The Torah of Sacrifice in its contexts, Pt. 1
I’ve just broken ground this week on ch. 3! The end of this post gives you my plan for my 35,000 word chapter on Lev. 1-7, of which I have been able to knock out 3,000. Pray for me. And look for the second installment of this in a few days.
3 – The Torah of Sacrifice
Leviticus 1–7, hereafter the Torah of Sacrifice, consists of two parallel sets of instructions for the five sacrifices that characterise the sacrificial service of Israel’s priesthood. The first set of instructions, Yahweh tells Moses, are to be spoken el-b’ney yish’rael, to the sons of Israel (Lev. 1:2a). In order, Yahweh discusses the ʿōlâ (“whole burnt offering,” Lev. 1), the minḥâ (“cereal offering,” Lev. 2), the šĕlāmîm (“peace offering, Lev. 3), the ḥaṭṭāʾt (“sin offering,” Lev. 4 MT [= 4:1–5:13 ET]), and the ʾāšām (“reparation offering,” Lev. 5 MT [=5:14–6:7 ET]). At Lev. 6:1 [=6:9 ET], Yahweh reviews these five sacrifices, this time as priestly instructions for Aaron and his sons, and this time in a revised order. After reviewing the ʿōlâ and minḥâ in 6:1–6 [6:8–13=ET] and 6:7–16 [=6:14–23 ET], respectively, He skips past the šĕlāmîm to the ḥaṭṭāʾt (6:17–23 [=6:24–30 ET]) and ʾāšām (7:1–10), moving it from the third, central position to the fifth, final one (7:11–36).
Notably, these seven chapters do not exhaust Torah’s characterisation of priestly service. There are several other categories of texts that this chapter will not examine in depth. First, other texts in Torah describe the priests’ duty to guard sacred boundaries and negotiate the fluctuating sacred status of the laypeople in the camp (cf. Lev. 11–15; Num. 19). But this study is focused not on cultic service in general, but sacrificial service in particular. Even so, a priest engaged in the performance of these duties would find himself offering sacrifices already described in the Torah of Sacrifice, namely the ḥaṭṭāʾt for purification (cf. Lev. 12:6–8), and the ʿōlâ once impurity is resolved (Lev. 14:10–20).
Second, the regular rites at which priests would serve are, in a manner of speaking, compounds of these five sacrifices: the tāmîḏ consists of two daily ʿōlâ offerings and one minḥâ (cf. Exod. 29:38–42; Num. 28:1–8); the ordination rite requires ʿōlâ, minḥâ, ḥaṭṭāʾt, and šĕlāmîm (cf. Lev. 9:15–22); and the Day of Atonement rites include ḥaṭṭāʾt and ʿōlâ, and its expanded scope is an expansion of the ḥaṭṭāʾt logic spelled out in Lev. 4.
Third, the festival rites, which developed traditional accoutrement over the course of Israel’s history, involve combinations of the same sacrifices. The pilgrimage festivals, pesach, shavuot, and sukkot, involve long lists of ʿōlâ and minḥâ (Exod. 12; Lev. 23:4–8, 15–22, 33–36; Num. 28:16–25; 29:12–38; Deut. 16:9–12) with very little variation. The weeklong festival of shavuot includes šĕlāmîm throughout, and sukkot requires ḥaṭṭāʾt on the first Sabbath. Not even the Passover lamb introduces a new sacrifice. The lamb notably, was not a Levitical sacrifice—that is, it was not ‘offered’ on an ‘altar’ and it didn’t involve a ‘priest’ (see especially Exod. 12:3–11).
Fourth, some texts describe variant gestures, occasions, and locations for these core sacrifices. In several places, Yahweh commands the šĕlāmîm be ‘waved’ as a tĕnûfâh, or ‘wave offering’ (cf. Exod. 29:24–28; Lev. 23:10–20; Num. 8:11), but the instructions given to the priests in Lev. 3; 7:11–36 are neither altered nor amended. In Lev. 22:17–25 and Deut. 12:6–7, voluntary versions of the ʿōlâ and šĕlāmîm are introduced. And the red heifer rite of Num. 19 is a variation of the ḥaṭṭāʾt performed not at the altar but outside the camp.
Although priestly service is described in these various ways throughout Torah, this study will remain focused on the parallel sets of instruction given to Moses for the sons of Israel, and the sons of Aaron, respectively, in the Torah of Sacrifice. It begins both by situating this text within its several narrative contexts (3.1.1) and by situating the concept of ‘sacrifice’ within its ideological contexts (3.1.2). Then, after clarifying the text’s own distinction between atoning and non-atoning sacrifices in the Torah for the People (Lev. 1–5), it examines the three sacrifices characterised as (primarily) non-atoning: the ʿōlâ, the minḥâ, and the šĕlāmîm (3.2). The chapter concludes with an analysis of the ritual motifs that characterise priestly service in the Torah for Priests in Lev. 6–7, including the tending of the perpetual fire, the arrangement of the šĕlāmîm atop the ʿōlâ, the relationship between divine and priestly consumption, and the particular status of the thanksgiving offering (3.3).