This Parashah covers the instructions for the 5 types of daily sacrifices offered in the Temple.

PNo24-2015-TP-Vayikra Pt1 – Rico Cortes Teaching

Part1

The Temple & the Honor Of our King

Isaiah 43:

22 Yet you have not called on me, Jacob; but you have been weary of me, Israel. 23 You have not brought me of your sheep for burnt offerings; neither have you honored me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with offerings, nor wearied you with frankincense.

What is Kedushah?

• In Hebrew, the term beit ha-mikdash. conventionally rendered as temple, literally means a house of kedushah—of holiness. At the outset, then, it is appropriate to ask, what is kedushah?
• NOT “HOLY,” NOT “SACRED”
• It is of little help to simply translate the term kedushah into English. Something kadosh is interchangeably said to be either sacred, or holy, or endowed with sanctity. However, because our culture is one in which religion plays only a peripheral role, our sensitivity to the distinctions of religious language has eroded. Seen in their original contexts, these three words are hardly synonymous. Holy comes from e German “heilig”, meaning “complete or whole. “1 Sancti stems from the Latin sanctum, meaning “walled off.” Sacred, also Latin in origin, comes from the word sacrum, which means “dedicated to the gods”.

” In a predominantly secular society, the words sanctity and sacred are often used in a sense denuded of religious connotation and are taken to mean “inviolate.” This is a usage that relates neither to their etymological origins, nor to their later religion’s connotations. It is in this vein that we speak of the sanctity of marriage. Likewise, when we refuse to deviate from a small detail of etiquette or object to the deletion of an item in an annual budget, we often do so on the grounds that each is sacred. The many translations of kedushah, therefore, allow only a distorted glimpse of the original meaning of the term.

Kadosh in the Scriptures

Were our Forefathers Holy (Kadosh) according to Scriptures?

• Noah is termed ish tzadik—a righteous man (Genesis 6:9). Moses is called ish Elokim—a man of God (Deuteronomy 33:1).
• Caleb is described by God as avdi—My servant (Numbers 14:24).
• Samuel is described as ne’eman—-faithful or loyal to God (l Samuel 3:20).

None, however, are called kadosh. The Book of Psalms may be seen as a record of the righteous individual’s relationship with God, Its protagonists are called by many names—tzadik (righteous), Chasid (pious), Yashar (straight in the path of God), ohev Torah (a lover of the mention several, but none are called kadosh. It would seem, then, that the term kadosh cannot be used to describe an individual’s character, no matter how “holy” he may be. In fact, throughout the entire Bible there is but a single occasion where an individual is described as kadosh.

• The wealthy woman of Shunem says in reference to the prophet Elisha, “I am sure that it is a holy man of God (ish Elokim kadosh) who comes this way regularly” (2 Kings 4:9).
• The fact that this term is used neither by God, nor by a prophet, nor even by the biblical narrator, but merely by a minor character within the story, serves only to highlight the exceptional nature of this usage. The general rule remains: the Bible does not characterize a righteous individual as kadosh.

Were the Patriarchs called Holy

In light of our discussion concerning the use of the term kadosh to describe righteous individuals, it is no surprise that none of the patriarchs is called kadosh. If, as a rule, throughout the Bible, individuals are not described as kadosh, there is no reason why the heroes of Genesis should serve as an exception. What is astonishing, however, is that not a single entity is described as kadosh in the entire narrative covering the careers of the patriarchs.

Israel is Holy but as a Nation

• The Israelite people are called an am kadosh dozens of times throughout the Bible.
  • Exodus 22:31, 29:33, 30:32, 30:37,
  • Leviticus 11:43-45, 19:2, 20:25-26, 21:7-8;
  • Numbers 15:39-40;
  • Deuteronomy 7:3-6, 14:1-2,

Covenantal Time And Space

• Time (Sabbath), Space (Feast), Objects (Temple), and Persons (Israel) all can be endowed with kedushah. However, within each of these realms, there are hierarchies of kedushah.
  • The High Priest bears a higher level of kedushah than do the other priests, and Yom Kippur has a higher level of kedushah than do the other holidays.

What Happens when you speak against these things?

