can appreciate the significance of the Day of Atonement and the place its revelation occupies in this book (chap. 16). The other chapters preceding and following that revelation raised the question, Who can be clean before God? We perceive that, notwithstanding what provisions we make or precautions we take, we can never be sure that no spot of uncleanness remains, or that the conditions for communion with God are fulfilled. Only God can be sure of this, or make us sure, but that assurance is what chapter 16 in its typical aspect is intended to provide.
Once a year, and on that day, all the iniquities of Israel, and all their transgressions, in all their sins were completely removed, and atonement made for every uncleanness. The prototype of this we find in the person and work of our blessed Lord, whose grace is sufficient for us, and whose blood cleanseth us from all sin.
QUESTIONS
1. Why is the standard of righteousness for Gods people different from the worlds?
2. Name some of the little things which may affect the saints communion with God.
3. Quote 2Co 7:1.
4. How would you define holiness?
5. Quote 1Co 5:7.
Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary
Lev 17:3. Killeth an ox; not for the purpose of eating, but for sacrifice. The object of this precept was first to prevent idolatry, and next to support the religion appointed of God to shadow forth the glory of Christ. But the precept was not absolute. Samuel offered sacrifice in Mizpeh, David at Araunahs, and Elijah on mount Carmel.
Lev 17:7. Devils. literally, beings full of hair, as the goats worshipped in Egypt; figuratively, fawns and satyrs of every kind which the imagination can paint. It was under a thousand vain figures in which the idols were made, that Satan availed himself, to draw the worship of men wholly to himself. Our version reads devils, as the Vulgate; and St. Paul calls the cup of idols the cup of devils, to which they offered blood. Israel being now married to the Lord, such worship would be spiritual fornication or adultery.
Lev 17:11. The life of the flesh is in the blood. Death, and deadness of a limb, follow obstructions of circulation in the blood. The ancients knew this fact, lately adopted in modern science, that animal life flows in the blood. Blood is ceremonially forbidden, for the gentiles drank the blood of their enemies, and offered libations of it to their idols. Genesis 9. Psa 16:3.
REFLECTIONS.
The Lord as sovereign of the universe and giver of life, has a right to command, without being accountable to his creatures; but he is so gracious and condescending, that he not only governs his rational creatures by the wisest of laws, but deigns to assign a reason, in one place or other, for almost every precept. The uniform character of revelation is to preserve us from sin, and to make us holy and happy. In appointing his holy sanctuary as the only place of sacrifice, oblation and atonement, there was a cause of the most weighty kind; there being but one Mediator between God and men, but one altar, the cross; but one laver, regeneration; but one mercy-seat, the throne of grace; and but one Holy Spirit, by whom we have access to the Father through the Son of his love. Let us therefore revere the smallest of his precepts, that our persons and our services may be accepted of the Lord.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Leviticus 17
In this chapter the reader will find two special points, namely – first, that life belongs to Jehovah; and, secondly, that the power of atonement is in the blood. The Lord attached peculiar importance to both these things. He would have them impressed upon every member of the congregation.
“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron, and unto his sons, and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto them, This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded, saying, What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp, and bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer an offering unto the Lord, before the tabernacle of the Lord; blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people.” This was a most solemn matter; and we may ask what was involved in offering a sacrifice otherwise than in the manner here prescribed? It was nothing less than robbing Jehovah of His rights, and presenting to Satan that which was due to God. A man might say, “Can I not offer a sacrifice in one place as well as another?” The answer is, “Life belongs to God, and His claim thereto must be recognised in the place which He has appointed – before the tabernacle of the Lord.” That was the only meeting place between God and man. To offer elsewhere proved that the heart did not want God.
The moral of this is plain. There is one place where God has appointed to meet the sinner, and that is the cross – the antitype of the brazen altar. There and there alone has God’s claim upon the life been duly recognised. To reject this meeting-place is to bring down judgement upon oneself – it is to trample under foot the just claims of God, and to arrogate to oneself a right to life which all have forfeited. It is important to see this.
“And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord, at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and burn the fat for a sweet savour unto the Lord.” The blood and the fat belonged to God. The blessed Jesus fully recognised this. He surrendered His life to God, and all his hidden enemies were devoted to Him likewise. He voluntarily walked to the altar and there gave up His precious life; and the fragrant odour of His intrinsic excellency ascended to the throne of God. Blessed Jesus! it is sweet, at every step of our way, to be reminded of Thee.
The second point above referred to is clearly stated in verse 11. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls: for IT IS THE BLOOD THAT MAKETH AN ATONEMENT FOR THE SOUL.” The connection between the two points is deeply interesting. When man duly takes his place as one possessing no title whatsoever to life – when he fully recognises God’s claims upon him, then the divine record is, “I have given you the life to make an atonement for your soul.” Yes; atonement is God’s gift to man; and, be it carefully noted, that this atonement is in the blood, and only in the blood. “It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” It is not the blood and something else. The word is most explicit. It attributes atonement exclusively to the blood. “Without shedding of blood there is no remission.” (Heb. 9: 22) It was the death of Christ that rent the veil. It is “by the blood of Jesus” we have “boldness to enter into the holiest.” “We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.” (Eph. 1: 7; Col. 1: 14) “Having made peace by the blood of his cross.” “Ye who were afar off are made nigh by the blood of his cross.” “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” (1 John 1: 7) “They washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Rev. 7) “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.” (Rev. 12)
I would desire to call my reader’s earnest attention to the precious and vital doctrine of the blood. I am anxious that he should see its true place. The blood of Christ is the foundation of everything. It is the ground of God’s righteousness in justifying an ungodly sinner that believes on the name of the Son of God; and it is the ground of the sinner’s confidence in drawing nigh to a holy God who is of purer eyes than to behold evil. God would be just in the condemnation of the sinner; but, through the death of Christ, He can be just And the justifier of him that believeth – a just God and a Saviour. The righteousness of God is His consistency with Himself – His acting in harmony with His revealed character. Hence, were it not for the cross, His consistency with Himself would, of necessity, demand the death and judgement of the sinner; but in the cross that death and judgement were borne by the sinner’s Surety, so that the same divine consistency is perfectly maintained while a holy God justifies an ungodly sinner through faith. It is all through the blood of Jesus – nothing less – nothing more – nothing different. “It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. This is conclusive. This is God’s simple plan of justification. Man’s plan is much more cumbrous, much more roundabout. And not only is it cumbrous and roundabout, but it attributes righteousness to something quite different from what I find in the word. If I look from Genesis 3 down to the close of Revelation, I find the blood of Christ put forward as the alone ground of righteousness. We get pardon, peace, life, righteousness, all by the blood, and nothing but the blood. The entire book of Leviticus, and particularly the chapter upon which we have just been meditating, is a commentary upon the doctrine of the blood. It seems strange to have to insist upon a fact so obvious to every dispassionate teachable student of holy Scripture. Yet so it is. Our minds are prone to slip away from the plain testimony of the word. We are ready to adopt opinions without ever calmly investigating them in the light of the divine testimonies. In this way we get into confusion, darkness, and error.
May we all learn to give the blood of Christ its due Place! It is so precious in God’s sight that He will not suffer ought else to be added to or mingled with it. “The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”
Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch
Leviticus 17-26. The Holiness Code (see Introd. 2).
Leviticus 17. Restrictions on Sacrifice.The whole chapter recalls P, yet there are differences of phrase (e.g. what man soever, Lev 17:3) and of tone (e.g. the giving of a reason for a command, Lev 17:11) and of contents (e.g. the explicit prohibition of slaughter except at the central sanctuary). Of the four sections of the chapter, each with its introductory phrase, the second is an extension of the first, the fourth of the third.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
GOD’S RIGHTS WHEN AN ANIMAL WAS KILLED (vv. 1-16)
This chapter is an appendix to chapter 16, though it does not deal with the sin offering. Rather, the Lord now strongly insists that any Israelite who would slaughter an ox or a lamb or a goat must bring it to the door of the tent of meeting to present it as an offering to the Lord. Verse 5 adds that these were to be offered as peace offerings to the Lord.
The offerer received most of the peace offering as food, but first the fat, the two kidneys and the lobe of the liver were to be burned on the altar to the Lord (Lev 7:3-5), while the breast was given to Aaron and his sons and the right thigh to the priest who offered the animal (Lev 7:31-33). Thus, God was to be first recognized in the killing of the animal, then typically Christ and the priestly family were to have their part, then the offerer was given all that remained.
The spiritual significance of this for us we must not ignore. For if anyone in Israel did not give God this first place of recognition, he was to be sentenced to death. The matter is no less serious for us, though God is not today requiring the sentence of death for an offender. Instead He has given us the instruction of 1Ti 4:4-5, For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. Even animals unclean for Israel by the law’s standards are for us perfectly fit for eating, for they are sanctified by the word of God and by the prayer of thanksgiving on the part of the eater. If one does not thank God for his food, he has no proper right to eat at all. For every creature is the property of God, and in receiving it we ought to recognize His rights first of all.
The ungodly sacrificed to demons in their recognizing idols, and evidently Israel had blindly followed this evil example, but verse 7 tells them to desist from this adulterous association. In fact, not only the people of Israel, but also any Gentiles who dwelt among them, were required to bring their sacrifices to the door of the tabernacle to be offered to the Lord, or suffer the penalty of death (vv. 8-9).
Again the Lord insists that anyone of Israel or of strangers who dwelt among them who ate blood must be cut off, that is, put to death (v. 10). For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul (v. 11). The blood shed is the sign of death. Since God is the Lifegiver, we must recognize His rights by refraining from eating blood. This was true before the law was given (Gen 9:4), and it remains true today when believers are not under law but under grace (Act 15:28-29).
If an animal died or was killed by other animals, it would not be properly bled, and if one should eat the dead animal he must both wash his clothes and bathe in water to be cleansed from defilement. If he did not, he would bear his guilt, which would mean death (vv. 15-16). All of this chapter therefore insists that God has rights that man must not ignore.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
1. Holiness of food ch. 17
We move from public regulations in chapter 16 to intimate regulations in chapter 18 with chapter 17 providing the transition. In contrast to the first sixteen chapters, chapter 17 says very little about the role of the priests. The emphasis is rather on mistakes that the ordinary Israelite could make that would affect his or her relationship to God. Food and sacrificial meals were a prominent part of heathen worship. Therefore what the Israelites ate and how they ate it demonstrated their consecration to Yahweh.
"The laws in this chapter deal with various problems connected with sacrifice and eating meat. These matters have already been discussed in chs. 1-7 and 11 (cf. Lev 7:26-27 with Lev 17:10 ff. and Lev 11:39-40 with Lev 17:15-16). This chapter draws together themes that run through the previous sixteen: in particular it explains the special significance of blood in the sacrifices (Lev 17:11 ff.)." [Note: Wenham, The Book . . ., p. 240.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
These directions pertained to both the priests and the people. Those laws in chapters 18-20 governed the lives of the common people only (cf. Lev 18:2; Lev 19:2; Lev 20:2). Other laws specifically for the priests are in chapters 21-22.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
HOLINESS IN EATING
Lev 17:1-16
WITH this chapter begins another subdivision of the law. Hitherto we have had before us only sacrificial worship and matters of merely ceremonial law. The law of holy living contained in the following chapters (17-22), on the other hand, has to do for the most part with matters rather ethical than ceremonial, and consists chiefly of precepts designed to regulate morally the ordinary engagements and relationships of everyday life. The fundamental thought of the four chapters is that which is expressed, e.g., in Lev 18:3 : Israel, redeemed by Jehovah, is called to be a holy people; and this holiness is to be manifested in a total separation from the ways of the heathen. This principle is enforced by various specific commands and prohibitions, which naturally have particular regard to the special conditions under which Israel was placed, as a holy nation consecrated to Jehovah, the one, true God, but living in the midst of nations of idolaters.
The whole of chapter 17, with the exception of Lev 16:8-9, has to do with the application of this law of holy living to the use even of lawful food. At first thought, the injunctions of the chapter might seem to belong rather to ceremonial than to moral law; but closer observation will show that all the injunctions here given have direct reference to the avoidance of idolatry, especially as connected with the preparation and use of food.
It was not enough that the true Israelite should abstain from food prohibited by God, as in chapter 12; he must also use that which was permitted in a way well pleasing to God, carefully shunning even the appearance of any complicity with surrounding idolatry, or fellowship with the heathen in their unholy fashions and customs. Even so for the Christian: it is not enough that he abstain from what is expressly forbidden; even in his use of lawful food, he must so use it that it shall be to him a means of grace, in helping him to maintain an uninterrupted walk with God.
In Lev 17:1-7 is given the law to regulate the use of such clean animals for food as could be offered to God in sacrifice; in Lev 17:10-16, of such as, although permitted for food, were not allowed for sacrifice.
The directions regarding the first class may be summed up in this: all such animals were to be treated as peace offerings. No private person in Israel was to slaughter any such animal anywhere in the camp or out of it, except at the door of the tent of meeting. Thither they were to be brought “unto the priest,” and offered for peace offerings (Lev 17:5); the blood must be sprinkled on the altar of burnt offering; the fat parts burnt “for a sweet savour unto the Lord” (Lev 17:6); and then only the priest having first taken his appointed portions, the remainder might now be eaten by the Israelite, as given back to him by God, in peaceful fellowship with Him.
The law could not have been burdensome, as some might hastily imagine. Even when obtainable, meat was probably not used as food by them so freely as with us; and in the wilderness the lack of flesh, it will be remembered, was so great as to have occasioned at one time a rebellion among the people, who fretfully complained: {Num 11:4} “Who shall give us flesh to eat?”
Even the uncritical reader must be able to see how manifest is the Mosaic date of this part of Leviticus. The terms of this law suppose a camp life; indeed, the camp is explicitly named (Lev 17:3). That which was enjoined was quite practicable under the conditions of life in the wilderness, when, at the best, flesh was scarce, and the people dwelt compactly together; but would have been utterly inapplicable and impracticable at a later date, after they were settled throughout the land of Canaan, when to have slaughtered all beasts used for food at the central sanctuary would have been impossible. Hence we find that, as we should expect, the modified law of Deuteronomy, {Deu 12:15-16; Deu 12:20-24} assuming the previous existence of this earlier law, explicitly repeals it. To suppose that forgers of a later day, as, for instance, of the time of Josiah, or after the Babylonian exile, should have needlessly invented a law of this kind, is a hypothesis which is rightly characterised by Dillmann as “simply absurd.”
This regulation for the wilderness days is said (Lev 17:5, Lev 17:7) to have been made “to the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they sacrifice in the open field unto the Lord, and sacrifice them for sacrifices of peace offerings unto the Lord And they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices unto the he-goats, after whom they go a whoring,”
There can be no doubt that in the last sentence, “he-goats,” as in the Revised Version, instead of “devils,” as in the Authorised, is the right rendering. The worship referred to was still in existence in the days of the monarchy; for it is included in the charges against “Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin,” {2Ch 11:15} that “he appointed him priests; for the he-goats, and for the calves which he had made.” Nor can here we agree with Dillmann that in this worship of he-goats here referred to, there is “no occasion to think of the goat worship of Egypt.” For inasmuch as we know that the worship of the sacred bull and that of the he-goat prevailed in Egypt in those days, and inasmuch as in Eze 20:6-7; Eze 20:15-18, repeated reference is made to Israels having worshipped “the idols of Egypt,” one can hardly avoid combining these two facts, and thus connecting the goat worship to which allusion is here made, with that which prevailed at Mendes, in Lower Egypt. This cult at that place was accompanied with nameless revolting rites, such as give special significance to the description of this worship (Lev 17:7) as “a whoring” after the goats; and abundantly explain and justify the severity of the penalty attached to the violation of this law (Lev 17:4) in cutting off the offender from this people; all the more when we observe the fearful persistency of this horrible goat worship in Israel, breaking out anew, as just remarked, some five hundred years later, in the reign of Jeroboam.
The words imply that the ordinary slaughter of animals for food was often connected with some idolatrous ceremony related to this goat worship. What precisely it may have been, we know not; but of such customs, connecting the preparation of the daily food with idolatry, we have abundant illustration in the usages of the ancient Persians, the Hindoos, and the heathen Arabs of the days before Mohammed. The law was thus intended to cut out this everyday idolatry by the root. With these “field devils,” as Luther renders the word, the holy people of the Lord were to have nothing to do.
Very naturally, the requirement to present all slaughtered animals as peace offerings to Jehovah gives occasion to turn aside for a little from the matter of food, which is the chief subject of the chapter, in order to extend this principle beyond animals slaughtered for food, and insist particularly that all burnt offerings and sacrifices of every kind should be sacrificed at the door of the tent of meeting, and nowhere else. This law, we are told (Lev 17:8), was to be applied, not only to the Israelites themselves, but also to “strangers” among them; such as, e.g., were the Gibeonites. No idolatry, nor anything likely to be associated with it, was to be tolerated from anyone in the holy camp.
The principle which underlies this stringent law, as also the reason which is given for it, is of constant application in modern life. There was nothing wrong in itself in slaying an animal in one place more than another. It was abstractly possible-as, likely enough, many an Israelite may have said to himself-that a man could just as really “eat unto the Lord” if he slaughtered and ate his animal in the field, as anywhere else. Nevertheless this was forbidden under the heaviest penalties. It teaches us that he who will be holy must not only abstain from that which is in itself always wrong, but must carefully keep himself from doing even lawful or necessary things in such a way, or under such associations and circumstances, as may outwardly compromise his Christian standing, or which may be proved by experience to have an almost unavoidable tendency toward sin. The laxity in such matters which prevails in the so-called “Christian world” argues little for the tone of spiritual life in our day in those who indulge in it, or allow it, or apologise for it. It may be true enough, in a sense, that as many say, there is no harm in this or that. Perhaps not; but what if experience have shown that, though in itself not sinful, a certain association or amusement almost always tends to worldliness, which is a form of idolatry? Or-to use the apostles illustration-what if one be seen, though with no intention of wrong, “sitting at meat in an idols temple,” and he whose conscience is weak be thereby emboldened to do what to him is sin? There is only one safe principle, now as in the days of Moses: everything must be brought “before the Lord”; used as from Him and for Him, and therefore used under such limitations and restrictions as His wise and holy law imposes. Only so shall we be safe; only so abide in living fellowship with God.
Very beautiful and instructive, again, was the direction that the Israelite, in the cases specified, should make his daily food a peace offering. This involved a dedication of the daily food to the Lord; and in his receiving it back again then from the hand of God, the truth was visibly represented that our daily food is from God; while also, in the sacrificial acts which preceded the eating, the Israelite was continually reminded that it was upon the ground of an accepted atonement that even these everyday mercies were received. Such also should be, in spirit, the often neglected prayer before each of our daily meals. It should be ever offered with the remembrance of the precious blood which has purchased for us even the most common mercies; and should thus sincerely recognise what, in the confusing complexity of the second causes through which we receive our daily food, we so easily forget: that the Lords prayer is not a mere form of words when we say, “Give us this day our daily bread”; but that working behind, and in, and with, all these second causes, is the kindly Providence of God, who, opening His hand, supplies the want of every living thing.
And so, eating in grateful, loving fellowship with our Heavenly Father that which His bounty gives us, to His glory, every meal shall become, as it were, a sacramental remembrance of the Lord. We may have wondered at what we have read of the world wide custom of the Mohammedan, who, whenever the knife of slaughter is lifted against a beast for food, utters his “Bism allah,” “In the name of the most merciful God”; and not otherwise will regard his food as being made halal, or “lawful”; and, no doubt, in all this, as in many a Christians prayer, there may often be little heart. But the thought in this ceremony is even this of Leviticus, and we do well to make it our own, eating even our daily food “in the name of the most merciful God,” and with uplifting of the heart in thankful worship toward Him.
But there were many beasts which, although they might not be offered to the Lord in sacrifice, were yet “clean,” and permitted to the Israelites as food. Such, in particular, were clean animals that are taken in the hunt or chase. In Lev 17:10-16 the law is given for the use of these. It is prefaced by a very full and explicit prohibition of the eating of blood; for while, as regards the animals to be offered to the Lord, provision was made with respect to the blood, that it was to be sprinkled around the altar, there was the danger that in other cases, where this was not permissible, the blood might be used for food. Hence the prohibition against eating “any manner of blood,” on a twofold ground: first (Lev 17:11, Lev 17:14), that the life of the flesh is the blood; and second (Lev 17:11), that, for this reason, God had chosen the blood to be the symbol of life substituted for the life of the guilty in atoning sacrifice: “I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls.” Hence, in order that this relation of the blood to the forgiveness of sins might be constantly kept before the mind, it was ordained that never should the Israelite eat of flesh except the blood should first have been carefully drained out. And it was to be treated with reverence, as having thus a certain sanctity; when the beast was taken in hunting, the Israelite must (Lev 17:13) “pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with dust”;-an act by which the blood, the life, was symbolically returned to Him who in the beginning said, {Gen 1:24} “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind.” And because, in the case of “that which dieth of itself,” or is “torn of beasts,” the blood would not be thus carefully drained off, all such animals (Lev 17:15) are prohibited as food.
It is profoundly instructive to observe that here, again, we come upon declarations and a command, the deep truth and fitness of which is only becoming clear now after three thousand years. For, as the result of our modern discoveries with regard to the constitution of the blood, and the exact nature of its functions, we in this day are able to say that it is not far from a scientific statement of the facts, when we read (Lev 17:14), “As to the life of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life thereof.” For it is in just this respect that the blood is most distinct from all other parts of the body; that, whereas it conveys and mediates nourishment to all, it is itself nourished by none; but by its myriad cells brought immediately in contact with the digested food, directly and immediately assimilates it to itself. We are compelled to say that as regards the physical life of man-which alone is signified by the original term here-it is certainly true of the blood, as of no other part of the organism, that “the life of all flesh is the blood thereof.”
And while it is true that, according to the text, a spiritual and moral reason is given for the prohibition of the use of blood as food, yet it is well worth noting that, as has been already remarked in another connection, the prohibition, as we are now beginning to see, had also a hygienic reason. For Dr. de Mussy, in his paper before the French Academy of Medicine already referred to, calls attention to the fact that, not only did the Mosaic laws exclude from the Hebrew dietary animals “particularly liable to parasites”; but also that “it is in the blood,” so rigidly prohibited by Moses as food, “that the germs or spores of infections disease circulate.” Surely no one need fear, with some expositors, lest this recognition of a sanitary intent in these laws shall hinder the recognition of their moral and spiritual purport, which in this chapter is so expressly taught. Rather should this cause us the more to wonder and admire the unity which thus appears between the demands and necessities of the physical and the moral and spiritual life; and, in the discovery of the marvellous adaptation of these ancient laws to the needs of both, to find a new confirmation of our faith in God and in His revealed Word. For thus do they appear to be laws so far beyond the wisdom of that time, and so surely beneficent in their working, that in view of this it should be easy to believe that it must indeed have been the Lord God, the Maker and Preserver of all flesh, who spake all these laws unto His servant Moses.
The moral and spiritual purpose of this law concerning the use of blood was apparently twofold. In the first place, it was intended to educate the people to a reverence for life, and purify them from that tendency to bloodthirstiness which has so often distinguished heathen nations, and especially those with whom Israel was to be brought in closest contact. But secondly, and chiefly, it was intended, as in the former part of the chapter, everywhere and always to keep before the mind the sacredness of the blood as being the appointed means for the expiation of sin; given by God upon the altar to make atonement for the soul of the sinner, “by reason of the life” or soul with which it stood in such immediate relation. Not only were they therefore to abstain from the blood of such animals as could be offered on the altar, but even from that of those which could not be offered. Thus the blood was to remind them, every time that they ate flesh, of the very solemn truth that without shedding of blood there was no remission of sin. The Israelite must never forget this; even in the heat and excitement of the chase, he must pause and carefully drain the blood from the creature he had slain, and reverently cover it with dust; -a symbolic act which should ever put him in mind of the Divine ordinance that the blood, the life, of a guiltless victim must be given, in order to the forgiveness of sin.
A lesson lies here for us regarding the sacredness of all that is associated with sacred things. All that is connected with God, and with His worship, especially all that is connected with His revelation of Himself for our salvation, is to be treated with the most profound reverence. Even though the blood of the deer killed in the chase could not be used in sacrifice, yet, because it was blood, was in its essential nature like unto that which was so used, therefore it must be treated with a certain respect, and be always covered with earth. It is the fashion of our age-and one which is increasing in an alarming degree-to speak lightly of things which are closely connected with the revelation and worship of the holy God. Against everything of this kind the spirit of this law warns us. Nothing which is associated in any way with what is sacred is to be spoken of or treated irreverently, lest we thus come to think lightly of the sacred things themselves. This irreverent treatment of holy things is a crying evil in many parts of the English-speaking world, as also in continental Christendom. We need to beware of it. After irreverence, too often, by no obscure law, comes open denial of the Holy One and of His Holy Son, our Lord and Saviour. The blood of Christ, which represented that holy life which was given on the cross for our sins, is holy-an infinitely holy thing! And what is Gods estimate of its sanctity we may perhaps learn-looking through the symbol to that which was symbolised-from this law; which required that all blood, because outwardly resembling the holy blood of sacrifice, and, like it, the seat and vehicle of life, should be treated with most careful reverence. And it is safe to say that just those most need the lesson taught by this command who find it the hardest to appreciate it, and to whom its injunctions still seem regulations puerile and unworthy, according to their fancy, of the dignity and majesty of God.