Lev. 1:4—“And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering; and it shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him”; 4:20—“Thus shall he do with the bullock; as he did with the bullock of the sin-offering, so shall he do with this; and the priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven”; so 31 and 35—“and the priest shall make atonement for him as touching his sin that he hath sinned, and he shall be forgiven”; so 5:10, 16; 6:7. Lev. 17:11—“For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life.”
The patriarchal sacrifices were sin-offerings, as the sacrifice of Job for his friends witnesses: Job 42:7-9—“My wrath is kindled against thee [Eliphaz] ... therefore, take unto you seven bullocks ... and offer up for yourselves a burnt-offering”; cf. 33:24—“Then God is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom”; 1:5—Job offered burnt-offerings for his sons, for he said, “It may be that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts”; Gen. 8:20—Noah “offered burnt-offerings on the altar”; 21—“and Jehovah smelled the sweet savor; and Jehovah said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake.”
That vicarious suffering is intended in all these sacrifices, is plain from Lev. 16:1-34—the account of the sin-offering and the scape-goat of the great day of atonement, the full meaning of which we give below; also from Gen. 22:13—“Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead of his son”; Ex. 32:30-32—where Moses says: “Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto Jehovah; peradventure I shall make atonement for your sin. And Moses returned unto Jehovah, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.” See also Deut. 21:1-9—the expiation of an uncertain murder, by the sacrifice of a heifer,—where Oehler, O. T. Theology, 1:389, says: “Evidently the punishment of death incurred by the manslayer is executed symbolically upon the heifer.” In Is. 53:1-12—“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all ... stripes ... offering for sin”—the ideas of both satisfaction and substitution are still more plain.
Wallace, Representative Responsibility: “The animals offered in sacrifice must be animals brought into direct relation to man, subject to him, his property. They could not be spoils of the chase. They must bear the mark and impress of humanity. Upon the sacrifice human hands must be laid—the hands of the offerer and the hands of the priest. The offering is the substitute of the offerer. The priest is the substitute of the offerer. The priest and the sacrifice were one symbol. [Hence, in the new dispensation, the priest and the sacrifice are one—both are found in Christ.] The high priest must enter the holy of holies with his own finger dipped in blood: the blood must be in contact with his own person,—another indication of the identification of the two. Life is nourished and sustained by life. All life lower than man may be sacrificed for the good of man. The blood must be spilled on the ground. ‘In the blood is the life.’ The life is reserved by God. It is given for man, but not to him. Life for life is the law of the creation. So the life of Christ, also, for our life.—Adam was originally priest of the family and of the race. But he lost his representative character by the one act of disobedience, and his redemption was that of the individual, not that of the race. The race ceased to have a representative. The subjects of the divine government were henceforth to be, not the natural offspring of Adam as such, but the redeemed. That the body and the blood are both required, indicates the demand that the death should be by a violence that sheds blood. The sacrifices showed forth, not Christ himself [his character, his life], but Christ's death.”
This following is a tentative scheme of the Jewish Sacrifices. The general reason for sacrifice is expressed in Lev. 17:11 (quoted above). I. For the individual: 1. The sin-offering = sacrifice to expiate sins of ignorance (thoughtlessness and plausible temptation): Lev. 4:14, 20, 31. 2. The trespass-offering = sacrifice to expiate sins of omission: [pg 726] Lev. 5:5, 6. 3. The burnt-offering = sacrifice to expiate general sinfulness: Lev. 1:3(the offering of Mary, Luke 2:24). II. For the family: The Passover: Ex. 12:27. III. For the people: 1. The daily morning and evening sacrifice: Ex. 29:38-46. 2. The offering of the great day of atonement: Lev. 16:6-10. In this last, two victims were employed, one to represent the means—death, and the other to represent the result—forgiveness. One victim could not represent both the atonement—by shedding of blood, and the justification—by putting away sin.
Jesus died for our sins at the Passover feast and at the hour of daily sacrifice. McLaren, in S. S. Times, Nov. 30, 1901:801—“Shedding of blood and consequent safety were only a part of the teaching of the Passover. There is a double identification of the person offering with his sacrifice: first, in that he offers it as his representative, laying his hand on its head, or otherwise transferring his personality, as it were, to it; and secondly, in that, receiving it back again from God to whom he gave it, he feeds on it, so making it part of his life and nourishing himself thereby: ‘My flesh ... which I will give ... for the life of the world ... he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me’ (John 6:51, 57).”
Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1892:22-34—On the great day of atonement “the double offering—one for Jehovah and the other for Azazel—typified not only the removing of the guilt of the people, but its transfer to the odious and detestable being who was the first cause of its existence,” i. e., Satan. Lidgett, Spir. Principle of the Atonement, 112, 113—“It was not the punishment which the goat bore away into the wilderness, for the idea of punishment is not directly associated with the scapegoat. It bears the sin—the whole unfaithfulness of the community which had defiled the holy places—out from them, so that henceforth they may be pure.... The sin-offering—representing the sinner by receiving the burden of his sin—makes expiation by yielding up and yielding back its life to God, under conditions which represent at once the wrath and the placability of God.”
On the Jewish sacrifices, see Fairbairn, Typology, 1:209-223; Wünsche, Die Leiden des Messias; Jukes, O. T. Sacrifices; Smeaton, Apostle's Doctrine of Atonement, 25-53; Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship of O. T., 120; Bible Com., 1:502-508, and Introd. to Leviticus; Candlish on Atonement, 123-142; Weber, Vom Zorne Gottes, 161-180. On passages in Leviticus, see Com. of Knobel, in Exeg. Handb. d. Alt. Test.
(e) It is not essential to this view to maintain that a formal divine institution of the rite of sacrifice, at man's expulsion from Eden, can be proved from Scripture. Like the family and the state, sacrifice may, without such formal inculcation, possess divine sanction, and be ordained of God. The well-nigh universal prevalence of sacrifice, however, together with the fact that its nature, as a bloody offering, seems to preclude man's own invention of it, combines with certain Scripture intimations to favor the view that it was a primitive divine appointment. From the time of Moses, there can be no question as to its divine authority.
Compare the origin of prayer and worship, for which we find no formal divine injunctions at the beginnings of history. Heb. 11:4—“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gifts”—here it may be argued that since Abel's faith was not presumption, it must have had some injunction and promise of God to base itself upon. Gen. 4:3, 4—“Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto Jehovah. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And Jehovah had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.”