• The People
  • The Temple
  • The Priesthood
  • The Land
  • The Sabbath

** *Rebellion against Yah and His Kadushah***

The Priest & Ascribed Honour

“Ascribed honour is the social claim to status of a person attributed to him by birth or genealogy. Normally such honour is already received at births and derives mostly from the lineage. Since kinship was the most important institution in antiquity, birth into a ‘noble’ family immediately meant ascribed worth in the eyes of the family’s peers; the family itself would make claims to worth on behalf of its offspring, these being most commonly expressed when a marriage was being arranged. Within that family, siblings have differing degrees of ascribed honor.”- GUARDING THE PARENTS’ HONOUR-DEUTERONOMY 21.18-21 

Anselm C. Hagedorn

1 Peter 1 & 2

I Peter an apostle of Yeshua Messiah, to the chosen ones who are living as foreigners in the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadociae Asia, and Bithynia, 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, that you may obey Yeshua Messiah and be sprinkled with his blood: Grace to you and peace be multiplied. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Master Yeshua Messiah, who according to his great mercy became our father again to a living hope through the resurrection of Yeshua Messiah from the dead,

1 Peter 2:

7 For you who believe therefore is the honor, but for those who are disobedient, “The stone which the builders rejected, has become the chief cornerstone,” {Psalm 118:22} 8 and, “a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” {Isaiah 8:14} For they stumble at the word, being disobedient, to which also they were appointed. 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:

1 Peter 1 & 2

… 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, that you may obey Yeshua Messiah and be sprinkled with his blood: Grace to you and peace be multiplied. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Master Yeshua Messiah, who according to his great mercy became our father again to a living hope through the resurrection of Yeshua Messiah from the dead,

1 Peter 2:

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:

Vayikra & ANET

• Literary Setting Some major features of Leviticus relate to similar aspects of other ancient Near Eastern texts.

— Walton, J. H. (2009). Zondervan Illustrated Bble Backgrounds Commentary (Old Testament): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (W. 1, p. 286). Grand Rapids, Ml: Zondervan.

Part2

1. Divine speech in a narrative setting. Compare, for example, the Sumerian Cylinder A Of Gudea, which extensively quotes the deities Ningirsu and Nanshe regarding construction of the Eninnu temple in Lagash.
2. Instructions for performance of rituals and festivals. Compare the Ugaritic rites for the vintage.
3. Rules for priests and other persons regarding their treatment of sacred things. Compare the Hittite instructions to priests and temple officials.5
4. Laws grouped by topic. Compare the Hittite and Mesopotamian law collections.
5. Blessings and curses after laws (ch. 26). Compare the epilogues to the laws of Lipit-lshtar and Hammurabi.

Rituals in the ANET

For ancient Near Eastern peoples, whose worldviews teemed with friendly and unfriendly gods and demons having awesome power Over every aspect of human life and death, rituals were essential for survival and well-being.

Keeping friendly forces happy by establishing, maintaining (by tare and feeding), and remedying relationships with them, and waging “spiritual warfare” against unfriendly ones by enlisting supernatural aid required a wide array of rituals (including magic) and expert personnel to properly perform them.

• The monotheistic religion of the Israelites reflected in Leviticus, according to which the real Presence (not a mere idol) of the one all-powerful, divine Creator dwelt at his sanctuary in their midst, liberated them from the complexity and fear (especially of demons) that burdened their polytheistic neighbors.

It is true that the Israelites, like other peoples, had a sanctuary/temple, authorized and trained cultic personnel, sacred times, and regulations to guard the sanctity and purity Of holy things and sacred precincts, and they performed a variety Of rituals to interact with their divine Lord. Of these kinds of ritual, sacrifices (ritual offerings to deity) were central, just as sacrifice was an important part of worship all over the ancient world. But unlike their neighbours, the Israelites were supposed to offer sacrifices as tokens Of relational transactions (including atonement/reconciliation) with a supreme deity who made specific moral demands and required obedience within a covenant context.

The facts that Leviticus—unlike ancient Near Eastern law collections outside the Bible—marries religion to social ethics, makes commands regarding attitudes of the heart (such as “love”) that only God could enforce, and opposes all forms of divination that compete with reliance on the Lord’s knowledge are symptoms of a fundamental distinction.

