(b) The true import of the sacrifice, as is abundantly evident from both heathen and Jewish sources, embraced three elements,—first, that of satisfaction to offended Deity, or propitiation offered to violated holiness; secondly, that of substitution of suffering and death on the part of the innocent, for the deserved punishment of the guilty; and, thirdly, community of life between the offerer and the victim. Combining these three ideas, we have as the total import of the sacrifice: Satisfaction by substitution, and substitution by incorporation. The bloody sacrifice among the heathen expressed the consciousness that sin involves guilt; that guilt exposes man to the righteous wrath of God; that without expiation of that guilt there is no forgiveness; and that through the suffering of another who shares his life the sinner may expiate his sin.
Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 170, quotes from Nägelsbach, Nachhomerische Theologie, 338 sq.—“The essence of punishment is retribution (Vergeltung), and retribution is a fundamental law of the world-order. In retribution lies the atoning power of punishment. This consciousness that the nature of sin demands retribution, in other words, this certainty that there is in Deity a righteousness that punishes sin, taken in connection with the consciousness of personal transgression, awakens the longing for atonement,”—which is expressed in the sacrifice of a slaughtered beast. The Greeks recognized representative expiation, not only in the sacrifice of beasts, but in human sacrifices. See examples in Tyler, Theol. Gk. Poets, 196, 197, 245-253; see also Virgil, Æneid, 5:815—“Unum pro multis dabitur caput”; Ovid, Fasti, vi—“Cor pro corde, precor; pro fibris sumite fibras. Hanc animam vobis pro meliore damus.”
Stahl, Christliche Philosophie, 146—“Every unperverted conscience declares the eternal law of righteousness that punishment shall follow inevitably on sin. In the moral realm, there is another way of satisfying righteousness—that of atonement. This differs from punishment in its effect, that is, reconciliation,—the moral authority asserting itself, not by the destruction of the offender, but by taking him up into itself and uniting itself to him. But the offender cannot offer his own sacrifice,—that must be done by the priest.” In the Prometheus Bound, of Æschylus, Hermes says to Prometheus: “Hope not for an end to such oppression, until a god appears as thy substitute in torment, ready to descend for thee into the unillumined realm of Hades and the dark abyss of Tartarus.” And this is done by Chiron, the wisest and most just of the Centaurs, the son of Chronos, sacrificing himself for Prometheus, while Hercules kills the eagle at his breast and so delivers him from torment. This legend of Æschylus is almost a prediction of the true Redeemer. See article on Sacrifice, by Paterson, in Hastings, Bible Dictionary.
Westcott, Hebrews, 282, maintains that the idea of expiatory offerings, answering to the consciousness of sin, does not belong to the early religion of Greece. We reply that Homer's Iliad, in its first book, describes just such an expiatory offering made to Phœbus Apollo, so turning away his wrath and causing the plague that wastes the Greeks to cease. E. G. Robinson held that there is “no evidence that the Jews had any idea of the efficacy of sacrifice for the expiation of moral guilt.” But in approaching either the tabernacle or the temple the altar always presented itself before the laver. H. Clay Trumbull, S. S. Times, Nov. 30, 1901:801—“The Passover was not a passing by of the houses of Israelites, but a passing over or crossing over by Jehovah to enter the homes of those who would welcome him and who had entered into covenant with him by sacrifice. The Oriental sovereign was accompanied by his executioner, who entered to smite the first-born of the house only when there was no covenanting at the door.” We regard this explanation as substituting an incidental result and effect of sacrifice for the sacrifice itself. This always had in it the idea of reparation for wrong-doing by substitutionary suffering.
