c. 7 NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBEES. Messrs CLARK have pleasure in forwarding to their Subscribers the last Issue of the FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY for 1863, viz. EBRARD'S GOSPEL HISTORY, and KURTZ on the SACRIFICIAL WORSHIP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. They trust that both Works will be found to supply wants urgently felt at the present time. The Publishers have in progress Translations of the COM- MENTARY of KEIL and DELITZCH on the OLD TESTAMENT ; of LAXGE'S BIBLE COMMENTARY ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES ; of BISHOP MARTENSEN'S SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY; of DELITZCH'S COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS ; of SCHMIDS' NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY; and of Dr HENG- STENBERG'S COMMENTARY ON ST JOHN'S GOSPEL. They thank their Subscribers for their past support, and trust that the Works in progress will be found not less valuable than those already published. Messrs CLARK beg also to invite attention to the Translation of TEE LIFE OP CHRIST BY DR LAME, which will be executed with great care, and will be found the best antidote to erroneous views on that all-important subject. It will be comprised in Six Volumes demy 8vo, to be issued to Subscribers at the price of L.I, 15s. Dr Lange is well known as the author of the ' THEOLOGICAL AND HOMI- LETICAL COMMENTARY ON ST MATTHEW'S GOSPEL,' etc. And in Bishop Elli- cotfs Hulsean Lectures, where Lange 's ' Life of Christ' is constantly quoted with approbation, it is spoken of thus : 'See especially the eloquent and thoughtful work of Dr Lange, already several times referred to a work which, we sincerely hope, may ere long meet with a competent translator.' Page 35. They beg respectfully to request those who desire to possess this most valu- able work, to favour them with their names as early as possible. EDINBURGH, 38, George Street, November 1863. * * For List of Messrs Clark's New Publications, see next page. ft. anb & Clurfe's fist of fUfo Mirations. MEDIATORIAL SOVEREIGNTY: THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST AND THE REVELATION OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. By GEORGE STEWARD. 2 vols. demy 8vo, 21s. THE GOSPEL HISTORY, A COMPENDIUM OF CRITICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN SUPPORT OF THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE FOUR GOSPELS. By Dr J. H. A. EBRARD, Professor of Theology in the University of Erlangen. Translated by James Martin, B.A., Nottingham. Revised and Edited by Alexander B. Bruce, Cardross. 1 vol. 8vo, 10s. 6d. III. SACRIFICIAL WORSHIP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By J. H. KURTZ, D.D., Professor of Theology at Dorpat. Translated by James Martin, B.A., Nottingham. 1 vol. 8vo, 10s. 6d. A CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL COMMENTARY ON THE BOOK OF GENESIS, WITH A NEW TRANSLATION. By JAMES G. MURPHY, LL.D., T.C.D., Professor of Hebrew, Belfast. 1 vol. 8vo, 10s. 6d. HAND-BOOK OF CHURCH HISTORY, FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE PRESENT TIME. From the German of Professor KURTZ. 1 vol. 8vo, 7s. 6d. BY THE SAME AUTHOR, HAND-BOOK OF CHURCH HISTORY, TO THE REFORMATION. 1 vol. 8vo. Second Edition. 7s. 6d. THE TYPOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE VIEWED IN CONNECTION WITH THE WHOLE SERIES OF THE DIVINE DISPENSATIONS. By PATRICK FAIRBAIRN, D.D., Principal and Professor of Divinity in the Free Church College, Glasgow. Fourth Edition, greatly enlarged and improved. 2 vols. 8vo, 21s. Vll. THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES; OR, THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE. By M. BAUMGARTEN, Doctor of Philosophy and Theology, and Professor in the Univer- sity of Rostock. Translated from the German. Second Edition, Revised. 3 vols. demy 8vo, 27s. VIII. THE LAST TIMES AND THE GREAT CONSUMMATION: AN EARNEST DISCUSSION OF MOMENTOUS THEMES. By JOSEPH A. SEISS, D.D., Author of ' The Parable of the Ten Virgins,' etc. Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged. 1 vol. crown 8vo, 5s. EDINBURGH: T. AND T. CLARK. LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. CLARK'S FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY. THIRD SERIES. VOL. XX. on tije Sacrificial ZSor$f)tp of tlje swarmers, leads to the conclusion, that their general movements were taken into consideration, as furnishing a common ground of exclusion. The selection of food and locomotion as the leading grounds of separation in the case of every class, is by no means difficult to ex- plain. For it is- precisely in these two functions that the stage of animal life is most obviously and completely distinguished from that of vegetable life, and approaches or is homogeneous with that of man. If, then, as Lev. xx. 24 sqq. unquestionably shows, the separa- tion of the clean animals from the unclean was a type of the selec- tion of Israel from among the nations ; and if, therefore, the clean animals represented the chosen, holy nation, and the unclean the heathen world, as the figurative language of the prophets so often implies; the marks and signs by which the clean and unclean animals were to be distinguished, must also be looked at from a symbolical point of view ; in other words, the marks which distin- guished the clean animals from the unclean, and characterized the former as clean, must have been a corporeal type of that by which Israel was distinguished, or at least ought to have been distinguished, spiritually from the heathen world. The allusion, therefore, was to THE PEOPLE. 29 the spiritual food and spiritual walk of Israel, which were to be con- secrated and sanctified, and separated from all that was displeasing and hostile to God in the conduct of the heathen. What we are to understand by spiritual walk, needs no demon- stration : it is walking before the face of God a firm, sure step in the pilgrim road of life. Spiritual food is just as undoubtedly the reception of that which sustains and strengthens the spiritual life, i.e., of divine revelation, of which Christ says (John iv. 34), "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me." The-two func- tions stand to one another in the relation of receptivity and spon- taneity. Let us apply this to the land animals. The first thing men- tioned is their chewing the cud. Now, if this is to be regarded as a figurative representation of a spiritual function ; if, for example, it is symbolical of spiritual sustenance through the word of God ; the meaning cannot be better described than it is in Josh. i. 8 : " This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein." In the importance attached to the cloven hoof, this fact must have been taken into considera- tion, that the tread of animals so provided is surer and firmer than that of animals with the hoof whole. And no proof need be given of the frequency with which reference is made in the Scriptures to the slipping of the feet, or to a firm, sure step in a spiritual sense (e.g., Ps. xxxvii. 31; Prov. v. 6; Heb. xii. 13, etc.). For the birds no general marks of cleanness or un cleanness are given. But the deter- mining point of view is nevertheless perfectly obvious. For example, all birds of prey are excluded, and generally all birds that devour living animals or carrion, or any other kind of unclean and dis- gusting food, as being fit representatives of the heathen world. In the case of the animals in the third and fourth classes, the common point which is placed in the foreground as distinguishing the un- clean, is the singularity so to speak, the abnormal and unnatural character of their motion : their disagreeable velocity, their terrible habit of swarming, etc. 5. The other prohibitions of food contained in the Mosaic law are based upon different principles, and are to be explained on the ground that the food forbidden was regarded either as too holy, or as too unholy, to be eaten ; the former on account of its relation to the sacrificial worship, the latter on account of its association with the defilement of death and corruption. The former alone comes 30 THE PERSONS SACRIFICING. under notice here. To this category belong the blood and the fat of animals. But so far as the fat is concerned, it must be remarked at the outset, that only the actual lobes or nets of fat, which enve- lope the intestines, the kidneys, and the liver (Lev. iii. 3, 4, 9, 10, 14, 15), are intended, not the fat which intersects the flesh; and also, that, according to Lev. vii. 23, this prohibition relates exclu- sively to the portions of fat alluded to in oxen, sheep, and goats, not to that of any other edible animals. For the prohibition of the EATING OF BLOOD, Lev. xviL 10 sqq. is the locus classicus. In ver. 11, a triple reason is assigned for the prohibition: (1.) "For the soul of the flesh is in the blood;" (2.) " And I have given it upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls;" (3.) "For the blood, it maketh atonement by means of the soul." According to Delitzsch. (Bill. PsycJiol. 196), the pro- hibition has a double ground here : " The blood has the soul in it, and through the gracious appointment of God it is the means of atonement for human souls, by virtue of the soul contained within it. One reason lies in the nature of the blood, and the other in the consecration of it to a holy purpose, by which, even apart from the other ground, it Was removed from common use." But Keil opposes this. " It is not to the soul of animals as such," he says, " as the seat of a principle of animal life, that the prohibition applies, but to the soul as the means of atonement set apart by God" (Biblische ArcMologie 1, 23). But if Keil were correct in saying (p. 24) that "in Lev. xvii. 11 the first two clauses do not assign two indepen- dent reasons for the prohibition, but merely the two factors of the foundation for the third clause, which contains the one sole ground upon which the prohibition is based " (which I do not admit, how- ever) ; and if in Gen. ix. 4 (" but flesh in (with) the soul thereof, the blood thereof, ye shall not eat") the one sole reason for the prohibition were not the fact that the blood itself is animated, but its fitness as a means of atonement (which I am still less able to allow) ; even then the correctness of Delitzsclis opinion would be beyond all doubt, and that for the very reason which has led Keil to oppose it. For example, he adds (p. 23)-: "This is clearly evi- dent from the parallel command in relation to the fat of oxen, sheep, and goats, or the cattle of which men offer an offering by fire unto the Lord (Lev. vii. 23, 25). This fat was not to be eaten any more than the blood, on pain of extermination (Lev. vii. 25, 27, xvii. 10, 13), either by the Israelites or by the strangers living with Israel." But Keil would not have spoken with such THE PEOPLE. . 3'1 confidence if he had placed the relation between these two prohibi- tions (the eating of blood and of fat) clearly before his mind. Even in the law of Leviticus (chap. vii. 23 sqq.) we find a very significant distinction between the prohibition of the eating of blood on the one hand, and that of fat on the other, \vhich Keil has quite overlooked. According to Lev. vii. 23, it is only the fat of oxen, sheep, and goats that may not be eaten ; the fat of other edible animals, therefore, such as stags, antelopes, etc., is not forbidden. But the prohibition of blood, instead of being restricted to that of oxen, sheep, and goats, extends to the blood of all animals without exception (ver. 26). Whence this distinction f The answer is to be found in ver. 25 : the fat of the oxen, sheep, and goats was not to be eaten, because it was to be offered as a fire-offering to Jeho- vah, i.e., was to be burnt upon the altar. To understand this, it must be borne in mind that, according to the law of Leviticus, which was drawn up primarily with regard to the sojourn in the desert, the slaughter of every ox, sheep, or goat, even if it were only slain for domestic consumption, was to be looked at in the light of a peace- (or thank-) offering (Lev. xvii. 3-5) : hence every such slaughter was to take place at the sanctuary, the blood of the animal slain was to be sprinkled upon the altar, and the fat to be burned there also. The eating of fat, consequently, was prohibited only because and so far as it was to be offered to Jehovah ; so that the fat of stags, antelopes, etc., might be eaten without hesitation. It was altogether different with the law against eating blood. In this case there was no restriction or exception at all : no blood whatever was to be eaten, whether the animal from which it flowed were sacrificed or not sacrificed, sacrificial or not sacrificial. From this it necessarily follows, that the reason for prohibiting blood cannot have been the same as that for prohibiting fat. Had the prohibition of blood rested merely upon the importance of blood as a means of atonement ; then, according to the analogy of the prohibition of fat, the blood of those animals only should have been forbidden, which really were offered as atoning sacrifices. But as it related to the blood of all animals, even to those that were neither sacrificed nor sacrificial, the principal reason for this prohibition must have been one entirely unconnected with the sacrificial worship. What it was, is clearly shown in Gen. ix. 4 and Lev. xvii. 11 : " For the soul of the flesh is in the blood." That this is the correct view, is also evident from the parallel commands in the second law contained in Deuteronomy (Deut. xii.). 32 THE PERSONS SACRIFICING. According to the law of Leviticus, the slaughter of an ox, sheep, or goat was to be carried out in every case like a sacrificial slaughter, and for that reason the eating of the fat of such animals was unconditionally forbidden. 1 The law in Deuteronomy, however, abrogated this command, as being unsuitable and impracticable in the Holy Land, especially for those who dwelt at a distance from the tabernacle, and allowed them at their pleasure to slay and eat oxen, sheep, and goats at their own homes, as well as antelopes or stags (Deut. xii. 15, 16, 20-24). But in the case of such private slaugh- tering, the blood was not sprinkled on the altar, nor was the fat burned upon the altar. As a matter of course, therefore, the com- mand not to eat of the fat of the slaughtered animals was abrogated also ; and this is indicated with even superfluous emphasis by the repetition of the statement, that they might eat them like the hart and the roebuck (vers. 15, 22), of which they were never forbidden to eat the fat. But the eating of blood, whether the blood of oxen, sheep, and goats, or that of the roebuck and stag, remained as un- conditionally forbidden as ever. Twice is it emphatically stated (vers. 16 and 24), that even in private slaughterings the blood was not to be eaten, but poured upon 'the earth like water. What Keil regards as the only reason for the prohibition, namely, the appoint- ment of the blood as the means of expiation, was as much wanting here in the slaughtering of such animals as it had formerly been in that of the roebuck and stag. If, then, for all that, the law against eating blood still remained in its utmost stringency even in the case of private slaughterings, whether the animals in question 1 Keil gives -a different explanation (pp. 24, 25). " From the fact," he says, " that the general command in Lev. vii. 23, 'Ye shall eat no manner of fat of ox, of sheep, or of goat,' is more minutely expounded in ver. 25, ' Whosoever eateth the fat of the beast of which men offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord,' it seems pretty evidently to follow, that the fat of the ox, sheep, and goat, which was burned upon the altar when they were sacrificed, might be eaten in those cases in which the animal was merely slaughtered as food." But Keil has overlooked what he himself has stated two lines before ; namely, that according to Lev. xvii. 8 sqq. , the slaughter of such animals was to be regarded in every case as a sacrificial slaughter, and therefore, that instead of his view following "pretty evidently" from Lev. vii. 25, it is perfectly evident that the very opposite follows. So that, when Keil adds, that " in any case the inference drawn by Knobel from Lev. vii. 24 is untenable, viz., that in the case of oxen, s"heep, and goats, slaughtered in the ordinary way, this (the application of the fat to ordinary use) was evidently not allowable ; " it is obvious that it is not KnobeFs inference, but Keifs condemnation of that inference, which is in any case untenable. THE PRIESTS. 33 were adapted for sacrifice or not, it is evident that any reason for such a law, based upon the appointment of blood as a means of expiation, can only have been a partial and secondary one. There must have been some other reason, and that a primary one, of universal applicability; and this is indicated again in the second giving of the law, viz., the nature of the blood as the seat of the soul (ver. 23) : " For the blood, it is the soul ; and thou mayest not eat the soul with the flesh." There is not the slightest allusion here, any more than in Gen. ix. 4, to any connection between the prohibition in question and the appointment of the blood as the means of expiation, which was applicable only to animals actually sacrificed, and to them simply as sacrificed. We must maintain therefore, in direct opposition to Keil, that it was to the soul of the animals expressly, as the seat or principle of animal life, that the prohibition applied as a universal rule. In the case of the blood of the sacrifices, it was merely enforced with greater stringency, but had still the same reference to the soul as a means of expiation sanctified by God. In Lev. xvii. 11, both reasons are given ; because, as the context shows, it is to the sacri- ficial blood that allusion is primarily made. But in what follows, from ver. 13 onwards, the prohibition is extended from sacrificial blood to blood of every kind, even that of animals that could not be offered in sacrifice ; and this extension of the prohibition is based solely upon the nature of the blood as the seat of the soul (ver. 14), and not upon the fact of its having been appointed as the means of expiation. B. THE PRIESTS. 6. Previous to the giving of the law, the priesthood in the chosen family, just as in other kindred tribes, was not confined to particular individuals ; but the head of the family discharged the priestly functions connected with the service of God, for himself and his family (Gen. viii. 20 sqq. ; Job i. 5). For this purpose, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob built altars in the different places where they sojourned, and chiefly upon those spots in which Jehovah had appeared to them ; and there they offered sacrifices, and cleansed and consecrated their households (Gen. xii. 7, xiii. 18, xxvi. 25, xxxiii. 20, xxxv. 1, 2). On the institution of the paschal sacrifice in Egypt, the father of every family discharged the priestly func- tions connected with that sacrifice (Ex. xii. 7, 22). After the c 34 THE PERSONS SACRIFICING. exodus from Egypt, all the priestly as well as princely authority culminated in the person of Moses. The hereditary priesthood of the heads of families was not abolished in consequence, any more than their princely rank (Ex. xix. 22, 24) ; but in Moses they both culminated in one individual head. It was in consequence of the request made by the people themselves to Moses (Ex. xx. 19), " Speak thou with us, and we will hear, but let not God speak with us, lest we die," and the divine approval of that request, that the priestly qualifications and duties were transferred from the people, and their representatives the elders, to Moses alone. At the com- pletion of the covenant, therefore, we find Moses alone officiating as priest (Ex. xxiv. 6, cf. 162 sqq.). But Moses could not possibly discharge all the priestly functions required by the congre- gation. On the contrary, his other duties already engrossed his whole time and strength ; consequently he was allowed to divest himself of the priestly office as soon as the covenant was concluded, and to transfer it to his brother Aaron, who was then ordained, along with his sons Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, as an hereditary priesthood. After the erection of the tabernacle they were duly consecrated and installed (Ex. xxviii. cf. 165 sqq.). But when preparation was made for removing from Sinai, the necessity was immediately felt for a considerable increase in the number of persons officiating in the worship of God. The taber- nacle had to be taken down ; all the different parts, as well as the various articles of furniture, had to be carried from place to place ; at every fresh encampment it had to be set up again : and for all this a very large number of chosen and consecrated hands were required. To this service, therefore, all the other members of the tribe to which Aaron belonged were set apart, viz., the tribe of Levi, comprising the three families of the Kohathites, the Gershonites, and the Merarites. Henceforth, therefore, this tribe was removed from its co-ordinate position by the side of the other tribes, and was appointed and consecrated to the service of the sanctuary, that is to say, to the performance of all such duties connected with the tabernacle as were not included in the peculiar province of tlie priestly office, which still continued to be the exclusive prerogative of the family of Aaron (Num. i. 49-51, iii. 6-10, viii. 5-22). After the sparing of the first-born in the night of the exodus from Egypt, they became the peculiar possession of Jehovah ; and consequently they ought properly to have been the persons selected for life-long service in the sanctuary. But for the purpose of giving THE PRIESTS. 35 greater compactness and unity to the personnel employed, the Levites and their descendants took their place (Num. iii. 12, 13, viii. 16-19). It was necessary, however, before this was done, that all the first-born should be redeemed by means of certain specially appointed sacrifices, and gifts to the tabernacle (cf. 229). In this way the persons officially engaged in the worship were divided into three stages. The lowest stage was occupied by such of the LEVITES as were not priests, who acted merely as attendants and menial servants. On a higher stage stood the Aaronites, as the true PRIESTS. And lastly, Aaron himself, and subsequently the successive heads of the family (according to the right of primo- geniture), represented as HIGH PRIEST, Tiisn li?^} the point of unity and the culminating point of all the priestly duties and privileges. 7. What notion the Hebrew formed of the priesthood, cannot be determined with any certainty from the name |H3, since the primary meaning of the root JH3 is doubtful and disputed. On the other hand, Moses clearly describes the nature of the priesthood in Num. xvi. 5. On the occasion of the rebellion of the Korahites against the restriction of the priestly prerogatives to the family of Aaron, he announces to them, " To-morrow Jehovah will show who is His, and who is holy, that He may suffer him to come near unto Him ; and whom He shall choose, him will He suffer to come near unto Him." There are four characteristics of the priesthood indicated here. The first is election by Jehovah, as distinguished both from wilful self-appointment, and also from election by human authority of any kind whatever. The second is the result of this election, viz., belonging to Jehovah ; which means, that the priest, as such, with all his life and powers, was not his own, or the world's, but had given himself entirely up to the service of Jehovah. The third is, that as the property of Jehovah, the priest, like everything belonging to Jehovah, was holy. And this involved the qualification for the fourth, viz., drawing near to Jehovah, as the true and ex- clusive prerogative and duty of the priest. All that is indicated here as composing the nature and purpose of the Levitical priesthood, has been already mentioned in Ex. xix. 5, 6, as characterizing the whole covenant nation when regarded in the light of its priestly vocation. As a kingdom of priests, Israel was Jehovah's possession out of, or before, all nations, and as such, a holy nation ; whilst the basis of its election is seen in the deliver- ance from Egypt (ver. 4), and the design, that they might draw near, in the approach to the holy mountain (ver. 17). From this 36- THE PERSONS SACRIFICING. resemblance it follows, that the priesthood of the Aaronites in relation to Israel, was similar to that of Israel in relation to the heathen. The Aaronites were the priests of the nation, which had been called and appointed to a universal priesthood, but which was not yet ripe for such a call, and therefore still stood in need of priestly mediation itself. What we are to understand by coming near to Jehovah, which was the true calling of the Aaronic priesthood, according to Num. xvi. 5, may easily be gathered from what goes before. The design and purpose of this priesthood was mediatorial communion with God, mediation between the holy God and His chosen people, which had drawn back in the consciousness of its sinfulness from direct communion with God (Ex. xx. 19). Like all communion, this also was reciprocal. Priestly approach to God involved both bringing to God, and bringing back from God. The priests brought into the presence of God the sacrifices and gifts of the people, and brought from God His gifts for the people, viz., reconciliation and His blessing. 8. But from the very nature of such a mediatorial office, two things were essential to its true and perfect performance ; and these the Aaronic priest no more possessed than any one else in the nation which stood in need of mediation. If it was the consciousness of their own sinfulness which, according to Ex. xx. 19, prevented the people from drawing near to God, and holding direct intercourse with Him ; the question arises, how Aaron and his sons, who belonged to the same nation, and were involved in the same sinfulness, could possibly venture to come into the presence of Jehovah. The first and immediate demand for a perfect priesthood, appointed to mediate between the holy God and the sinful nation, would be perfect sinlessness ; but how little did the family of Aaron, involved as it was in the general sinful- ness, answer to this demand ! Secondly, and this was no less essential, true and all-sufficient mediation required that the mediator himself should possess a doublesidedness ; and in this the Aaronic priest was quite as defi- cient as in the first thing demanded, namely, perfect sinlessness. To represent the people in the presence of Jehovah, and Jehovah in the presence of the people, and to be able to set forth in his own person the mediation between the two, he ought to stand in essential union on the one hand with the people, and on the other with God ; and in order fully to satisfy this demand, he ought to be as much THE PRIESTS. 37 divine as human. But the Aaronic priesthood partook of human nature only, and not at all of divine. Both demands were satisfied in an absolutely perfect way in that High Priest alone (Heb. vii. 26, 27), to whose coming and manifestation the entire history of salvation pointed, who, uniting in His own person both deity and humanity, was sent in the ful- ness of time to the chosen people, and through their instrumen- tality (Gen. xii. 3, xxviii. 14) to the whole human race, and through whom, just as Aaron's sons attained to the priesthood by virtue of their lineal descent from Aaron, so, by means of spiritual regenera- tion and sonship (1 Pet. ii. 5, 9), the universal spiritual priesthood and "kingdom of priests" have been actually realized, the members of which are redeemed from sin, and partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. i. 4), and of which, according to Ex. xix. 4-6, Israel was called and appointed to be the first-born possessor (Ex. iv. 22). But as the manifestation of this priesthood could not be, and was not intended to be, the commencement and starting point, but only the goal and fruit, of the Avhole of the Old Testament history of salvation ; and yet, in order that this goal might be reached, it was indispensably necessary that intercourse with God through the mediation of a priest should be secured to the chosen nation of the old covenant ; the priesthood of that time could only typically prefigure the priesthood of the future, and could only possess in a symbolical and typical manner the two essential prerequisites, sinlessness and a divine nature. The former it acquired through washing and a sacrificial atonement, the latter by investiture and anointing on the occasion 'of its institution and consecration (Ex. xxix. cf. 165 sqq.) ; and these were renewed previous to the discharge of every priestly function by repeated washings, and by the assumption of the official dress, which had already been anointed (Ex. xxix. 21). The sacrificial atonement, which was made at the first dedication, had to be repeated, not only on every occasion on which a priest was conscious of any sin or uncleanness, but also once a year (on the great day of atonement, cf. 199), for the cancelling of all the sin and uncleanness of the entire priesthood which might have re- mained unnoticed ; and this must be effected before any further priestly acts could be performed. Moreover, the demand for sin- lessness had its fixed symbolical expression in the demand for phy- sical perfection, as the indispensable prerequisite to any active participation in the service of the priesthood (Lev. xxi. 1624). 9. As the Levites and priests were separated by their voca- 38 THE PERSONS SACRIFICING. tion, and by their appointment to the service of the sanctuary, from the rest of the tribes, and did not receive, as the rest had done, a special allotment of territory in the Holy Land, where they could provide for their own wants by the cultivation of the soil, their maintenance had to be provided for in a different way. The tribe of Levi was to have no inheritance in the promised land, for, said Jehovah, " I am thy part and thine inheritance" (Num xviii. 20 ; Deut. x. 9, etc.). At the same time forty-eight cities were assigned to them as dwelling-places, distributed among all the tribes (that by their knowledge of the law they might be of service to all as teach- ers, preceptors, judges, and mediators: cf. Lev. x. 11); and thir- teen of these cities were specially designated " cities of the priests" (Num. xxxv. 1-8 ; Josh. xxi. ; 1 Chron. vi. 54-66). 1 But for their actual maintenance they were referred to Jehovah, in whose service they were to be entirely employed ; so that it was only right that Jehovah should provide for their remuneration. This was done, by His assigning to them all the revenues and dues which the people had to pay to Him as the Divine King and feudal Lord of all. These included the first-fruits and tenths of all the produce of the 1 As the priesthood was limited, after the death of Aaron's eldest sons, Nadab and Abihu, to the families of his other two sons, and therefore cannot have embraced more than from ten to twenty persons at the time of the entrance into the Holy Land, there is apparently a great disproportion between the number of priests' cities and the actual need, on the supposition, that is to say, that these thirteen cities were intended to be occupied exclusively by priests. But for that very reason such a supposition is obviously a mistake. Even the so- called priests' cities were undoubtedly, for the most part, inhabited by Levites, and only distinguished from the rest of their cities by the fact, that one or more of the families of the priests resided there. Just as Jerusalem was called the king's city, though it was not inhabited by the court alone, so might these thir- teen cities be called priests' cities, even if there were only one priestly family residing there. When we consider that the number of priests' cities was not fixed by the law, but was determined in Joshua's time (chap. xxi. 4), and that the number 13, which admits of no symbolical interpretation whatever, can only have been decided upon because of some existing necessity, it is more than proba- ble that the number of priests at that time was exactly 13, and that at first there was only one priestly family in every priests' city. It is true, that if we deduct the home of the high priest, the one head of the entire priesthood, who dwelt, no doubt, wherever the tabernacle was, the number 12 remains, answering to the number of the tribes, which may be significant as a contingency, but was not determined on account of that significance, since the 24 orders of priests, which were afterwards appointed, do not appear to have been connected at all with the number of the tribes ; nor was one priests' city taken from each tribe, but the selection was confined to the three tribes nearest to the sanctuary, Judah, Simeon, and Benjamin. THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. 39 land, as well as the first-born of men and cattle, which were partly presented in kind, and had partly to be redeemed with money. Of all the sacrificial animals, too, which the people offered to Jehovah spontaneously, and for some reason of their own, certain portions were the perquisites of the officiating priest, unless they were entirely consumed upon the altar ; and this was only the case with the so-called burnt- offerings. All the first-fruits and first-born came directly .to the priests. In these the Levites did not participate, because they had them- selves been appointed as menial servants to the priests, in the place of the first-born who were sanctified in Egypt. On the other hand, the tithes fell to the share of the Levites, who handed a tenth of them over to the priests. CHAPTEK II. THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. 10. The patriarchs had erected simple altars for the worship of God in every place at which they sojourned (Gen. viii. 20, xii. 7, xiii. 18, etc.). Even the house of God, which Jacob vowed that he would erect at Luz (= Bethel : Gen. xxviii. 22), was nothing more than an altar, as the execution of the vow in Gen. xxxv. 1, 7, clearly proves. When the unity of the patriarchal family had been expanded into a plurality of tribes, houses, and families, and these again were formed by the covenant at Sinai into the unity of the priestly covenant nation, a corresponding unity in the place of worship became also necessary. The idea of the theocracy, accord- ing to which the God of Israel was also the King of Israel, and dwelt in the midst of Israel ; the appointment and vocation of the people to be a " kingdom of priests," and a " holy nation" (Ex. xix. 6) ; the temporary refusal to enter upon the duties of that vocation (Ex. xx. 19) ; the consequent postponement of it till a future time ; and the transference of it to a special priesthood belonging to the tribe of Levi ; all this was to have its symbolical expression in the new house of God. At the same time, it was necessary to create a fitting substratum for the incomparably richer ceremonial appointed by the law. Moses therefore caused a sanctuary to be erected, answering to 40 THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. these wants and demands, according to the pattern which Jehovah had shown him on the holy mount (Ex. xxv. 9, 40), and by the builders expressly appointed by God, Bezaleel and Aholiab (Ex. xxxi. 2, xxxvi. 1, 2). To meet the necessities of the journey through the desert, it was constructed in the form of a portable tent, and consisted of the dwelling (}3tfE>ri) and a court surrounding it on every side ("i^L 1 , Ex. xxv.-xxxi. and xxxv.-xl.). The DWELLING itself was an oblong of thirty yards in length, and ten yards in breadth and height, built on the southern, northern, and western sides of upright planks of acacia-wood overlaid with gold. Over the whole there were placed four coverings. The inner one, consisting of costly woven materials (byssus woven in different colours, with figures of cherubim upon it), was so arranged as to form the drapery of the interior of the dwelling, whilst the other three were placed outside. In the front of the building, towards the east, there were five gilded pillars of acacia-wood ; and on these a curtain was suspended, which closed the entrance to the dwelling, and bore the name of ^DD. The interior of the dwelling was divided into two parts by a second curtain, sustained by four pillars, and made of the same costly fabric and texture as the innermost covering. Of these two parts the further (or westerly) was called the MOST HOLY, D'Chp T tjn'pj and was a perfect cube of ten cubits in length, breadth, and height ; so that the other part, or the HOLY, KHpn, was of the same height and breadth, but twice as long. This inner curtain was called nrhB. The COURT was an uncovered space completely surrounding the dwelling, 100 cubits long and 50 cubits broad, bounded by 60 wooden pillars of 5 cubits in height. The pillars stood 5 cubits apart, and the spaces between were closed by drapery of twined byssus. In the front, however, i.e., on the eastern side, there was no drapery between the five middle pillars, so that an open space was left as an entrance of 20 cubits broad ; and this was closed by a curtain of the same material and texture as the curtain at the door of the tabernacle, and, like the latter, was called 'Hpo. The position of the dwelling within the court is not mentioned. It probably stood, however, so as to meet at the same time the necessities of the case and the demands of symmetry, 20 cubits from the pillars on the north, south, and west, leaving a space of 50 cubits square in front of the entrance to the tabernacle. 11. The ALTAR OF BURNT-OFFERING, H^iyn rat ? stood in the THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. 41 COURT. It was a square case, made of acacia-wood, lined within and without with copper, and filled with earth. It was five cubits in length and breadth, but only three cubits high. At the four corners there were four copper horns. About half-way up the chest there ran a bank, 23"]3, all round the outside, evidently that the officiating priests might stand upon it, and so be able to perform their duties at the altar with greater convenience. From the outer edge of this bank a network of copper sloped off to the ground. The space underneath this grating was probably intended to receive the blood which- re- mained over from the sacrifices. There was also a LAYER, "ri s 3, in the court, in which the priests washed their hands and feet, a pro- cess that had to be repeated, according to Ex. xxx. 20, 21, every time they entered the Holy Place or officiated at the altar. In the HOLY PLACE there were three articles of furniture : 1. The ALTAR OF INCENSE, rnbj? "iBpO ri2Tp or rnbj? H2TD, made of acacia-wood overlaid with gold. It was one cubit in length, one in breadth, and two in height, and stood in the centre, before the entrance to the Holy of Holies. The upper surface, which was surrounded by a rim, and had gilt horns at the four corners, was called J3 ? a term suggestive of the flat roofs of oriental houses. The principal purpose to which it was applied was that of burning incense ; but there were certain sacrificial animals' whose blood was sprinkled upon the horns. 2. The TABLE or SHEW-BREAD, l^f D, also con- structed of acacia-wood overlaid with gold, a cubit and a half in height, two cubits long, and one cubit broad. Upon this was placed the so-called shew-bread ( 159), which had to be changed every week. 3. The SEVEN-BRANCHED CANDLESTICK, n"jfoEn, of pure gold, and beaten work. From the upright stem there branched out, at regular intervals, three arms on each side, which curved upwards and reached as high as the top of the central stem. Each of these was provided with one oil lamp, so that there were seven lamps in a straight line, and probably at equal distances from one another. The height of the candelabrum is not given. In the MOST HOLY PLACE there was only one article of furni- ture, viz., the ARK OF THE COVENANT or the ARK OF TESTIMONY, jVlK JTH2n, nviyn }i"ix. It consisted of two parts. The ark itself was a chest of acacia-wood, covered within and without with gold plates, two cubits and a half long> and one cubit and a half in breadth and height. In the ark there was the testimony, rmyn ; i.e., the two tables of stone, which Moses had brought down from the holy mount, containing the ten words of the fundamental law, written by the 42 THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. finger of God. A plate of beaten gold, rnbs, served as the lid of the ark ; and at each end of this lid stood a cherub of beaten gold. The cherubim stood facing each other, and looking down upon the Cap- poreth, which they overshadowed with their outspread wings. With regard to the form of these cherubim, the figures of which were also worked in the Parocheth, the curtain before the Most Holy, and the inner covering of the tabernacle, all that we can gather from the description is, that they were probably of human shape, and that they had one face and two wings. 