But, with all the suggestions of the rite of blood-covenanting, in the sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual, there were limitations in the correspondences of that rite in those sacrifices, which mark the incompleteness of their symbolism, and which point to better things to come. In the primitive blood-covenant rite itself, both parties receive, and partake of, the blood which becomes common to the two. In all the outside religions of the world, where men reach out after a divine-human inter-union through substitute-blood, the offerer drinks of the sacrificial blood, or of something which stands for it; and so he is supposed to share the nature of the God with whom he thus covenants and inter-unites. In the Mosaic ritual, however, all drink-offerings of blood were forbidden to him who would enter into covenant with God; he might not taste of the blood. He might, it is true, look forward, by faith, to an ultimate sharing of the divine nature; and in anticipation of that inter-union, he could enjoy a symbolic inter-communion with God, by partaking of the peace-offerings at the table of his Lord; but as yet the sacrificial offering which could supply to his death-smitten nature the vivifying blood of an everlasting covenant, was not disclosed to him.[533]
Even the substitute blood which he presented at the altar, as he came with his outreaching after a blood-covenant union with the Lord, did not secure to him direct personal access to the symbolic earthly dwelling-place of the Lord. That blood could be poured out at the base of the altar of consecration, or it could be sprinkled upon its horns. That blood could, on occasions be sprinkled before the veil of the Most Holy Place; or could touch the horns of the altar of sweet incense. But that blood could never pass that veil which guarded the place of the Lord’s symbolic presence, save once in a year when the high-priest, all by himself, and that not without a show of his own unfitness for the mission, went in thither, to sprinkle the substitute blood before the mercy-seat; “the Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the Holy Place hath not yet been manifest[534]”; that the substitute “blood of bulls and of goats”[535] cannot be a means of man’s inter-union with God.
Lest, indeed, the Israelite should believe that a blood-covenant union was really secured with God, rather than typified, through these prescribed symbolic sacrifices and their sharing, he was repeatedly warned against that fatal error, and was taught that his true covenanting must be by a faith-filled recognition of the symbolism of these substitute agencies; and by the implicit surrender of himself, in loving trust, to Him who had ordained them as symbols. Thus in the Psalms:
“Hear, O my people, and I will speak;
O Israel, and I will testify unto thee:
I am God, even thy God.
I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices;
And thy burnt-offerings are continually before me....
Will I eat the flesh of bulls,
Or drink the blood of goats?