Text for the Week: Create a Clean World

Scripture: Leviticus 4:1-12

The Lord said to Moses, ² Say to the Israelites: Do the following whenever someone sins unintentionally against any of the Lord’s commands, doing something that shouldn’t be done:

³ If it is the anointed priest who has sinned, making the people guilty of sin, he must present to the Lord a flawless bull from the herd as a purification offering for the sin he has committed. ⁴ He will bring the bull before the Lord at the entrance to the meeting tent and press his hand on the bull’s head. Then he will slaughter the bull before the Lord. ⁵ The anointed priest will take some of the bull’s blood and take it into the meeting tent. ⁶ The priest will dip his finger into the blood and sprinkle some of it seven times before the Lord, toward the sanctuary’s inner curtain. ⁷ Then the priest will put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of perfumed incense, which is in the meeting tent before the Lord. But he will pour out all the rest of the bull’s blood at the base of the altar of entirely burned offerings, which is at the meeting tent’s entrance. ⁸ Then he will remove all the fat from the bull for the purification offering: the fat that covers and surrounds the insides; ⁹ the two kidneys and the fat around them at the loins; and the lobe on the liver, which he will remove with the kidneys, ¹⁰ just as this is removed from the ox for the communal sacrifice of well-being. Then the priest will completely burn these on the altar of entirely burned offerings. ¹¹ But the bull’s hide and all of its flesh, along with its head, lower legs, entrails, and dung— ¹² all that remains of the bull—will be taken to a clean location outside the camp, to the ash heap. It should be burned there at the ash heap on a wood fire.

Theme- The purification offering was about recognizing sin contaminates the world.

Questions

1. Why does Leviticus 4 describe four different purification offerings based on who sinned?
2. Why does the offering only deal with unintentional sins?
3. Why is does the priest merely sprinkle or wipe the blood on the altar when with other sacrifices he tosses the blood on the Altar?
4. Why does the priest offer the purification offering for himself on the inner altar when all other offerings are done on the outer altar?
5. Why is very little of the animal offered in the sacrifice and the rest burned outside the camp?

Helpful Information

Related texts: Hebrews 10:19-22

I learned a great deal of this from a Twitter thread by Rabbi Ari Lamm which can be found here.

The pieces of the animal offered for the purification offering have symbolic significance, the fat offered was considered the choicest piece of the animal, the kidneys (like the heart) were seen as the core of the animals thinking and feeling, and the liver was associated with divination and seeing the future.

The blood of offerings is reserved because it represents the life of the animal and though the person has a right to offer the meat, they have no right over the life and so must take care of the blood.

The offering was not meant to purify the person making the offering it was intended to purify the altar space. Sins our sins pollute the physical world we must take steps to purify what we have contaminated.

For more background information watch my video here

Reflection

I think it is easy to get confused by the ritual in Leviticus 4. I have been for years. I think this fact stems from less accurate, but still popular, older translations that called this a “sin offering” instead of a “purification offering” being combined with pagan notions of sacrifice. In my mind, Leviticus 4 was describing a ritual where a worshipper became aware of sin in their lives, and wanted to cleanse themselves and so brought this sacrifice to God. The animal was killed in place of the one offering it and so the person walked away with the animal bearing the guilt of the sin that the person committed. I daresay many think like this, and the reason is that is how pagans approached sacrifices and so when non-Jewish Christians read the Scriptures, both these Old Testament passages, and the ones relating to Jesus as the sacrifice in the New Testament, they read that pagan background into the text. We have complicated explanations for Jesus’ sacrifice built on the assumption that Jesus stands in our place receiving the punishment that we deserve. There are legitimate metaphors about Jesus being the perfect sacrifice for sin and standing in our place, but we want to be careful not to mix these metaphors. Instead, we should look at the purification offering in Leviticus and ask what it could mean for our understanding of how we relate to God.

The purification offering was the first offering mentioned in Leviticus that is required to be presented and it is required when someone sins. At first glance it might look like the offering is about making the person clean, but the offering is meant to cleanse the sanctuary. The blood of the animal was considered the cleansing agent and it was wiped, not on the one who had sinned, but on the sacred space. The belief was that humanity’s sins contaminated not just the sinner but the community and the physical space. The offering was meant not to forgive the sin in the sense we often used the phrase, which was done by God’s grace, but to bring purity to the area that had been contaminated by the sin. This is why Leviticus 4 lists four different levels of sin that must be atoned for priest, whole community, leader, and ordinary citizen. These levels indicate how deeply the sin impacted the community which correlated directly to the size and cost of the animal offered. The priest having the greatest impact on society had the largest offering while the average person had the smallest.

The result of this system is that anyone who brought this mandatory offering to the tabernacle would be forced to consider how their sin impacted not simply their relationship with God but also the world around them. They would be confronted by how death was a necessary consequence of the sin committed and that regardless of how private the matter may seem the world was impacted and contaminated by their actions. It was connecting to the purity of God and of the tabernacle that people became free of their sin. The purification offering reset the space so that a pure God did not have to leave the impure space and so allowed the people to connect to God and grow into the God’s likeness.

This same metaphor can be applied to how we think about Jesus, as a large part of his ministry is to provide purification for the sins of the world. The difference between the offering of Jesus and those of the Old Testament is that we understand that Jesus’ offering is universal and effective for the entire world. The Jesus’ purity effectively brings God’s holiness completely into the world and allows us to connect completely to God’s righteousness. Jesus also eliminated the consequences of sin in the world, notably death and destruction. His offering cleanses not simply an isolated location, for one person’s sins, but the entire world from the effects of all sin and gives us the opportunity to rejoice in God’s holy presence.