Outside Israel, human behaviour was guided by the ideal of an outwardly well-ordered society, with individuals harmoniously fitting into their communities. Israel also possessed a strong sense of communal solidarity and the need for order rather than disorder, but a deeper level of motivation was added: an inner conviction of right versus wrong, which we would call “morality.”

This morality was based on Israel’s relationship with the Lord, to whom his people were accountable for inner attitudes as well as outward actions.

Contrast with Pagans

1. L. Oppenheim succinctly characterized Mesopotamian religion as “the care and feeding of the god.”
2. We owe Israel’s priesthood for eviscerating every trace of this notion from the sacrificial system. Pagans regularly set food and drink on their god’s table, but the Priestly legists banned all food rites inside the shrine. All sacrifices were to be offered on the outer altar in the open courtyard (see fig. 2), visible to all worshipers and removed from the tent, YHWH’s purported domicile. The text specifically prohibited the burnt Offering (flesh), the cereal offering (bread), and all libations (drink) on the inner altar (Exod 30:9*). Further, the frankincense, a precious spice, Offered with the bread of the Presence, is not placed on the bread, as is the case with other cereal offerings (Lev 2:18, 15′; 6:8′) but is uniquely set apart from it, so that the bread can be eaten in its entirety by the priests (Lev while the frankincense alone is burned on the inner altar (Exod 30:7-8). Thus, all food gifts brought as sacrifices are conspicuously removed from the tent, YHWH’s purported domicile, thereby erasing any suspicion that Israel’s God consumed the sacrifices (see Psalm 50).

— Milgrom, 1m). A Continental Commentary: Leviticus: a and 21). Minneapolis. MN: Fortress Press.

• 1:3 If the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, you shall offer a male without blemish; you shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting, for acceptance in your behalf before Lord. 4 You shall lay your hand on the head Of the burnt offering and it shall be acceptable in your behalf as atonement for you.
• 1:3-4 burnt offering. The burnt offering is always a male animal that is completely burned on the altar, except for the skin. This is the type of sacrifice that was offered by Noah and the type that Isaac was supposed to be. Other peoples are portrayed in the Bible as making burnt offerings (e.g., Num 23:14—15), and texts from Syria (Ugarit and Alalakh) and Anatolia (the Hittites) testify to the practice in Sym-Palestine. In contrast there is not yet any evidence of this type of sacrifice in Egypt or Mesopotamia.

 The burnt offering serves as a means to approach the Lord with a plea. The plea could concern victory, mercy, forgiveness, purification, favour or any number Of Other things. The purpose Of the offering is to entreat the deity’s response. At least one each day was offered up on behalf of the people of Israel. Special ceremonies and festival days also generally featured burnt offerings.

• 1:4. laying hand on the head. The laying on of the hand is an important part of the sacrificial ritual. It is not designed to transfer sin, for it is used in sacrifices that do not deal with sin. Other possibilities are that the offerer in some way identifies with the animal, perhaps as his substitute, or identifies the animal as belonging to him. Most occurrences of the ritual confirm that either transferring or designating is taking place (or both), but it is not always clear what is being transferred or designated, and it may vary from one situation to another.

– Matthews, V. H, Chavalas, M. W, ‘Walton, j. H. (203). The lVP Bible background commentary: Old Testament (electronic ed., Le 1:4). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity press.

4 You shall lay your hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be acceptable in your behalf as atonement for you.

Lay his hand on the head (1:4). In Hittite ritual, the same gesture to carry the same function of identifying the as the One who is giving the sacrifice. For example: ‘The Old Woman takes one so[ur loaf of thick bread] of one handful, one che[ese] and one jug of wine. She hol[ds] them forth to the offerer(s). They place their hand on. She up the loaf of thick bread and the cheese and she liberates the wine.”

D. P. Wright explains: Hand placement attributes the offering and offering act to the offerer. Though p 290 another functionary performs the actual distribution of the offering, the offering to be ritually attributed to the one who performs the gesture. To put it analogically, hand placement is the signature on a letter delivered to the god by means of a cultic postman. When the god receives the letter, he recognizes that t is from the one who signed the letter (i.e., the one who performed the gesture), not from the postman who delivered it.

