The lamb that burned every day for fifteen centuries, the sin offering with a hand laid on its head, the sentence about blood that explains both, and the priest who finally sat down
Morning and Evening
Two lambs a day, one at dawn and one at dusk, at the door of the tent and then at the temple, from Sinai to the year the Romans stopped it. No other act in Israel’s worship was so constant. Beside it stood the sin offering, for a person who had done a particular wrong: a lamb, a hand on its head, blood on the horns of the altar, and a sentence the priest could say at the end. Leviticus explains what the blood was doing in one verse, and Hebrews explains what it could not do in another.
You are reading as a visitor, so your notes and your place in the series will not be kept. Sign in or create an account to keep them.
Lesson 4 of 12 · The altar
Israel’s day was measured by a lamb. One was offered at morning and one at evening, every day, at the door of the tent where God said he would meet with his people, and the hours of the two offerings became the hours of prayer that the New Testament still keeps. Beside that constant fire stood the sin offering, for a particular person and a particular wrong: he brought a lamb, laid his hand on its head, killed it himself, and the priest put its blood on the altar and said that he was forgiven. Leviticus says what the blood was for in a single sentence: the life is in the blood, and it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life. A life stood in for a life. The word for what it did means to cover. The prophets said, and the law never denied, that God did not want the animals for their own sake; and the letter to the Hebrews says that every priest stood day after day offering what could never take sin away, until one priest offered one sacrifice and sat down. The daily lamb was the shape of a promise kept on a schedule, morning and evening, until the thing it promised came.
The lamb that never stopped
The instructions for the altar end with the offering that will be made on it every day.
“Now this is that which you shall offer on the altar: two lambs a year old day by day continually. The one lamb you shall offer in the morning; and the other lamb you shall offer at evening; and with the one lamb a tenth part of an ephah of fine flour mixed with the fourth part of a hin of beaten oil, and the fourth part of a hin of wine for a drink offering. The other lamb you shall offer at evening, and shall do to it according to the meal offering of the morning and according to its drink offering, for a pleasant aroma, an offering made by fire to Yahweh. It shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your generations at the door of the Tent of Meeting before Yahweh, where I will meet with you, to speak there to you. — Exodus 29:38–42 · WEB
Read the comment on That I Might Dwell Among Them
Two lambs a year old, day by day, continually; the one lamb in the morning and the other at evening, with flour and oil and wine; a continual burnt offering throughout your generations at the door of the Tent of Meeting, where I will meet with you. The word is tamid, continual, and it became the offering’s name. It was made on the day the tabernacle was raised and on the day the temple fell, and when Daniel speaks of the daily sacrifice being taken away, this is what he means. Whatever else happened in Israel, a lamb was burning at dawn and at dusk, at the place where God had said he could be met. The ninth hour, when the evening lamb was offered, is the hour at which Mark says Jesus cried out from the cross.
כָּפַר kâphar H3722
a primitive root; to cover (specifically with bitumen); figuratively, to expiate or condone, to placate or cancel; appease, make (an atonement, cleanse, disannul, forgive, be merciful, pacify, pardon, purge (away), put off, (make) reconcile(-liation).
To cover — the root’s plainest sense, used once of coating the ark with pitch — and from that to atone, to make expiation, to wipe away, to appease. The noun made from it names the Day of Atonement and the lid of the ark, the mercy seat, where the blood was sprinkled on that day. Scholars argue whether the picture is of sin covered over or of sin wiped off, and the Old Testament uses the verb both ways; what it never means is sin excused. Something is done, at a cost, and the wrong is dealt with rather than overlooked. The English word atonement was made for it in the sixteenth century, out of "at one," and has kept the sense: what makes two parties at one again.
Sign in to keep a note here. It is listed with your Saved notes, under this lesson.
A hand on its head
The daily lamb was for the nation. The sin offering was for a person, and Leviticus 4 gives the procedure.