Curtis, Primitive Semitic Religion of To-day, on the Significance of Sacrifice, 218-237, tells us that he went to Palestine prepossessed by Robertson Smith's explanation that [pg 724]sacrifice was a feast symbolizing friendly communion between man and his God. He came to the conclusion that the sacrificial meal was not the primary element, but that there was a substitutionary value in the offering. Gift and feast are not excluded; but these are sequences and incidentals. Misfortune is evidence of sin; sin needs to be expiated; the anger of God needs to be removed. The sacrifice consisted principally in the shedding of the blood of the victim. The “bursting forth of the blood” satisfied and bought off the Deity. George Adam Smith on Isaiah 53 (2:364)—“Innocent as he is, he gives his life as a satisfaction to the divine law for the guilt of his people. His death was no mere martyrdom or miscarriage of human justice: in God's intent and purpose, but also by its own voluntary offering, it was an expiatory sacrifice. There is no exegete but agrees to this. 353—The substitution of the servant of Jehovah for the guilty people and the redemptive force of that substitution are no arbitrary doctrine.”
Satisfaction means simply that there is a principle in God's being which not simply refuses sin passively, but also opposes it actively. The judge, if he be upright, must repel a bribe with indignation, and the pure woman must flame out in anger against an infamous proposal. R. W. Emerson: “Your goodness must have some edge to it,—else it is none.” But the judge and the woman do not enjoy this repelling,—they suffer rather. So God's satisfaction is no gloating over the pain or loss which he is compelled to inflict. God has a wrath which is calm, judicial, inevitable—the natural reaction of holiness against unholiness. Christ suffers both as one with the inflicter and as one with those on whom punishment is inflicted: “For Christ also pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me” (Rom. 15:3; cf. Ps. 69:9).
(c) In considering the exact purport and efficacy of the Mosaic sacrifices, we must distinguish between their theocratical, and their spiritual, offices. They were, on the one hand, the appointed means whereby the offender could be restored to the outward place and privileges, as member of the theocracy, which he had forfeited by neglect or transgression; and they accomplished this purpose irrespectively of the temper and spirit with which they were offered. On the other hand, they were symbolic of the vicarious sufferings and death of Christ, and obtained forgiveness and acceptance with God only as they were offered in true penitence, and with faith in God's method of salvation.
Heb. 9:13, 14—“For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled, sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” 10:3, 4—“But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sins year by year. For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.” Christ's death also, like the O. T. sacrifices, works temporal benefit even to those who have no faith; see pages 771, 772.
Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, 441, 448, answers the contention of the higher critics that, in the days of Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, Jeremiah, no Levitical code existed; that these prophets expressed disapproval of the whole sacrificial system, as a thing of mere human device and destitute of divine sanction. But the Book of the Covenant surely existed in their day, with its command: “An altar of earth shalt thou make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt-offerings” (Ex. 20:24). Or, if it is maintained that Isaiah condemned even that early piece of legislation, it proves too much, for it would make the prophet also condemn the Sabbath as a piece of will-worship, and even reject prayer as displeasing to God, since in the same connection he says: “new moon and Sabbath ... I cannot away with ... when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you” (Is. 1:13-15). Isaiah was condemning simply heartless sacrifice; else we make him condemn all that went on at the temple. Micah 6:8—“what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly?” This does not exclude the offering of sacrifice, for Micah anticipates the time when “the mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established on the top of the mountains, ... And many nations shall go and say, Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah” (Micah 4:1, 2). Hos. 6:6—“I desire goodness, and not sacrifice,” is interpreted by what follows, “and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings.” Compare Prov. 8:10; 17:12; and Samuel's words: “to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Sam. 15:22). What was the altar from which Isaiah drew his description of God's theophany and from which was taken the live coal that touched his lips and prepared him to be a prophet? (Is. 6:1-8). Jer. 7:22—“I spake not ... concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices ... but this thing ... Hearken unto my voice.” Jeremiah insists only on the worthlessness of sacrifice where there is no heart.
(d) Thus the Old Testament sacrifices, when rightly offered, involved a consciousness of sin on the part of the worshiper, the bringing of a victim to atone for the sin, the laying of the hand of the offerer upon the victim's head, the confession of sin by the offerer, the slaying of the beast, the sprinkling or pouring-out of the blood upon the altar, and the consequent forgiveness of the sin and acceptance of the worshiper. The sin-offering and the scape-goat of the great day of atonement symbolized yet more distinctly the two elementary ideas of sacrifice, namely, satisfaction and substitution, together with the consequent removal of guilt from those on whose behalf the sacrifice was offered.