Shall bring the blood and sprinkle it (1:5). Blood represented life, and ritual application of animal blood to the Israelite altar enacted ransom of human life (17:11).

[By contrast to the Israelite ritual system, in which blood was intentionally and meaningfully applied in various ways (splashing, sprinkling, daubing, etc.) to objects, areas, and persons, Mesopotamian and Ugaritic cults lacked such ritual use of blood.]

— Walton,J. H. Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary (Old Testament): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (W. 1, p. 290). Grand Rapids, Ml: Zondervan.

In some ancient cultures (Hittite, Greek), blood could be used for libations to underworld deities, conveyed to them by means of ritual holes in the ground.

Just after such an activity (slaughter of a sheep in a ritual pit), a ritual involved in establishing a new Anatolian temple for the “Goddess of the Night” purifies the new deity and temple by bloodying the golden image, the wall, and all the implements of the deity.28 The Israelite sacrifices, by contrast, were offered to a celestial deity, Yahweh.

A Greek ritual for purification from homicide called for slaughtering a piglet over the head of the person undergoing purification and then rinsing off the blood. In another Greek purification ritual, officials carried a piglet around the city square in Athens, then slaughtered it, sprayed its blood over the seats, and discarded the carcass. These practices somewhat resembled Israelite purification (so-called “sin”) offerings, the blood of which was used to purify persons, objects, and places (see comments on 4:3, 26; 16:14).

Unlike the Greek purifications, Israelite sacrifices applied blood to part of the sanctuary/temple of their deity, such as an altar. Although Yahweh is a heavenly divinity, he is concerned with life, represented by blood.

• 1:4. atonement– A second important observation is that in a number of cases this “atonement” is necessary even though no sin has been committed (for instance, the ritual impurity Of women each month).

For these and other reasons recent scholars have preferred “purification” or, more technically, “purgation,” as the translation. so the altar would be purged on behalf of the Offerer whose sin or impurity had ritually tarnished it.

The purpose was to maintain the sanctity of God’s presence in their midst. The ritual, like a disinfectant, is normally remedial, but it can be preventative. The agent is usually blood, but not always. This decontamination of the sanctuary renders the offerer clean and paves the way for his reconciliation with God.

The purging of Objects (including cities, houses, temples and persons) from ritual contamination or evil influence by wiping or rubbing on a substance is also known in ancient Near Eastern practice, though these are mainly magical rites.

• 1:5-9 Role of priests. Some aspects of the ritual were performed by the priests, because only the priests had access to the altar and the holy place. (See comment on Exodus 28:1 for general information.) The priests of the ancient Near East were involved not only in sacrificial rituals but also in divination and Other magical rites. Incantations and general advice concerning appeasement Of I the gods were also under the jurisdiction of the priests. Priests were expected to be skilled in the knowledge of which rituals were to be used for any desired results and in the appropriate performance of the rituals.
• 1:5. importance of blood. Blood serves as the mechanism for ritual cleansing in Israel—a concept not shared by its ancient Near Eastern neighbors. The blood represented the life or life force of the animal, so the animal had to be killed for the blood to have efficacy. See the comment on 17:11 for more information.
• 1:5. sprinkling on the altar. The sprinkling of the blood on all sides of the altar is the symbolic means Of applying the death Of the animal to the purging Of any contamination that might interfere with the entreaty that is being made on the occasion of the sacrifice. The blood represents the life/death of the animal, and the altar represents the sanctuary (Gods presence) and is specifically the place where a request before God would be made.

• You are not to burn any yeast or honey (2:11). Apparently, the reason for excluding yeast from the altar was that leavening involves a kind of decay through fermentation, which was associated with mortality/impurity and thus had to be separated from intimate contact with God’s sphere of holiness and life.
• [Non-Israelite peoples, whose deities were not dissociated from death in the same way, frequently offered honey to their gods. Thus in Assyria and Anatolia, honey (along with other liquids, such as oil and wine) could be poured into a ritual hole in the ground as a libation for an underworld deity.
• The final ritual of the fifth day of the Babylonian New Year Festival of Spring was a burnt offering to celestial gods that included honey, along with ghee and oil.]

