Introduction
THE SACREDNESS OF BLOOD.
Since blood is the only means of atonement, it becomes important to impress upon the Hebrew mind not only the sacredness of the blood of the victims slain in sacrifice, but of the shed blood of all beasts and birds. Hence, when the sacrificial animals are slain for food, they must be killed at the door of the tabernacle, (Leviticus 17:1-6.) Sacrifices to demons are forbidden, (Leviticus 17:7-9,) and all blood eating, (Leviticus 17:10-16.)
CONCLUDING NOTE. VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.
Bahr regards Leviticus 17:11 as the key to the whole theory of the Jewish sacrifices. His comment thereon, covering fifteen pages of his great work, embraces the following chief points: that the central point of the sacrifice is not the killing of the animal, but the procedure with the blood; that the end of the sacrifice was expiation or atonement; that it is Jehovah from whom the atonement proceeds; (“ I have given it;”) and that it is for man; (“for your souls;”) and that the blood makes an atonement because the soul is in the blood; that the atoning power does not reside in the material blood, but in the soul that is in the blood bannephesh “by means of the soul.” There is a substitution of the soul of the animal for the soul of man; yet only a symbolical substitution. The sacrifice has also a sacramental character, so far as blood is the means, ordained of God, of bringing the soul of man into connexion with himself.
Winer says, that “the parallelism of the soul of the animal with the souls of the persons who offered it is assuredly not without significancy.” Tholuck thus proves that the expiatory sacrifices of the Old Testament were in their nature vicarious: 1.) The idea has prevailed in all nations. 2.) Among the Jews the death of men was considered vicarious; (2 Samuel 12:15, etc.; Isaiah 53:4-5; especially Daniel 9:24-27;) allied to this is substitution by means of animals. 3.) The ritual favours this view; only in the expiatory sacrifices is the animal rendered unclean and its remains burned without the camp, because “it is a sin offering.” Exodus 29:14.
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