12. On the DESIGN OF THE SANCTUARY, 1 the names them- selves furnish some information. It was called the TENT OF MEETING, "Urto 7nx ; and we may learn from Ex. xxv. 22, xxix. 43, what that name signifies. Jehovah says, that He will there meet with the children of Israel, and talk with them, and sanctify them through His glory. It is also called the DWELLING-PLACE, }3>p, as in Ex. xxv. 8, and xxix. 45, 46, Jehovah promises that He will not merely meet with Israel there from time to time, but dwell there constantly in the midst of them, and there make Himself known to them as their God. Lastly, it is also called the TENT OF WITNESS, rmyn ?n, where Jehovah bears witness through His covenant and law that He is what He is, viz., the Holy One of Israel, who will have Israel also to be holy as He is holy (Lev. xix. 2), and who qualifies Israel for it by His blessing and atoning grace (Ex. xx. 24). In accordance with this design, as soon as it was finished, the glory of Jehovah filled the tabernacle (Ex. xl. 34 sqq.). The tabernacle, then, must represent an institution, in connection with which Jehovah dwelt perpetually in Israel, to sanctify it an institution, to establish which He had led them out of Egypt (Ex. xxix. 46) ; which was not established, therefore, till after the Exodus. This institution, as is self-evident, could be no other than the theocracy founded at Sinai, or the kingdom of God in Israel, the nature and design of which is described in Ex. xix. 4-6. From this fundamental idea we may easily gather what was involved in the distinction between the court and the tabernacle. If the latter was the dwelling-place of Jehovah in the midst of Israel, the former could only be the dwelling-place of that people whose God was in the midst of it, just as the tabernacle was in the 1 A more elaborate and thorough discussion of the meaning of the tabernacle and its furniture, is to be found in my Beitrdge zur Symbolik des alttest. Cultus (Leipzig 1851). THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. 43 midst of the court. And the fact that the people were not allowed to enter the dwelling of God, but could only approach the door permission to enter being restricted to their consecrated representa- tives and mediators, the priests irresistibly reminds us of Ex. xx. 19, and shows that the court was the abode of that people, which, notwithstanding its priestly calling, was not yet able to come directly to God, but still needed specially appointed priestly mediators to enter the dwelling-place, to hold communion with God in their stead, to offer the gifts of the people, and to bring back the proofs of the favour of God. But the dwelling-place of God was also divided into two parts : the HOLY PLACE, and the MOST HOLY. These were two apart- ments in one dwelling. Now, since the relation between the dwelling-place and the court presented the same antithesis as that between the unpriestly nation and the Aaronic priesthood and since the ordinary priests were only allowed to enter the Holy Place, whilst the high priest alone could enter the Most Holy, it is evident that the distinction between the Holy and Most Holy answered essentially to that between the ordinary priest and the high priest ; and therefore, that the abode of God in the Most Holy set forth the highest culmination of the abode of God in Israel, which, for that very reason, exhibited in its strongest form the fact that Pie was then unapproachable to Israel. A comparison between the name " Holy of Holies," and the corresponding " heaven of heavens," in Deut. x. 14, 1 Kings viii. 27, also leads to the conclusion, not that the Most Holy was a type of heaven in its highest form, but that it contained the same emphatic expression of the Jehovistic (saving) presence and operations of God in the kingdom of grace, as the name " heaven of heavens" of the Elohistic presence and operations of God in the kingdom of nature. The division of the dwelling-place into Holy and Most Holy was an indication of the fact, therefore, that in the relation in which the priests stood to God, and consequently also in that in which the people would stand when they were ripe for their priestly vocation, there are two different stages of approach ability. The constant seat and throne of God was the Capporeth, where His glory was enthroned between the wings of the cherubim (Num. vii. 89 ; Ex. xxv. 22). But as the room in which all this took place was hidden by the Parocheth from the sight of those who entered and officiated in the Holy Place, the latter represents the standpoint of that faith which has not yet attained to the sight of the glory of God, 44 THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. and the Most Holy the standpoint of the faith which has already attained to sight (vide 1 Cor. xiii. 12). The threefold division of the tabernacle contained a figurative and typical representation of the three progressive stages, by which the kingdom of God on earth arrives at its visible manifestation and ultimate completion. In the COURT there was displayed the existing stage, when Israel, as the possessor of the kingdom of God, still stood in need of priestly mediators ; in the HOLY PLACE, the next stage, when the atonement exhibited in type in the court, would be com- pleted, and the people themselves would be able in consequence to exercise their priestly calling and draw near to God ; in the MOST HOLY, the last stage of all, when the people of God will have attained to the immediate vision of His glory. This triple stage of approach to God, which was set forth simultaneously in space in the symbolism of the tabernacle, is realized successively in time through the historical development of the kingdom of God. The first stage was the Israelitish theocracy ; the second is the Christian Church ; the third and last will be the heavenly Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. Each of the two earlier stages contains potentially within itself all that has still to come ; but it contains it only as an ideal in faith and hope. For the first stage, therefore, it was requisite that representations and types of the two succeeding stages should be visibly displayed in the place appointed for worship. 13. The principal object in the court, and that in which its whole significance culminated, was the ALTAR OF BURNT-OFFERING. The first thing which strikes the eye in connection with an altar is, that it represents an ascent from the earth towards heaven (H03 = altare), a lifting of the earth above its ordinary and natural level. From the time that Jehovah ceased to walk with man upon the earth, and hold intercourse with him there, as He had done before the fall (Gen. iii. 8), and the earth was cursed for man's sin in consequence of the fall (Gen. iii. 17), and heaven and earth became so separated, the one from the other, that God came down from heaven to reveal Himself to man- (Gen. xi. 5, xviii. 21), and then went up again to heaven (Gen. xvii. 22), the natural level of the earth was no longer adapted to the purpose of such intercourse. It was necessary, therefore, to raise the spot where man desired to hold communion with God, and present to Him his offerings, into an altar rising above the curse. "Whilst the. name n3 expressed what an altar was, viz., an elevation of the earth, the other and ordinary name of the altar indicated the purpose which it served : THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. 45 it was a place of sacrifice, on which sinful man presented his slain offering for the atonement and sanctification of his soul before God. But the altar which JEHOVAH caused to be built, was not merely the raising of the earth towards the heaven where God had dwelt since sin drove Him from the earth, but also the place where heaven itself, or rather He who fills heaven with His glory, came down to meet the rising earth ; not only the spot where man offered his gifts to Jehovah, but also the spot where God came to meet the gifts of man and gave His blessing in return. For Jehovah promised this in Ex. xx. 24 : " In all places where I record My name, I will come unto thee and bless thee." But an altar, however high it may be built, does not reach to the heaven where God dwells. In itself, therefore, it merely expresses the upward desires of man. And these desires are not realized and satisfied, till God Himself comes down from heaven upon the altar. According to Ex. xx. 24, 25, it was a general rule for an altar to be built of earth or unhewn stones, as still retaining their original form and component elements. It is true that this very composition of earth and stone represented the curse, which adhered to them in their existing natural condition. But man, with all his art and diligence, is unable to remove this curse. Consequently, no tooling or chiselling of his was to be allowed at all. Whatever he might do, he could not sanctify the altar which was formed from the earth that had been cursed. That could be done by none but God, who had promised " to record His name there" (Ex. xx. 24), " to give the atoning blood upon the altar, to make an atone- ment for their souls" (Lev. xvii. 11). Jehovah appointed and consecrated the place where the altar was to be built ; He gave to the blood of the sacrifice, that was sprinkled upon it, the atoning worth which it possessed ; and He caused the smoke of the sacrifice which was consumed upon the altar to become a sweet smelling savour, as representing the self-surrender of man (Gen. viii. 21). The elevated earth, which formed the altar in the court, was surrounded by a wooden chest covered with copper, to give it a firm cohesion and fixed form. By the square shape of the surround- ing walls the seal of the kingdom of God was impressed upon it. The altar, therefore, was the evident representative of the Old Testament institution of atonement and sanctification, by which the expiation of sinful man and the sanctifying self-surrender of the expiated sinner were effected before God. This being its mean- ing, it could only stand in the court, the abode of the sinful, though 46 THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. reconcilable nation, which could not yet draw near directly to Jehovah, but still needed the mediation of the Levitical priesthood for the presentation of its sacrifices and gifts. In our interpretation of the HORNS, which rose from the altar at its four corners, we need not refer, as Bahr (Symbolik 1, 472) and Keil (Arch. 1, 104) do, to passages in which the horn of the ani- mal is mentioned as indicative of strength, or as its glory and orna- ment ; nor to those in which the horn is used as the symbol of the fulness and superabundance of blessing and salvation ; but, as Hofmann and Kliefoth have done, to such passages as Isa. v. 1, where the term horn is applied to an eminence running up to a point. For the idea of height is the predominant one in connection with the altar ; and the only thing, therefore, that comes into considera- tion is, what the horn is in relation to the height of the animal, viz., its loftiest point, and not what it is as an ornament or weapon. Still farther from the mark, however, is the allusion to the horn as a symbol of fulness ; for the horn acquires this signifi- cance merely as something separated from the animal, or as a vessel shaped like a horn that has been taken off. The horns on the altar increased its height. Consequently, the blood sprinkled on the horns of the altar was brought nearer to God, than that which was merely sprinkled on the sides. 14. Since the Holy Place, as we saw, was a part of the abode of God which the priests alone could enter, as the mediators of a nation which, notwithstanding its priestly calling, was still unpriestly, the three articles of furniture in the Holy Place, together with the offerings connected with them, foreshadowed typically what the nation, regarded as a priestly nation, was to offer to its God in gifts and sacrifices, and what qualities and powers it was to unfold before Him. And as the way to the Holy Place necessarily lay through the court, where atonement was made for the sinful nation, and where it dedicated and consecrated itself afresh to its God, and entered anew into fellowship with Him ; the offerings in the Holy Place are to be regarded as symbols of such gifts and ser- vices, as none but a nation reconciled, sanctified, and in fellowship with God, could possibly present. Of the three articles of furniture in the Holy Place, the ALTAR OF INCENSE was unquestionably the most significant and important. This is indicated not only by its position between the other two, and immediately in front of the entrance to the Most Holy, but also by its appointment and designation as an altar, on the horns of THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. 47 which the blood of atonement, that was brought into the Holy Place ( 107), was sprinkled ; inasmuch as this established an essential and necessary relation between it and the altar of the court on the one hand, and the Capporeth of the Most Holy on the other. It is true, the sacrifices which were offered upon this altar, and ascended to God in fire, were not the bleeding sacrifices of atonement, but the bloodless sacrifices of incense, which, as our subsequent investigation will show ( 146), represented the prayers of the congregation, that had just before been reconciled, sanctified, and restored to fellowship with God, by the bleeding sacrifice of the court. The altar of incense stood in the same relation to the altar of burnt-offering, as the Holy Place to the court, as the priestly nation to the unpriestly, as the prayer of thanksgiving and praise from those already reconciled and sanctified to the desire and craving for reconciliation and sanctification, and as the splendour of the gold seven times purified, in which it was enclosed, to the dull, dead colour of the copper which surrounded the altar in the court. It was a repetition of the altar that stood in the court, but a repetition in a higher form. The two other articles of furniture, the TABLE OF SHEW-BEEAD and the CANDLESTICK, were offshoots, as it were, of the altar of incense, as their position on either side indicates ; and the peculiar form of each was determined by the offerings which it held ; for the bread required a table, and the lights a candelabrum. What was combined together in one article of furniture in the altar of burnt-offering in the court, was here resolved into three, which served to set forth the ideas in question in a much more complete and many-sided manner (cf. 158 sqq.). 15. In the MOST HOLY, as the abode of God in the fullest sense of the word, and in the most thorough unapproachableness, there was but one article of furniture, though one consisting of several parts, viz., the ARK OF THE COVENANT, with the CAPPORETH. Hengstenberg" s view, expressed in his Dissertations on the Penta- teuch (vol. ii. 525, translation), which may perhaps look plausible at first sight, viz., that the covering of the ark, or of the law contained in it, by the Capporeth, was intended to express the idea, that the grace of God had covered or silenced the accusing and condemning voice of the law, will be found, on closer and more careful investiga- tion, to be defective and inadmissible on every account (see my Bei- trdge zur Symbolik der Alttest. Cultus-stdtte, pp. 28 sqq.). I have the greater reason for still regarding the course of argument adopted 48 THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. as satisfactory, because Keil has been induced by it to give up Hengstenberg 's view, and in all essential points to adopt my own. I will repeat the leading points of my argument here. First of all, it must be borne in mind, that the ark of the cove- nant answered a double purpose : (1) to preserve the tables of the law, and (2) to serve as a support and basis to the Capporeth. Let us commence with the former. As the receptacle for the two tables of the law, it was called the " ark of the testimony," or " ark of the covenant." The tables of the law were named the testimony, nnyrij because in them God furnished the people with a testimony to His own nature and will. This attestation was the preliminary, the foundation, and the soul of the covenant which He concluded with His people. Hence the ark of the testimony was also called the " ark of the covenant," JV")2n Ji"iN. In like manner, the tables of the law are also called "the tables of the covenant" (Deut. ix. 9, 11, 15), and the words engraved upon them " the words of the cove- nant" (Ex. xxxiv. 28). And, in certain cases, the former are de- signated in simple terms as "the covenant" (n B3 denotes not a local, material covering, but a spiritual one ; and the object of this covering is always and everywhere the sin of man. For this reason, the name Capporeth cannot possibly be understood as de- noting the fact that it covered the tables of the law. For the object THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. 49 to be covered by the Capporeth, i.e., to be atoned for, could not be anything that came from God, and least of all God's holy law. Moreover, the law of God was to be anything but covered up, that is to say, covered up in any sense that would represent its voice as silenced. The Capporeth, therefore, apart from the fact that it closed up the ark, must have been something in itself, must have had its own significance and purpose within itself. And though it did un- doubtedly form a material, local covering to the ark, this can only have been of subordinate, collateral, and secondary importance. 16. But what was this real, independent, primary, and princi- pal significance of the Capporeth? Keil's interpretation (Arch&o- logie i. 114) falls back into Buhrs error, of confounding the king- dom of nature with that of grace, or natural revelation with the revelation of salvation, and is altogether beside the mark. Accord- ing to his view, " the Capporeth resembled the firmament, and bore the name Capporeth or mercy-seat, because the highest and most perfect act of atonement in the Old Testament economy was per- fected upon it, and God, who betrothed Himself to His people in grace and mercy by an everlasting covenant, sate enthroned there- on." The latter part, namely, that the Capporeth was the highest medium of atonement in the old covenant, and at the same time was the throne of Jehovah, which, though for the time unapproach- able by the people, was nevertheless erected upon earth and in the midst of Israel, is unquestionably perfectly correct ; but for that very reason the Capporeth could not possibly represent the firma- ment. Or are we to suppose, that the highest and most perfect act of atonement in the old covenant ought properly to have been per- formed upon the firmament of heaven, but that, as this could not well be accomplished, a representation of it M r as placed as its sub- stitute in the Holy of Holies ? And was the true act of expiation in the fulness of time, of which this was only a shadow and type ( 56), really performed above the firmament, i.e., in heaven ? Was it not rather accomplished on earth, in the land of Judaea "? No doubt "that God, who betrothed Himself to His people in grace and mercy by an everlasting covenant," was enthroned upon the Capporeth. But this betrothal took place, not above the firma- ment, i.e., in heaven, but on the earth, at Sinai. Jehovah came down for the purpose (Ex. xix. 20) ; and the glory of Jehovah entered the sanctuary, and took up its permanent place upon the Capporeth (Ex. xl. 34 sqq. ; Num. vii. 89; Ex. xxv. 22). Un- D 50 THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE. questionably there is also a throne of God in the heaven of heavens, which stands upon the firmament ; but the throne of God in the Most Holy Place on earth was so far from being a copy or repre- sentative of that heavenly throne, that it rather presented a contrast, and one as sharp as that between heaven and earth, nature and grace, Elohim and Jehovah. This confusion of ideas, which Keil himself has generally kept distinct enough elsewhere (Arch. i. 94 sqq.), has evidently arisen from his being misled by the connection between the Capporeth and the figures of the two cherubim, and the fact that the latter are often represented as surrounding the throne of God in heaven. But if Jehovah, in addition to the throne in heaven, established one also for Himself upon earth, could He not surround the latter with cherubim also ? Moreover, Keil has involved himself, without per- ceiving it, in the most striking self-contradictions. Figures of cherubim, precisely similar to those which stood upon the Cappo- reth, were also woven into the inner covering of the tabernacle, and into the curtain which separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy. Now if the Capporeth must represent the firmament of heaven because of the cherubim standing upon it, simple consis- tency requires that the entire space of the Holy and Most Holy should be regarded as a figurative representation of heaven. And this Bdhr actually maintains, though Keil rejects such a view as thoroughly unscriptural, and decides correctly that the tabernacle was a figure of the kingdom of God in Israel (p. 95). What the Capporeth was really intended to represent, is evident from its name, and was practically exhibited in the fact that the highest and most perfect expiation was effected upon it. It was called, and was primarily, a means of atonement (l\a viz., such as were either consumed entirely upon the altar, or, so far as they were not consumed, were eaten by the priests, and by them alone. Cf. Knobel on Lev. xxi. 22. In the present work we have to do with the gifts of the third class alone, i.e., with the Corbanim which were placed either in whole or in part upon the altar. Even in the Thorah the name Corban is applied pre-eminently to these. -18. Hengstenberg (Opfer, p. 4) very properly blames Bdhr, and others who have followed him, for commencing their attempt to determine the nature and meaning of sacrifice, in the stricter sense of the term, with Lev. xvii. 11, where, as we have already seen ( 11), the prohibition to eat blood is based upon the fact, that the soul of the flesh is in the blood, and Jehovah gave the blood THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SACRIFICE. 53 to His people upon the altar, to make atonement therewith for their souls. In tins passage they imagined that they had found "the key to the whole of the Mosaic theory of sacrifice." It is perfectly obvious, however, that Lev. xvii. 11 merely furnishes the key to the sprinkling of the blood in the case of the sacrifice of animals. But the question, whether, as has been maintained on that side, an explanation of the sprinkling of the blood prepares the way for understanding the other functions connected with the sacrifice of animals, or whether the animal sacrifices alone could lay claim to the character of independent offerings, whilst the bloodless (vegetable) gifts were merely to be regarded as accompaniments to the bleeding (animal) sacrifices, must be determined, even if it could be proved at all, from the special inquiry which follows afterwards, and there- fore, even if correct, ought not to be laid down as an a priori axiom. But what both Hengstenberg and Keil have adopted as the basis and key to the altar-sacrifices, both bleeding and bloodless, is cer- tainly quite as inadmissible as that laid down by Bdlir. The true basis is said to be found in Ex. xxiii. 15, "My face shall not be seen empty," or as it reads in Deut. xvi. 16, "Appear not empty before the face of Jehovah;" to which is added by way of expla- nation in ver. 17, "Every one according to the gift of his hand, according to the blessing which Jehovah thy God has given." It is really incomprehensible how these two theologians could fall into the mistake of regarding the passages quoted as the basis of the whole sacrificial worship ; for, according to both the context and the true meaning of the words, they have nothing to do with it, or rather, are directly at variance with its provisions. The amount of the sacrifices to be offered upon the altar (whether bleeding or bloodless) was not determined, in the majority of cases, as it is in Deut. xvi. 17, by the possessions or income of the person sacrificing. The command of the law of sacrifice was not "according to the gift of his hand, according to the blessing which Jehovah thy God hath given thee." The exact amount was prescribed in every case by the law ; and the difference in the worth of the offerings was regulated, not by the wealth and income of the sacrifice!', but partly by his position in the theocracy (i.e., by the question, whether he was priest, prince, or private individual), and partly by differences in the occasion for the sacrifice. 1 But apart from this, how can our 1 It is to be hoped that no one will be sufficiently wanting in perspicacity to bring forward as an objection to my statement the fact, that a poor man, who was not in a condition to bring the sheep which was normally required, was 54 THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SACRIFICE. opponents have overlooked the fact, that these passages do not refer to the altar-sacrifices in particular, which they ought to do to war- rant such an application, and not even to the Corbanim in general, or as a whole. They apply exclusively and expressly to the first- fruits and tenths to be offered on the three harvest festivals ; and they could not refer to anything else, even if no such statement had been made. How complete a mistake this quid pro quo is, is also evident from the fact, that if, instead of restricting the demand there expressed to the harvest festivals and the harvest gifts, we extend it, as Hengstenberg and Keil have done, to the sacrificial worship generally ; then to enter the Holy Place, where the name of Jehovah dwelt, without offering sacrifice, say even for the pur- pose of praying, or of beholding the beautiful service of the Lord (Ps. xxvii. 4, ciii. 4, and Ixxxiv.; Luke ii. 27, 37, etc.), would necessarily have been regarded as an act of wickedness and pre- sumption. 19. Since, therefore, neither the passages adduced by Bdhr, nor those which Hengstenberg cites as containing the key to the nature and meaning of sacrifice, are available for the purpose, and since no others offer themselves, the only course left open is to take as our starting point the connection between the sacrifices in the more restricted sense of the word and all the rest of the offer- ings. We have to examine, therefore, (1) what they had in com- mon with the other Corbanim, and (2) in what they differed from them. The three classes of Corbanim ( 17) were all holy gifts. They were called holy, because they were all related to Jehovah, whether they were offered and appropriated to Him directly and personally, or whether they fell to the portion of His servants the Levites and priests, or to His dwelling-place the sanctuary. In the case of all of them, those prescribed by the law (gifts of duty), as well as free-will offerings presented without constraint or necessity (spon- taneous gifts), the real foundation of the offering was the conscious- ness of entire dependence upon God and entire obligation towards Him a consciousness which is always attended by the desire to embody itself in such gifts as these. The main point was never the material, pecuniary worth of the gifts themselves, either in connec- tion with their presentation on the part of man, or their acceptance on the part of God. The God whom the Israelite had recognised allowed to offer a pigeon instead, and if this were impossible, to offer the tenth part of an ephah of wheaten flour. Lev. v. 11. THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SACRIFICE. 55 as the Creator of heaven and earth, could not possibly desire the offering of earthly blessings for their own sake ; He could not care about the gift, but only about the giver, that is to say, about the feelings, of which the gift was the expression and embodiment. Hence the possession, which the worshipper gave up, was the repre- sentative of his person, his heart, his emotions. In these gifts, which were his justly acquired property, gained by the sweat of his face and the exercise of his earthly calling, he offered, in a certain sense, an objective portion of himself, since the sweat of his own labour adhered to it, and he had expended his own vital energy upon it, and thereby, as it were, really given it life. In this way he gave expression to his consciousness of the absolute dependence of his whole life and activity upon the grace and blessing of God, and to his obligation to devote it entirely to God and to divine pur- poses in praise, thanksgiving, and prayer. He gave partially back to God, what he had received entirely from God, and had wrought out and acquired through the blessing of God. And in the part, he sanctified and consecrated the whole, or all that he retained and applied to the maintenance of his own life and strength, and with this his own life also, to the maintenance of which he had devoted it. " It is true (says Oehler, Reallex. x. 614), the impulse from within, which urges a man to the utterance of praise, thanksgiving, and prayer to God, finds its expression in the words of devotion ; but it is fully satisfied only when those words are embodied, when they acquire, as it were, an objective existence in some appropriate act, in which the man incurs some expense by self-denial and self- renunciation, and thus gives a practical proof of the earnestness of his self-dedication to God." 20. If we proceed now to examine what it was, that constituted the essential difference between the Corbanim of the third class and those of the other two, we shall find it in the peculiar relation in which the former stood to the altar. For this reason we have de- signated the offerings of the third class a&ar-offerings. In material substance, it is true, they were essentially the same as those of the second class (the feudal payments). The objects presented were in both instances the produce of agriculture and grazing ; in both there were animal and vegetable, bleeding and bloodless, offerings ; and they were both alike the fruit and produce of the life and work connected with the ordinary occupation, or the means by which life was invigorated and sustained. But the difference was this : some went directly to the priests and Levites, whilst the others were given 56 THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SACRIFICE. directly and personally to Jehovah, through the relation in which they were placed to the altar. For the altar was the spot upon which men presented their gifts to Jehovah who dwelt on high, and to which Jehovah came down to receive the gifts and bless the giver (Ex. xx. 24). All the Corbanim of the third class, whether animal or vegetable, were burned upon the altar in whole or part, and on that account are designated in the Thorah either n$K (firing, from C'S fire), or nin 1 ; '$ (Jehovah's firing). What the purpose of this burning upon the altar was, is evident from the almost universal formula : nin^ n$K nirP3 n C| i7 (i.e., firing to the savour of peace, of T a v ~ : \ ' satisfaction, of good pleasure for Jehovah), Ex. xxix. 41 ; Lev. viii. 21, etc. (see also Gen. viii. 21). Jehovah smelt the vapour as it ascended from the burning, i.e., the essence of the sacrificial gift purified by fire from the merely earthly elements, and found peace, satisfaction, good pleasure therein. The gift was intended for Him personally, and He accepted it personally, and that with good-will ; and, ac- cording to Ex. xx. 24, He blessed the giver in consequence. But if, as we have seen, it was not the gift as such that Jehovah desired, but the gift as the vehicle of the feelings of the giver, as the repre- sentative of his self-surrender, the cordial acceptance of the gift on the part of God, expressed in the words rtirn rrn^ applies not to the gift in itself, but to the gift as the representative of the person pre- senting the sacrifice. The distinguishing feature which belonged exclusively and universally to the Corbanim of the third class, viz., that of burning upon the altar, was an expression therefore of the self-surrender of the worshipper, which was well-pleasing to God and accepted by Him, and which He repaid by His blessing. But the Corbanim of the third class were placed in another re- lation to the altar, so far as their nature permitted, and one that was equally essential (in the case, that is, of the animal sacrifices), viz., by the sprinkling of the blood upon the altar before the sacri- fice was consumed. The design of this we may settle now, without forestalling any subsequent inquiry, from the passage which has already been referred to in various ways, viz., Lev. xvii. 11 ; though how that design was, or could be, accomplished by such means, we must leave for a future section. This design is expressed in Lev. xvii. 11, in the words DTnb'Dr^J? "I33^ ? i.e., "to expiate (= to cover the sins of) your souls." The blood was the means of expiation, the sprinkling of the blood the act of expiation ; and Jehovah Himself, who appointed this as the mode of expiation for Israel (" And I have given it you"), acknowledged thereby its validity and force. THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SACRIFICE. 57 It is very apparent that the two acts the sprinkling of the blood upon the altar, and the burning of the sacrifice upon the altar were essentially and necessarily connected. The sprinkling of the blood, or expiation, was the means ; the burning, or dedication to Jehovah, the end.. In order that the second should be a " savour of satisfac- tion to the Lord," it was necessary that the first should precede it ; the first, therefore, was the basis or prerequisite of the second. It was entirely different with the Corbanim of the second class. It is true, they were also presented as feudal payments due to Jehovah ; but instead of being retained, or personally appropriated by Him, they were handed over at once and without reserve to the priests or Levites. Even in their case the primary consideration was subjectively (so far as the act of offering was concerned), not the material gift in itself, but the consciousness of dependence upon God, and the sense of obligation towards Him, of which the gift was an expression ; but objectively (so far as their application to the payment and maintenance of the priests and Levites was con^- cerned) the material aspect once more presents itself. This dis- tinction (viz., that they were not intended for Jehovah personally) then reacted upon the mode of presentation, so that there was no apparent necessity for either the burning as a symbol of direct per- sonal appropriation on the part of Jehovah, or the sprinkling of blood as a symbol of the covering of sin preparatory to such appro- priation. But with the altar-sacrifices, at least so far as they were personally appropriated by Jehovah, the loftier, ideal aspect of self- surrender was firmly retained to the end. For that reason they were holier than the others, requiring as a basis the sprinkling of blood, and as a consummation the burning upon the altar. They possessed and retained, from every point of view, a purely personal character : on the objective side, because they were to be set apart for Jehovah personally, and also because Jehovah desired a per- sonal surrender, and not the mere material gift ; on the subjective side, because in them the worshipper presented himself before Jehovah, with all his life and deeds, his hopes and longings, his thanksgiving and praise, his prayers and supplications. Through this exclusively spiritual character the altar-sacrifices ', as may easily be conceived, stand in a much closer relation to the equally spiritual character of prayer. They were indispensable to one another. For, on the one hand, a sacrifice offered ivitliout prayer, at least without the spirit of prayer, was a body without soul, an empty, lifeless^ powerless opus operatum ; and, on the other 58 THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SACRIFICE. hand, prayer could not dispense with the accompaniment of sacri- fice. Prayer in itself is merely an ideal expression of the need and longing for expiation and fellowship with God, and does not really set these forth ; but in the sacrificial worship there is an embodi- ment, a visible and palpable expression, not merely of the subjective desire of the worshipper, but also of the objective satisfaction of that desire. I cannot help regarding it as a mistaken and mislead- ing statement of Hengsten berg's, therefore, that sacrifice "was in the main an embodiment of prayer (Hos. xiv. 2 ; Heb. xiii. 15)." On the contrary, sacrifice was something different from and something more than prayer. It did not correspond to prayer, as the symbol to the idea ; but it ran parallel to it, and required it as an accom- paniment throughout its entire course. Moreover, " the main point in the sacrifice" was not, what prayer could have exhibited equally well, a subjective longing for the blessings of salvation, but an ob- jective assurance of them. Kelts explanation, in which Hengsten- berg's idea is adopted, but without the essential, though still not sufficient limitation, " in the main," is still more inadmissible. " Sacrifice," he says, " is the visible utterance of prayer as the most direct self-dedication of a man to God." 1 (Arch. i. 192.) But if sacrifice itself was in the main an embodiment of prayer, what ne- cessity could there be for a special symbol of prayer to be associated with most of the sacrifices ? For both Hengstenberg and Keil have thus correctly interpreted the incense which had to be added to every meat-offering, and thereby to every burnt-offering and peace-offer- ing also, but which was not allowed to be added to the sin-offering. 21. If we turn now to what was actually offered, to the mate- rial substance of the Corbanim, it is self-evident that the first and most important consideration was this, that the offering to be pre- sented should be the property of the person presenting it, and should be properly acquired or earned. 2 How essential this demand was with reference to all the Corbanim, is evident from the nature of the case, and requires no proof. For instance, whereas in the first class the notion of property was without restriction, and embraced valuables of every kind (gold, silver, furniture, houses, fields, vine- 1 Vid. Delitzsch on the Epistle to the Hebrews (p. 739) : "The sacrifice, when offered in a right state of mind, had the self -dedication of the worship- per as its background, and his prayer as its accompaniment (Job xlii. 8 ; 1 Sam. vii. 9 ; 1 Chron. xxi. 26 ; 2 Chron. xxix. 26-30) ; but it was not the symbol of either self -dedication or prayer." 2 Thus, for example, the gains of prostitution and the merces scorti virilis are forbidden to be offered (Deut. xxiii. 18). THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SACRIFICE. 59 yards, etc.), in the second it was restricted to the produce of agri- culture and grazing, and in the third class was limited still further, all garden produce, all fruits (except wine and oil), and all unclean animals being excluded, so that the only things left for this class of offerings were oxen, sheep, goats, and pigeons, as well as wine, oil, and corn (either in natura, or in the form of flour, dough, bread, cakes, etc.). The fact that the Corbanim of the second class were limited to the produce of agriculture and grazing, but embraced all such pro- duce, may be explained from their character as feudal payments. Agriculture and grazing were to be the peculiar and sole occupation of the Israelites in the land which their God had given them in fief ; hence their feudal payments were to be restricted to the produce of these. But, in the case of strict altar-sacrifices, two other limitations were introduced. All kinds of property which could not serve the Israelite as food (e.g., houses, clothes, furniture, etc.) were to be ex- cluded, as well as every kind which ought not to be so used (viz., all unclean animals the ass, the camel, etc.). In addition to these, every kind of property was to be excluded which had not been ac- quired by the worshipper himself in the sweat of his face, i.e., by his own diligence and toil, and in the exercise of his own proper calling : for example, all edible game, such as stags, gazelles, and antelopes, and fruit which had grown ready to his hand, and could be eaten without the bestowal of any special labour or care (such as almonds, dates, pomegranates, etc.). Oil and wine were not included in them, because in their case it was not the grape and olive that were offered, but juice which had been procured in the sweat of the face. 1 From what has been already said, it follows that both Bdlir (Symb. ii. 316-17) and Neumann are in error, when the former 1 It is true this last point could not be carried out in all its stringency and literality ; for a man who had no field or flock of his own (a labouring man, for example) could not offer bread that he had reaped, or cattle that he had reared. It was necessary, therefore, that he should be allowed to offer a sacrifice that he had bought (the purchase, at any rate, was made in such a case with money acquired by the sweat of his own face) ; and in the Holy Land this exception afterwards grew to be the rule whenever the person lived at such a distance from the sanctuary as rendered it difficult to bring the sacrifice with him. This exception was a compromise of a similar kind to that which allowed the poor man, who could not procure an expensive animal, to offer as a substitute an incomparably cheaper pigeon, or if that were impossible, the tenth part of an ephah of flour. 