• Salt of the covenant of your God (2:13).

In antiquity, parties who shared salt (here the Lord and the Israelites) were united by mutual obligations. Thus, a letter from Neo-Babylonia refers to a tribe’s covenantal allies as those who “tasted the salt Of the Jakin tribe,” Similarly, the Greeks salted their covenant meals, and in Ezra 4:14 those who tasted the salt of the Persian king’s palace were bound to loyalty to him (Ezra 4:14).

Since human allies establishing a covenant would commonly share a meal featuring salted meat, it made sense for salt with Israelite sacrifices to serve as a reminder Of the covenant between God and Israel. Because salt was employed as a preservative, its use in a covenant context also emphasized the expectation that the covenant would last for a long time, a meaning attached to salt in Babylonian, Persian, Arabic, and Greek covenant contexts.

Because salt inhibits the leavening action of yeast, which represented rebellion, salt could additionally stand for that which prevented rebellion.

• As food. (3:11)

Offerings presented to the Lord at the Outer altar are called the “food” of God (Lev 21:8; Num. 28:2, etc.). Non-Israelite peoples also Offered food, but they regarded their deities as needing to consume it (see comment on Lev. 1:9). As part of the daily care and feeding of the gods, Egyptians, Hittites, and Babylonians regularly placed various kinds of food and drink on tables or stands before idols in their temples.

A. L Oppenheim the way deities consumed their food.

Food was placed in front of the image, which was apparently’ assumed to consume by merely looking at it, and beverages were poured out before it for the same purpose. A variant of this pattern consisted of presenting the offered food with a solemn ritual gesture, passing it in a swinging motion before the staring eyes of the image.⁴⁴

Read more on page 294 in Zondervan

The Purification (So-Called “Sin”) Offering (4:1-35)

• Sins unintentionally (4:2). In the ancient Near East, deities were believed to possess superhuman powers of perception and to hold human beings accountable for their faulty actions, whether they knew that they had done wrong or not. Therefore, a person could suffer evil consequences without knowing why. So, an Egyptian prayer asks a god for mercy: “Visit not my many offenses upon me, I am one ignorant of himself. I am a mindless man, who all day follows his mouth, like an ox after grass.”
  • This kind of uncertainty was compounded by the difficulty of not knowing what the deities wanted. A Mesopotamian righteous sufferer expressed this problem: “I wish I knew that these things were pleasing to a god! What seems good to one’s self could be offense to a god. What is ones heart seems abominable could be good to ones god”.
  • Such uncertainty demanded a solution. Besides knowing which sacrifices, incantations, or magical rituals to perform in order to appease deities or otherwise turn away evil (which could be demonic), priests often practiced divination to sort out the variables, such as why the gods reacted as they did and what would placate them.
  • However, divination was not always successful.

• In Israel, divination was unnecessary because several factors greatly simplified reconciliation with the Lord:
• In monotheism there was no need to determine which deity to approach.
• Sin that required a ritual remedy was defined as violation of a command that the Lord had communicated to the Israelites.
• Israelites who committed inadvertent wrongs were liable for Offering purification Offerings only when they came to know what they had done wrong (Lev. 4:14, 23, 28; but see comment on 5:17).
• A limited number Of ritual types (burnt, purification, and reparation offerings) were prescribed to remedy a wide range of offenses.

Walton, J. H. (2009)_ Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds CommentMY (Old Testament):

Genesis, Exodus, Ricus, Deuteronomy (Vol. l, p. 294). Grand Rapids, Ml: Zondervan.

The Reparation Offering

5:14-16. reparation offering.

The reparation offering was traditionally termed the guilt offering. Though the term that is used is often appropriately translated as guilt, the term serves a more technical function within the sacrificial system. This offering is designed to address a particular category of offense—understood to represent a breach of faith or an act of sacrilege. “Breach of faith” would appropriately describe the violation of a covenant, while “sacrilege” refers generally to desecration of sacred areas or objects. Both of these crimes were well known in the ancient Near East, and examples can be found from the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Hittites and Aramaeans.

– The lVP Bible background comment”: Old Testament (electronic ed., Le5:1318). Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity press