Leviticus 1

I. THE PUBLIC WORSHIP OF THE ISRAELITES CHS. 1-16

Leviticus continues revelation concerning the second of three elements necessary for any nation to exist, namely, a people (Genesis 12:10 - Exodus 19), their law (Exodus 20 - Numbers 10:10), and their land (Numbers 10:11 - Joshua 24). The first major section of Leviticus deals with how the Israelites were to conduct their public life as an expression of worship to God.

"The fact that the covenant between Yahweh and Israel was modeled after those of the ancient Near East in both form and function allows one to understand the myriad of cultic detail in the Pentateuch with unusual clarity. The sacrifices and offerings were designed to demonstrate the subservience of Israel, to atone for her offenses against her Sovereign, Yahweh, and to reflect the harmoniousness and peaceableness of the relationship thus established or reestablished." [Note: Merrill, p. 57. Cf. Wenham, pp. 25-26.]

"Put differently, the main concern of Leviticus 1-16 is the continuance of the presence of God in the midst of the sinful nation, while Leviticus 17-27 records the effect of the presence of God upon the congregation. Consequently the abiding presence of God in the midst of the nation spans the entire contents of the Book of Leviticus." [Note: Rooker, p. 42. ]

Thus the movement in Leviticus is from doctrine (chs. 1-16) to practice (chs. 17-27), as in Romans 1-11, 12-16 and in Ephesians 1-3, 4-6. Similarly the content of Leviticus reflects that of the Ten Commandments, where the first four commandments deal with the believer’s relationship to God and the last six his or her relationship to other people.

A. The laws of sacrifice chs. 1-7

God designed these offerings to teach the Israelites as well as to enable them to worship Him; they had both a revelatory and a regulatory purpose. They taught the people what was necessary to maintain and restore the believers’ communion with God in view of their sin and defilement.

"The servant, therefore, had to approach his Sovereign at His dwelling place by presenting an appropriate token of his obedient submission." [Note: Merrill, p. 57.]

"Sacrifice is at the heart of all true worship. It serves as the consecrating ritual for participation in the holy rites, it forms the appropriate tribute due to the LORD, and it represents the proper spiritual attitude of the worshiper." [Note: Ross, p. 73.]

"The examination of individual sacrifices that follows leads to a covenantal interpretation of sacrifice in Israel. Covenant refers to the relationship that exists between God and his people Israel. This covenant relationship is related to sacrifice in three ways. First, sacrifice is a gift on the part of the worshiper to his covenant Lord. Second, a number of sacrifices include a notion of communion or fellowship between covenant partners. Last, and perhaps most important, sacrifice plays a major role in healing rifts in the covenant relationship. This function is frequently described by the technical theological term expiation." [Note: Longman and Dillard, p. 85.]

The regulations that follow do not contain all the detail that we would need to duplicate these sacrifices. Only information that helps the reader understand and appreciate future references to the offerings appears. In this respect the present section of text is similar to the instructions concerning the tabernacle. Neither section gives us all the information we could want, but both tell us all that we need to know.

"They [chapters 1-7] may be compared to the genealogies in Genesis and those at the beginning of 1 Chronicles, whose purpose is to introduce the main characters of the subsequent narratives." [Note: Sailhamer, pp. 323-24.]

Each offering involved three objects:

1. The offerer (the person bringing the offering)

2. The offering (the animal or other object being offered)

3. The mediator (the priest).

There were important differences between the offerings. [Note: For charts of these differences in more detail, see The Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament, pp. 168-71.]

1. Each offering was different from the other offerings.

2. Within each offering there were different options of what the offerer could present and how he could offer them.

The first three offerings were "soothing aroma" offerings. The last two also go together because they were not soothing aromas. The first three were offerings of worship that were a sweet aroma to God because they were made in communion and to celebrate communion with the Lord. Each of these offerings reveals what is essential for or what results from a relationship between a redeemed sinner and a holy God. The last two were offerings of expiation for sin and were therefore not a sweet savor to God. These two offerings reveal how to restore a broken relationship between a redeemed Israelite sinner and a holy God.

"This is not the order in which the sacrifices were usually offered, but is rather a logical or didactic order, grouping the sacrifices by conceptual associations . . . ." [Note: F. Duane Lindsey, "Leviticus," in ibid., p. 172.]

In the revelation of the first three offerings, each chapter contains three paragraphs. In each chapter God described the most valuable (costly) sacrifice first and then the less valuable. The rules about these sacrifices may have been arranged in logical order to make them easier to memorize. [Note: A. F. Rainey, "The Order of Sacrifices in OT Ritual Texts," Biblica 51 (1970):487.]

These laws concerning offerings appear here in the text because they explain the sacrifices and ceremonies that took place at the ordination of Aaron and his sons, which Moses recorded in chapters 8 and 9. Thus this legal material prepares the reader to understand that narrative material.