60 THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SACRIFICE. looks at the material of the altar-sacrifices exclusively in the light of a collection of the principal productions of the country, and a representation of the whole of the national property, whilst the latter merely regards it in the light of food. It is a sufficient reply to Bdhr, that very many of the productions that were characteristic of the country, and much that represented the national wealth, could not be offered at all (e.g., the ass, the grape, the fig, the pomegranate, milk and honey, etc. : Num. xiii. 23 ; Deut. viii. 7-9, xi. 7-9). And Neumann? s assertion is no less inconsiderate ; for if that had been the only regulating principle, stags, gazelles, and antelopes, as well as the numerous kinds of clean birds, together with vegetables, figs, dates, pomegranates, honey, etc., ought to have been offered as well. To obtain a correct view of the material selected for the sacri- fices, we ought to do as Oehler has done, viz., to combine the three aspects referred to, and to regard this as the principle of selection, that nothing was suitable to the purpose but personal property justly acquired, which was, on the one hand, the fruit of Israel's proper avocation (agriculture and the rearing of cattle), and on the other hand, the natural and legal means of sustenance, that is to say, of maintaining that avocation. 22. From the rule thus laid down for the choice of the materials for the altar-sacrifices, it is perfectly obvious that in these offerings it was not the gift itself, but the giver, that was the primary object of consideration ; in other words, that they represented a personal self-surrender to the person of Jehovah Himself. If this self-sur- render to God was to be expressed, not merely ideally in thought, or verbally in prayer, but in a visible and tangible act; and if, moreover, as had been unalterably established since the occurrence related in Gen. xxii., this act was not to assume the form of a real human sacrifice ; nothing remained but to select as a symbolical re- presentation or substitute some other thing, which was evidently suitable for the purpose on account of the close and essential con- nection existing between it and the worshipper. But for this pur- pose it was not sufficient that the sacrifice should be merely the property of the person offering it; 'on the contrary, it was requisite that it should stand in a close, inward, essential relation, a psychical rapport, to the person of the worshipper. This was the case, on the one hand, whenever the material of the sacrifice was the result and fruit of his life-work, his true avocation, and thus in a certain sense was inoculated and impregnated with his own vis vitalis ; and, THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SACRIFICE. 61 on the other hand, whenever it was appointed as the means of main- taining and strengthening his vital energy, that is to say, when it impregnated him with its own vis vitalis. But, as the rule laid down above evidently shows, both points of view were combined in the material selected for the Mosaic sacrifices. To the cattle which the Israelite had reared, to the corn which he had reaped, to the wine and oil which he had pressed, there still adhered the sweat of his toil. The acquisition and maturing of them had been dependent upon his own unwearied care, his toil and exertion ; and thus, in a certain sense, one element of his own life had been transferred to them, and penetrated into them. He had devoted a portion of his life to the task of acquiring them ; and they were consequently, as it were, an objective portion of his own life. To recognise the full importance of this connection, it must again be borne in mind, that according to the law itself the whole of the earthly life-work and vocation of the Israelite was restricted to agriculture and the rear- ing of cattle, and consequently that he devoted himself to it with his whole heart, with undivided interest. But wine, oil, corn, and cattle were not merely the result of Ms toil and care, they were also and chiefly the fruit of the blessing of GOD, a gift of God ; and by virtue of what God had done, they were appointed and suited to nourish and preserve his bodily life, and to enable him to carry out his true vocation. Keil disputes the correctness of this view of a biotic rapport be- tween the sacrificer and his sacrifice ; Oehler, on the contraiy, admits its truth. But when Keil argues, (1) that in that case the ass could not have been excluded, and (2) that this principle is perfectly inap- plicable to the vegetable portion of the materials of sacrifice, it is a sufficient reply to the former, that the ass was an unclean animal, and therefore could not be used as food by the Israelites ; and we have already shown that there is no force whatever in the latter. Neumann (p. 332), on the other hand, will not admit that the question of property had anything to do with the choice of materials for the altar-sacrifices ; (1) " because dogs, asses, camels, houses, and even wives, formed part of the property of an Israelite, and yet were not offered in sacrifice ; " (2) because " the ram, which Abra- ham sacrificed instead of his son, was hardly his own property ;" and (3) because " in the later period of the Jewish history the instances were numerous enough, in which the people offered to their God what had been contributed by foreign kings" (Ezra vi. 9 ; 1 Mace. x. 39 ; 2 Mace. iii. 3, ix. 16). Keil, who agrees with Neumann in his 62 THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SACRIFICE. rejection of our view, lays stress upon the last point only. The first needs no refutation on our part. To the second we reply, that this was before the standpoint of the sacrificial worship of the law had been reached ; and the case in itself was so singular and extra- ordinary, that it cannot be regarded as supplying the rule for the rest. And to the third Oehler (p. 625) has already replied, that " in Ezra's time this was the necessary consequence of the poverty of the people (Ezra vii. 17, 22) ; but Nehemiah's directions (Neh. x. 33, 34) show how strong was the feeling even then, that it was the duty of the people themselves to provide for the expenses of their own worship." "With regard to the later times of the Syrians and Komans, the custom at that time proves nothing ; for many things were practised then, which were totally at variance with the spirit of the Mosaic legislation. 23. The altar-sacrifices were presented under the aspect of food, not only subjectively, but objectively also ; that is to say, they not only consisted of the materials which constituted the food of Israel, but they were also to be regarded as food for Jehovah. The latter would follow from the former as a matter of course, even if it had not been expressly stated. But it is expressly indicated, inas- much as these sacrifices are spoken of as a whole, as the bread, the food, of Jehovah (Lev. iii. 11, 16, xxi. 6, 8, 17, xxii. 25 ; Num. xxviii. 2). Not, of course, that flesh, bread, and wine, as such, could be offered to the God of Israel for food (Ps. 1. 12 sqq.). They were not to pass for what they were, but for what they sig- nified ; and only in that light were they food for Jehovah. That which served as the daily food of Israel was adopted as the symbol of those spiritual gifts, which were offered to Jehovah ae food. We have no hesitation whatever in understanding the expression " bread of Jehovah" in the strict sense of the words ; but we must keep well in mind, that in the case of the God of Israel the allusion could only have been to spiritual, and not at all to material food. Jehovah, who, as the God of salvation, had entered into the history of the world, and moved forward in it and with it, stood in need of food in that capacity, but of spiritual food, the complete failure of which would be followed by His also ceasing to be Je- hovah. That food Israel was to offer Him in its own faithful self- surrender ; and the symbol of that self-surrender was to be seen in the sacrifices consumed upon the altar, and ascending as a " savour of satisfaction to Jehovah." If Israel had failed to fulfil its cove- nant obligation of self-surrender to Jehovah, it would have broken THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SACRIFICE. 63 away from the covenant, and the covenant itself would have ceased ; and had the covenant been once abolished, God would also have ceased to be the covenant-God, i.e., to be Jehovah. 1 24. Our remarks, thus far, apply equally to all the materials of sacrifice, whether animal or vegetable. But there is one import- ant point of view, from which there was an essential distinction between them, and which is adapted to throw light upon the ques- tion, why they stood side by side in the sacrificial worship ; that is to say, why bloodless as well as bleeding sacrifices were required. Animals of the higher class, more especially domestic animals and cattle, stand incomparably nearer to man than plants do : their life rests upon the same psychico-corporeal basis, they are subject to the same conditions of life, they have the same bodily organs and functions, and need the same corporeal food as man. All this is wanting in the case of the plant; or rather, everything in it is precisely the opposite. An animal, therefore, is far better adapted to represent the person of a man, his vital organs, powers, and actions, than plants can ever be. On the other hand, the cultiva- tion of plants, more especially the growing of corn, requires far more of the preparatory, continuous, and subsequent labour of man, and is more dependent upon him than the rearing of cattle. It was not upon the latter, but upon the former, that the curse was really pronounced in Gen. iii. 17-19 (cf. v. 29). The material acquired by agriculture, therefore, was far more suitable than the flocks to represent the fruit, or result of the life-work of man. And this distinction, as we shall afterwards show, was undoubtedly the prin- ciple by which the addition of the vegetable to the animal materials of sacrifice was regulated. 25. The altar-sacrifices are thus divisible into bleeding (animal) and bloodless (vegetable) sacrifices. 2 The former may be grouped 1 Compare with this what Henystenberg says with reference to the shew- bread : " This was really the food which Israel presented to its King ; but that King was a spiritual, heavenly one ; and therefore the food offered to Him under a material form must be spiritual also The prayer to God, ' Give us this day our daily bread,' is accompanied by the demand on the part of God, ' Give Me to-day My daily bread ; ' and this demand is satisfied by the Church, when it offers diligently to God in good works that for which God has endowed it with strength, benediction, and prosperity." (Diss. on the Pentateuch, vol. ii. pp. 531, 532, translation.) 2 This distinction, however, is by no means coincident, as Kliefoth supposes, with that between the expiatory sacrifices ("by which forgiveness of sins and the favour and fellowship of God were secured ") and eucharistic offerings (" in which, after reconciliation has taken place, God and man hold intercourse with 64 THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SACRIFICE. again in three classes : (1) SIN-OFFERINGS (ns^n) and TRESPASS- OFFERINGS ( D ^N), the latter of which was merely one peculiar de- scription of the former; (2) BURNT-OFFERINGS (^V); and (3) PEACE-OFFERINGS (Q^P^; Luther, " thank-offerings"). In the first, the sprinkling of the blood appears to have been the principal thing ; in the second, the burning upon the altar ; and in the last a new feature is introduced, which is wanting in both the others, namely, the sacrificial meal. In the different kinds of bloodless offerings we have to include, not only those which were burned upon the altar in the court, but those which were offered upon the altar, table, and candlestick of the Holy Place. The former were designated as meat-offerings and drink-offerings C=1P.^ ^P)? anc ^ consisted of corn (meal, bread, cake, etc.) and wine, with the addi- tion of oil, incense, and salt. We find the same essential elements in the Holy Place, but distributed upon the three different articles of furniture the incense upon the altar, bread and wine (meat- and drink-offerings) upon the table of shew-bread, and oil (light- offering) upon the candlestick. Thus the whole of the Mosaic Corbanim may be classified as follows : OFFERINGS. II. FEUDAL PAYMENTS, I. SACRED OFFERINGS, III. ALTAR-SACRIFICES, for the maintenance of for the endowment of the for personal appropria- the priests and Levites sanctuary. tion on the part of Je- (first -fruits and tenths). hovah. 1. Fruits. 2. Cattle. 3. Men. A.. Bleeding. i^ClelnTlrUnde^. 1- Sin-offerings and tres- pass-ottenngs. 2. Burnt-offerings. 3. Peace-offerings. B. Bloodless. (1). In the (2). In the Court. Holy Place. Meat and 1. Incense- drink-of- offerings, ferings. 2. Light-of- ferings. 3. Meat-of- ferings. one another in mutual fellowship of life "). Still less is he right in denying to the bleeding (expiatory) sacrifice the character of an offering altogether. This view is overthrown at once by the fact that all the sacrifices are called by the same name, Corbanim. Even the bleeding, expiatory, animal sacrifices were primarily offerings, or gifts ; and this character of an offering was expressed in the burning (of their fleshy parts), to which they were subjected in the same way as the bloodless altar-gifts. Even in the case of those bleeding sacrifices in which the expiation reached its highest point, and everything else gave place to it (viz., in the case of the sin-offerings), the essential characteristic of an offering was invariably preserved through the burning of the fat (cf. 142). BOOK II. THE BLEEDING SACRIFICE. PART I. RITUAL OF THE SACRIFICE. 26. The ritual of the bleeding sacrifice may be arranged according to its salient points in the following manner : When circumstances demanded, or inclination prompted, the person presenting the sacrifice, having selected an animal in accord- ance with the legal directions as to both kind and mode, brought it before the door of the tabernacle, i.e., to the altar of burnt-offering in the court, where he laid his hand upon it, and then slaughtered it on the north side of the altar. The sacrificer had now performed his part, and all the rest belonged to the province of the priest. The latter began by receiving the blood of the animal in a vessel, and applying it, either in whole or in part, and in various ways according to the nature and importance of the sacrifice, to the altar of the court (in certain cases also to the altar of the Holy Place, or the Capporeth of the Most Holy). He then flayed the animal, and having cut it in pieces, and washed the entrails and lower part of the thigh in water, burned either the whole of it except the skin, which belonged to himself, or only the fat, upon the altar of the court. It was only in the case of the burnt-offerings that the former was done ; whilst the latter was the case with all the other kinds of sacrifice. But in the case of the peace-offerings, after the burning of the fat and the removal of certain portions, which fell to the lot of the officiating priest, the remainder was eaten at a sacrificial meal by the sacrificer himself and his family ; and in that of the sin-offerings and trespass-offerings, the flesh was either burned without the camp, or (in certain cases) eaten by the priests in the Holy Place. With the burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, there E 66 THE NOTION OF EXPIATION. were also associated meat-offerings and drink-offerings ; but never with the sin-offerings and trespass-offerings. Of the different points referred to here, we shall look, in the first place, simply at those which mark the progressive steps of the sacrificial ceremony as a whole, and only so far as they do this. All the rest we shall defer till we come to our examination of the various kinds of sacrifice. CHAPTER I. THE NOTION OF EXPIATION. 27. The EXPIATION (Rabbinical : n% ^) ^ ^ ie P erson sacri- ficing is what we meet with everywhere, not only as the first intention, but to a certain extent as the chief and most important end of the bleeding sacrifices in general. When the sacrifice of animals is mentioned in the law, making atonement (ivy ISO?) is nearly always expressly mentioned, and for the most part this alone, as being the purpose, end, and fruit of the sacrifice. It is perfectly obvious, indeed, that there were other ends to be attained, such, for example, as the self-surrender of the sacrifice to Jehovah in the burning of the sacrificial gift, and the enjoyment of fellow- ship with Jehovah in the sacrificial meal ; but the fact that these ends could not possibly be attained in any other way than by means of expiation, and on the basis of expiation, gave to the latter its incomparable, all-surpassing importance, and its central place in the plan of salvation, the progressive stages of which were sym- bolically represented in the sacrificial worship. The highest and most difficult, in fact the only real enigma, which the saving counsel of God had to solve in the whole history of salvation, was the expiation of sinful man. Let this difficulty be overcome, and every other difficulty falls with it to the ground, so that the way is fully opened for the attainment of all the other blessings of salvation. The question was not, how could man, who had been created l>y and for God, attain to fellowship with God, and continue therein as so created (there would have been no difficulty in this ; in fact, it would have followed, so to speak, as a matter of course) ; the question was, whether, and how, sinful man, notwithstanding his sin, which had severed all the bonds of fellowship with God, and rendered THE NOTION OF EXPIATION. 67 their reunion impossible, could nevertheless attain to that fellow- ship again. Nothing but expiation, i.e., the extermination of his sin, could render this impossibility possible. Consequently, the expiation of his sin was the Alpha and Omega for the wants and longings of a sinner desirous of fellowship with God ; and for that reason, the law of sacrifice, which meets these wants and this longing with its institutions of salvation, reiterates again and again, and more than anything besides, its lvj? "1337 or }n3n IvV "ISO] (" to make atonement for him," or " the priest shall make atonement for him"). 28. Although the root "i>3 does not occur in Kal (for the ~IS3 in Gen. vi. 14 is probably a denominative verb from ~>S3 = pitch or resin, cf. Furst, Lex. i. 621), the correctness of the generally accepted radical signification, " to cover," " to cover up" is fully established from the cognate dialects. This radical meaning has been retained in the Piel, only the notion of covering up has passed from the literal into a figurative sense. "123 and "193 are never used to denote any other than an ideal covering. In this sense it is chiefly em- ployed in religious phraseology, i.e., in connection with divine worship. That which is covered up is never God, or anything godly, 1 but always something ungodly, displeasing to God, hostile to Him, provocative of His wrath and punishment ; that is to say, sin, guilt, and uncleanness (" for sin," Lev. iv. 35, v. 13, etc. ; " iniquity," Jer. xviii. 23 ; Ps. Ixxviii. 38, etc. ; " his ignorance," Lev. v. 18). If we find a number of other objects appended to 133 (e.g., " for the soul," or " for the souls," Ex. xxx. 15 ; Lev. xvii. 11, etc. ; " for the children of Israel," Num. viii. 19 ; " for the house," Lev. xiv. 53, and many others), it is only in appearance that this is opposed to our assertion. All these objects come into con- sideration only so far as sin or uncleanness adheres to them ; and it is not to them, but to the uncleanness adhering to them that the term 133 applies. In such a case the covering becomes eo ipso an expiation, and the covered sin no longer exists as sin, but is an exterminated or expiated sin. 1 It is incorrect, and likely to mislead, therefore, to speak of atoning the wrath of God, as DelitzKch, for example, does (Heb. p. 741) : " it is the wrath of God excited by sin which is atoned, i.e.j appeased by the punishment of sin." On the contrary, we must distinguish between expiation and reconciliation. Accord- ing to the analogy of the ordinary expression, " to reconcile an enemy," we may also speak of reconciling the angry God, but never of atoning (expiating) God, or the wrath of God. The reconciliation of the angry person is effected through the expiation of that by which he has been offended, and his anger has been aroused. 68 THE NOTION OF EXPIATION. We must here inquire, in the first place, however, by what process of thought the covered sins were regarded as exterminated or expiated. According to the general opinion, the covering removed the sins from the sight of Jehovah ; Jehovah saw them no more ; they no longer provoked His anger and His punishment ; and thus they mi^ht be regarded as no longer existing, as exterminated, and altogether removed from the wrath of God (vid. Bdhr, ii. 204; Ebrard, p. 42 ; Kliefotli, p. 31 ; Oehler, p. 630). In confirmation of this view appeal is made to the expression in Lev. vi. 7, "IB31 niiT rj& jnbn V^y, where the sins are represented as being covered up " before the face of Jehovah." But D^B is not the face in the sense of that which sees, but rather in the sense of that which is seen, or is to be seen ; the expression employed to denote the former is nirv TJJ?. And when we find the forgiveness of sins designated in Micah vii. 19 as a casting of the sins into the depths of the sea, and in Jer. xviii. 23, " washing away (''npn) the sins before the face of Jehovah," answering as a parallelism to ^^n Q-hy^y 5 these are simply different figures for the same thing, from which nothing at all can be inferred as to the meaning of 1S3, although Oehler appeals to both these points. And when Oeliler goes on to remark, that "the immediate consequence is, that by virtue of such a covering, the sinful man is protected from the punishing judge," no objection can be made to this, unless, as is done by Delitzsch (Heb. p. 387, 740), there is given to "123 itself the meaning or force of & protective covering, or of a covering from danger, namely, from the manifestation of the wrath of God. The meaning of 1B3, in the sacrificial terminology, cannot possibly be that what is covered is to be protected, delivered, preserved. Such a meaning would be perfectly inadmissible in connection with the common expressions nNDrr^y, pjr^JJ (" for their sin," " for their iniquity"), etc. ; for sin, iniquity, guilt, or uncleanness, is just what is not to be protected, but, on the contrary, to be exterminated, set aside, annihilated. No doubt the object of the verb 1B3 in the sacrificial language, is for the most part the person of the sacrificer himself ; in which case, the notion of protection, deliverance, pre- servation, and so forth, before the wrath of God would be perfectly applicable. But the frequency with which the verb is connected with sin, iniquity, etc., compels us to assume, that even where a person is mentioned as the object, it is not the person himself, or in himself, that is to be regarded as the object to be covered, but the sin and uncleanness adhering to him. Moreover, when we observe THE NOTION OF EXPIATION. 69 that very frequently, where the person of the sacrificer is mentioned as the object, there is added, as an explanatory apposition, either inxarrfy; ( concerning his sin"), Lev. iv. 35, v. 13 ; or SfiMtf"^ (" concerning his ignorance"), Lev. v. 18 ; or instsno (" from his sin"), Lev. iv. 26, v. 6, 10, xvi. 34 ; or nisotsp (" from the unclean- nesses"), Lev. xvi. 16 ; or, lastly, KDH iBtep (Eng. Ver., " for that he sinned"), Num. vi. 11 ; we must admit the correctness of the conclusion to which Rosenmuller and Bdhr both came, that " the formula V7J7 123 (Eng. Ver., " make atonement for him"), which occurs most frequently in the sacrificial ritual, is abbreviated from the more complete form i&'S^py "i33 (" make atonement for his soul"), and that this again stands for it^SJ DNBrn'y "IBS (" make atonement for the sin of his soul"). But whether the word 133 be understood as denoting a cover- ing in the sense of withdrawing from view, or of protecting from danger, the use of the word in other connections viz., in Gen. xxxii. 20; Prov. xvi. 14; Isa. xxviii. 18, xlvii. 11 seems to show that neither of these interpretations can be sustained. When Isaiah says, for example, rncrriK Q?n > 'i3 "ISD1 (" your covenant with death shall be covered "), the meaning is not that the covenant with death shall be rendered invisible, for even as an invisible (secret) covenant it might answer its purpose quite as well ; still less that it shall be protected from danger, for, on the contrary, it is to be rendered powerless and nugatory. But covering would only render it power- less and nugatory, provided it was a covering of a kind to suppress, restrain, and destroy the ability and effort to assist the ally. In the same way it would be opposed both to the meaning and the context, to imagine the words employed by Jacob, " I will cover his face with a present," as signifying either that he would protect Esau's face from danger, or that he would hide it from view by means of his present ; on the contrary, Jacob's intention was to protect himself from the wrath of Esau, of which his face was the vehicle, and then to follow this " covering of his face " by actually " seeing his face." Nor can we interpret this passage, according to the analogy of the "covering of the eyes" in Gen. xx. 16, as indicating that it was Jacob's intention to "hold something before Esau's face which would prevent him from looking any longer at the wrong that had been done him" (Ho/mann, Schriftbeweis ii. 1, p. 233) ; for in that case he would have followed the analogy of Gen. xx. 16, and said, YTJJ mSDK ("I will cover his eyes"), to say nothing of the fact that the meaning thus obtained could not possibly be applied to the sacri- 70 THE NOTION OF EXPIATION. ficial "IDD. Jacob determines to cover Esau's face, not that he may no longer see the wrong that Jacob has done, but that the anger depicted in Esau's face may be broken, that is to say, rendered altogether powerless. And when it is stated in Prov. xvi. 14, that " a wise man covers C 1 ??) the wrath of the king," the word is to be understood in the same sense as Jacob's mB2S. With this interpre- tation of the word "1B3, " a transition to the phrase nin "IBS (to cover mischief) in Isa. xlvii. 11" is undoubtedly "possible," and a mean- ing may be obtained which shall be perfectly appropriate to the parallel njn "iW ("the dawning of evil"). In this way, then, we also understand the covering of sin in the sacrificial worship as a covering by which the accusatory and damnatory power of sin its power to excite the anger and wrath of God is broken, by which, in fact, it is rendered both harmless and impotent. And, understood in this sense, the sacrificial covering was not merely an apparent, conventional, expiation of sin (which would have been the case if it had been merely removed from the sight of Jehovah), but a process by which it was actually rendered harmless, which is equivalent to cancelling and utterly annihilat- ing. Among other passages which show that the word "IB3 must be understood in this sense, we may cite Deut. xxi. 9, where the "133:1 in ver. 8 is followed by an explanatory 1^3^ (thou shalt put away). 1 With this view the intensive force of the Piel, as determining or modifying this signification, is firmly retained : it is so complete, effectual, and overpowering a covering, that all real and active force in that which is covered up is thereby rendered impossible, or slain. Hofmann has a very peculiar notion with regard to 1B3- In his opinion, it is a denominative from 1B3 (a redemption fee), and sig- nifies to give a covering, or payment ; so that the means by which the sin is expiated assumes the appearance of a " compensation," without which the sinner could not be set free from the captivity of sin ; in just the same sense in which payment is made as a re- demption fee for deliverance from bodily captivity. But notwith- standing the amazing acuteness, and minute, hair-splitting cleverness, 1 Since writing the above, I have found essentially the same view expressed by Kdhnis (i. 271), who says, " To expiate, literally to cover up, does not mean to cause a sin not to have been committed, for that is impossible ; nor to repre- sent it as having no existence, for that would be opposed to the earnestness of the law ; nor to pay or compensate it by any performance ; but to cover it before God, i.e., to deprive it of its power to come between us and God." 11 THE NOTION OF EXPIATION. 71 with which Hofmann has endeavoured once more to establish this derivation and meaning, and to defend it against the objections of Ebrar'd (pp. 41, 42) and Delitzsch (Heb. 386, 740), in the second edition of his Schriftbeweis (ii. 1, 232 sqq.), he- has not succeeded even in rendering it plausible. He cannot adduce a single passage from which this signification of "IBS or its derivatives (B**? and rnQ3) can be proved ; x and still less is he able to meet the important fact, that the term 1S3i which is so common elsewhere, and which is said to furnish the real key to the explanation of the sacrificial worship, is not to be met with on one single occasion in connection with the sacrificial worship, whereas the word "IBS, which is said to be derived from it, with its several derivatives, is perpetually em- ployed, and occurs in connections of the most various kinds, which would have furnished just as fitting an occasion for the use of "IBS, if the two words had really been synonymous. 29. The subject from whom the 133 proceeded in connection with the sacrificial worship, was always represented as either GOD, or His servant and representative the priest; and the fruit and effect of it as being the forgiveness of those sins (Lev. iv. 20, "IBS1 Dr6rta>:i jnsn Dn^ ; also Lev. iv. 26, 31, 35, v. 10, 13, 16, 18,' vi. 7 ; Num. xv. 28), or the removal of that uncleanness (Lev. xii. 7, 8, rnnoi iT$>y ispl, c f. Lev. xiv. 31, 53, xvi. 19), for which expia- tion was to be made. The blood alone is mentioned as the means of sacrificial expiation (Ex. xxx. 10; Lev. vi. 30, viii. 15, xvi. 16, etc.) ; from which it follows, that it was the bleeding sacrifice alone, and not the bloodless offerings also, which possessed an ex- piatory value. But why, or in what way, the blood was adapted to be a means of expiation, we learn first of all in connection with the publication of the command to abstain from eating blood in Lev. xvii. 11 :" For the soul 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 the blood, it makes atonement by means of the soul." We adopt this rendering of 1S3^ t^Bas, in common with Bdhr, Keil, Delitzsch, etc. 1 The only passage which could be adduced as favouring this meaning, viz., Ex. xxx. where the census-tax, which is called i^'S3 1Q3 in ver. 12, is de- scribed in ver. 16 as D'HBSn f)DS, and in ver. 15 as serving Dp/nbfB^y "I33^> only proves that on one occasion, under peculiar circumstances, and in a parti- cular sense, the mS3, which, as a rule, was accomplished by the sacrificial blood, was accomplished in a more literal sense by a money payment. But it by no means follows from this, that on every occasion, whatever the means of expiation might be, it must always be regarded in the light of a payment. 72 THE NOTION OF EXPIATION. Ebrard (p. 44), on the other hand, adheres to the rendering adopted by the LXX. (avrl ^rv^(ij3n t$M. On the other hand, I fully agree with Hofmann, in opposition to Delitzscli, KnoM, and Odder, that in ver 14, in the clause {On itt>S31 10T "lB>3-^3 K>Q3, the 2 is neither local nor instrumental, since neither the one nor the other will give any tolerable sense ; and that it is to be understood as 2 essentise, " the soul of all flesh is its blood, as its soul," or, as Hofmann explains it, "it is true of the soul of all flesh, that it is its blood, which constitutes its soul." But just as in this place the context compels us to regard the Beth as essential, because this alone will give any meaning ; so the current phraseology requires that in the word K'Wa in ver. 11 it should be regarded as instrumental, which gives a good meaning, and is perfectly in harmony with the context. 74 THE NOTION OF EXPIATION. portant object in them all. The words, " to make atonement for him " (V^y "is?/'), are expressly used, in fact, not only in connection with the sin-offering (Lev. iv. 20, 26, 31, 35, etc.) and trespass- offering (Lev. v. 16, 18, vi. 7, etc.), but in connection with the burnt-offering also (Lev. i. 4). And if this is not the case with the peace-offerings, we must not conclude from that, that the law did not attribute to them any expiatory character at all. In proportion as the expiatory character of the different kinds of sacrifice diminished in importance, the eagerness of the law to give prominence to their atoning virtue diminishes also. The sin- and trespass-offerings are hardly referred to once, without an allusion to the atonement to be made. In connection with the burnt-offering, it is expressly men- tioned only once, viz., at the very commencement of the sacrificial law (Lev. i. 4 ; compare, however, Lev. v. 10, xiv. 20, xvi. 24). And in the sections relating to the peace-offering (Lev. iii., vii. 11- 21) it is not brought into prominence at all. Thomasius (Christi Person und Werk iii. 1, p. 40) also adduces Ezek. xlv. 15 (see also ver. 17) as a proof of the expiatory charac- ter of the peace-offerings. But this passage cannot be accepted as conclusive. For although the meat-offering, the burnt-offering, and the peace-offering are classed together in ver. 15 (in ver. 17 the sin- offering also is mentioned), and the expression, " to make reconcilia- tion for them " (D>]vJ| ">????), is applied in common to them all ; the introduction of the meat-offering renders this passage unservice- able for the end supposed. But we do not require any express or special proof passages. The question is settled already by Lev. xvii. 11. If all blood placed upon the altar was atoning blood, this must have applied to the blood of the peace-offerings also. And a still more decisive proof is to be obtained per analogiam from the entire ritual of sacrifice. If the sprinkling of blood in connection with the burnt-offering and trespass-offering served as an atonement 0(7 " l ???)j tne sprinkling of the blood of the peace-offering, which was performed in precisely the same way, must necessarily have had the same significance. On the other hand, it certainly cannot be directly inferred from Lev. xvii. 11, that it was the sprinkling of blood alone which pos- sessed an expiatory worth, to the entire exclusion of all the rest of the sacrificial rites. Though this conclusion, which Hofmann disputes, is perfectly correct ; only it cannot be proved from Lev. xvii. 11. It may be inferred, however, on the one hand, from the fact, that the sprinkling of blood is frequently spoken of as making atone- THE OBJECTS USED IN SACRIFICE. 75 ment, apart from any other portion of the sacrificial rite, whilst no other portion of that rite is ever mentioned as possessing atoning worth apart from the sprinkling of blood, and, on the other hand, from the impossibility of deducing the idea of expiation from any other part of the sacrificial ritual. CHAPTER II. THE OBJECTS USED IN SACEIFICE. 31. We have already seen, chiefly from the statement in Lev. xvii. 11, that the soul of the sacrificial animal, which was brought to the altar in its blood according to divine direction, made expia- tion for the sinful soul of the person sacrificing, and procured the forgiveness of his sin. But neither this passage, nor any other, explains to us how, why, and by what process the soul of the sacri- ficial animal was adapted to serve as the means of expiation. The only way that we have, therefore, of obtaining an answer to this important question, is to ascertain what idea the Hebrew formed of the soul of the sacrificial animal in itself, and in its relation to the soul of man, and also through what process he imagined that soul to pass, before and during its appropriation as the medium of atone- ment. A careful and thorough investigation into the Old Testament view of the nature and essence of the soul in itself, and in its rela- tion to the other bases and powers of life in both the animal and the human spheres, cannot of course be undertaken by us here. We must be content to bring out those points which seem best adapted to further our immediate purpose. The whole of the animal and human world is repeatedly com- prehended in the phrase, Dn (no) rrn to i^K "ife'a'fe, " all flesh, in which is a (breath) spirit of life" (Gen. vi. 17, vii. 15, 22). Consequently, the nature of man, like that of the animal, consists of flesh (or body) and a life-spirit. But through the connection of the life-spirit with the flesh, through the indwelling of the spirit in the flesh, a third arises, viz., the living soul (Gen. ii. 7). Thus it is expressly stated in Gen. ii. 7, that God breathed into the body of the man, which had been formed from the dust of the earth, a " breath of life," and the man became thereby a living soul. But, 76 THE OBJECTS USED IN SACRIFICE. according to Gen. vi. 17, and vii. 15, 22, a spirit or breath of life dwells in the animals also. Again, according to -Gen. ii. 19, they too were formed from earthly materials. And lastly, they also pro- ceeded as "living souls" from the creating hand of God (Gen. ii. 19, i. 20, 24). So that we may conclude that they too became " living souls," through the endowment of their material, earthly bodies with a " breath of life" (vid. Ps. civ. 30, 31 ; Job xxxiv. 14, 15 ; Eccl. iii. 21). In both instances the nostrils are mentioned as the seat of the spirit or breath (vid. Gen. vii. 22, ii. 7, VBK3). The meaning, however, is of course, not that the spirit of life, either in man or in the animal, is identical with the air which they breathe ; but the obvious intention is to point out the spirit as the power, whose activity is manifested in breathing as the most striking evi- dence of existing life. But through the diffusion of this spirit-power throughout the flesh, there arises a third, viz., the living soul. The soul, therefore, is not something essentially different from the life- spirit, but merely a mode of existence which it assumes by pervading and animating the flesh ; and regarded in this light, it has its seat, both in man and beast, in the blood (Lev. xvii. 11 ; Gen. ix. 4-6). Since the soul, therefore, represents in itself the unity of flesh and spirit, and as the incarnate life-spirit is the first principle, the seat and source of all vital activity, the whole man, or the whole animal, may of course be appropriately designated " a living soul," as is the case in Gen. i. 20, 24, ii. 7, 19. 32. Now, if animals as well as men are " living souls," and in both this is dependent in the same way upon the indwelling of a " spirit of life" in the flesh, it might almost appear as though the Old Testament view rendered any essential distinction between man and beast impossible. But that is not the case. The essential dis- tinction between man and beast, notwithstanding this apparent levelling on the part of the Hebrews, is no less certain, and is main- tained with even greater sharpness, than was the case among other nations. A comparison of Gen. ii. 7 with Gen. ii. 19 will be sufficient to show, that the author made an essential distinction between the animal and the human creation. It is true he uses the same ex- pression, " God formed," with reference to both, and the result in both cases was a "living soul." But he makes a distinction even in the substratum for the formation of the body. In the case of the animals he says at once, " of the ground ;" but in that of the man he says, " dust of the ground." In the former he speaks of the THE OBJECTS USED IN SACRIFICE. 77 earthly material without selection ; in the latter, of a nobler, finer, and as it were sublimated, earthly material. In the case of the former, too, there is no express reference made to the endowment of the earthly figure with a " breath of life ; " though he can hardly have intended to deny that this was the case, since its result is admitted, viz., that the animal also became a "living soul." But he regarded it as too trivial and unimportant to be specially men- tioned, and therefore embraced it in the one expression " formed ; " whereas, in ver. 7, the "breathing in of the breath of life" becomes an independent act, and is described as the acme of the whole pro- cedure. In the first account of the creation, the formation of man is still more expressly distinguished from that of the animal. A simple command of God (i. 20, 24) calls the animals out of the earth as their material womb (rendered fruitful by the Spirit of God, which had moved upon the face of the primary chaotic matter) ; but in the creation of man God holds a formal consultation with Himself, and creates him in His own image. The creation ascends step by step ; its last work is man ; and he alone, of all creatures, bears in himself the image of God (i. 26, 27). Now, if we compare with this the two points in the creation of man in Gen. ii. 7, there can be no question that the endowment with the image of God is to be associated, not with the fact first named, " He formed," but with the second, " He breathed." The endowment of man with a spirit of life was at the same time an endowment with the image of God. The animals were also endowed, like man, with a spirit of life, and thus became a living soul ; but man's spirit of life alone was im- pregnated with an essentially divine potency, by which the image of God was impressed upon his nature. And it is this potency which we are accustomed to call spirit, in distinction from body and soul, and because of the absence of which we deny that the animal is possessed of a spirit ; whereas the Hebrew phraseology, employing the word spirit (!?"i), or breath ( n ^), in a broader sense, attributes a spirit to the animal also. Whether and how far that divine potency, which belonged to man alone, was obscured, weakened, suppressed, or even lost through the fall, we are nowhere expressly informed, either in the Penta- teuch or any other part of .the Old Testament. But that this did not take place without a considerable deterioration and alteration of its original standing and worth, especially from an ethical point of view, is presupposed by the whole of the Old Testament history and 78 THE OBJECTS USED IN SACRIFICE. doctrine of salvation. But it is equally certain that its inalienable, so to speak its physical side viz., self-consciousness, personality, freedom of choice, self-determination, and consequent responsibility for his actions remained with man even after the fall (Gen. iv. 10 ; Deut. xi. 26 ; Josh. xxiv. 15, etc.) ; whereas the actions of the animal are determined by instinct, by the necessities of its nature, and it cannot direct or unfold its powers in any other way than that to which its nature impels, so that it is not, and cannot be, respon- sible. 1 33. " Spirit" or " breath" denotes the animal life (in man as well as the animal), so far as its activity is shown in the process of respi- ration. " Soul" on the other hand, denotes the same, so far as it is manifest in the circulation of the blood. As the spirit pervades the body, and, so to speak, becomes incarnate in it by means of the pro- cess of breathing, it becomes " soul," which has its seat in the blood, and, by means of the blood, penetrates and animates the whole body in all its members, the whole flesh in all its muscles and nerves. Hence the " spirit" is the potential, the " soul" the actual, principle of life ; and it is not the spirit but the soul which connects the outer with the inner world (by its receptive activity), and the inner with the outer world (by its spontaneous activity). It is the sensitive principle, the seat of emotion, of liking and disliking, and the impelling power of motion and action. Through its mediation the 'impressions and influences of the outer world assume the form of perception. Through this the individual is affected agree- ably or disagreeably from without, experiencing pleasure or pain. Through this also the individual manifests its power outwardly in movement and action. This impels it to do what yields it pleasure, to avoid what causes pain. It is also the seat and source of desire, both on its positive and its negative side, as affection or aversion, sympathy or antipathy. Hence, in the New Testament, whenever this is the only motive power 'by which any man's conduct is re- gulated, he is called a soulish, or psychical (Eng. Ver. " natural") man. This is the common basis of the human and the animal souls. They have a common foundation a common root and source. And both were originally dependent upon the primary moving of the Spirit of God, which moved upon the chaotic mass of earthly 1 Such passages as Gen. ix. 5, vi. 7 ; Ex. xxi. 28 ; Lev. xx. 15, 16 ; Deut. xiii. 15, are not to be regarded in the light of punishment inflicted upon the ani- mal. Geu. iii. U stands altogether by itself. THE OBJECTS USED IN SACRIFICE. 79 matter, out of which their corporeality was formed. But above this common natural basis, there rises the essential difference between the human and animal souls. Whereas the animal world was merely endowed with a spirit of life by a general creative operation of the Spirit of God upon the earthly material, out of which their bodies were prepared ; the breathing of the spirit of life into the human form was the result of a direct, special, unique act of God, through which the general, earthly spirit of life was imbued with specific and divine powers ; so that the spirit of life thus impregnated, ren- dered man not merely a living soul (Gen. ii. 7), but also the image of God (Gen. i. 27), and thereby stamped upon him on the physical (essential) side, as a copy of the divine nature, the indelible character of personality, with all its attributes, and on the ethical (habitual) side, as a (potential) copy of the divine character, the capacity to be holy as God is holy. For as man, by virtue of his personality, was able to mould himself otherwise than God had in- tended, and to will otherwise than God had willed ; this side of his likeness to God could only have been imparted to him at first as a mere capacity, and not as a developed and inalienable reality. And the fact is recorded in Gen. iii., that the man did not progress from the potential holiness at first imparted, to an actual holiness of his own choosing ; but, on the contrary, abused his freedom, and fell into unholiness and sin. The following, therefore, we may regard as the result of our discussion thus far. The soul of the animal, like that of man, is the first principle, the seat and source, of the sensuous life in all its functions ; in this respect, both are alike. But the difference between them consists in this, that if we look at the absolute con- dition of both, the soul of the animal is determined and sustained by instinct and the necessities of its nature, and therefore is not capable of accountability ; whilst the soul of man, on the contrary, by virtue of the likeness to God imparted at first, is possessed of personality, freedom, and accountability ; whereas, if we look at the condition of both, as it appears before us in reality, and as the practical result of that inequality, the soul of man appears laden with sin and guilt, and exposed to the judgment of God (Gen. ii. 17, iii. 16 sqq.), whilst the animal soul, because not responsible for its actions, may be regarded as perfectly sinless and free from guilt. The soul is in both the seat of pleasure and displeasure, and, as such, the impulse to all that is done or left undone ; but in man alone can the pleasure or displeasure be regarded as sinful, and 80 THE OBJECTS USED IN SACRIFICE. the soul be designated as the birth-place and laboratory of sin ; since in it alone, and not in the animal soul, the element of per- sonality, i.e., of free self-determination and inalienable accountability, is to be found. We are all the more warranted, or rather compelled, to bring forward this contrast on the one hand, freedom from sin and guilt, on the other, sinfulness and gutlt as of essential importance to our question ; because, as ">S3? shows, in connection with every animal sacrifice, though in different degrees, the point in question was the expiation of the sin which clung to the soul of the person sacrific- ing. The sinless and guiltless soul of the animal was the medium of expiation for the sinful and guilty soul of the person by whom the sacrifice was offered. 34. Before proceeding to the second question, viz., what was done to, and with, the soul of the sacrificial animal before and for the sake of the expiation, we must first of all consider the choice of the materials of sacrifice, and what was requisite to fit them for the purpose. The material of sacrifice, so far as expiation was the object in view, consisted of an animal. But all kinds of animals were not admissible ; nor was every individual belonging to such species as were admissible necessarily suitable for the purpose. The only animals admissible were those which served the Israelites as food, and had been reared by themselves ( 21), and which therefore stood in a biotic relation to the person presenting the sacrifice ( 22). We have already examined the meaning of these provi- sions, and have found that, whilst all the Corbanim were primarily and chiefly representatives of personal self-surrender to Jehovah, the altar-sacrifices possessed this character in an especial and exclu- sive manner. And another difference has also presented itself ( 24) ; viz., that the animal sacrifices set forth the person of the sacrificer himself and his vital powers ; the vegetable sacrifices, the fruits and performances of those vital powers. And in connection with this, it must also be borne in mind, that the laws of food sanc- tioned and established the notion, that the clean, i.e., the edible animals, from which alone it was lawful to take those that were sacrificed, were representatives of Israel as the chosen nation ; whilst the unclean animals, on the other hand, were representatives of the heathen world, which stood outside the sanctifying covenant with Jehovah ( 3 ; vid. Lev. xx. 24-26). If, as we have already seen ( 23), the altar-sacrifices were regarded as food for Jehovah THE OBJECTS USED IN SACRIFICE. 81 (rtnv Drp), it follows as a matter of course, that Israel durst not offer to Jehovah such food as His own people had been forbidden to eat because it was unclean ; and if the intention of such offerings was not to present earthly food, of which Jehovah had no need, but spiritual food, which alone is well-pleasing to Jehovah, and which was really requisite to His Jehovistic relation in other words, the faithful self-surrender of the covenant nation, all unclean animals were necessarily excluded, as being representatives of the heathen world. And the fact that even clean animals were not all admis- sible in sacrifice, but only such of them as were the objects of their own care and rearing, of their daily thought and need, had, as we have seen, its good and obvious foundation in the spiritual worth of this food of Jehovah, and in the personal self-dedication of the sacrificer, of which it was the representation. With regard to the sex, both male and female were admissible ; at the same time, the law for the most part gave express directions when a male animal was to be offered, and when a female, and pro- ceeded generally upon the rule, that the male, as superior in worth, power, and importance, was to be used for the higher and more im- portant sacrifices. The age of the animal was also taken into con- sideration : it was not to bear any signs of weakness about it, either because of its youth, or because of its age. As a general rule, it was required, that animals from the flocks should be at least eight days old (Lev. xxii. 27 ; Ex. xxii. 30) ; and in most cases it was prescribed, with regard to sheep and goats (Lev. ix. 3, xii. 6 ; Ex. xxix. 28 ; Num. xxviii. 3, 9, 11), and once with regard to oxen (Lev. ix. 3), that they should be a year old. But a still greater age is generally indicated in the case of oxen, by the use of the word "is and nna (as distinguished from the calf, #, Lev. ix. 3), without any limits being assigned. According to the rabbinical regulations, no animal was to be more than three years old. 1 With regard to the character of the animal, bodily faultlessness was strictly required (Lev. xxii. 20-24). Both of these demands viz., that of a vigor- ous age, and that of bodily faultlessness were connected with the appointment of the animal as a medium of expiation. As so appointed, it was not to have the very same thing that it was de- signed to expiate in the person presenting the sacrifice. In man, no doubt, the infirmities, wants, and injuries, for which the expiation 1 In Judg. vi. 25, the instruction to offer a bullock of seven years old was connected with the duration of the Midianitish oppression ; and therefore, as an exceptional case, was not necessarily opposed to the rabbinical tradition. F 82 THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. was intended, were moral in their nature ; whereas an animal, not being an accountable creature, could have none but physical faults. But what sin is in the sphere of the moral spirit-life, bodily infirmi- ties and injuries are in the sphere of the physical and natural life ; and, for that reason, bodily faultlessness and vital energy were adapted to copy and represent symbolically that spiritual purity and fulness of life, which were requisite in a perfect sacrifice as a medium of expiation, and as an antidote to ethical wants, infirmi- ties, and crimes. On proceeding now to examine what was done with the sacrifi- cial materials so chosen and constituted, we find the whole process consisting of six leading stages : (1) The presentation of the animal, by bringing it to the altar in the court ; (2) the laying on of hands ; (3) the slaughtering before the altar ; (4) the sprinkling of blood against the altar; (5) the burning of the flesh upon the altar ; and (6) the sacrificial meal which was held at the sanctuary. CHAPTER III. THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. 35. The BRINGING of the animal by the sacrificer himself is expressed by the verb N^n, and is to be distinguished from the " offering" of the animal (= ^"ipn), the latter term being used to denote the whole of the sacrificial rite. The place to which the sacrifice was required to be brought was the court of the sanctuary (Lev. i. 3, iv. 4, 14, etc.), as being the only spot where sacrifices were allowed to be offered (Lev. xvii. 1-6). The reason for this act lies upon the surface : the person presenting the offering showed thereby that he felt and desired to put into practice the wish, the need, or the obligation to renew, to fortify, and to give life, by means of such an offering, to his fellowship with that God who dwelt and revealed Himself there ( 12). The presentation of the animal was followed, no doubt, by an examination on the part of the priests, to see whether it answered in kind and condition to the directions contained in the law ( 34), inasmuch as it was necessary that this should be decided before any further steps could be taken. 36. Of incomparably greater importance was the LAYING ON THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. 83 OF HANDS, which was done by the sacrificer himself. This took place in connection with every kind of animal sacrifice (even in the trespass-offerings, 122), except that of pigeons ; and even then the omission was certainly made on outward grounds alone, and had therefore no decisive meaning. The standing expression applied to this ceremony, i"P~fiK ^CD (which led the Rabbins to call the act itself the Semichah), is stronger and more significant than our " laying on of hands :" it denotes a resting, leaning upon the hand. The choice of this expression, therefore, shows that it had reference to a most important act an act which required the strongest energy and resoluteness both of mind and will, for which reason the Rab- bins expressly required that the Semichah should be performed with all the powers of the body (Maimonides, nb'?^ cf. Oehler, p. 627). 1 The laying on of hands in general denotes, throughout the Holy Scriptures, the transfer or communication of some supersensual ele- ment to or upon another, whether it be a power, gift, affection, or obligation : for example, in the act of blessing (Gen. xlviii. 13, 14 ; Matt, xix 13-15); in the communication of the Holy Spirit in general (Acts viii. 17 sqq., xix. 6), and especially in connection with consecration to any theocratical or ecclesiastical office (Num. xxvii. 18 sqq. ; Deut. xxxiv. 9 ; Acts vi. 6 ; 1 Tim. v. 22) ; in the mira- culous cures of Christ and His Apostles (Matt. ix. 18 ; Mark vi. 5 ; Luke xiii. 13 ; Acts ix. 12, 17) ; in the setting apart of a personal substitute (Num. viii. 10, xxvii. 18 sqq. ; Deut. xxxiv.. 9) ; in the sentence of a malefactor to execution (Lev. xxiv. 14 and Susannah ver. 34) . 2 Consecration, therefore, to some new position in life, by one who had the power and the right to make the appointment, and to qualify and equip the other for it r is to be regarded as the general purpose of the imposition of hands. For blessing may be looked at 1 According to the unanimous tradition of the Jews, a verbal confession of sins was associated with the imposition of hands ; and, according to the Mish- nah (cf. Outram, p. 170), it ran as follows : Obsecro Domine, peccavi, deliqui, rebellavi, hoc et illud fed, nunc autem posnitentiam ago, sitque hsec (hostia) ex- piatio mea. Bahr also admits that " the sacrificial ceremony can hardly have been performed in perfect silence ; but, just as among the heathen, prayers or other formularies were repeated during the sacrifice." But the law of Moses never mentions any such custom ; for Lev. xvi. 21 does not bear upon the point at all ( 45), and the command in Lev. v. 5 and Num. v. 7 with regard to the confession of sin cannot be adduced as any proof of the custom, since it is not connected with the imposition of hands, but precedes the whole sacrificial cere- mony. 2 For a fuller examination of these passages, cf. 45. 84 THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. in this light, and miraculous healing also : the former is the conse- cration of the person blessed to the course and sphere of labour which the person blessing intends for him ; the latter, the consecra- tion of the person who has hitherto been ill or crippled, to a healthy and vigorous life. What power, gift, affection, or obligation it was that was communicated or transferred to this end through the im- position of hands, must be, learned from the peculiar circumstances under which, the purpose for which, or the psychical emotion and decision with which it was performed in the cases referred to, as well as in connection with the sacrificial ceremony. 37. In Balirs opinion (ii. 341), the laying on of hands in con- nection with the sacrifice was " nothing but a formal and solemn declaration, on the one hand, that this gift was his actual property, and on the other hand, that he was ready to give up this property of his entirely to death, i.e., to devote it to death for Jehovah." In my Mosaisches Opfer, p. 65 sqq., I have, as I believe, already shown this view, together with all the positive and negative arguments adduced in its favour, to be perfectly groundless and untenable; and I therefore feel that I am relieved from the necessity of repeat- ing my objections here. Hofmann, on the other hand, in the first edition of his Schrift- leweis (ii. 1, pp. 153-4), has expressed himself as follows on the significance of this ceremony : " What the person offering the sacrifice inwardly purposed to do, when bringing the animal to the Holy Place, was to render a payment to God ; and he had full power to appropriate the life of the animal for the rendering of this pay- ment. 1 And the meaning of the imposition of hands was, that he intended to make use of this power, and so inflicted death upon the animal, by which he purposed to render payment to God." Exam- ples, analogies, and other proofs of this assertion, he did not think of furnishing. In the second edition the passage is wanting, and in the place of it we read (pp. 247, 248), that the laying on of hands was " an appointment of the animal for a slaughter, the ob- ject of which (as Delitzscli admits) was twofold, viz., to obtain the blood for the altar, and the flesh for the fire-food of Jehovah, whether the intention was to supplicate the mercy of God towards the sinner, i.e., to make expiation, or (as in the case of the thank- offering) to present thanksgiving and prayer for the blessings of life." But this correction has not really mended the matter. For 1 Strange to say, Hofmann bases this power upon the fact recorded in Gen. iii. 21 ; cf. 68. THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. 85 if the " appointment for such a slaughter" was nothing more than the declaration, that by virtue of the power accruing to him from Gen. i. 2 6, he had determined "to do to this animal all that neces- sarily followed from his desire to obtain the mercy of God, or give glory to His goodness by thanksgiving and supplication" (p. 247), such a declaration was very superfluous ; for it had already been sufficiently made in the simple act of bringing to the altar an animal that really belonged to him, and was entirely subject to his control. Nothing short of such a difference in the manner in which the im- position of hands took place, in the sin-offerings on the one hand, and the thank-offerings on the other, as would have shown that the former expressed a desire for the mercy of God, and the latter thanksgiving and prayer for the blessings of life, and thus would have introduced a new feature that was not already expressed by bringing the animal to the altar, could possibly deliver the laying on of hands, if so understood, from the reproach of a perfectly idle and unmeaning pleonasm. But if the appointment of the animal was something more than a simple declaration of the purpose for which it was offered ; then, just as the imposition of hands in the ordination to an office was something more than the declaration that the person to be ordained was appointed to that office (viz., the requisite endowment with the Spirit of God), so must it also in this case have been intended to express a communication, both answering to, and qualifying it for the purpose to which it was devoted. But this is just what Hofmann denies. 38. Whilst Bdhr and Hofmann are thus unable to content themselves with the traditional and orthodox view, which has pre- vailed from time immemorial, and was adopted alike by the Rabbins and the Fathers of the Church, viz., that the laying on of hands was expressive of the transfer of sin and guilt from the person sacrificing to the animal sacrificed ; that view has met with numerous supporters even in our own day. And even Keil, who in other respects has thoroughly given up the Church theory of sacrifice, has not been able in this particular point to break away from it ; though, as we shall soon discover, he has involved his own doctrine in the most striking self-contradictions by thus stopping half-way ( 53). Modern supporters of this view start with the assumption, that the laying on of hands must denote, in the ritual of sacrifice, as in every other place in which it occurs, a communication or transfer, the object of which, here as everywhere else, was to be gathered S6 THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. from the feelings or intention of the person by whom the act was performed. Now, as the starting point in sacrifice was the conscious- ness of guilt, and the end the expiation of that guilt ; as the soul of the sacrificer, therefore, was entirely filled with the desire to be delivered from its guilt and sin ; the imposition of hands could only express the (symbolical) transfer of his sin and guilt to the animal to be sacrificed. But with regard to the special adaptation of this view to the various kinds of sacrifice, the advocates of this view differ from one another, and may be classified in two separate groups. In the opinion of some, the laying on of hands had throughout the sacrificial ritual, in the burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, as well as in the sin-offerings and trespass-offerings, one and the same signification, viz., the transfer of sin or sinfulness from the person sacrificing to the animal sacrificed, since in every case it was pre- paratory to the expiation, and the expiation alone. This view formed one of the leading thoughts in my own Mosaisches Opfer ; and among later writers it has met with approbation from Hdvernick, Ebrard, Kliefoth, Stockl, and ethers. In the opinion of the others, on the contrary, the idea of the transfer of sin was expressed in the laying on of hands in the case of the sin-offerings and trespass-offerings only. In the burnt- offerings and peace-offerings they attribute to it a very different meaning. This remark applies to Neumann, Delitzsch, and Keil more especially, but also to Gesenius, Winer, Knobel, Tholuck, and others. Keil, who has gone most thoroughly into the question, expresses himself thus : " If the desire of the sacrificer was to be delivered from a sin or trespass, he would transfer his sin and tres- pass to the victim ; but if, on the other hand, he desired through the sacrifice to consecrate his life to God, that he might receive strength for the attainment of holiness, and for a walk well-pleasing to God, he would transfer this desire, in which the whole effort of his soul was concentrated, to the sacrificial animal ; so that in the latter, as in the former instance, the animal would henceforth take his place, and all that was done to it would be regarded as being done to the person who offered it. But if the intention was merely to express his gratitude for benefits and mercies received or hoped for, he would simply transfer this feeling of gratitude to the victim, so that it would represent his person only so far as it was absorbed (?) into the good received or sought for." Delitzsch expresses him- self to the same effect : " By the imposition of hands the person THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. 87 presenting the sacrifice dedicated the victim to that particular object which he hoped to attain by its means. He transferred directly to it the substance of his own inner nature. Was it an expiatory sacrifice, i.e., a sin-offering or a trespass-offering ; he laid his sins upon it, that it might bear them, and so relieve him of them." Delitzsch does not go any further into a discussion of their meaning in the case of the burnt-offering and peace-offering. Neumann says, " The person presenting the sacrifice laid his hand upon the victim, to transfer to it his own individual determination by means of the appropriation. . . . Only, let it not therefore be supposed, that in every case it denoted a simple imputation of sins. If I brought a peace-offering to my God, the victim upon which I had laid my hand would carry my peace into His presence ; and if I brought an atoning sacrifice, it would express my desire to be delivered from my guilt and sin." Hengstenberg affirms, that " its signification in general was to show the rapport between the person sacrificing and the sacrifice itself. Anything more precise must necessarily be learned from the nature of the particular sacrifice. ... In the sin- offering and burnt-offering the thought was expressed symbolically, t That am I;' and in the thank-offering, on the other hand, ' That is my gift, my thanksgiving.'" 39. According to the view last mentioned, therefore, the imposition of hands had a different meaning in every one of the different kinds of sacrifice ; just as it did not represent the same thing in a miraculous cure as in a simple blessing, nor the same thing in consecration to an office as in a sentence of execution. But are we warranted in resorting to such an analogy 1 ? In the latter, the act has reference in every instance to a totally different department of life ; and in all the cases mentioned, the attendant circumstances, the occasions, and the subjects, differ entirely from one another. In the former, on the contrary, notwithstanding the difference in the sacrifices, the act itself is always confined to one and the same department, being performed with the same attendant circumstances, and on the same foundation ; and even the persons by whom it is performed are not distinguished in relation to that act by special and different endowments, or official positions, as is the case with a father who gives his blessing, with a worker of miraculous cures, a consecrating dignitary, or an accusing witness. But if, notwithstanding this, the imposition of hands in the different kinds of sacrifice effected the transfer of different objects, one would suppose that this difference would be indicated in some way, 88 THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. say, by a verbal declaration connected with the imposition of hands ; yet of this there is nowhere the slightest trace. 1 What can have been the object transferred in the case of the burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, if not the same as in that of the sin-offerings and trespass-offerings 1 Delitzscli leaves the ques- tion unanswered, and thus evades the difficulty of expressing a clear and definite opinion. According to Neumann, the peace-offering was thereby commissioned by the person presenting it to carry his peace before God (I). And yet none of the sacrificial rites which followed favour such a conclusion ; for the sprinkling of its blood upon the altar served, according to Lev. xvii. 11, as a covering for sin ; and the burning of the fat cannot have been intended as an execution of that commission, any more than the eating of the flesh. It is just as difficult to understand how Hengstenberg can maintain his distinction, seeing that the burnt-offering was un- doubtedly quite as much a gift and offering as the thank-offering. Keifs distinction is perfectly incomprehensible. That the animal constituting the sin-offering or trespass-offering should, after I had transferred my sin or guilt to it, be treated itself as sinful or guilty, and that " what happened to it should be regarded as happening to the person offering the sacrifice," is perfectly intelligible. But when I had transferred my wish for powers of holiness to the animal selected as a burnt-offering, would the animal itself be regarded as wishing for such powers I or would the thank-offering, to which I had transferred my gratitude for benefits received or desired, be treated as expressing thanks for such benefits, and all that happened to it be looked upon as the fulfilment of my wish, or the result of my gratitude ? Certainly not ; for it was slaughtered immediately afterwards, and therefore could neither receive the power desired, nor manifest the gratitude that was felt. Moreover, in the presen- tation of a tliank-offering, another feature was associated with the feeling of gratitude. The thoughts of the person offering the sacrifice were directed from the very first to the sacrificial meal, and to what was signified by that meal, namely, fellowship with God ; so that the desire for this would fill and move his soul when laying on his hands, and even force itself into the foreground. Why then should not this be the object transferred ? And just as the 1 The peculiar and unparalleled case mentioned in Lev. xvi. 21 cannot serve as a proof, that the imposition of hands in connection with all the sin-offerings was accompanied by a verbal declaration ; to say nothing of the burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. Vid. 45. THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. 89 want of expiation sought and found satisfaction, not only in the sin and trespass-offering, but in the burnt-offering and peace-offering also ; so not in the burnt-offering only, but in the sin-offering, tres- pass-offering, and peace-offering also, did the striving after a self- surrender, that craved sanctification, seek and find satisfaction ; the former being met by the sprinkling of blood, and the latter (though not in the same degree) by the burning upon the altar. Consequently, according to our opponents' premises, the imposition of hands would necessarily be preparatory not merely to the sprin- kling of blood, but to the other sacrificial functions also ; so that in the sin-offering, not merely the sin, but also the wish for sanctification would be transferred, and in the burnt-offering, not merely the latter, but the former as well. This, or something similar, is actually maintained by Eioald (Alterthk. p. 47). " The laying on of hands," he says, " indicated the sacred moment when the person presenting the sacrifice, just as he was commencing the sacred rite, laid all the feelings, which gushed from him in fullest glow, upon the head of that creature whose blood was to be shed for him, and to appear as it were before God." In all the different varieties of sacrifice, the laying on of hands stood in the same local, temporal, and conditional, i.e., preparatory, relation to the slaughtering, and the sprinkling of the blood. Are we not warranted, therefore, and even obliged, in every case, to uphold the same signification in relation to them ? Take the burnt- offering, in connection with which, in the very front of the sacri- ficial law in Lev. i. 4, expiation is so evidently, expressly, and emphatically mentioned as one point, if not as the main point, and placed in the closest relation to the laying on of hands (" He shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering ; and it shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him "). Is it really the fact that even here the imposition of hands stood in no relation whatever to the expiation 1 Certainly, if there were nothing else to overthrow such a view, the passage just quoted would suffice, and before this alone it would be compelled inevitably to yield. 40. Let us now examine the other view, of which I was once a supporter, that the imposition of hands was intended to express the same simple meaning in connection with all the sacrifices, viz., the transfer of sin or sinfulness from the person sacrificing to the animal sacrificed. I will confess at the outset, that I am no longer prepared to maintain my old opinion in this particular form (44 sqq.) ; but as the arguments of my opponents have not led me to 90 THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. this change in my views, my relinquishing that opinion has not made me insensible to the elements of truth which it contains. We will compare it first of all with the view which Keil and Delitzsch oppose to it. In how much simpler, clearer, more intelli- gible, and concrete a form does it present the meaning of the cere- mony in question ! And what objection has been offered to it from this side? It is true, the final purpose in connection with the burnt-offering was the burning, and with the peace-offering the sacrificial meal; and consequently the ultimate intention of the person presenting the sacrifice was directed, in the former, to a complete self-surrender to Jehovah, in the latter, to fellowship with Him. But in the mind of the worshipper, the consciousness of his sin rose like an insuperable wall in the way of both : he knew that his self-surrender could never be well-pleasing to God, and that his longing for fellowship with God could never be satisfied, till atonement had been made for his sin. Even in the sacrifice of a burnt-offering or peace-offering, therefore, his desire was first of all directed to expiation ; whilst his purpose of self-surrender, and the striving after fellowship with God, could only come to light when his sin had been covered and atoned for. Would not the longing for forgiveness, so long as it remained unsatisfied, stand in the foreground of his thoughts and feelings, and suppress for the time every other feeling? But if this question must be answered in the affirmative, every ground for our opponents' view is swept away. The only thing that could have favoured that view at all would have been, that the laying on of hands in the burnt- and peace-offerings should have taken place after the atonement was completed, and immediately before the burning or the sacrificial meal, the animal of course having been killed in the meantime. In the case of the burnt-offering, we appeal with conclusive force to Lev. i. 4 ; for it is not to the burning, but to the atone- ment, and to that alone, that the imposition of hands is there ex- pressly represented as preparatory. Even in the burnt-offering it was requisite that all the desires and actions of the worshipper, all the co-operation and help of the priest, should be directed first of all to the making of atonement, before anything further or any- thing different could be undertaken ; for the complete surrender, which was the ultimate purpose in the burnt- (or whole) offering, had necessarily to be preceded by complete expiation. This applies to the peace-offering also. In the pious Israelite, the consciousness of his own sin and of the divine holiness was so THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. 91 clear and strong, that he was afraid lest he should die if he drew near to God and held communion with Him (Ex. xx. 19, xxxiii. 20, etc.) ; and consequently his longing for that communion, and for the joy which it inspired, was overpowered by the fear that he might not be able to stand. When he brought a peace-offering, therefore, hoping thereby to obtain communion real house-and- table fellowship with God, how could it be otherwise than that the sinfulness which rendered him unfit for that fellowship should be present to his mind, and his whole soul be filled with the desire for expiation before anything else, and therefore in connection with the laying on of hands ? And if the feeling of gratitude for benefits received, or the prayer for blessings desired, impelled him to present a peace-offering, would not the contrast between his own sinful unworthiness and the blessing enjoyed or hoped for so occupy and control his thoughts and feelings, that here also the conscious- ness of sin and the want of expiation would assert themselves, and fill his mind before everything else ? There is also another point of importance. If the imposition of hands, even in its preliminary signification, had respect to the objects which lay beyond the expiation, and, in the case of the burnt- and peace-offerings, to one of them exclusively, as our oppo- nents maintain, viz., in that of the burnt-offering to self-surrender in the burning, and in that of the peace-offering to fellowship with God in the sacrificial meal ; we should expect to find an imposition of hands, or something answering to it, connected with the meat- offering also (especially when it was not introduced as a mere appendage to the bleeding sacrifice, but was an independent offer- ing without the basis of an animal sacrifice : 151 sqq.), inasmuch as the desire for sanctification and fellowship was as prominent a feature in these as in either the burnt- or the peace-offerings. But as nothing of the kind is to be found, we are warranted perhaps in drawing the conclusion, that the sacrificial imposition of hands had exclusive regard to the atonement, and therefore was admissible in the bleeding sacrifices alone. 41. Hofmamts own view of the sacrificial imposition of hands we have already shown to be untenable ( 37). In his arguments against my view and those of his other opponents, he really does nothing more than lay hold of certain expressions which are easily misunderstood, and are probably to some extent inappropriate or wrong, and then, having fathered upon them a meaning which does not belong to them, exhibit the absurdities to which this 92 THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. meaning leads. Thus he seizes upon the ambiguous expression of Delitzsch (p. 737), " By the imposition of hands the worshipper appropriated to himself the victim for that particular purpose to which he intended it to be applied," and observes, in reply (p. 247), "It is perfectly obvious that it was his own property; and that being the case, he did not require first of all to appropriate it to himself." But who cannot see that what Delitzsch means by " appropriating " is not appropriating it as property, but appropri- ating what was his property already to the purpose which, as a sacrifice, it was intended to subserve ? Thus again he replies to Kliefoth : " But it was not a real transfer of sin and guilt ; for it is impossible to see how they could ever be really transferred to an animal ;" whereas Kliefoth means something entirely different. For, when he says (p. 52), "The imposition of hands was not a sign that the person laying his hands upon the head of another ' attributed ' something to him ; but invariably, wherever it occurs in the Scriptures, some real communication is made in consequence," - he evidently refers to the imposition of hands apart from the sacri- ficial worship, and certainly does not mean to deny that in the purely symbolico-typical ceremonial it represents symbolically, what in other departments it really effects. It is much the same when Ilofmann observes, in reply to Keil (i. 206), " Nor was it an ap- pointment of the animal to be or to suffer anything in the place of the person offering it, either by causing it to be punished for his fault, which would be quite out of place in the thank-offering, or by transferring his own intention to it, when the slaughtering of the animal was really the commencement of its fulfilment." But the transfer of an intention is something very different from the fulfil- ment of that intention ; and, so far as the supposed inappropriate- ness of this meaning to the imposition of hands in the case of the "thank-offerings" is concerned, Keil has fallen into just the same error as Hofmann here. 42. Hofmann argues most warmly and elaborately against the opinion expressed by me in. my Mosaisches Opfer (pp. 67 sqq.). " According to Kurtz" he says, " the imposition of hands always denoted the impartation of that which the one possessed and the other was to receive ; consequently, in the case of sacrifice, as every sacrifice, in his opinion, was an expiatory sacrifice, it denoted the communication of the sinful affection to the animal soul, so that the death which took place was thereby rendered a representative death. An exchange of position was expressed by it : the soul of THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. 93 the sacrifice appearing as if laden with sin and guilt, and that of the person sacrificing as free from both." This view Hofmann now takes the trouble to expose, as leading to absurd consequences. " But how was it, !> he replies, " with the imposition of the hands when a person was blessing, or healing, or ordaining? Did he change places with the person upon whom his hands were laid, so that he lost the good which he conferred upon the other ? In all these cases the imposition of hands was the act, which accompanied the conferring of whatever the person acting intended for the other. The internal process of intention and application was expressed in the corresponding pressure of the hand, applied to the head of the person for whom anything was intended, whether it belonged to the person officiating or not. The agent needed plenary power to com- municate it, but there was no necessity for it to be his own ; to say nothing of his parting with it by conferring it upon another, or ex- changing it for what the other previously possessed. The person blessing did not transfer his own peace, nor the healer his own health, nor the person ordaining his own office : he simply made use of his own priestly character, his healing power, his official standing, to do to the other what this authority empowered him to perform." I must acknowledge at the outset, that I now consider the ex- pression, " a change of places," both inappropriate and liable to be misunderstood ; and that, looking at the circumstances, it may pro- perly be said, that by the imposition of hands the sacrificial animal was appointed to play the part of the sinner meriting punishment, i.e., to bear the merited punishment in his stead, but not (what the expression might certainly be made to mean, though I never in- tended to say it) that the person presenting the sacrifice had hence- forth to take the place which previously belonged to the animal sacrificed. But Hofmann does me a grievous injustice when he forces upon me the absurd assertion, that through the imposition of hands the person sacrificing not only transferred his sin and guilt to the sacrificial animal, but exchanged them for " what the other (viz., the animal) formerly possessed." I have undoubtedly said (p. 83), that "by the imposition of hands sin and guilt were sym- bolically imputed to the soul of the sacrifice ;" but not that, vice versa and eo ipso, the previous innocence of the animal sacrificed was imputed to the sacrificer. I have also said, it is true, that " henceforward the animal to be sacrificed passed for what HE was before, viz., laden with sin and guilt, and therefore took his place;" 94 THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. but not that the person presenting the sacrifice passed henceforward for that which the animal was before, and so took the place of the animal. And Hofmann has no right to father such nonsense upon me. I grant that what the person acting conferred upon the other was not necessarily his own, in the sense of being his own property ; but I have never said that the imposition of hands was the communica- tion of something that was the property of the one and was to become the property of the other, but " of what the one had and the other was to receive." And certainly, in any case, I must first have what I am to impart to another. So that here also Hofmann twists my words, and then convicts me of talking nonsense. Nor did I ever think of maintaining anything so foolish as that the person laying on the hand always, and under all circumstances, " parted with the good which he conferred upon the other," or that " the person blessing always transferred his own peace, the healer his own health, the ordain er his own office;" and this does not fol- low in any way from my explanation. Sin and guilt are not a " good" but an evil ; and that makes an essential difference, which Hofmann is pleased to ignore. Where the imposition of hands de- notes the communication of some salutary power or gift (as, for example, in blessing, in the communication of the Spirit, in ordina- tion, or in the miraculous cures of Christ and His Apostles), which the agent desires another to possess, though without parting with it himself, we must regard such a communication as somewhat resem- bling a flame lighting a second flame without being extinguished, or the sun imparting light and warmth to the earth without thereby losing its luminous and warming power. But when, as in Num. viii. 10, it denotes the transfer from one person to another of a cer- tain responsibility, from which the former desires to be free, the communication is to be regarded as exhaustive and complete ; and the same would also be the case when it denoted (as in Lev. xxiv. 14 and Susannah 34, according to my opinion at that time) the rolling off or rolling back of a certain crime upon another. And it was upon the latter, not the former cases, that I rested my view, that the sacrificial imposition of hands, in which there was also the transfer of a responsibility and the rolling away of an evil, denoted the imputation of sin. It is only by generalizing, therefore, what / had particularized, that Hofmann has succeeded in stamping my view as absurd. How thoroughly unjust such generalization must be, is evident from Hofmann s observations in another way also ; THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. 95 for, in the reckless heat of his generalizing process, he brings for- ward a case as impossible, which is not only possible, but is men- tioned in the Scriptures as having actually occurred. For in Num. xxvii. 18 sqq. and Deut. xxxiv. 9, Moses is said to have " transferred his own office to Joshua by the imposition of hands." And in how thoughtless and unfair a manner are the other two sentences com- posed ! It is true, the person conferring the blessing does not " transfer his own peace, or the person effecting a cure his own health ;" but the former imparts the blessing power, and the latter the healing power, entrusted to him, and that without suffering any loss in consequence, because it is in the very nature of such spiritual powers that they should not be exhausted through communication to others. One more remark in conclusion. "In all these cases," says Hofmann, " the imposition of hands was the act which accompanied the appropriation of what the person acting intended for the other." Only the accompaniment, then, and not the medium ? No doubt the latter would be inconvenient enough for Hofmann' s theory of the sacrificial imposition of hands ; but does this warrant him in diluting the mediation, which is so obvious in these cases, into a mere accom- paniment ? Was nothing more intended than a mere accompani- ment, and not a real means of conveying the gift, when the Apostles communicated the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands ; or when, as is stated in Deut. xxxiv. 9, " Joshua was filled with the spirit of wisdom, FOR Moses had laid his hands upon him," and when Jehovah said to Moses, with regard to the same imposition of hands, " Thou shalt lay of thine honour upon him" (Num. xxvii. 20) ? 43. We have already seen in 36, that the imposition of hands in all cases that were unconnected with sacrifice, denoted dedication to some new office, or some new position of responsibility. Was this also the idea when the imposition of hands was associated with the sacrificial worship ? I do not imagine that any one will be able to answer this question in the negative. According to Lev. i. 4 (cf. 39, 40), it denoted the dedication of the sacrificial animal, as the medium of atonement for the sins of the person whose hands were laid upon its head. But on this common basis, as an act of dedication, there arises at once a considerable variety of divergences. In some cases the imposition of hands effected the substitution of one person for an- other (vid. Num. viii. 10, xxvii. 18 ; Deut. xxxiv. 9). What the person previously entitled, qualified, or required, was no longer able, % THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. or willing, or bound, to perform, was henceforth to be done by the other. In other cases, again, there was no room for the thought of any such substitution as this. Now, to which of these classes did the imposition of hands in the sacrificial ritual belong ? We reply, without the least hesitation, to the former ; and in this we may con- gratulate ourselves on the agreement of nearly all the commentators, who attribute a representative character to the sacrificial animal, though they do so in different ways, and who regard the imposition of hands as denoting dedication to this vicarious position. 1 And properly so. For if the assumption is warranted, that the God of Israel sought the sacrificial gift, so. far as it was a gift, not for what it was in itself i.e., not as bodily food, and not on account of its material worth and that Israel never imagined that it could serve its God with such gifts as these, but that, on the contrary, God sought the giver in the gift, and Israel represented thereby its own self-surrender ; if, moreover, it is also true that Israel, even on the ground of its laws of food (Lev. xx. 24-26, cf. 4), was accustomed to regard the animals which were allowed to be offered in sacrifice as representatives of itself in contrast with the heathen world ; and if, lastly, it is evident from Lev. xvii. 11 that the animal, on account of the soul which dwelt in its blood, was also the medium of atonement for the soul of the person presenting it, which, as we shall presently see, it could only be through a vicarious expiation of his sins, all this places it beyond the possibility of doubt that the animal sacrificed had also a representative character. When Moses approached the end of his earthly course, he ordained Joshua as his successor, and substituted him for himself, by communicating of his glory (T^W) to him (Num. xxvii. 20), and filling him with the spirit of wisdom (Deut. xxxiv. 9), through the laying on of hands. In Num. viii. 10, on the other hand, the sub- stitution of the Levites in the place of the first-born of all the tribes, is described as effected through the laying on of the hands of the 1 Even Keil admits, in various places, the representative character of the sacrificial animal by virtue of the imposition of hands, though this involves him in contradiction with his own fundamental view of the meaning of the sacri- ficial worship ( 53, 69). Thus in the passage already noticed, when he says of the sin-, trespass-, and burnt-offerings, that " the sacrificial animal henceforth took the place of the person offering it, and what happened to it is to be re- garded as happening to the sacrificer himself." But when he afterwards says that he admits the representative character of the peace-offering "only so far as the victim was absorbed in the good received or prayed for," I confess that I am perfectly unable to make out what the sentence means. THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. 97 congregation, i.e., of the elders as its representatives ; and what was transferred in this case, was the obligation of life-long service in the sanctuary, based upon the fact, that all the first-born belonged to Jehovah (6). In the one case, therefore, it was a good, a salutary power and gift, which was transferred ; in the other, a burdensome obligation. Which of these two was analogous to the imposition of hands in the sacrificial ritual? Certainly not the first. For, ac-- cording to the relation in which the imposition of hands is proved by Lev. i. 4 to have stood to the act of expiation, the idea was not the giving up of any good, but the getting rid of a certain evil. But was it analogous to the second ? Undoubtedly it was. As the debtor is under obligations to the creditor, the thief to the person robbed, the rebel to the king, in the sense of being bound to render to him, or suffer from him, according to the wrong that he has done ; so also is the sinner to his Lord and God. This obligation was transferred by the person sacrificing to the sacrificial animal, that it might render or suffer all that was due from him to God, or, vice versa, on account of his sin ; and through this, the blood of the animal, in which is its soul, became the medium of expiation for the soul of the person sacrificing ( 28). 44. This was the meaning of the imposition of hands in the sacrificial ritual. 'Consequently, I must candidly confess, that my previous opinion of this ceremony viz., that it denoted a transfer of sin and guilt, a so-called imputation of sin, in sacrifices of every kind cannot be sustained. But so far from adopting in the place of it the opinion of Neumann, Keil, and Delitesch, that the idea of the imputation of sin is to be restricted to the sin-offerings and trespass-offerings, I should be disposed to pronounce their opinion all the more untenable, just because of this unwarranted restriction ( 39, 40). Moreover, as I have already stated, no argument ad- duced by any one of my opponents either Hofmann or Hengsten- berg, Keil, Delitzsch, or Oehler has brought me to the conclusion that my previous opinion was untenable. What produced this con- viction, was chiefly a more careful examination of Lev. xvii. 11, the very same passage which I had principally relied upon to support my previous opinion, and, in fact, a very simple argument ( one so obvious, that I am puzzled to understand how it could ever have escaped my own notice, or that of my former opponents and sup- porters), namely, that if the souls of the persons sacrificing, or, to speak with still greater precision, the sins adhering to or proceeding from their souls, were to be covered by the blood of the sacrifice, as G 98 THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. Lev. xvii. 11 states that they ivere, these sins could not have been communicated to the blood itself (or, more correctly, to the soul of the animal which was in the blood), but must have adhered to the soul of the sacrijlcer after the imposition of hands, as well as before. 45. The evidence adduced both by myself and others who held the same view, in support of the transference of the sins from the sacrificer to the sacrifice through the imposition of hands, I find on closer scrutiny to be insufficient. We will take first of all the argument based upon Lev. xvi. 21, which has been appealed to with the most confident assurance of victory (cf. Tholuck, p. 94 ; Neumann, 1853, p. 343 ; Ebrard, p. 49 ; Delitzsch, p. 737). The allusion is to the second goat presented as a sin-offering on the great day of atonement (after the first had been sacrificed in the ordinary way as an expiation), and the passage runs thus : " And let Aaron lay C=1^D1) both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, and put (P^) them upon the head of the goat," etc. All that ffofmann has said to weaken the cer- tainly apparent force of this passage, is little adapted to do so. He says (p. 246) : " Reference has been made to Lev. xvi. 21, as the passage where we are to learn the meaning of the imposition of hands in connection with the sacrifices. But whV is it stated there, that the priest is to lay both his hands upon the head of the animal, which is an essentially different attitude, viz., that of a person praying over the animal ? The act which we are considering cor- responds to what followed afterwards, when he laid the sins of the congregation upon the head of the animal, that it might carry them into the wilderness." But who is likely to be convinced by the argument, that because the expression generally employed is " to lay on the hand," and here Aaron is to lay on both hands, therefore the ceremony referred to in the latter place is not the imposition of hands, but the attitude of prayer? If the difference between sin- gular and plural be pressed at all, how is it possible to understand it in any other way than this, that the laying on of both hands denoted a greater amount of energy in the communication than the laying on of only one 1 Moreover, is not the very same act, which is designated in Num. xxvii. 18 as a ftp"IS 'HEp (" lay thine hand upon him "), afterwards described in Deut. xxxiv. 9 as a l^-Jltf ^OD (" Moses had laid his hands upon him ") ? Where are the proofs, then, that laying on the hands ever was or could be an attitude of prayer? And how weak and empty is the subterfuge, that it was THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. 99 not the laying on of Aaron's hands, but what followed viz., Aaron's laying the sins of the congregation upon the head of the animal which corresponded to our ceremony ! Is it not obvious that the latter was the necessary consequence and effect of the first ? You have only to read the passage with the three consecutive verbs in the Perfect tense, to be convinced how utterly powerless the reason- ing is. And by what means, if not by the laying on of the hands, are we to suppose that the sins were laid upon the head of the goat? There is certainly more force in what Balir has said (ii. 339) against the bearing of this passage upon the doctrine of imputation. " The goat," he says, " neither took the place of the high priest nor that of the children of Israel ; it was not even put to death, but sent alive into the desert ; in fact, it was not a sacrifice at all, and the treatment of it therefore proves nothing with regard to the ritual of sacrifice." In fact, everything connected with this imposition of hands was done in such a way, as to distinguish it entirely from the ordinary sacrificial ceremony. In addition to the circumstance pointed out by Bahr, it should also be remembered, that in every other case in which a sacrifice was presented for the whole congre- gation, it was not by the high priest, but by the elders as repre- sentatives of the congregation, that the laying on of hands was performed, and that this is the only occasion on which the cere- mony is accompanied by a verbal declaration (rninrn) which serves to explain it. And this very circumstance, that a verbal explanation was thought necessary as an accompaniment to the act itself, is a proof that here, and nowhere else, the imposition of hands was to be regarded as a laying on of sin. We shall return to this passage at 199. 46. Again, Lev. xxiv. 14 has been misinterpreted in a manner that favours the doctrine of imputation. It is there commanded that, before stoning a blasphemer who has been sentenced to death, the witnesses of his blasphemy are to lay their hands upon his head. The same occurs in Susannah 34, when Susannah is condemned to death on account of her supposed adultery. The reason for this is thought to have been, that the capital crime committed within a community was supposed to reflect a kind of complicity in the guilt, a stain or curse upon the whole community, or, at all events, upon the witnesses of the act ; and that this was to be rolled back upon the actual criminal. But no proof is to be found that such an idea was ever entertained. For the fact that the sins of forefathers 100 THE PRESENTATION AND LAYING ON OF HANDS. continued to adhere to their descendants as guilt demanding punishment or expiation (2 Sam. xxi.), and the circumstance that the family of a criminal was regarded and punished as sharing in the guilt (Josh, vii.), had nothing in common with Lev. xxiv. 14. And Num. xxxv. 31-34, in which I once thought that I had dis- covered the key to Lev. xxiv. 14, has just as little bearing upon that passage. It is there commanded, that no ransom is to be accepted for the forfeited life of a wilful murderer, but he is to be executed forthwith. If this be neglected by Israel, the land is thereby de- filed, and the blood which has remained unavenged will bring a curse upon the land, which will rest upon it until the demands of strict justice are satisfied. But this passage would only favour the view in question, provided the curse upon the land came from the crime of the murderer, which is evidently a misapprehension. It was not from the malefactor or his crime that it came, but from the neglect, on the part of the judges appointed for that purpose, to punish him for the crime. Nevertheless, Lev. xxiv. 14 may help us to a correct interpreta- tion of the sacrificial imposition of hands, or at least help to con- firm the conclusion which we have already reached by a different method ( 43). And it will do so all the more, if Ewald is really correct, as seems very probable, in stating that " the older sacrificial rite evidently furnished the model" for the judicial custom men- tioned in Lev. xxiv. 14. In both cases it was a dedication to death which was expressed by the imposition of hands ; with this differ- ence, however, that the dedication in the case of the sacrificial ani- mal signified a substitution of the animal for the person sacrificing it, whereas there could be nothing of the kind here, inasmuch as the act had reference simply and solely to the sin of the person about to be executed. " There is no transference here," as Hofmann correctly says, " of what is one's own to some one else ; but the sin committed by the criminal is placed upon his own head, that it may come upon him in the punishment which he afterwards receives." On the other hand, the character of the transference, or assignment, was essentially the same in both. The idea in both cases was the assignment of an obligation or debt : in the former instance, that of another ( 43) ; in the latter, his own, viz., the obligation to submit to death on account of the sin or crime that had been committed. In the former, the sinner himself devoted the animal to death for his own sin ; in the latter, it was the witnesses of the crime who dedicated the criminal himself to death : for in the one, the sinner SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 101 himself was his own accuser, because either he alone was aware of his sin, or he was best acquainted with it ; in the other, it was the witnesses who (with the exception of the criminal himself) were the only persons aware of his crime, or those best acquainted with it. 47. Hengstenberg adduces, as one of the principal arguments for a transference of the sins to the sacrificial animal, at any rate in the case of the sin-offering and trespass-offering, the names of the sacrifices themselves, fixtsn (= sin) and DC?N (= guilt) ; and he has been followed by Baumgarten and Keil. Through the transfer of the sin, or trespass, he says, the animal became as it were a living sin or trespass. But Oehler (p. 649) has justly replied to this : " The name of the sin-offering, riSEn^ at all events, ought not to be adduced in support of such a view, since by a very simple metonymy (vid. } e.g., Micah vi. 3, where V^B also stands in connection with it is used to designate the sacrifice offered for the sin Lev. iv. 3), on which account the LXX. generally ren- der the name quite correctly, irepl a^apria^" In addition to Micah vi. 7 (not vi. 3), we may adduce, in proof of the frequent occurrence of such a metonymy in the current phraseology, Isa. xl. 2, where the expression n^ns^n-pa can only be rendered " all the punishments" or " expiations for their sins," not all their " sins ;" also Zech. xiv. 19, where, in the same manner, D^VP HK^n cannot mean the sin, but the punishment of Egypt. The thought, that through the " imputation of sins," the person to whom it was imputed actually became " sin," is, as it appears to me, a monstrous and inconceiv- able one, which presupposes that, at all events before the laying on of hands, the sacrificer was either " sin" himself, or equivalent to sin. CHAPTER IV. SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 1 48. The imposition of hands was followed by the SLAUGHTER- ING (""i^nt^ 2 Chron. xxx. 17), by the hand of the person offering the 1 The word sprinkling we have used here in its broadest sense ; so that it is to be understood as including the application of the blood to the altar, and other media of expiation in every possible way (viz., literal sprinkling (ntn) rinsing (p"]T)i and smearing with the finger). 102 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. sacrifice, and this again by the SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD by the hand of the priest. If the conclusion which we have arrived at above ( 36, 43) as to the meaning of the imposition of hands in connection with sacrifice be the correct one, viz., that according to Lev. i. 4 it denoted the consecration of the animal to be the medium of atonement for the sins of the person sacrificing, by means of a substitutionary transference (as shown by the analogy of Num. viii. 10) of the obligation to do or suffer, in his stead, that which his God demanded from him on account of his sin ; then the slaughtering could only express the completion of the act, or the endurance of the punishment, in order that the animal, or rather its blood, in which was its soul, might thereby become fitted to be a medium of expiation. The imposition of hands, therefore, may be more exactly defined as the consecration to death (according to the analogy of Lev. xxiv. 14; cf. 45), and that a vicarious, penal death; the slaughtering, as the completion of this penal death, by which the blood of the animal was fitted to become the medium of expiation ; and the sprinkling of the blood, the completion of the expiation itself. This combination and this conclusion are so clear, firm, and certain, that even if there were no other passage in the Old Testa- ment in which death is represented as the wages of sin (Rom. vi. 23), the sacrificial worship itself would be sufficient to prove that it is a genuine Old Testament doctrine. But there are other passages which can be shown to teach it. It may be traced, in fact, to the very first and fundamental beginning of divine revelation in the primeval history of man. For the declaration Jnon J")i (" thou shalt surely die"), in connection with the first sin (Gen. ii. 17, iii. 17), taught it ; and every one of the innumerable repetitions of riOV ni (" he shall surely be put to death"), which occur in the law, con- firmed the lesson taught. The truth involved in Gen. ii. 17, iii. 17, that every sin, whether small or great according to a human standard, is to be regarded as rebellion against the will of God and an abuse of the image of God, and therefore as deserving of death, but that a decree of divine grace intervened, in consequence of which death does not take place on the first sin, or every subsequent sin, but only when it pleases God to cut off the man and the respite provided by that sparing mercy (Gen. vi. 3) ; this truth is not only confirmed, but explained and expanded by the Mosaic sacrificial worship on the ono hand, and the Mosaic jurisprudence on the other, or rather by SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 103 the supplementary or antithetical relation in which they stand the one to the other. The eternal counsel of Divine Mercy devised a redemption from sin and its consequences. Death, indeed, as the necessary wages of sin, cannot be, and is not intended to be, averted in consequence, since the mortality which through sin has pervaded the corporeal life, must be brought, like an abscess, to a head, in order that in like manner it may then be overcome and removed by means of a curative process. On the other hand, not only is the approach of death retarded as long as God sees fit, that man and the human race may have time to manifest the subjective conditions of salva- tion, which the divine counsel of mercy demands, but death is divested of its eternal duration and rule ; for as death is in a man before he actually dies, so the man is in death after he dies. In the former case, death is a potentiality, bound and repressed by the vital energy ; in the latter, it is an unfettered power without him, and possessing unlimited supremacy over him. The author of the book of Genesis did not, of course, possess so clear and sure an insight into the relation between sin, death, and redemption, as has been made possible for man on New Testament ground ; but GOD possessed it, and even under the Old Testament it was by this that He regulated His treatment of man. But whilst this general alteration of things removed the original necessity for every single sin to be immediately punished with death, and the divine provision intervened, that man might con- tinue alive for a longer or shorter time notwithstanding his sinful- ness and his many actual sins ; that provision did not extend to all actual sins, for example, not to such as threatened and endangered the very existence either of the moral world in general, or of the special theocratic plan of salvation, and therefore not to capital crimes. But in order that the consciousness might still be pre- served, that strictly and originally every sin, even those which seemed the most trivial, deserved immediate death, and this law of nature was only interrupted by the sparing mercy of God ; the institution of sacrificial expiation was established, or rather per- mitted and legitimated by God, an institution which stood in a typical relation to the complete salvation that had been predeter- mined in the eternal counsels of God, as the progressive develop- ment of the plan of salvation showed with growing clearness (Isa. liii.), and the event at Golgotha displayed in perfect light (cf. 57). 49. Keil (i. 211), indeed, thinks that the scriptural proofs of 104 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. the sacrificial death having been a penal death, are drawn by me among others, "merely" from two " misinterpreted " passages, viz., Rom. vi. 23 (" the wages of sin is death "), and Heb. ix. 22 (" with- out shedding of blood there is no remission of sins "). But I can safely affirm, that in this sentence both the "merely" and the " misinterpreted " are wrong. Where the misinterpretation of Rom. vi, 23 is supposed to lie, I cannot imagine, since I have under- stood the passage in just the same sense as Keil himself, who gives this exposition : " The wages of sin is the justly acquired and merited reward which follows sin." And Keil cannot deny that these wages " may be called a punishment so far as the reward is an evil and not a good." But in his opinion, " so long as it has not been proved from other sources that the sacrificial act (he ought to have said, the act of slaying) is to be regarded as a judicial act, there is no ground for applying Rom. vi. 23 to the sacrificial slay- ing." Very good ; but where is the misinterpretation of Rom. vi. 23, if the explanation is correct, and it is only our application of the correct explanation which is inadmissible ? When Keil charges me, on the other hand, with misunder- standing Heb. ix. 22, the true ground for the charge is, that I have interpreted it in a different manner from himself. By the alpar- K^va-la, for example, I understand the pouring out of the blood in the act of slaying. Keil understands it, in common with other expositors, of the sprinkling of blood, and consequently accuses Sleek, who gives the same explanation as I have done, of counting the passages in its favour instead of weighing them. Since then, Liimmann and Delitzsch have given the same interpretation of the passage. What Keil himself has adduced in opposition to this meaning, certainly does not seem adapted to prove it to be inadmis- sible. For instance, he says (i. 212): "The ai^areK^va-ia in the Epistle to the Hebrews cannot be understood as referring to the slaying of the sacrifice, because in the whole of the law of sacrijice the shedding of blood is nowhere referred to, and the slaying is never spoken of as a shedding of blood." But could not the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews by any possibility gather more from the law of sacrifice, than is stated there expressis verbis ? And is not the slaying of an animal eo ipso a shedding or pouring out of its blood ? x 1 Keil closes his discussion of Heb. ix. 22 with this remark : " The expres- sion otipettix.xvaiot. relates to the pouring out of the blood on the altar, which appears to have been indispensable to the forgiveness of sin. And the shedding SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 105 However, I shall not dispute any further here, whether Heb. ix. 22 refers to the shedding of the blood or the sprinkling of the blood, but will leave the decision of this controversy to the commentators on the Epistle to the Hebrews ; since, even if the latter were proved to be the correct view, it would only show that the (possibly more extended) view of the writer of that Epistle was in harmony with our interpretation, though not the authoritative and genuine view of the lawgiver and his contemporaries. 50. As there is nothing at variance with the Old Testament in the idea of death as a penal suffering, consequent upon sin and indispensable to the expiation of sin ; so also there is nothing at variance with it in the other idea involved in our interpretation of the Shechitah (the slaying), viz., that of vicarious suffering. This even elder admits (p. 631) ; and the correctness of it is established by the following passages : (1.) The vicarious death of an animal for a man is most clearly expressed in Gen. xxii. 13, in the words iJ3 nnn ? "in the stead of his son." Abraham was to have offered his son as a burnt-offering, and therefore to have given him up to death ; but instead of his son, he sacrifices, puts to death, a ram, according to the divine pur- pose, and under the direction of the word and providence of God. It may be questioned whether this sacrifice was to possess an expia- tory worth as well, and whether the slaying is to be regarded as a death occurring as the wages of sin ; but it cannot be disputed that the severity of the test of Abraham's faith consisted not in the nipyn (i.e., in the burning) of his son, after he had been slain, but in the killing of his son, which was indispensable to such a sacrifice, and that the killing of the ram as an offering saved him from any such necessity, and according to the gracious will of God was a substitute for it : so that in this case, at all events, the death of an animal did take place as a substitute for the death of a man, which was strictly required. And that is all that is necessary for our purpose. (2.) To this we may add the ceremony prescribed in Deut. xxi. of the blood of Christ is to be judged by the same rule. The satisfaction ren- dered by His death did not lie in the dying or shedding of blood as swc/*, but in the fact that He gave up Himself, or His life, as a guilt-offering for the sins of the world." But who has ever maintained that the satisfaction rendered by the Old Testament sacrifices consisted in the death as such ? All that is main- tained is, that it consisted in the death as so appointed by the imposition of hands ; and mutatis mutandis the same remark equally applies to the sacrifice of Christ. 106 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 1-9, at the basis of which, even according to Oehlers decision, " there evidently lies the idea of poena vicaria" (See also Delitzsch on Hebrews, pp. 742-3.) The blood of a murdered person demanded the blood of the murderer as an expiation (Num. xxxv. 33). But if the murderer could not be discovered, a heifer was to be killed, and the elders of the nearest town were to pray to God, that He would regard its death as representing the execution of the murderer who could not be found ; that the innocent blood which had been shed might no longer lie uncovered, i.e., unexpiated (ver. 8), in the land (because, according to Gen. iv. 10, so long as that was the case, it cried to heaven for vengeance) ; and that the city might not re- main under the ban, which the murder committed in the neighbour- hood had brought upon it. It is true, the object in this instance was not to cover or atone for the sin of the murderer, and therefore not to obtain blood as a means of expiation for that sin ; so that, as a matter of course, the act of slaying could not be designated a nt^riB^ But the idea of a pcena vicaria, suffered by an animal in- stead of a man, is as evident here as in the sacrificial worship ; the only difference being, that in the one case the punishment could' not be inflicted upon the person who deserved it, because he was not to be found ; and in the other case, it was not to be inflicted upon him, because the mercy of God had provided a means of expiation for his sin in the blood of the animal offered ly him and dying for him. (3.) A still further proof of the existence of the idea that an innocent person might die for a guilty one, and the latter thereby escape the punishment he deserved, is to be found in Ex. xxxii. When the people had sinned in the wilderness through the worship of the golden calf, to such an extent that the wrath of Jehovah was ready to destroy them altogether (ver. 10), and that even Moses ordered them to be decimated by the swords of the Levites to satisfy in some measure the just demands of that wrath (vers. 27, 28) ; he said (ver. 30), " I will go up unto Jehovah ; peradventure I may be able to make expiation for your sin ;" and then went before Jehovah interceding for the rest, and saying (ver. 32), "Now for- give them their sin, or else blot me out of Thy book." The meaning of this prayer is, that God might accept the punishment inflicted upon those who had been executed already, as an expiation or covering for the same sin on the part of those who were living still ; and that if this did not suffice (since the latter had their own sins to atone for), that He would take his own life, the life of the inno- cent one, as a covering or expiation. No doubt Jehovah refused SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 107 to grant this request, and said (ver. 33), " Whosoever hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My book ;" but the existence of the idea of such a substitution in the religious consciousness of Moses is nevertheless unquestionable. 1 And more than that, the existence of a thought so opposed to all human notions of justice in the case of a man like Moses would be perfectly inexplicable and inconceivable, if it could not be traced to the manifestation of the very same idea in the sacrificial worship with the direct sanction of God. (4.) To this we may add, that what Moses the servant of God offered, though God did not accept the offer, was to be actually performed by another, greater Servant of Jehovah by one who, ac- cording to Isaiah's predictions in chaps, xl.-lxvi., was Moses' true antitype in the history of salvation in this as in everything besides, a Moses in higher potency, and to be performed with the consent and approval of Jehovah (chap. liii.). Of this Servant of Jehovah it is stated in vers. 4 sqq., " He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Pie was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement of our peace was upon Him ; and by His stripes we are healed." And in ver. 10, with express allusion to the sacrificial worship, it is stated that God made " His life an offering for sin." Could there be a more obvious, more lucid, or more indisputable interpretation of the sacrificial slaying than this ? The undeniable fact, that the later Jewish theory of sacrifice regarded the slaying as a vicarious penal death, might be despised as a rabbinical error; but the exposition of a prophet, like the writer of Isa. liii., instead of being thus lightly set aside, must be regarded as authentic. And even if the words of the prophet are not admitted to possess the character of an interpreta- tion, at least they must have all the force of an expansion of the Mosaic view of sacrifice ; and in that case they would at all events prove as much as this, that the foundation for such a view of the sacrificial slaying already existed in the Mosaic ritual of sacrifice. 51. Whilst Bahr (ii. 343) attributes to the slaying a meaning in accordance with his general theory of sacrifice, viz., that it ex- 1 Hofmann (p. 248) enters his protest against this view. " All that Moses really asks," he says, " is that if Jehovah will not forgive the nation, He may blot out his name from the book of life. He has no wish to live if his people are to forfeit their sacred calling, which they have received from God." But the answer given by God in ver. 33 requires our interpretation ; for it presup- poses that Moses had asked to be blotted out of the book, for the purpose of preserving those who had deserved it because of their sin. Cf. Rom. ix. 3. 108 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. hibited the completion of the self-surrender, for which the laying on of hands had already exhibited a willingness, and Neumann (1. c. 343) regards it as an acknowledgment on the part of the person presenting the offering, that he gave the animal entirely up, re- nouncing for ever both it and its life (both of them opinions Avhich we do not feel it necessary to refute) ; Delitzsch, Oehler, and Hof- rnann do not allow it to have possessed any independent significance at all. Oehler says (p. 628), "In the Mosaic ritual the slaying .was evidently nothing more than a necessary link in the process ; it was simply the means of procuring the blood." Delitzsch again says (p. 426), "The Shechitah merely answered the double purpose of providing the blood, in which was the life of the animal, for the expiation of the soul of the sacrificer, and the flesh as fire-food for Jehovah;" and this Hofmann expressly approves and adopts in the second edition of his Schriftbeweis. Delitzsch observes, at p. 744, "The killing was merely the means of procuring the blqod and offering the sacrifice ; and hence it was not called killing, but slaughtering" Let us look at this first of all. In opposition to the penal theory, Delitzsch lays stress upon the fact, that the killing of the sacrificial animal is always desig- nated by the verb ontJ>, never by rvon. In this he thinks that he can discover a proof that the idea of killing, as an act of signifi- cance in itself, was foreign to the sacrificial slaying, and the sole intention was to take away life, as the necessary step to another purpose, viz., the procuring of the blood or the flesh. This thought is derived, however, not from the Hebrew, but from the German idiom, where the notion of slaughtering certainly has received such an application. And the fact that the verb tane* is never used in ordinary life to denote a literal slaughtering for the purpose of cooking the flesh (ri3D is the word generally used) ought to have created some distrust of this attempt to define the meaning of tsnw. Moreover, we actually find this verb applied to the slaying of a man, where there could not have been any other object than to put him to death, namely, as punishment for a crime that was thought worthy of death (e.g., Num. xiv. 16; Judg. xii. 6; 1 Kings xviii. 40 ; 2 Kings x. 7, 14, xxv. 7 ; Jer. xxxix. 6, xli. 7). BnE> ac- cording to its etymology is related to nn&J*, nnc?, nnfc? (vid. Rodiger in Gesenius Thes.), and its primary meaning was probably to throw down, to strike to the ground, to destroy, to lay in ruins. In the more developed stage of the language it became a technical term for the killing of an animal; from that it settled down into a SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 109 special term belonging to the sacrificial worship, and thus acquired so definite and fixed a meaning, that people were afraid to apply it to the slaughtering of an animal for the ordinary purposes of life. From its original use, however, which was restricted to the killing of an animal, it came also to be applied to the killing of a man, when it took place, not in the mode adopted in an ordinary execu- tion, but in a summary and informal manner, by striking to the ground (as a beast is killed). Thus it is evident, that neither in the derivation of the word, nor in its customary use, is there the least warrant for attributing to it that exclusive reference to the procuring of blood or flesh, which certainly has come to be asso- ciated with the German word schlachten (to slaughter). 52. In opposition to the idea that the Shechitah had no inde- pendent significance of its own, there rises with irresistible force the solemnity of the act, its firm incorporation into the sacrificial ritual, and the necessity for its being performed on holy ground, before Jehovah (Lev. i. 5, etc.), by the side of the altar, in the presence of the priest, and with his indispensable, and therefore certainly significant, co-operation. If it had been nothing more than the means of procuring the blood and flesh for sprinkling and burning upon the altar, it is difficult to see why it was necessary that it should be performed on holy ground; why not at a man's own home, from which the blood and flesh could easily have been taken to the altar, without in any way detracting from the worth of the sprinkling and burning. This was at all events indicated in the original law (Lev. vii. 25, xvii. 3-5), where the slaughtering of every animal, even for domestic and ordinary purposes, is ordered to be carried out in precisely the same manner as a peace-offering (cf. 5). But what furnishes the strongest testimony against this attempt to deprive the Shechitah of all independent worth, is the command, that animals offered in sacrifice should be killed on the north side of the altar only. It is true, this command is particularly and expressly mentioned only in connection with the burnt-offerings, sin-offerings, and tres- pass-offerings (Lev. i. 11, iv. 24, 29, 33, vii. 2) ; and the Rabbins have inferred from this (" without reason," as Keil also says, i. 205), that the peace-offerings were to be slain on a different side (viz., the south). But if the lawgiver had intended to make the peace-offering an exception to this otherwise universal rule, he would have indicated it, not by silence, but by an express command. This silence is rather a direct proof of the contrary. 110 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. What the reason for this command was, it is impossible to de- termine with perfect certainty. But Ewald's opinion is assuredly wrong, that we may see in this " the remnant of an earlier belief, that the Deity resides either in the north or in the east, and that it is from thence that He comes." TholucKs conjecture is a much more probable one, viz., that the north side (P^', the hidden, dark, midnight side, hence the side pregnant with evil) was regarded as the gloomy and joyless one. Should this be accepted as the true explanation (and it would be difficult to find one more plausible), not only would it be a proof in itself of the independent worth of the Shechitah, but would throw a considerable weight into the scale in favour of the very same meaning which we obtained in 48, 50, by a different process. But whatever may be the reason for the command, there must at all events have been some reason; and this is in itself a proof that the slaughtering, to which it referred, must have possessed some significance also. A few commentators, indeed e.g., Fr. v. Meyer (on Lev. i. 11) and Bunsen (ad h. /.) imagine that they can find a sufficient reason for the command in the external necessities of the case. On the eastern side, they say, there was the heap of ashes (ver. 16), on the western the tabernacle and the large basin (Ex. xl. 30), and on the southern the entrance; so that the only side left for the slaughtering was the northern side. But there is no force in this ; for if there had been no other (symbolical) difficulties in the way, the southern side would have been the most appropriate, just because the entrance was there. 53. That Oeliler should see no meaning in the sacrificial slaughtering in itself, was a necessary consequence of his funda- mental view of sacrifice ; and in no other way could he possibly succeed in bringing the slaughtering into harmony with his expla- nation of the other parts of the sacrificial ceremony. This opinion is based upon the correct premiss, that if the sacrificial slaughtering had not the force of a poena vicaria, we must give up all idea of discovering any symbolical meaning whatever. But with the independent position which it occupied, the solemnity with which it was performed in the Holy Place, etc., it is very hard to do the latter. Hence, even Keil acknowledges the necessity of attributing to it a significance of its own. The meaning which he has given, however, is more decidedly erroneous than even Oehler's negation of all meaning, since it drives him inevitably into partly open and partly latent opposition to the scriptural data, and also to his own SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. Ill interpretation of the other parts of the ritual of sacrifice. He commences (i. 206) with the admission, that " the slaughtering of the animal was a symbol of the surrender of life to death;" only not a surrender, he adds, " to death as the punishment of sin, . . . for although the death of the sacrificer, symbolized by the slaying of the victim, was a fruit and effect of sin, it did not come under the aspect of punishment, because sacrifice was an institution of divine grace, intended to insure to the sinner not the merited punishment, but, on the contrary, forgiveness of sins ; whilst the death which follows sin is and remains, as a rule, a punishment only for that sinner for whom there is no redemption, and brings to those who are redeemed and forgiven deliverance from all evil, and an entrance into eternal and blessed life with God. 1 If, therefore, the object of sacrifice was the reconciliation of man to God, and his reception into a state of grace with all its felicitous consequences, which no one denies and there is no possible ground for denying, the death connected with the sacrifice can only be regarded as the medium of transition from a state of separation and estrangement from God into one of grace and living fellowship with Him, or as the only way into the divine life out of the ungodly life of this world. And even though the necessity for this way displays the holiness of the righteous God, who has appointed death as the wages of sin ; yet a death which redeems man from sin, and introduces him into eternal life, cannot be called a punishment, since the idea of divine holiness and righteousness is by no means exhausted by the notion of punish- ment alone." In examining this argument, even if we take no notice of the unhistorical blending of the Old and New Testament standpoints (for it is only the latter which teaches that death is the bridge for crossing from the ungodly life of this world into the godly life of eternal blessedness with God) ; and if we also pass over the doctrinal ambiguity, which both affirms and denies that death is the punish- ment of sin in the case of the redeemed, and ascribes to death, which is and remains under all circumstances the wages of sin, what belongs to redemption alone ; we shall still find this view in all respects untenable as applied to the ritual of the sacrificial wor- ship. The death of the sacrificial animal is said to typify the death of the redeemed, which, however, is "not punishment for sin," 1 So far as these assertions are directed against the theory of penal death, we shall examine them by and by at 65. Here we are only concerned to examine Keil's own view. 112 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. but rather " a passage into the divine life out of the ungodly life of this world." Now Oehler does not state, what alone would make good sense, that the holiness of the person sacrificing, qua redeemed, was " transferred to the victim," but, like Keil himself in his expla- nation of the imposition of hands in connection with the atoning sacrifice, maintains that " the sin and guilt" of the sacrificer as a sinner were so transferred ; so that the animal was made " as it were incarnate sin," and its body " a body of sin." It is not by the atonement of sin, therefore, but by giving compensation for sins still unatoned for, that death is stamped as the " medium for the transition from a state of separation and estrangement from God into one of grace and living fellowship with God;" and yet, after all this, the sinner who is already perfectly redeemed, inasmuch as he has already entered " into a state of grace and fellowship with God," into " eternal and blessed life with God," is then for the first time to have expiation made for his sins. According to this theory of KeiFs, the expiation, i.e., the sprinkling of the blood, ought necessarily to have preceded the slaughtering ; for it was through the expiation that the life of a sinner was first qualified for entering into a state of grace and fellowship with God, into eternal and blessed life with God. This no one has ever yet denied, or ever can deny. By thus rejecting the true meaning of the sacrificial slaying, Keil is driven into opposition, partly to the biblico-orthodox doctrine, which he nevertheless still holds, and partly to his own interpreta- tion of the other parts of the sacrificial ceremony. But it becomes still more striking, when we find in other parts of Keifs work the very same doctrine which he has here opposed and rejected when advocated by me, expressed in the very same words, and given as his own view of the sacrificial slaying. For example, whereas he affirms, at p. 207, that " the slaying typified the surrender of the life of the sacrificer to death, but did not typify death as the punish- ment of sin;" at p. 237 he says, "Now the ram of the trespass- offering stood for the person of the guilty man, and by being slain, suffered death in his stead as the punishment for his guilt" At p. 228, again, he says, " By being slain, the animal of the sin-offering was given up to death, and suffered death for the sinner, i.e., in the place of the person sacrificing, as the wages of sin /" and at p. 283, " By these attributes (sc., freedom from blemish, and a fresh, vigorous fulness of life) the animal was perfectly fitted to bear as a sin-offering the guilt of the congregation imputed to it by the laying SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 113 on of hands, and to suffer death in a representative capacity as the wages of sin" So also at p. 384 : "Asa sacrifice appointed by the Lord, the paschal lamb suffered death vicariously, as the effect of sin, for the father of the family who killed it for himself and his household." Only on one or two occasions does it seem to have occurred to the writer that it was necessary to reconcile these self-contradictions. Thus at p. 213 he observes : " But the justice of God was made manifest through the grace that ruled in the sacrificial atonement, in this respect : expiation presupposed death ; without death, in fact, i.e, without dying spiritually, it is absolutely impossible to be re- ceived into the fellowship of divine mercy ; and without physical death there can be no entrance into eternal blessedness. And herein lies the reason, why every sacrifice of atoning worth was necessarily required to be a sacrifice by death, and why, in the performance of the sacrificial rite, the victim had to suffer death, before its blood could be sprinkled upon the altar." But even with reference to this exposition, which is not overburdened with super- fluous clearness, we have several important queries to make. If expiation presupposed death, how could death even before expiation lead from the ungodly life of this world into the blessedness of life eternal, seeing that evidently this could only be said, if death, on the contrary, presupposed expiation ? " Only to a man redeemed and pardoned," says Keil himself, at p. 207, " could death bring redemption from all evil, and effect a transition into eternal and blessed life with God." But how is pardon itself secured 1 Is it through physical death in itself ? Is it not rather through expiation, or the extermination of sin ? And yet, according to Keil, expiation presupposes death, which forms the passage to eternal life, instead of death presupposing expiation. How strange a righteousness of God would that be, which should be manifested in the reception of a sinner through death, before expiation, and therefore without expia- tion, into the blessedness of eternal life 1 And yet this is said to constitute the reason why in the sacrificial ritual the victim was necessarily put to death, before its blood couldbe sprinkled on the altar! And if this was actually the reason why the sacrifices of an expia- tory character (i.e., according to Keil, the sin- and trespass-offerings) were required to be sacrifices by death, and why death necessarily preceded expiation, where are we to look for the reason why the sacrifices, that were not expiatory in their character (viz., the burnt- offerings and thank-offerings), were also required to be sacrifices by death, and in their case also death necessarily preceded the expiation? H 114 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. I am quite unable to find any reconciliation of the contradictions occurring here, in what Keil says at p. 228. "The sinner," he says, " certainly merited death, and the victim taking Ms place had to suffer it in his stead, because the mercy of God could not, and would not destroy, or even weaken, the holiness of the law ; and therefore, even when the sinner was intended to discern in the death of the sin-offering what he himself would have deserved, if God had dealt with him according to His justice, the law contains no statement to the effect, that the sin-offering was in any sense a satisfaction," etc. (for the rest, see 65, 67). On the contrary, the discrepancies appear rather to multiply. For how could the sinner discern in the death of the sacrificial animal what he himself would have deserved, viz., death as the punishment of sin, if that death was a symbol, not of death as the punishment of sin, but, on the contrary, of a death which redeemed from sin and introduced into the blessedness of eternal life? And how can it be said, that the victim had necessarily to suffer in the place of the sinner the death deserved by him as the punishment of his sin, if the death of the victim is not to be regarded as a penal death at all ? And how is it possible to find the idea expressed in the institution of sacrifice, that the mercy of God could not destroy or weaken the holiness of the law which demanded death as the punishment of sin, if, as is stated immediately afterwards, the sacrifice had no satisfactory worth, and the grace of God out of pure mercy covered over the sin ? Does not " pure" mercy in this way become an arbitrary mercy, opposing the demands of the holiness of the law, and not merely weakening, but actually abolishing it 1 54. We will now adduce two other examples, to show how the denial of a satisfactio vicaria in the Old Testament sacrifices, on the part of theologians who are generally anxious to adhere to the biblical and orthodox standpoint, is sure to drive them to inconsis- tencies and contradictions. Delitzsch, speaking of the imposition of hands which preceded the slaying, says (p. 737), " If it was an expiatory, i.e., a sin- or trespass-offering, he laid his sins upon it, that it might bear them and carry them away from him." Now, if this be correct, it is placed beyond all doubt, that between the impo- sition of hands and the sprinkling of the blood (at any rate, in the case of the sin-offerings and trespass-offerings) something must have intervened, by which the sin imputed in the laying on of hands was overcome, wiped away, and changed into its opposite. For, just as sin could not be covered, expiated, wiped away by sin, so the blood SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 115 of the animal, which after the imposition of hands was laden (as the vehicle of the soul) with sin and guilt, could not in that condi- tion become the means of expiation. Something else must neces- sarily have been done to it in the meantime, by which the sin imputed to it, and by virtue of that imputation regarded as its own, had been conquered and wiped away, and by which it had been fitted to be used as a means of expiation ; and there is nowhere else that we can look for this, but in the slaying which intervened, and which could only be a vicarious penal suffering, by virtue of which it suffered the death which the sacrifice!' deserved, and suffered it for him. The blood brought to the altar was then a proof that the merited punishment had been endured, and in that light was fitted to cover the sinful soul of the sacrificer himself. Delitzsch, again, always lays great stress upon the necessity of acknowledging the representative character of the sacrificial animal. But as he is unwilling to acknowledge it in the fiB' i nB> ) where it is primarily and chiefly appropriate, he is induced to place it in the sprinkling of the blood. Thus he says, at p. 741, " In Lev. xvii. 11 it is stated that the blood of the animal made expiation for the soul of the person offering it, by virtue of the soul which was con- tained in it : evidently, therefore, the soul of the animal took the place of the soul of the man; and when poured out in the blood, covered the soul of the man, which w r as deserving of death, before an angry God." And again, at p. 745 : " The Old Testament sacrifice, so far as it was expiatory, was intended to be regarded as representative. There was no ritual manifestation, indeed, of the penal suffering, since the expiation was only effected through the blood, apart from the violent death ; but the bleeding expiation, when understood typically, as it was intended to be understood, and has been prophetically expounded in Isa. liii., also pointed to a vica- rious satisfaction to be rendered to the judicial righteousness of God." But the idea of representation in the first half of the sacri- ficial ceremony (i.e., before the burning) was evidently applicable to the slaying alone, as a penal suffering, and not at all to the atone- ment, i.e., the sprinkling of the blood. The blood brought to the altar, or rather the soul which dwelt within it, was to cover the soul of the offerer there. How could it, then, take the place of the latter? For, where one person takes the place of another, the other is not there himself, but the representative is there in his stead, performing or suffering what the former ought to have suffered or performed. 55. The meaning of the SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD is self- 116 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. evident, after what has been stated already. The person presenting the sacrifice was conscious of his sin or sinfulness ; he knew that he was liable, in consequence, to death as the wages of sin. It is true, the divine long-suffering, which, notwithstanding the threat to the first sinner, " In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," had preserved his life for a lengthened period, extended to him also as to every other sinner. Provided he did not commit, or had not committed, any sin which threatened to overturn and destroy the moral order of the universe generally, or the essential elements of its specifically theocratic order, and which it was necessary on that account for the judicial authorities of earth to punish with death, he need not immediately die. But, for all that, he was under sentence of death for every minor sin, and even for mere sinfulness, from which all actual sins proceed ; and this sentence of death lay like a ban upon him, disturbing the peace of his soul, preventing him from the quiet and happy enjoyment of the blessings of life, causing him to see himself as an object of divine wrath, arid even in this earthly life threatening him either with a quick and painful death, or with evils and calamities of every description. And with the Old Testa- ment Israelite this was all the more the case, because his want of a clear perception of eternal life hereafter was accompanied with an equal want of any clear perception of retribution hereafter; and the whole weight of divine retribution to his consciousness, there- fore, fell not in the life beyond, but in the life on this side the grave. To be delivered from this ban by the expiation, the wiping away, the forgiveness of his sin, was therefore the inmost desire of his soul, the most pressing need of his life. But from the very earliest times God had established an institution of grace, by which he could secure the expiation or forgiveness of his sins. Accordingly, relying upon the divine Vfiru (" I have given it," Lev. xvii. 11), he brought to the altar an animal from his own stall a living, animated being like himself, a domesticated animal, which as such belonged to his own house, which had been tended by himself almost as one tends his own child, which was dear to him almost like a man- servant or maid-servant, but which was not a sinful creature like himself, his servant, his maid-servant, or his child, but sinless, inno- cent, pure, without blemish, without fault or failing, and which, on account of all this, was apparently well fitted at all events better fitted than any other gift which he could possibly offer as a recom- pense for his guilt to redeem his soul which was under the death- ban of sin. And to that he set apart the animal, being directed to SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD 117 do so by God Himself. By laying his hands upon it he transferred to it his own sentence of death, and caused it to suffer in his stead the punishment, which he was conscious that he himself deserved on account of his sins. Upon this the priest, as the mediator be- tween God and the nation, carried to the altar the blood which had passed through death, the wages of sin, that on that spot where, according to Ex. xx. 24 (cf. 13), Jehovah had promised to come to His people to bless them, he might cover and atone for the sinful soul of the person presenting the sacrifice. The imposition of hands was the qualification of the sacrificial animal for the vicarious endurance of punishment ; and the death in which this was completed was the qualification of the animal blood, in which its soul resided, for the act of expiation ; and this again was completed by the bringing of the blood thus qualified to the altar, where it covered (ideally) the sinful soul of the person offering it. The imposition of hands did not deliver the person sacrificing from his sin ; for it was not a transference of his sin to the sacrificial animal ( 44), but only the communication of a sub- stitutionary obligation, to suffer on his behalf what he had deserved / O / on account of his sin. Even the slaying, in which it suffered death vicariously for him, did not effect in itself an expiation or wiping away of his sins, just as my pecuniary debts are not wiped out by the fact of another having earned the necessary money through the labour of his hands. The debts themselves can only be wiped out by his covering them with the money which he has earned ; and so a debt of sin requires to be covered by the merit of the suffering of the sacrifice before it can be regarded as atoned for and wiped out ; in other words, the meritorious performance of the sacrifice must be transferred to the sinful soul of the person presenting it, and person- ally appropriated to him (so as to be regarded as his merit, his per- formance), in the same way in which his obligation had previously been imputed to the sacrifice. And, according to Lev. xvii. 11, this was done by means of the sprinkling of the blood, in which the sinless and guiltless soul of the sacrificial animal covered (if only ideally) the soul of the person offering it. The merit acquired by the soul of the victim, which in itself was pure and sinless and therefore liable to no punishment on its own account, through its vicarious endurance of death, now acted upon the sinful soul of the sacrificer as a covering for sin, that is to say, it rendered his sin inoperative ( 28). 1 1 Compare the pregnant words of Kahnis, i. 271 : " The sacrificial blood atones, so far as it is the life of the animal in compendia ; for in the blood (Lev. 118 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 56. But for this expiation to possess any objective validity, it was necessary that it should be performed at the altar (Lev. xvii. 11), and by the priest (Lev. i. 5, 11, etc.), not by the sacrificer him- self ; and even that was insufficient unless the antecedents and pre- liminaries viz., the presentation, the imposition of hands, and the slaying had taken place before the altar and in the presence of the priest. The latter contains its own explanation ; for it is self-evident that an obligation or debt which I owe to any one must be discharged either in his own presence or that of his accredited agent, whether I discharge it in my own person or by deputy. The former proves that the sacrificial blood was not fully qualified for the purposes of atonement, either in itself, or through the imposition of hands and the infliction of death ; but that it acquired for the first time its objective, atoning power, through the fact that the priest, as medi- ator of the saving grace of God, brought it to the altar '(i.e., to the place of mercy and salvation, where Jehovah came to His people to bless them), and there it acquired a divine energy which supplied all its defects and endowed it with plenary power. Substitution under any circumstances is of course a problema- tical thing, and its acceptance and acknowledgment are dependent upon the mercy of God (Ex. xxxii. 33). But the substitution re- ferred to here, is in all respects so obviously insufficient, that we cannot speak of its possessing validity according to natural law, but only according to the law of mercy laid down by the divine plan of salvation. It is true, the sacrificial animal, as belonging to the flock and home, stood in a biotic rapport with the person presenting the sacrifice ( 23) ; but the animal was not, what a thorough sub- stitution would have required, re vera of his own nature was not re vera, but only symbolically, his alter ego : there was altogether wanting an internal basis of substitution, a positive unity of nature and will, resting upon the nature and will of both. The animal, again, was certainly guiltless and sinless ; but only because it stood l>elow the sphere of sin, not because it was elevated, or had raised itself, above that sphere. It is true, the obligation to suffer death for the sinner was transferred to it by the imposition of hands ; but this transference, again, was only symbolical and figurative, not literal and real. The animal was doubtless the property of the person sacrificing it ; consequently, he possessed the right and the xvii. 11) is that life, which carries negatively the death that it has endured in our stead, and positively a pure life, which can be brought into fellowship with God." See also p. 585. SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 119 authority to offer up its life for his own good and salvation. But for all that, it was a forced, and therefore an insufficient representa- tion ; inasmuch as it was impossible, from a pneumatico-ethical point of view, for the animal to declare its free-will to give itself up to death for the sinner as the wages of his sin, being utterly desti- tute as it was of this pneumatic character, and of the least freedom of will and purpose ( 33) ; whilst from a psychico-physical point of view, it would resist with all its might the attempt to use it in this way as a means of atonement ; whereas the sin to be expiated had sprung from the soil of free personality, and therefore it was requisite that the expiation itself should be the product of free per- sonality, the sacrifice a voluntary one, the result of an independ- ent and perfectly unconstrained resolution of the will. Again, the sacrifice, it is true, was put to death. But the death which the animal suffered, was not of the same kind or importance as that which the sinner deserved ; for the life of an animal belongs to a lower stage than that of man, and hence death to an animal is something different from death to a man. Moreover, in the sacri- ficial worship, sin was considered, not as a violation of human rights and claims (for in this respect it was liable to the penal juris- diction of earthly magistrates), but as rebellion against God both God without us, i.e., a resistance to the objective will and law of God, and also God within us, i.e., a violation of the image of God in us, which in the form of conscience protests and strives against sin. But if the foundation of all justice is the jus talionis (Ex. xxi. 23, soul for soul, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, etc.), and consequently the violation of that which is violated must return upon the person of the violator with all the force given to it by the greatness of the injury, and the importance of that which is injured ; it is evi- dent that, although the violation of earthly relationships may be atoned for by earthly punishment (and in its most intense form by capital punishment), yet sin, as an injury done to the eternal, holy God, the Lord and Creator of heaven and earth, demands a death which is not exhausted by earthly death (the only death pos- sible to the sacrificial animal), and a punishment which continues even in Sheol (as the abode of the departed human soul), yea, to all eternity, because the God offended is an eternal God. 57. The whole of the sacrificial ceremony, up to the act of expiation itself, moved upon the basis of symbolism ; and the sacri- ficial blood, therefore, was capable of nothing more than a symboli- cal atonement. But Lev. xvii. 11 does not state that the atonement 120 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. was merely symbolized by the sprinkling of the blood ; on the con- trary, it assigns to it a real atoning power. Whence did the sacri- ficial blood acquire this ; and by what means did its symbolical atoning power acquire the potency of a real atonement, and the empty, powerless symbol a sacramental efficacy ? According to the principles of natural (so to speak, Elohistic) justice, the expiation of a sin can only be effected by personal satis- faction ; that is, by the sinner himself enduring all the punishment deserved, in other words, an equivalent to the sin. But it is alto- gether different with the principles of saving (Jehovistic) justice. For the divine plan of salvation has discovered a way by which the sinner, without completely exhausting the punishment of sin in his own person, may be freed and delivered. It consists objectively in this, that a righteous being interposes for sinners, endures for them the merited punishment, a righteous one, whose life is worth in- finitely more than the life of all sinners together, whose temporary sufferings surpass in worth and importance even the eternal suffer- ings of the whole human race, a righteous one, who, by placing himself in essential rapport with sinful humanity, becomes their true (not merely conventional) representative, their real alter ego, and thereby qualifies himself to endure the punishment of sin for them ; and who undertakes all this of his own free-will. It con- sists subjectively in this, that the sinner, on the other hand, is placed in a condition to enter into essential rapport with this righteous being by an unconstrained determination of his own will ; so that, as the righteous one bears and exhausts the sinner's punishment as his own, he also may make the sin-exterminating merits, thereby acquired by the righteous one, into his own. According to the counsel of God, the self-sacrifice of this right- eous being could not, and was not intended to become a historical event until the fulness of time. But to the consciousness of God, who is exalted above time and space, and to whom there is no past or future, but only an eternal now, this sacrifice, while to man still in futurity, was ever a present event ; and therefore its fruits and its merits were objectively present also. And this was the genuine and essential atoning power with which God endowed the sacrificial blood that was brought to the altar, as the place of salvation and of grace, so as to change the empty symbol into a true sacramental type. Then, too, the saying applies: accedit verbum (Lev. xvii. 11, " I have given it ") ad elementum, et fit sacramentum. For even then God could appropriate the merit of that righteous one, which had SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 121 already an objective existence to Him, to the covering of the sins of those who were subjectively fitted for it. But to prevent the de- lusion, that sin was a light thing in the estimation of God, that He could and would forgive sin and bestow His mercy without reserve, or without satisfaction being rendered to justice, an institution was provided in the sacrificial worship of the Old Testament for the sinner who desired salvation, that brought before his mind afresh, with every new sin for which he sought atonement, what his sin de- served, and he would have had to suffer, if he had been required to atone for it himself, and what must necessarily take place to release him from that obligation ; inasmuch as what God then directed to be done to the animal, was what would one day be done in the ful- ness of time to that righteous one, for the covering of the sins of all sinners who desired salvation and were fitted to receive it. 58. Thus far we have taken our stand upon the New Testa- ment, Gospel ground, that w r e might be able from this point of view to understand the meaning of the sacrificial expiation of the Old Testament, and see in what the objective atoning worth ascribed to it consisted. The question becomes incomparably more difficult, when we look at it from the legal standpoint of the Old Testament, and seek to discover the meaning attached to it by Moses and his contemporaries. Was the Israelite of that age also conscious of this typical import of the animal sacrifice ; or, at any rate, was it pos- sible for him to attain to this consciousness ? In the first place, we may here point to the fact, that this typi- cal import of the sacrifice actually did develop itself in the heart of Judaism, without any New Testament influence, and therefore out of the elements existing in the Mosaic ritual ; for not only is it ex- pressed from the pre-Christian standpoint of an Isaiah (chap, liii.), but from the equally pre-Christian standpoint of many of the later Rabbins, who maintained very decidedly that the animal sacrifices would cease with the coming of the Messiah, because He would perform in the most perfect manner all that the sacrifices had been designed to accomplish. We are warranted, therefore, in expecting and looking for the germs, or germinal elements, of this consciousness in Mosaism itself. Among these we notice first of all those shortcomings and defects in the animal sacrifices, which we have already pointed out, and which could not be overlooked even from the standpoint of an Israelite under the Old Testament. For the fact that the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin (Heb. ix. 12), was one 122 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. which must have forced itself upon the mind of every thinking man. It would also be brought before the Israelite by the fact, that aton- ing efficacy was not attributed to the blood of the animal, after or in consequence of the imposition of hands and infliction of death, but was acquired first of all from contact with the altar, upon which God came down to His people with power to bless and save (Ex. xx. 24). But when this imperfection in his sacrificial worship was once clearly brought before his mind, and with it the contrast between the insufficiency of the means and the fulness of the promise, which insured an eventual and perfect efficacy to those means notwith- standing these defects ; he could hardly fail to investigate and search for the explanation of this incongruity between the means employed and the effect produced. For ordinary purposes, the promise " This blood maketh atonement for your souls" was prac- tically sufficient, provided it was received in simple faith ; for the faith which laid hold of this word grasped at the same time the blessing of the sacrifice promised therein, which was really the same, even though its internal ground might not be perceived. But to any one who studied the secrets of the divine plan of sal- vation, and the sacred imagery of the ritual, who did not " let the book of the law depart out of his mouth, but meditated therein day and night" (Josh. i. 8), whose "delight was in the law of the Lord" (Ps. i. 2), who prayed, " Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law," there must have pre- sented themselves the first glimpses of a deeper knowledge, even if he perceived at the same time, that a more perfect insight could only be obtained after a further development of the sacred history and its accompanying revelation. Did not Moses himself point out the symbolical and typical character of the entire ritual appointed by him, when he distinctly stated that the eternal original had been shown to him on the holy mount? And what could be more simple, than to bring the germ and centre of the whole ritual into connec- tion with the primary promises of the salvation to be secured through the seed of the woman, and the seed of the patriarchs? What more simple, than to connect the centre of his hopes and expecta- tions with the centre of his worship to imagine a hidden, even though incomprehensible, link between the two, and to seek in this link the solution of the sacred enigma? But undoubtedly, for a clear perception and deep insight into the historico-typical import of the sacrificial atonement, and a full SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 123 solution of its enigmas, the way was first prepared through the pro- phetic standpoint of an Isaiah, and eventually completed in the sacrifice on Calvary. 59. The juridical interpretation of the Old Testament sacrifice, in which the slaughtering is regarded as a poena vicaria endured by the sacrificial animal in the stead of the person offering it, has been the one generally received from the time of the Rabbins and Fathers at least so far as the sin-offerings and trespass-offerings are concerned ; and even in the most recent times it has found many supporters of note. Among these are Gesenius, De Wette, Winer y Hengstenberg (in his Christology, and his Sacrifices of Holy Scripture), Scholl, Bruno Bauer, v. Meyer, Hdvernick, Lange, Thal- hofer, Stvckly Tholuck, Ebrard, Knobel, Kliefoth, Keil, Tliomasius, and Kahnis+ On the other hand, it has met with numerous opponents, espe- cially in modern times ; though the arguments adduced certainly do not gain in importance from the fact, that for the most part they are founded upon feelings altogether distinct from the subject in hand, viz., an antipathy to the orthodox, New Testament doctrine of reconciliation, as is undeniably the case with Steudel, Klaiber, Bdhr, and Flofmann. In the case of Keil, who repeatedly reverts to the orthodox, traditional view, and thereby involves himself in striking discrepancies, it is to be lamented that he should evidently not have been conscious of the discrepancies, or he would certainly have adhered throughout, and not merely in isolated passages, to the old well-tried truth, instead of his new and untenable discoveries. Neumanns views and words are so misty and obscure, that they have consequently but little weight. But OeJiler and Delitzsch, who cannot certainly be supposed to have any ulterior end to serve, have been led away to their negative position by attaching too much importance to various plausible arguments. 60. We will now examine the objections offered to the view in question. Steudel adduces four objections in his Vorlesungen uber d. Theol des A. T.: (1.) "Throughout the whole of the Old Testament we never meet with any such idea as this, that the pardon which God confers must be purchased first of all by sub- stitution. He grants forgiveness at once, as soon as the sinner repents; and that not merely according to the teaching of the prophets (Ezek. xviii. 1 sqq., xxxiii. 14 sqq.), but according to the teaching of the Pentateuch also (as in Deut. iv. 30, 31, xxx. 2 ; Lev. xxvi. 40 sqq.), where the promise is given, that when the Israelites 124 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. turn to the Lord, He will also turn at once to them in mercy, and bestow upon them all His blessing." To this I have already given the following answer in my Mos. Opfer : How marvellous ! whilst some writers take the greatest offence at the wrathful Jew-God of the Old Testament, who can only be appeased with blood, others find in Him a loving Father, who forgives in the most indiscriminate manner. God grants forgiveness, they say, without anything further; in other words, without a sacrifice. But the whole law of worship, which never promises forgiveness without anything further, but always makes it dependent upon a sacrificial expiation, rises against this. Steudel does indeed modify his " without anything further," by introducing the condition of repentance. But does not that addition prove the very opposite of what it is meant to prove ? It proves, that is to say, that for the Israelite there was no forgiveness without sacrifice ; for conversion, turning to Jehovah, included the offering of sacrifice. What could it mean but returning to the theocratic union ? And this could only be effected through sacri- fice. What else could it mean than returning from a heathen to a theocratic life, the central point of which was the sacrificial wor- ship? What else, than resuming and faithfully performing the theocratic duties that had been neglected, and which had their centre in sacrifice? By what other means could the Israelite give a practical demonstration of the earnestness, the genuineness, and the permanence of his repentance, than by a faithful worship of Jehovah, as demanded in the law, the very soul of which was sacrifice ? If, therefore, forgiveness could only be obtained by repenting and turn- ing to Jehovah, by that very fact it was made dependent upon the sacrifice, in which this was practically exhibited ; and the entire argu- ment is consequently reduced to this circle : an assumption that sacri- fice did not involve substitution may be adduced as a proof that it did. (2.) Steudel says, "It is just in connection with the more im- portant sins that we never find the slightest intimation of their need- ing to be expiated by sacrifice. And yet if sacrifices were appointed for the violation of precepts relating to outward acts, how important must it have seemed, supposing substitution to have been the idea, that sacrifices should be offered for moral offences in the strict sense of the word, which were of much greater importance!" But the most casual glance at the sacrificial law will show, that it was not merely the violation of outward precepts, which the law undoubtedly exhibits as equally important, and in certain circumstances more important than many offences of a strictly " moral " character, that SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 125 had to be expiated by sacrifice, but offences of the latter kind as well. In one respect, indeed, the statement is certainly correct. There were certain offences of greater importance those, for example, which arose from wantonness and rebellion (Num. xv. 30, 31), whether they were violations of outward or of strictly moral laws which could not be expiated by sacrifice, but had to be punished by extermination. The reason why the latter could not be "bound" (as, mutatis mutandis, in the Christian Church), even in the case of repentance, was, that the institution of sacrifice under the Old Testament related to the earthly theocracy alone : the sinner was excluded by his sin from membership in the covenant and theocracy ; and the atoning sacrifice was intended to qualify him for readmission, a thing which execution rendered eo ipso impos- sible. But the fact that the institution of sacrifice in the Old Testa- ment contained no allusion to the life everlasting after death, may be explained on the ground, that the standpoint of the Old Testament did not furnish any clear or profound insight into the life eternal. (3.) SteudeTs third objection is this : "According to Lev. v. 11, in cases of extreme poverty a bloodless sin-offering of meal might be offered instead of the bleeding sacrifice. Hence the only correct view of the sin-offering must be one, which regards it as of no essential moment, whether the offering presented consisted of an animal or of meal, and therefore does not recognise a pcena vicaria" But even Bdhr (ii. 181) will not allow, that there is any force in this argument. " D. Strauss is right," he says, " in pronouncing this decision perfectly incorrect, and in saying, as he does in his Streitschriften, p. 163, i Whenever it was possible, whenever any one was in a condition to bring a pair of doves, the sin-offering was to be a bleeding one ; it was only in cases of extreme distress that meal was allowed to be substituted ; but we have no right to allow the nature of the substitute to exert any influence upon our inter- pretation of the thing itself, and to regard the characteristic which was wanting in the former, as being necessarily absent from the latter also.' " We cannot regard this argument, however, as Bdhr does, as sufficient in all respects to meet SteudeVs objection, for the substitute must be related in some way to the thing actually re- quired, however inferior it may be in actual worth and importance. Stones, for example, could never serve as a substitute for coffee, though acorns might. And if, as a matter of course, even the poorest of the people were to be furnished with the means of ob- taining expiation ; in cases where it was absolutely impossible to 126 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. procure a sacrificial animal for the purpose, the substitute appointed would necessarily be, not an animal that was not suitable for sacri- fice, but something which at all events might be offered. The sym- bolical manifestation of the satisfactio vicaria in the slaughtering of the animal would no doubt be wanting ; but the satisfactio itself might be there, as the element of real satisfaction even in the animal sacrifice did not proceed from the slaughtering, but was communicated by the grace of God to the blood sprinkled upon the altar through a donum superadditum. (4.) He argues, "On the great day of atonement (Lev. xvi.) the one goat upon which the sins of the people were actually laid, was sent away at perfect liberty into the desert, without any pcena vicaria, whilst upon the other goat, which was sacrificed, the sins were not laid ; so that neither in the one instance nor in the other is substitution of any kind to be thought of." (For our answer to this, see 199 sqq.) 61. Whilst SteudeTs objections, to which we have just referred, have not been repeated by any later writers, those of Bdhr, in part at least, have met with great approval. They are the following : (1.) "The juridical view, we are told, makes the act of slaying, by which the punishment was completed, the culminating point and centre of the whole of the sacred transaction. But this shows at once the fallacy of that view. For nothing is more obvious, than that the blood, and not the death, and the use made of the blood, the sprinkling therefore, and not the slaying, constituted the main feature and centre of the sacrifice. But the ritual law distinguishes the two, the slaying and the sprinkling, most sharply from one another, and states expressly that it was by the latter, and not by the former, that the expiation, the ultimate object of the sacrifice, was effected. In any case the sprinkling of the altar or Capporeth was not a penal act ; and it follows indisputably, therefore, that the notion of punishment can never have been the central point of the idea of sacrifice." Similar objections are made again and again by BaJir. For example, at p. 347 he says, "With this view, the sprinkling of blood that main action, that culminating point of the whole of the sacrificial transaction sinks into a mere accom- paniment, a kind of supplement or appendix to the main action (the penal death) ; and it is impossible to see how, notwithstanding all that, it caii have been, as the Scriptures so distinctly state, the sine qua non of the expiation." And again, at p. 280 : " He makes the death, and not the blood, the medium of expiation, contrary to SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 127 the express declaration of Lev. xvii. 11. For, let any one only make the attempt to read at pleasure death for blood, per synec- dochen, in this leading passage, and the words, otherwise so clear, become mere nonsense." In Oelders opinion, also, these objections are well founded. At p. 628 he says, " If the act of slaughtering were intended to represent the penal death deserved by the person offering the sacrifice ; and if the shedding of blood, therefore, by the sacrificial knife were the true expiatory act ; it ought to have been brought into greater prominence." And at p. 631 : "It would be perfectly inexplicable, in that case, why the sacrificial ritual should represent the offering of the blood upon the altar, and not the slaughtering, as the real act of payment or of covering." These objections have none of them any force at all, except on the assumption, that according to our view the slaughtering is re- garded, or must be regarded, as the real act of expiation. But if it be shown that this is a misunderstanding, and if, moreover, it can be proved that the theory of a penal death can stand without any such assumption, and in fact, when rightly understood, actually excludes it, all these objections fall to the ground. Now I believe that I have already sufficiently, and for every unprejudiced reader, conclusively proved, that this is the case (compare more particu- larly 55, 56, 57). After the explanations I have given there, I trust that it will be understood, that I also make, not the slaughter- ing, but the sprinkling of blood upon the altar, the main point, the kernel and centre of the sacrifice ; and that I regard, not the death, but the blood which has passed through death, and is endowed for the first time with real atoning efficacy upon the altar, the true medium of expiation. To Oehler's remark, that according to my view the act of slaughtering ought to have been brought into greater prominence, I reply, (1) that I too regard the sprinkling of the blood as more im- portant and more significant than the slaughtering, as is evident from what I have stated already ; and (2) that the act of slaughtering in Lev. i., for example, where the burnt-offering is mentioned, is really brought into no less and no greater prominence than the sprinkling of the blood (vers. 5, 11, 15). This is also the case in chaps, iv. and v., where the sin-offering is referred to. For the slaughtering is never passed by unnoticed ; and if it is simply men- tioned without any further description of the manner in which it should take place, whilst the command to sprinkle the blood is fol- lowed by a minute description of the manner how, any one can see that such a description was quite as unnecessary in the case of the 128 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. former, as it was indispensable in that of the latter. For the mode of slaughtering would be understood by everybody, and was just the same for one sacrifice as for another. There was no necessity, therefore, to describe it. And what would not be so naturally understood, namely, the catching of the blood by the priest, is distinctly and expressly enjoined. But the manner in which the blood was to be sprinkled was not so self-evident, and differed with different kinds of sacrifice. It was necessary, therefore, that this should be described with minuteness and precision. And if the person and place are described with the necessary fulness in con- nection with the sprinkling of the blood, a similar description is to be found with all necessary fulness in connection with the slaughtering also, since it is expressly observed, that it was to be effected by the person presenting the sacrifice before the altar, on its northern side ( 53), and in the presence, as well as with the co-operation, of the priest who caught the blood. But if Bdhr means, that the sprinkling of the altar or of the Capporeth cannot possibly be regarded as a penal act, the " non- sense " must be put to his own account ; for no one has ever asserted anything of the kind, and it does not follow either from my own exposition or from that of any one else. His argumentum ad homi- nem reads almost like a burlesque, when he advises that some one should just try for once to read at pleasure death for blood per synec- doclien in Lev. xvii. 11. In my Mos. Opfer I have already replied to this, to the following effect : We cannot help imagining that the zeal of the esteemed author for his cause left him no time for reflection ; otherwise we should set down as utterly unworthy, a line of argument, which might indeed dazzle and confuse a simple and unintelligent reader, but which has not the smallest shadow of force or of truth. To prove this, we need do nothing more than carry out the proposed synecdoche. Thus : Whosoever eateth the " death " shall be cut off, for the soul of the flesh is in the " death," and the " death " rnaketh an atonement for your souls : whosoever therefore eateth the " death " shall be cut off. No doubt this is mere non- sense ; but we wash our hands in innocence, the " mere nonsense " belongs to the line of argument which led to it. The passage does not refer ex professo to sacrifice, but to eating ; and for that very reason, not to eating death, but to eating blood. Sacrifice is only referred to for the purpose of explaining that the blood was not to be eaten because it was the medium of expiation. As a matter of course, therefore, the synecdoche could only be applied to those SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 129 words, which really relate to sacrifice : " I have appointed the blood of the animal, as the seat of the animal soul, to be the medium of expiation for your souls." If we make the proposed substitution here, the words will read, " I have connected expiation with the 'death' of the sacrificial animal: the 'death' of the animal makes expiation, covers your souls, viz., your sinful souls, and therefore your death." This may possibly be an incorrect statement, but it is by no means " mere nonsense." 62. (2.) " It is thoroughly incompatible with the juridical view, that the sacrificer himself, and not the priest as the representative of God, should inflict the penal death. For if the sacrificing were a penal act, God would certainly appear as the punisher, and the sacrificer as the person to be punished." Even to later writers this argument has appeared to be peculiarly forcible and conclusive. We find it, for example, in Hofmann (p. 244) ; and Oehler strengthens it by the emphatic inquiry : " Or does God really appear as a judge, who commands the evil-doer to execute him- self ? " It is quite out of place, however, to speak of self-execution, since the animal to be slaughtered was not a symbolical ipse ego of the person sacrificing, but a representative alter ego. But even if we should regard it as a symbolical ipse ego, a symbolical " self-exe- cution" would perhaps not be so absurd a thought after all ; for when translated into its literal meaning, this symbol would express the thought, as true as it is profound, that the sinner must punish himself to escape the punishment of God. But this idea of the sacrifice, as a symbolical ipse ego, is decidedly erroneous ( 67, 69). Kliefoth does me a great injustice when he says, that my "only" reply to Bdhrs objection, that God would necessarily have directed the animal to be slain and the punishment to be inflicted by the priest, is, that no doubt this might have been commanded, but God ordered it otherwise. I have devoted almost two entire pages in my Mqs. Ojpfer to the proof, that the connection between punish- ment and suffering is a necessary one ; that punishment is the con- tinuation of sin, its complement, which is no longer within the sinner's caprice or power ; and that death is the finishing of sin, comprehending all the punishment, according to the words of the Apostle, "sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." Sin, from its very nature, is a violation of the moral order of the world, a pressure as it were against the law, which, because of the vitality and elasticity of the law, produces a reaction, that falls upon the sinner in the form of punishment. Sin, therefore, is a half, un- I 130 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. finished thing, that demands completion ; and that completion is to be found in death, which is not foreign to it therefore, or arbitrarily imposed from without. On the contrary, it is the sin itself that bringeth forth the death which existed in it potentially from the very first. From this point of view, therefore, we may say that God does not punish the sinner, but the sinner punishes himself ; the recoil of the law, which reaches him as punishment, being evoked and determined by himself alone. Kliefoth says nothing essentially different, at any rate, nothing better, when he supplies the supposed deficiency of my reply as follows : " That which slays the sacrifice is really the sin of the sinner which it has to carry." And I must pronounce it utterly erroneous, when he proceeds to observe that God Himself cannot possibly be represented as inflicting the punishment, since He puts no one to death, but lets the sin produce death by its own develop- ment ; and as the sacrifice cannot put itself to death, since sacrifice is not suicide, there is actually no one left but the sacrificing sinner ; and he therefore, as the cause of the death, must necessarily inflict it. In opposition to this assertion, I still abide by my former argu- ment (p. 76) ; viz., that inasmuch as this elasticity of the law, or of the moral order of the universe, is given to it by God, and is sustained by Him; or rather, inasmuch as God Himself is this moral order of the universe; He is also Himself the judge and punisher too. There is the same apparent discrepancy here which we find in the words of Christ, who says in John v. 22, that the Father hath given all judgment to the Son ; and in John xii. 47 sqq., that the Father has not sent the Son into the world to judge the world ; and that whoever does not believe is judged already, has judged himself. There is no intention to deny that God can be represented as the inflicter of punishment ; but the same motive which led Christ, in John xii. 47 sqq., to transfer the act of judicial punishment from Himself to the sinner, may also have regulated the symbolism of worship. In the institution of sacrifice, for example, God appears as the merciful One, who desires not the death of the sinner, but his reconciliation and re- demption (of course in a manner accordant with justice) ; whilst the sinner, on the other hand, appears as one who has brought death and condemnation upon himself through his sin, and is con- scious of having done so. In this case it is peculiarly appropriate and significant, that he should accuse himself, pronounce sentence of death upon himself, and inflict it himself upon his symbolical SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 131 substitute, which the plan devised by God has allowed him to choose. 1 But those who accept the evangelical and prophetical teaching (Isa. liii.) respecting the sacrificial death of Christ, and admit the vicarious and penal character of His sufferings, and yet, for the reasons mentioned, deny all this in the case of the Old Testament sacrifices, should ask themselves the question, who it was that in- flicted the death on Golgotha ; whether it was God, or whether it was not rather the world whose punishment the Sacrifice had taken upon Himself? 63. (3.) "The atonement," in Bdhrs opinion, "can never have had God for its object, whilst in the juridical view the demands of divine justice are satisfied, and the wrath of God is appeased." An argument without the slightest force, which rests entirely upon the inadmissible identification and interchange of reconciliation and atonement. (See 28, particularly the note.) (4.) " It is equally opposed to the thank-offerings, in which confessedly there is no idea of warding off a punishment, least of all the punishment of death, and in which God never appears as a judge to punish " (p. 281). Again a perfectly futile argument, for the former cannot be admitted ( 31, 41) ; nor can the latter be sustained. (5.) " If the sacrificial death had been a penal death, every sin for which a sacrifice was offered would necessarily have been re- garded as deserving of death ; and that no one can maintain. For sin-offerings were offered for sins of ignorance, and for not even purely moral, but theocratic offences" (p. 281). The latter is palp- ably a mistake ( 92) ; and the former may be met by the remarks in 48 (cf. also 56, 59), in connection with which we may refer instar omnium to Deut. xxvii. 26, " Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them." (6.) " The juridical view confounds symbolical substitution with real, religious with judicial. The sacrificial animal, in its estimation, was not a mere symbol, but a substitute for the person offering it ; so that the penal act itself was of necessity not a figurative, but a 1 Cf. Kahnis, luth. Dogmatik i. 270 : " As every sacrifice was representa- tive, the person offering it expressed, in the slaughtering of the animal, the sentence which he had previously pronounced upon himself, before venturing to hope for communion with God. After the man had thus practically declared, by the slaughtering of the animal, ' I am a sinner deserving of death in the sight of God,' the priest sprinkled," etc. 132 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. real one. But in this way the sacrifice loses entirely its symbolico- religious character, and becomes a purely outward, formal, mecha- nical act." That the former was not the case, has already been shown in 56, 57 ; but even if it really were so, the latter would be a very superficial or a very inconsiderate expression. Or does Bahr really mean that punishment inflicted before a worldly tribunal is a merely outward, formal, mechanical act, without any inward, essen- tial, and moral signification ? (7.) Lastly, we read at p. 347 : " The typology based upon the juridical view regards the sprinkling of the blood, as a type of the imputatio justitice Christi et applicatio meritorum ejus. But how could this be effected by the sprinkling, not of the person offering the sacrifice, but of sacred places ?" We find the same argument in Oehler, ffofmann, and Keil. But it is a sufficient answer, to show that the application of blood to the altar was necessary, chiefly and primarily necessary (this has already been done at 56, 57), and that it involved eo ipso an (ideal) application to the person of the sacrificer. But the latter is unquestionably taught in Lev. xvii. 11, where it is distinctly affirmed, " I have given you the blood upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls." The souls of the per- sons sacrificing, therefore, were ideally upon the altar, and were there covered by the sacrificial blood ; a view which rests upon Ex. xx. 24 : cf. 13. 64. We now turn to the forces with which Neumann, Keil, and Oehler have come to the help of Bahrs phalanx of objections. Let us look first of all at Neumann. " It would be foolish," he says, " if a sacrifice seeks and is the medium of forgiveness, to try to convince us that the forgiveness is secured through punishment, and that a punishment endured, not by the person seeking forgiveness, but by a creature having no share whatever in the guilt to be en- dured." But who wants to convince Dr Neumann, that forgiveness was secured through punishment ? So far as I know, all the sup- porters of the satisfactio vicaria have hitherto taught that forgiveness comes through mercy, but mercy is made conditional upon, and rendered possible by, the fact that the punishment of the guilty is sustained and endured by one who is innocent. The idea that par- ticipation in the guilt to be punished was the necessary condition of a vicarious endurance of punishment, is absurd ; for the very opposite was the case ; and the prerequisite of substitution was, that there should not be participation in the guilt to be punished, since other- wise the substitute would have to undergo punishment, not as a SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 133 substitute, but on its own account. At the same time, substitution required an essential, internal rapport, a transfer of the obligation from the one to the other ; and this took place (at least symbolically) through the imposition of hands. But we have already seen ( 50) that the idea of vicarious suffering is a familiar one in the Old Tes- tament, even apart from the sacrificial worship. Moreover, if there were any force in this argument, the charge of absurdity would be just as applicable to the doctrine of satisfaction in the New Testa- ment as in the Old, and yet the author has apparently no wish to abandon the former. 1 65. We will now examine the fresh arguments adduced by KeiL (1.) At p. 207 he says, " Although the death of the sacrificer, typified by the slaughtering of the victim, was the fruit and effect of sin, it did not come under the notion of punishment ; for sacrifice was an institution of divine mercy, which was intended to secure for the sinner, not the merited punishment, but forgiveness instead." We have already seen, at 53, how untenable and contradictory the results of Keil's own theory of the slaughtering of the sacrifice have been, and necessarily must be, in consequence of his rejection of the idea of punishment in death. All that we have here to do with is the assertion, that sacrifice, as an institution of mercy, was intended to secure for the sinner, not punishment, but forgiveness instead. But how inconsiderate this reply really is ! For that very reason, that the institution of sacrifice as a provision of mercy was intended to secure for the sinner, not punishment, but grace, and for the purpose of rendering this possible, it transferred the obligation to endure the punishment from the person sacrificing to the animal slain. The same incautiousness meets us again at p. 211, note 3. " For when Kurtz" he says, " adds at last, that in the institution of sacrifice God appears as the merciful one, the exaltation of the 1 With reference to the prophetic intuition of the self-sacrifice of the Servant of Jehovah (Isa. liii.), Neumann himself proposes this question : " Can we have any doubt that the prophet regarded this sacrifice of the Servant of God as the punishment of our sins ?" and then replies, " Certainly we have considerable doubt, for, etc." I also not only doubt, but most decidedly deny that folly, to which Neumann seeks to forge the signature of the Church. No one on our side has ever taught that our sins were punished in the sacrifice of Christ ; but, on the contrary, it is always maintained that our sins, or rather we the sinners, receive mercy in that sacrifice. And when Neumann afterwards states the fol- lowing as the true meaning of Isa. liii. : " He endured the punishment which ought to have fallen upon humanity in the judgment of the Just One," I sub- scribe this meaning, and cannot see in what it differs from the orthodox theory of sacrifice. 134 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. divine mercy does not tally at all with the assumption, that the death of the sacrifice represents the punishment of the sinner with death ; for the mercy of God does not punish sin, but forgives it." Most decidedly, it is not the mercy of God which punishes, but His justice. But why should it not be possible, and even necessaiy, for the justice of God to find expression in the institution of sacrifice by the side of His mercy ; if, as Keil himself maintains (p. 228), mercy cannot, and will not, forgive sins, without anything further, that is to say, without justice being previously satisfied? But when Keil still further' maintains, at p. 207, that univer- sally death, which entered through sin, is and remains a punish- ment only for that sinner for whom there is no redemption, this no more needs any thorough refutation than the strange statement, that " death delivers man from sin, and introduces him into eternal life ; " for in the latter he ascribes to death what can only be affirmed of Christ, the Redeemer from sin and death ; and with regard to the former, we need only appeal to the terrors and bitter- ness of death, even to the pious Christian, as attested both by the Scriptures and experience, to show that even to him death is still the wages of sin, i.e., punishment. Moreover, here again Keil con- founds, what ought to be carefully distinguished and kept apart when the sacrificial worship is concerned, the death which comes upon all men, both good and bad alike, on account of Adam's sin, i.e., on account of the universal sinfulness of the human race (Gen. iii. 19), and the death deserved afresh for every special sin (cf. 48). Keil is speaking of the former, whereas the institution of sacrifice has simply to do with the latter. Consequently his argument, even if it were in itself as correct as it is weak and untenable, would ne- cessarily fall wide of the mark. And when Keil still further observes (p. 207), that a death which delivers man from sin, and introduces him into eternal life, cannot be called a punishment, " because the idea of divine holiness and justice is by no means exhausted by the notion of punishment," I must certainly leave this unanswered, be- cause I do not understand it. For though I might venture perhaps to interpret the sentence by itself, I must confess that I cannot com- prehend what it has to do with the context. But (3) Keil seems to promise himself the most effect from his reply on p. 213. " Death," he says, " even regarded as the wages or punishment of sin, is no extermination of sin, from which a restitutio in integrum follows, since even after this punishment the sin remains. The injury that it has done to man, the desolation SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 135 brought by it into body and soul, is not removed, and the sinner sinks into eternal death, unless the mercy of God forgives the sin and quickens new life. So the fact that the authorities punish a thief or a murderer with death, does not restore what was stolen to its owner, or give back life to the dead. Death, therefore, re- garded as punishment, cannot be described as the expiation of sin, since the punishment of sin neither cancels nor forgives. So also it furnishes no satisfaction for sin, but only for divine justice and objective right." This is certainly luce clarius I And yet, strange to say, even Oehler, who is quite as decided an opponent of the theory of penal death as Keil, and a .much more consistent one, thinks that " what Keil has said in opposition to the idea of the extermination of guilt by death, and a consequent restitutio in integrum, can hardly be regarded as decisive." Certainly I have sagacity enough to know that the execution of a murderer does not bring the murdered man to life again. But the fact is simply this, that Keil has not understood me. When I spoke of a restitutio in integrum, I did not mean the undoing of the deed by which the moral order of the universe had been disturbed, but the restoration of the disturbed order itself. And that I still maintain. (4.) To this is added, what is really a surprising statement from such a quarter, that " the law, and in fact the whole of the Scrip- tures, contain neither a direct nor an indirect assertion to the effect that the sin-offering possessed the character of a satisfaction" For how does this tally with the author's admissions on the very same page, that " the sinner deserved to die, and the victim which took his place had to suffer in his stead ;" and that " the animal of the sin-offering suffered death in the place of the person sacrificing, as the wages of sin " ? If the victim must suffer death for the sinner, and in his stead, as the wages or punishment of his sin, and the design of the sin-offering viz., the expiation or forgiveness of the sins of the person sacrificing could not be secured without such a vicarious death, can it well be denied that such a death possessed the character of a satisfaction ? Moreover, at p. 237, the author expressly admits, at least in the case of the Zmspass-offering, what he here as expressly denies in the case of the sin-offering. " The trespass-offering," he says, " having been slaughtered, and having suffered death in the place of the person sacrificing, as the punish- ment for his guilt, and satisfaction having thus been rendered to justice," etc. And again, a few lines further on, he maintains that by the trespass-offering " satisfaction was rendered to divine jus- 136 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. tice," and that " the trespass-offering was a work of satisfaction, in consequence of which full pardon was granted to the guilty person on the part of God." It is true that at p. 228 he is speaking of the sw-offering alone, and at p. 237 of the trespass-offering only, the fundamental idea of which, according to Keifs theory (p. 223), is that of sufficiency or satisfaction, in marked distinction from the sin-offering. We shall show as we proceed that this theory is inad- missible ( 95). But even if it were as well-founded as it is un- tenable, the self-contradiction we complain of would not be removed. For at pp. 223, 226, where he lays down the idea of satisfaction as the common fundamental notion of all the trespass-offerings, he understands by the word " satisfaction " something altogether dif- ferent from what he does at p. 228, where he denies that the sin- offering had any satisfactory worth, and at p. 237, where he attri- butes such worth to the trespass-offering. In the former passage (pp. 223, 226) he defines the fundamental notion of the trespass- offering, as that of satisfaction for the violation of the rights of others, or of compensation (remuneration) for the purpose of re- covering lost theocratic rights ; so that it had regard to a satisfac- tion which the person sacrificing had to render to another, along with the sacrificial expiation ; whereas in the latter (pp. 228, 237) he speaks of a satisfaction to be rendered to divine justice as such, and rendered, not by the offerer himself, but by the victim offered by him, " through its endurance of death in his stead, as the pun- ishment for his sin or trespass." But here, according to Keifs own doctrine, sin- and trespass-offerings are not opposed to one another, but perfectly parallel and harmonious. If (according to p. 237) divine justice was satisfied through the vicarious endurance of death on the part of the trespass-offering, as a punishment for the guilt of the person sacrificing, that death, which the sw-offering endured vicariously for the person sacrificing and in his stead, must also be regarded as rendering satisfaction to the justice of God ; and that all the more, because, according to Keil's own doctrine, the sin and guilt of the person sacrificing were imputed to the sin-offering as well as to the trespass-offering, through the laying on of hands ( 38). There prevail throughout Keifs work, as we shall again have occasion to notice ( 95), great obscurity and confusion with regard to the notion of satisfaction ; and this is the cause of the present and other mistakes. When Keil boldly appeals to the whole law, in fact to the whole Scripture, as bearing witness against the satisfactory import of the SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 137 sin-offering, we cannot help asking whether he also intends to deny that there was any satisfactory import in the self-sacrifice of Christ? And yet, after what has been stated before, we must assume that he either denies all satisfactory import to the sacrifice of Christ, in opposition to both the Bible and the Church, or that he denies to that sacrifice the validity of a sin-offering, just as firmly as he attributes to it the exclusive validity of a trespass- offering. But we are forbidden to assume the former by the author's position in relation to both the Bible and the Church, and the latter by his definition of the sin-offering. For no one cer- tainly not Keil himself would think of maintaining that the im- port and validity of the self-sacrifice of Christ are exhausted by the notion of " satisfaction for the violation of the rights of others, or a compensation (remuneration) for the recovery of lost theocratic rights." And what was the expiatory sacrifice of the great day of atonement, which undoubtedly shadowed forth the atoning sacrifice of Christ in a fuller, clearer, and more comprehensive manner than any of the Old Testament sacrifices? Was it a trespass-offering or a sm-offering ( 202) ? 66. The first of Keil's arguments mentioned above is re- peated with still greater emphasis by Delitzsch, p. 742, and with the greatest of all by Oelder, p. 631. The former says, " The animal sacrifice did not set forth- in figure the events on Calvary, for this simple reason, that the institution of sacrifice was an institution of grace, in which, instead of justice punishing, grace forgave." But could grace do under the Old Testament what it cannot under the New, namely, forgive without the satisfaction of justice ? And was not that institution, of which the proceedings upon Calvary were the kernel and centre, also an institution of grace ? And if in the latter there was, for all that, an actual exhibition of penal suffering, why should there not be a symbolical (or typical) exhibition of it in the sacrificial ceremonies of the Old Testament ? The institution of sacrifice in the Old Testament became an institution of grace, through the simple fact that the condition of pardon was the vicari- ous, penal death of the sacrifice. In Oehler the argument runs thus : " In the Old Testament ceremonial God did not sanctify Himself by acts of penal justice : neither the house, in which His name dwelt, nor the altar, at which He met with the congregation, was a place of judgment. Whoever had sinned wantonly against the covenant-God and His ordinances, fell without mercy under the penal justice of God : for him there 138 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. was therefore no more sacrifice, and for him the ritual of sacrifice was not designed. That ritual was a provision of divine grace for the congregation, which had indeed sinned in weakness, but was seeking the face of God." The assertion, however, that the theory of a penal death makes the altar, or the house in which the name of God dwelt, a place of judgment, is one which could be made with justice, provided the act of slaying had really taken place upon the altar, or in the tabernacle. But it did not ; and, as we shall presently see, Oehler is disposed to adduce this fact as an additional argument against the theory in question. But does not one argu- ment cancel the other? The fact that the completion of the symbolical pcena vicaria took place beside the altar and not upon it, before the door of the tabernacle and not within it, previous to the act which expressed forgiveness and not after it, set forth the idea that mercy could only have free course after and in conse- quence of the satisfaction of justice. And why should not God be able to sanctify Himself in the sacrificial ritual also by " acts of penal justice," if such acts really are the preliminaries of mercy, if they promise it and render it possible, and if they are the necessary condition and basis of its manifestations ? But what Oehler still further adds with regard to wanton sins against the ordinances of God, and sins committed in weakness, even if it had any force, would only affect the views we hold, provided it proved that sins of weakness, which admitted of sacrificial expiation as such, were not followed by judicial punishment at the hands of God, even when they remained intentionally unatoned for, in conscious contempt of the means of salvation that had been provided. Now it is evi- dent that this was not the case, for the sinner offered sacrifice for the purpose of escaping the penal justice of God. Oehler is quite wrong again, in my opinion, when he observes, at p. 629, " And if the slaying had been the real act of expiation, it would have taken place upon the altar itself, and not merely by the side." I have already abundantly and superabundantly shown, that according to our view the slaying was by no means the real act of expiation. But even if this had been the case, and if it would have been more in harmony with the idea for it to have taken place upon the altar than by the side of it, the actual impracticabi- lity would have been sufficient to prevent it. In conclusion, we may be allowed to take this opportunity of reminding our esteemed opponents of what we have written already at 52. 67. " The question as to the central idea of sacrifice," as SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 139 Delitzsch has very properly said, " may all be summed up in this : Why, and in what sense, was blood, i.e., the life, when made to stream out by violence, the Old Testament medium of expiation?" We have already answered this question (55 sqq.), and fortified it against all the objections and attacks with which we are acquainted. All that now remains for us to do, is to explain and examine the positive theories of our opponents. Bdhrs views are thus expressed at p. 210: "The symbolical character of the sacrifice consisted in the fact, that the offering of the nephesh in the sacrificial blood upon the altar, was a symbol of the self-sacrifice of the person sacrificing, and of his drawing near to Jehovah. As the offering of the animal blood was a surrender and giving up of the animal life to death, so the psychical, i.e., personal, life of the individual sacrificing, which was opposed to God, was to be surrendered and given up, i.e., to die ; but as this is a surrender to Jehovah, it is no actual cessation of existence, but a dying, which becomes eo ipso a living. . . . The psychical ctTroda- veiv is the condition of true life. The meaning of sacrifice, there- fore, was briefly this: the psychical, sinful existence (life) was given up to God in death, for the purpose of obtaining true being (sanctification) by union with God." But to this more negative and subjective side there is added a positive and objective one (p. 211), viz., the reception and acceptance on the part of Jehovah, and the impartation of sanctification, the condition of true life, to the person thus surrendering himself. This latter element rendered the sacrifice a sacramental act, by which the blood appeared as the medium appointed by God, for covering sin or the soul, for bringing into union with God, and so producing sanctification. In the words of the law peculiar prominence is given to this sacramental character, especially in Lev. xvii. 11. The question, "how this sacramental character could be given to the blood," is answered by Bfihr at p. 212, where he shows, (1) that the blood of the sacrifice, as the means of expiation and sanctification, was " something apart from the per- son for whom atonement had to be made, something different from himself, and in fact something appointed and chosen by God ; (2) that it was nevertheless not something absolutely different, foreign, and opposed, but something related to him, analogous in its nature, homogeneous." If we add to all this the discussion as to the sprinkling of the blood, in p. 346 (" If, then, the blood represented the nephesh of the person presenting the sacrifice, the sprinkling of the blood upon one of the holy places (in this term Bdhr includes 140 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. all the vessels of the sanctuary) could have no other object, than the bringing of the nephesh to the place in which the holiness of God was manifested, that it might attest itself, and work efficaciously as such, i.e., might sanctify him, and so destroy, cover over, what was sinful in him, make atonement for him "), we have the quintessence of Bdhrs theory of sacrifice. The simple fact that this theory has never met with approval, nor been adopted by any of the later commentators, may be regarded as a sufficient proof how little truth there can be in it, and may release me from the necessity of entering into so thorough a refuta- tion here, as I have on a former occasion. Passing over, therefore, many other obscurities and self-contradictions, I shall simply point out in a summary manner how untenable its main propositions are. In the first place, then, it makes the soul of the sacrifice a figurative ipse ego of the person sacrificing, instead of a representative alter ego; whereas it is expressly stated in Lev. xvii. 11, that the animal soul, which was in the blood, covered the soul of the sinner upon the altar, and therefore in this, the culminating point of the sacrificial ceremony, even in its symbolical character, was regarded as another, and as entirely distinct from the soul of the person sacrificing. Secondly, and this is connected with the former, it makes the animal sacrifice, as Delitzsch expresses it, nothing more than the attendant shadow of the personal act of the man himself. Thirdly, as Delitzsch has also justly observed, " to die to oneself," or " to give oneself up to God through death," is an idea completely foreign to the whole of the Old Testament. Fourthly, the sacramental signifi- cance which it attributes to the sacrificial blood is riot only entirely baseless, but is at open variance with the symbolical meaning which it is supposed to possess. Fifthly, and lastly, we may be allowed to point out, how Bdhr, whenever he is speaking against the "juridical" view, cannot affirm with sufficient emphasis, that, in direct opposition to all the data of the law of sacrifice, it makes the act of slaying the real act of expiation, the kernel and centre, the climax and main point in the whole ceremony, and reduces the sprinkling of blood to a mere appendix and supplement ; and yet, with his theory of the psychical or personal airoOaveiv, he has plunged over head and ears into the very same, or even greater condemnation. Let any one read the whole of Bdhrs exposition of the notion of sacrifice, and just observe how the word " death " and its various synonymes are crowded together : he is continually speaking of the surrender and giving up of life to death, of dying, SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 141 of the cessation of life, of an aTroOavelv, as the strictest and most essential idea of sacrifice. Now is not this making death the cul- minating point of sacrifice? The irpwrov -v^eOSo? of Bd/tr's theory- is the thoroughly false position which he assigns to sanctification in relation to justification ; and this Kliefoth also has observed. " The fundamental error in this view," he says, " is that it makes expia- tion and forgiveness the effect and consequence of sanctification, whereas the very opposite is the truth." 68. We will now turn to Hofmann. At pp. 248-9 he writes as follows : " It was not the animal sacrificed, or the blood brought to the altar, which came between the sinful aian and the holy God ; but through the act of sacrifice the man produced the effect of a ")Q3 upon God (cf. 28) ; with it he interposed for himself, the sinner, and redeemed himself from guiltiness" And again : " That authority over a living creature, which had its origin in the first forgiveness of sins on the part of God, was employed by man, who sacrificed in this way as an expiation, for the purpose of offering to God such sacrifice as was most closely related to him, the living one, and which he could not offer in any other way than by inflicting upon it the suffering, so painful for himself, of putting it to death. By this act, expressive both of faith in the revealed willingness of God to forgive sin, and of a consciousness of guilt, the man inter- posed for himself, the sinner, that he might be delivered from his guilt in consequence. As he could not come to God himself in such a way as that the death, through which he came to Him, should be the termination of that attitude towards God which sin had pro- duced, and the commencement of a new one, he offered what was foreign to himself, and yet was really his own, and what participated in his attitude towards God only through its appointment as a sacrifice, so that with the death, through which it came to God, its relation to the sin of the sacrificer, that had cost it its life, was over, and he prayed to God that He would now bring his relation to Him to an end, whether that relation depended upon his sins in general, or upon some one particular sin." The manner in which Hofmann explains the necessity for bringing the blood to the altar is also very peculiar. In the first edition (p. 152) he says, " The meaning of the sprinkling was this : the slaying of a living being, which took place as an atonement for the person presenting the sacrifice, was appropriated to the Holy- Place in the blood, which had been its life. It was sprinkled, and not the person sacrificing, because it was he who made the payment, 142 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. and God to whom it was made. The sin of the person sacrificing made the Holy Place unclean, inasmuch as it was the place of his connection with God. Hence, what he had done for the restoration of his fellowship with God was attributed to it, and the uncleanness with which his sin had defiled it was thereby taken away. The very same thing, which was done on the yearly day of atonement to every part of the sanctuary, including even the Most Holy Place (Lev. xvi. 16 sqq.), was done to the altar of burnt-offering in con- nection with every sacrifice." In the second edition I miss this passage, which is remarkable for its clearness. But the idea that he has renounced the* T iew expressed in it, is precluded by p. 258, where he says, in perfect harmony with p. 164 of Ed. 1: " Now if the procedure with the blood was the most distinctive peculiarity of the sin-offering, the essential purpose must have been, to bring to God what had been the life of the sacrificial animal, as a payment rendered by its being shed, and by means of that payment to deliver the abode and vicinity of God from the defilement which sin had brought upon it." For the correctness of this view, he appeals to Lev. viii. 15, and xvi. 15. Consequently, it appears as though Hofmann only retained this view in connection with the sin-offering, and had discovered that it was inadmissible in relation to the burnt- offering and the thank-offering. In all the rest, too, Hofmann's theory appears to be essentially the same as before. The sacrifice is still, in his estimation, an act performed for God, or a payment made to God, with which the sinner interposes for himself, and frees himself from the obligations by which he is bound. The idea of a mulcta is not yet fully laid aside, and he still retains the indefensible allusion to Gen. iii. 21, and the opinion, so irreconcilable with Lev. xvii. 11, that it was not the soul of the sacrificial animal that was offered, but what had Iteen the soul or life of the animal, that in which the animal had had its life. Now, in the first place, so far as regards his fundamental view of the sacrifice, as an act performed, or a payment made to effect deliverance from liabilities which sin had imposed ; this falls along with the equally untenable interpretation of the 132 (cf. 28). His reference to Gen. iii. 21, according to which the " first forgive- ness of sins" was introduced by God's slaying animals and using their skins " to clothe the nakedness of the first sinner, which had been changed into a shameful nakedness in consequence of sin," for the purpose of teaching him, that in future he and his descendants could, and might deliver themselves from the liabilities produced by SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 143 sin through the slaying of animals, has not the slightest warrant, either in Gen. iii. 21, or in the whole of the sacrificial Thorah. For in Gen. iii. 21 there is nothing of the kind to be found, any more than in the Thorah itself, in which there is never the slightest allusion to any connection with the fact recorded in Gen. iii. 21 ; and the existence of any such connection is precluded by the fact, that the skins of the animals were not given back to the person sacrificing to be used as clothing, but in the case of the burnt-offer- ing were assigned to the priest, the representative and servant of God (Lev. vii. 8), and in that of the sin-offering, when the priest himself was the person presenting it, were ordered to be burned along with the flesh outside the camp (cf. 112). Lastly, the interest which Hofmann has in still maintaining that the blood brought to the altar was not the soul of the sacrifice itself, but what had been its soul, may be very easily understood. At the same time, it is evident that he does so in the interest of his own singular theory of sacrifice, and not in that of any biblical datum; least of all, in that of the statement made in Lev. xvii. 11, which is in the most open and direct contradiction to what Hofmann maintains. For if, as is there stated, the blood was given upon the altar to make atonement for the soul of the offerer, and the atoning efficacy is attributed to the fact that the blood made atonement through the soul (or in Hofmanrts words, as the soul, 29), it follows as a matter of course, that what is intended is not the blood without the soul, but the blood as animated by the soul. For this simple reason I cannot comply with Ebrartfs expectation (p. 48), that I should willingly adopt the incidental (?) correction, that it was not the soul of the animal itself, but the slain and extinct life of the animal, in other words, the proof that the vicarious death had taken place, which was brought to the altar before the eye of God. For, according to Lev. xvii. 11, the blood of the sacrifice atoned, and could atone, only because, and so far as the soul which had endured the pcena vicaria was in it still ; or, as Neumann expresses it (p. 352), " so long as the breath from above still moved within it," viz., the " breath of life" which made the animal also a " living soul" ( 32). And in what sense the blood which had just flowed from the animal might be regarded as still being, as it were, the bearer and possessor of the soul, that is to say, as living blood, may be explained from the analogous phrases " living water" and " living flesh" (in distinction from cooked meat, 1 Sam. ii. 15). As Oehler observes (p. 630) : " Can it be surprising, then, that the fresh, 144 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. steaming, and still fluid blood should be regarded as a blood with life and soul in it still?" Lastly, with regard to Hofmanris view, that the sprinkling of the altar with the blood of the sacrifice served to deliver the former from the defilement, which the sin of the person sacrificing had brought upon it : this is erroneous only on the supposition that the intention of the sprinkling is limited to that ; in which case it is decidedly erroneous. In Lev. xvii. 11 we do not read, " I have given you the blood upon the altar, to make atonement for the altar," but " to make atonement for your souls." But if the sin of the soul is expiated upon the altar, the sin is regarded as existing npon the altar and defiling it. But the sprinkling of blood, i.e., the expiation, had reference primarily to the sin ; let this be conquered and exterminated, and then eo ipso the altar is delivered from its defilement. Keil and Delitzsch therefore are wrong in condemning Hofmanris view without reserve, that is to say, in opposing both what is false and what is true. That the blood of the sacrifice, when brought to the altar, purified the altar as well as the person sacrificing, is distinctly stated in Lev. viii. 15. Compare 201. 69. The principal points of Kelts theory of expiation are the following: "The bleeding sacrifice was also a sacrificial gift, and acquired its vicarious signification from the simple fact, that the faithful covenant-God appointed it, in His condescending mercy, as the vehicle of His grace (i. 205). By the laying on of hands there were transferred to the animal, as the representative of the person sacrificing, in the case of the sin- and trespass-offerings, the sin and guilt of the person sacrificing ; in that of the burnt-offerings, his desire for sanctification ; and in that of the peace-offerings, his gratitude for favours prayed for or received (p. 206). The slaying represented the surrendering to death of the life of the person sacrificing, but by no means to death as the punishment of his sin (p. 207) ; though, according to pp. 228, 237, 283, 384, it did set forth death as punishment for sins ( 53). This death (which pre- ceded expiation) still further represented death as the medium of transition from a state of alienation and separation from God into a state of grace and vital fellowship with Him, or as the door of entrance into the divine life out of the ungodly life of this world ; as a death which redeemed from sin and introduced into the blessed- ness of eternal life, into which, therefore, in the case of the sin- and trespass-offerings at least, the soul which was laden with sin and guilt, or rather had become sin or guilt through the imposition of SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 145 hands (p. 227), had already entered, even before the expiation or forgiveness of sins. The sprinkling of blood upon the altar, which then took place, denoted the reception of the person sacrificing into the divine fellowship ; and this was " symbolically effected through the sacrifice, in such a manner, that by virtue of the substitutionary character of the sacrificial animal, the soul of the person sacrificing, which was offered up in the blood sprinkled upon the altar, was brought to the place of the Lord's gracious presence, i.e., brought within the operations of divine grace, which (out of pure compassion, p. 228) covered or expiated, i.e., forgave sin." As the refutation of this theory, in our account of which we have employed throughout the author's own words, is to be found in 39, 40, and 65, so far as relates to the imposition of hands and slaying of the animal, we shall confine ourselves here to the meaning assigned to the sprinkling of the blood. The first thing which strikes us is that with Keil, just as with Bdhr, the (symbolical) substitution which was maintained at first, and afterwards referred to again and again, is suddenly changed into a mere similitude of the person sacrificing, and the dissimilar alter ego becomes a similar ipse ego. But I cannot regard this alteration, as an improvement, for it is ob- viously at variance with Lev. xvii. 11. It is distinctly taught there, that the soul of the sacrifice conies to the altar, as a most holy means of atonement for the soul of the sacrificer ; whereas Keil maintains that it came as a similitude of the soul of the sacrificer, and there- fore as being itself unholy and in need of expiation. Again, according to Lev. xvii. 11, the soul of the sinner was covered upon the altar by the soul of the animal which was in the sacrificial blood ; whereas, according to Keil, " the soul of the sacrijicer, which was offered up in the blood sprinkled upon the altar, was brought within the opera- tions of divine grace, which covered sin ;" so that, according to Keil, the soul of the sacrifice was that which had to be covered up, whereas, according to Lev. xvii. 11, it was that which effected the covering. But, secondly, this sudden change of the dissimilar alter ego into a similar ipse ego is at variance (at least latently) in two respects with Lev. xxii. 20-24. For example, if, as Keil teaches, the sacri- ficial animal was intended to be not a dissimilar alter ego, but a similar ipse ego, it would be impossible to conceive, why the law should have demanded with such emphasis and stringency perfect spotlessness and f aultlessness, as the conditio sine qua non of sacrificial fitness. If the person sacrificing came (as no one has denied that K 146 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. he did, at least in the case of the sin- and trespass-offerings) as one laden with sin and guilt, as blemished and unclean, as needing atone- ment and sanctification ; then, on the supposition that all that was intended was, that there should be a symbolical representation of the moral condition in this ipse ego, the law would never have demanded such features in the animal sacrificed, as were expressive of a con- dition the very opposite to the existing moral condition of the person presenting the sacrifice. On the contrary, his sinfulness, his un- holiness, and his need of expiation and sanctification, would have been symbolized in the sacrificial animal by such a condition as could truly be regarded as his likeness ; and the removal or negation of that condition would have needed to be superinduced by the ritual of sacrifice. But in the actual law of sacrifice we find precisely the opposite ; for all the regulations with regard to the nature of the sacrifice were designed to exhibit it as innocent, holy, pure, faultless, spotless, healthy and strong, and by that very sacrificial ritual (ac- cording to KeiVs explanation) sin and guilt, uncleanness and un- holiness, were imputed to it. Thirdly, this view of the matter is altogether opposed to and perfectly irreconcilable with Keil's own explanation of the previous slaying of the sacrifice ( 53) : The soul that had already been in- troduced through death, with all its sins unatoned for, into the fellowship of the divine life, into the blessedness of life eternal, had now to be torn away again from this eternal blessed life, and be ex post atoned for again by being placed within the operations of divine grace in the earthly kingdom of God (for that was the signification of the altar, according to Keifs own correct interpretation : cf . i. 103, 104). Fourthly, whilst Ke.il has correctly affirmed, on p. 228, that " the sinner deserved death for his sin, and the victim which inter- posed for him had to suffer that death in his stead, because the compassion of God neither could nor would either abolish or weaken the holiness of the law," a few lines further down, this truth is de- nied again ; for there we are told, that " the soul of the man con- fessing his sin, which was represented by the blood of the victim, could only be brought into the fellowship of divine grace, or into the sphere of its operations, by means of the sprinkling of blood ; and out of pure compassion that grace then covered up and exter- minated sin." What becomes, then, of the firm demands of the holiness of the law, which compassion neither could nor would either abolish or weaken ? SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 147 Lastly, KeiCs view of the sprinkling of the blood is proved to be perfectly untenable by the fact, that through the sprinkling of blood not only the sinful nation, or one particular individual be- longing to it, but the defiled sanctuary and its furniture, could be and were commanded to be cleansed ( 189). Now if, according to KeiVs theory, the atonement for a sinful man was effected by the soul of the animal being brought, as a substitutionary representative of the soul of the man for whom atonement was to be made, to the place of the gracious presence of God i.e., within the sphere of the operations of divine grace, then, in the same manner, when the polluted altar was to be expiated or purified, the blood of the sacri- fice would necessarily be regarded as its substitutionary representa- tive, placed within the sphere of the operations of divine grace (i.e., upon the altar) ; which would be simply absurd. 70. The views entertained by Delitzsch of the sacrificial expia- tion of the Old Testament may be gathered from the following passages of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (p. 740) : " That by which sin and uncleanness, or the person to whom it at- tached, was to be covered, could not be merely a symbol of the man himself ; it must take his place not merely in a symbolical manner (as a substitute), but actually (as a representative in a legal sense)." And again at p. 742 : " Satisfactio vicaria, or, as it may also be called, pcena vicaria, is by no means strange, therefore, to the law (cf. Ex. xxxii. 30) ; though we are not to regard the slaying of the animal as an actual infliction of punishment. The animal sacrifice did not represent the proceedings upon Calvary, for this simple reason, that the institution of sacrifice was an institution of mercy, in which, instead of justice punishing, mercy forgave. As the event on Calvary is presupposed by the sacrament of the New Testament, though it is not repeated in that sacrament ; so did that event form the mysterious background from which the divine ap- pointment of animal sacrifice proceeded, though without there being any intention that the ritual should really depict it." Again at p. 426 : "Placed in the light of the New Testament counterpart, the surrender of the life of the sacrificial animal acquires a signification above the sacrificial ritual of the law. For in the latter the She- cliitali was simply the means adopted for the double purpose, of obtaining the blood as the atonement of the soul of the sacrificer, and its flesh as fire-food for Jehovah. The offering up of the sacrificial animal was an involuntary submission to constraint on its part ; and by the previous Semichah, or laying on of hands, an inten- 148 SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. tional signification was merely impressed upon it from without. But the death of Christ performed that, of which the sacrificial animal had without knowledge and will to serve as the means, in free, conscious self-determination ; and unravelled the l^na (< I have given it', Lev. xvii. 11), in which the faith of the Old Testament had to rest." P. 745 : " Rightly understood, the sacrifice of the Old Testament, so far as it was expiatory, was intended to be sub- stitutionary also. The penal suffering, it is true, was only exhibited typically, since the expiation was effected simply by the blood apart from the violent death ; but the bleeding expiation, when under- stood typically, as it was intended to be understood, and has been prophetically unravelled by Isa. Hii., also pointed forward to a vicarious satisfaction to be rendered to the punitive justice of God." It will be apparent, without further proof, that DelitzscKs view is the most like my own of all those that differ from it ; in fact, Delitzsch has undertaken to defend my view against Bdhr, Keil, and Ho/mann, and shown wherein, according to his opinion, it is superior to the theories of the above-named theologians (pp. 739, 740). He then sums all up in these words : " It is not to be denied, that the so-called juridical view defended by Kurtz, is the simplest, the most intelligible, and the most in harmony with the New Testament anti- type." His objection to my view rests primarily upon certain dif- ficulties connected with my explanation of the Shechitah, which he regards as insuperable. But if my new line of argument, which is modified in many respects and strengthened on the positive side, and my reply to his difficulties ( 28, 30, 39, 40, 43, 44, 52, 54- 56, 66), are not altogether without force, I may possibly hope to see him take his stand still more decidedly and completely upon my side. 71. Oehler's view is to be found at p. 632 of his solid and fre- quently cited work, which has rendered essential help to the study of this subject. He there says : " The real covering, that which atoned for the souls of the people, needed to be soul itself. A man might put his thanksgivings and his prayers into the form of a gift ; but, as the gift of an unclean and sinful person, it would be itself unclean, and could only be pleasing to God so far as it presupposed the self-surrender of the person presenting it. For this reason, God appointed something in connection with the ceremonial of worship to represent this self-surrender. For the unclean and sinful soul of the worshipper, He substituted the soul of a clean and guiltless ani- SLAUGHTERING, AND THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD. 149 mal. Offered in the blood of the sacrifice, the soul intervened be- tween the person sacrificing and the holy God. God thus beheld a pure life upon His altar, by which the impure life of the person approaching Him was covered over ; and in the same manner, this pure element of life served to cover and remove the impurities that were attached to the sanctuary. Hence the importance of the blood in the sacrifice was altogether specific. It was not to be regarded as the noblest gift consecrated to God ; but it was that which ren- dered the acceptance of all the gifts possible on the part of God, since the self-surrender of the person sacrificing was accomplished vicariously in it, and in it also the sinful soul of the person sacrific- ing was introduced into the gracious fellowship of God. Because the unfitness of a man to enter into the immediate fellowship of God was asserted anew with every sacrifice ; therefore it was neces- sary that, with every sacrifice, the person offering it should be covered by a pure life in the presence of God. The importance attached to this particular feature depended upon the question, whether the expiation simply formed the conditio sine qua non for the offering of the gift, or whether the whole of the sacrificial act was designed as an expiation ; and this also regulated the proceed- ings in connection with the blood." But even this view, which does away with a host of difficulties that beset all the rest, still leaves the leading and fundamental question, how the soul of the sacrificial animal, which was merely pure on its own account, could be regarded as covering or atoning for the soul of the sinner, i.e., as wiping away sin, without violating the idea of divine justice, an insoluble enigma, in which neither the imposition of hands nor the slaying of the animal can receive its due importance, according to the place assigned it in the ritual of sacrifice. This point, however, has been fully discussed in its proper place. We conclude this chapter, therefore, with the firm and certain persuasion, that the so-called juridical or " satisfactory " view of the sacrificial expiation, of which the imposition of hands and slaying of the animal formed the introduction, and which was represented by the sprinkling of the blood, is not nly, as Delitzscli says, and even Oehler admits, " the simplest, the most intelligible, and the one most in harmony with the New Testament antitype," but the only one which is clear and intelligible, and the only one which is in har- mony with the New Testament antitype. 150 BURNING THE SACRIFICE. THE SACRIFICIAL MEAL. CHAPTER V. BURNING THE SACRIFICE. THE SACRIFICIAL MEAL. 72. After the sprinkling of the blood was finished, the ritual of the bleeding sacrifice entered upon a new and different stage, viz., into one in which it rested upon the same basis, and moved within the same limits, as the bloodless sacrifices. For what now followed, viz., the burning of the sacrifice and the eating of the sacri- fice, were processes to which the latter were subjected in essentially the same manner, and which constituted, in their case, the entire ritual. All that has hitherto been described in connection with the bleeding sacrifice (the imposition of hands, the slaying of the ani- mal, and the sprinkling of the altar), was absent here ; and neces- sarily so, because the very nature of the bloodless sacrifice furnished no substratum or point of contact for these ceremonies. The bleed- ing sacrifice was, in this second stage of its ritual, what the bloodless sacrifice was altogether, an offering, a gift, food (nourishment) for Jehovah (nfrup n$x nrp,, cf. 23). Henceforth the whole ceremony has relation to the flesh, which is the food of man as much as bread and wine, and which, as food offered for Jehovah, could only be a symbol of what it was the duty and desire of the covenant- keeping, pious Israelite to offer as food to his God. It was different with the blood, which was the kernel and goal of the first stage of the sacrificial ritual. It is only in the most general manner that the blood, which was brought to the altar, could be designated a gift for Jehovah. For even though the sacrificer presented the animal, and brought it to the altar himself, he did not give it its atoning virtue and significance ; nor did these exist already in the blood itself, but they were communicated to it by Jehovah alone (" I have given it," Lev. xvii. 11, cf. 57). The flesh, on the other hand, as well as the bread and wine, already possessed the charac- ter of food, and therefore was naturally adapted to serve as a sym- bolical representation of the food to be offered to Jehovah. Again, neither literally nor generally could the atoning blood be designated as food for Jehovah. As blood is not a means of physical nourish- ment, and was not allowed to be used as food for man (Gen. ix. 4 ; Lev. xvii. 11 ; cf. 5), it could not represent spiritual food, or food for Jehovah ; consequently, we find that even the blood brought to the altar was there appropriated, not to Jehovah, but rather to BURNING THE SACRIFICE. THE SACRIFICIAL MEAL. 151 the offerer himself ( 28). The appropriation of the sacrificial gift to Jehovah was effected solely through burning it upon the altar as niiTv n$K ; and as the blood could not be '"fifTy n$K, so also it could not be njn^ Dl^ either. 73. According to one view, which was formerly very generally adopted, the BURNING or THE FLESH or THE SACRIFICE (for which the expression used in the law is constantly "> 1 '9i?'?> *'> to cause to ascend in smoke or vapour, and never f \"^ ! ) was a symbol of the everlasting punishment of hell (Isa. Ixvi. 24 ; Mark ix. 44, 46, 48 ; Rev. xx. 10). J. D. Michaelis, for example, expresses himself thus in his Entwurf der typischen Gottes-gelahrtheit ( 20): "To show that sin was not expiated by death, but that there was also a punishment after death ; it was ordered that either the whole or part of the sacrifice should be burned with fire. The meaning and intention of this command become still more obvious, when we observe that the punishment of burning among the ancient Hebrews was inflicted, not while the criminal was living, but after his death ; and that the punishment, which was inflicted after death for the purpose of increasing the ignominy, showed, according to the explanation given by Moses himself in Deut. xxi. 22, 23, that the sinner had not suffered enough for his sin by being put to death, but still remained accursed of God. Consider, moreover, how generally the idea of the punishment of hell was represented in the ancient countries of the East under the image of fire ; and there will surely be no room to doubt, that the burning of the sacrifices was intended to symbolize the punishments of hell." Von Meyer expresses a similar opinion. In the Blatter fur hd'h. Wahrheit x. 51, 53, he says, with reference to the uninterrupted burning of the fire upon the altar : " The slaughtering of the animal was the death of the body, and the burning the punishment after death. So long as the altar stood and burned for the consumption of the sacrifices, the wrath of God on account of sin was not yet extin- guished." J)e Maistre also says, in his Soirees de St Petersbourg ii. 234 : " The victim was always burned in whole or part, to show that the natural punishment of crime was by fire, and that the substi- tuted flesh was burned in the place of the flesh that was really guilty." But this view is decidedly and totally wrong. It misap- prehends the significance .of the flesh, in regarding it as guilty or sinful, and the purport of the fire as well. It cannot be denied, indeed, that fire is met with in the Scriptures as a figurative repre- sentation of devouring wrath, and of the torturing punishment of 152 BURNING THE SACRIFICE. THE SACRIFICIAL MEAL. hell. A glance at the concordances will show how frequently this is the case in both the Old and New Testaments. For all that, the view in question is a false one ; because, through confining itself to the surface, it overlooks the deeper ground of this usage of speech, and its original unity with the still more common one, in which fire is a figurative representation of refining and sanctification. Fire is essentially the source of light and heat. But light and heat are the immediate and most important conditions of life. Without light and heat, all life becomes interrupted, becomes numbed and dies ; but when nourished by light and heat, all life grows more cheerful, vigorous, and strong. The first thing noticed, therefore, in con- nection with fire, is its life-quickening, life-exciting, in a word, its animating power. The second is its power to refine. This is the second, because it is dependent upon the existence of a second thing, viz., of something ignoble, perishable, corrupt or corrupting, which is eliminated by the fire that refines the object. This second signification of fire, therefore, intervenes, when the perishable has infected and pervaded the imperishable. But it is identical with the first, since the eliminating and refining are eo ipso the restoring of the vital energy that has been interrupted. The third meaning of this element is that of consuming, torturing, damning ; it is in- troduced in cases where the perishable has swallowed up the im- perishable, and transubstantiated it into its own nature. A suffi- cient explanation of the connection between the second and third is to be found in 1 Cor. iii. 11 sqq., where the wood, hay, and stubble are said to be burned by it, whilst it refines and tests the gold, silver, and precious stones. Fire is the noblest, finest, keenest, and purest of the elements I might, indeed, say the most godlike ; for as nothing (morally) unclean can approach God, without re- ceiving pain and condemnation in its accursed uncleanness, where- as the pure are happy in His presence, so nothing (physically) un- clean can come into contact with fire without being consumed, whilst that which is pure receives thereby an elevation of its vital power. For this reason, fire is also employed in the Scriptures as the symbol and vehicle of the Holy Spirit ; and this serves to ex- plain the fact, that in all merely natural religions fire was regarded as the symbol, and even as the incarnation of Deity itself. This view also misapprehends the meaning of death. It tears asunder the death of the body and eternal death as entirely heterogeneous ; whereas here they ought to be regarded simply in their point of unity. In the death of the animal the death of the sinner was BURNING THE SACRIFICE. THE SACRIFICIAL MEAL. 153 symbolized in all its relations. The view in question, considered in its typical bearing, would lead to Aepiris doctrine of an intensive endurance of the punishment of hell on the part of Christ on His descent thither, a notion which is neither doctrinally nor exegeti- cally tenable. According to this view, again, the atonement made was necessarily insufficient and nugatory, and for that reason was abolished ; whereas in Lev. xvii. 11, etc., it is accepted and de- clared to be perfectly valid. Moreover, how could such a burning be regarded as a " sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savour to Jehovah " ( 20) ? Equally irreconcilable with this view is the constancy with which the function in question is designated by the verb T'Bjpn. " If," as Oehler has well expressed it " if the fire on the altar was a penal fire, and the burning sacrifice was as it were a burning in hell ; how could the smoke of the sacrifice be described as a smell that was pleasing to God?" Lastly, another thing which speaks most decidedly and undeniably against this interpretation, was the circumstance that the meat-offering, with its accompaniments (oil, incense, and salt), was burnt in the same manner, and along with the meat of the sacrifice. Now, the idea of punishment is abso- lutely untenable and absurd in connection with the burning of the meat-offering, and still more with that of the accompaniments. The meat-offering signified good works, the incense the prayers of the believer, and the oil the Spirit of God. Both Michaelis and v. Meyer admit this ( 141 sqq.). Were these, then, also liable to the punishment of hell-fire ? 74. All the commentators since Bdhr are agreed in the opinion that the burning of the sacrificial gift as a "