“‘If he brings a lamb as his offering for a sin offering, he shall bring a female without defect. He shall lay his hand on the head of the sin offering, and kill it for a sin offering in the place where they kill the burnt offering. The priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger, and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering; and all the rest of its blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar. He shall remove all its fat, like the fat of the lamb is removed from the sacrifice of peace offerings. The priest shall burn them on the altar, on the offerings of Yahweh made by fire. The priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin that he has sinned, and he will be forgiven. — Leviticus 4:32–35 · WEB
Read the comment on Sin Offering: the Ruler and the Common Person
If he brings a lamb as his offering for a sin offering, he shall lay his hand on the head of the sin offering, and kill it; the priest shall take some of the blood with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar; the priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin, and he will be forgiven. Three things are worth slowing over. The offerer lays his hand on the animal’s head, which the law says elsewhere is how an offering is accepted for him (Leviticus 1:4): the animal is made his, or he is joined to it, before it dies. The offerer kills it, not the priest; the man who sinned holds the knife. And the sentence at the end is not a hope. He will be forgiven, said by the law about a person who had done wrong and brought a lamb.
For the life of the flesh is in the blood. I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life. — Leviticus 17:11 · WEB
Read the comment on The Life of the Flesh Is in the Blood
For the life of the flesh is in the blood; I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life. This is the law explaining itself, which it rarely does. Blood atones not because it is blood but because the life is in it: a life is given on the altar for the life of the one who brought it. And the giving is God’s. I have given it to you, the verse says, as if the altar were a provision made for the people rather than a demand made on them, which is the sense of Abraham’s sentence on the mountain. God will provide himself the lamb.
Sign in to keep a note here. It is listed with your Saved notes, under this lesson.
What the prophets said about it
“He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.” Leviticus 1:4 · WEB
He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him: the gesture, and what the law says it does.
“You shall tell them, ‘This is the offering made by fire which you shall offer to Yahweh: male lambs a year old without defect, two day by day, for a continual burnt offering. You shall offer the one lamb in the morning, and you shall offer the other lamb at evening,” Numbers 28:3–4 · WEB
Male lambs a year old without defect, two day by day, for a continual burnt offering, the one in the morning and the other at evening: the daily lamb restated forty years later, for the generation that would enter the land.
“For you don’t delight in sacrifice, or else I would give it. You have no pleasure in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. O God, you will not despise a broken and contrite heart.” Psalm 51:16–17 · WEB
You don’t delight in sacrifice, or else I would give it; the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: David, after Bathsheba, on what the altar could not supply.
“For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” Hosea 6:6 · WEB
I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings: the sentence Jesus quoted twice to people who kept the altar and missed the point.
The prophets are not against the lamb; Hosea and David both kept the feasts. They are against the idea that the lamb was the thing wanted. Isaiah says God has had enough of the blood of lambs from people whose hands are full of blood; Micah asks whether thousands of rams would please him, and answers that he has shown what he wants. The altar was never the end. It was a schedule of reminders, and Hebrews will say so in almost those words.
Sign in to keep a note here. It is listed with your Saved notes, under this lesson.
Standing daily, seated once
The letter to the Hebrews reads the whole daily system and draws one contrast from it.
Every priest indeed stands day by day serving and offering often the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, but he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God, from that time waiting until his enemies are made the footstool of his feet. For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. — Hebrews 10:11–14 · WEB
Read the comment on He Sat Down
Every priest stands day by day serving and offering often the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God. For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. There were no chairs in the sanctuary. A priest stood, because his work was never finished; the evening lamb followed the morning lamb, and the next morning’s followed that, and the same sins came back with the same people. The letter’s whole argument is in a posture. The daily offering was repeated because it could not finish anything; the offering it pointed to was made once, and the one who made it sat down.
Sign in to keep a note here. It is listed with your Saved notes, under this lesson.
What the daily lamb asks
It asks the reader to see forgiveness as something as regular as morning. For fifteen centuries an Israelite woke to the smoke of a lamb offered for the nation and went to sleep to another, and could bring a third for himself on the day he needed it, and be told he was forgiven. The rhythm was the mercy. The New Testament does not abolish the rhythm; it says the lamb has been offered once, and the rhythm is now the rhythm of coming to a thing already done. Morning and evening, the same sentence the priest said over the man with his hand on the lamb: he will be forgiven.
Read Leviticus 4:27-35 and Hebrews 10:1-14. Write down each thing the offerer did with his own hands in Leviticus, and then what Hebrews says a worshiper now does instead. Then write one sentence on why a priest who sat down was the end of the argument.
Sign in to keep a note here. It is listed with your Saved notes, under this lesson.