Purification Offering - Leviticus 4

I’ve waited to talk about this next chapter because TB had two whole lectures on it and I thought that maybe it was way more in depth or there was some secret message within it, plus I’ve been busy with personal stuff. Of note before we begin is that TB says, and the IM references this also, that chapter 4 and 5 go together hand in hand.

Even though both TB and the IM have a lot of material on this chapter, I’m just going to stick with the parts that I think are noteworthy. The scriptures refer to this 4th sacrifice as a “sin offering” but both TB and the IM note that the sins this sacrifice is covering are only unintentional sins, ones committed “through ignorance.” TB says that a more accurate description would be “Purification offering.” The term “sin offering” implies someone who is trying to be forgiven for sins committed knowingly, so “purification” more means ridding the offerer of impurities brought upon them by committed errors they didn’t know were wrong because we live in an imperfect world.

Interestingly, it seems like this is an offering that is made by the priest, meaning the animal is brought to the temple, killed, and dealt with by the priest instead of an random Israelite bringing and killing the animal. TB suggests that this is because this is a single sacrifice made by the high priest to represent and cleanse the whole of Israel. Similarly, Christ’s atonement is infinite in that only the one sacrifice is what saves everyone and it was performed by the ultimate high priest, Jesus Christ Himself.

It seems like several different animals can be offered as part of this sacrifice, a young bull, a goat, even a female goat, a lamb, to turtle doves, two young pigeons, or flour without oil. The IM poses the question “why do you think the Lord allowed so many acceptable offerings to expiate sins of ignorance?” but it doesn’t offer any explanations and I’m not exactly sure. After killing the animal, the blood is brought to “the veil of the sanctuary” and some of the blood is put on to the horns of the altar. The veil is significant because it represents Christ and the people’s separation from God, so the blood of the animal representing Christ is brought to the place where the people are separated from the presence of God and the blood is put there. Seems to represent Christ’s blood and atoning sacrifice to be the only thing that will allow the separation of the people from God to be reconciled.

Then the animal is cut apart, separating the fat covering the inwards and the organs, the kidneys and the fat by the tail and they are burned up on the altar. I don’t exactly know how this would work for a bird, but I digress. The interesting part here though is that the rest of the animal isn’t allowed to go to the priests like in the other sacrifices or thrown away or anything like that. The rest of the animal “shall he carry forth without the camp unto a clean place, where the ashes are poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire.” What’s interesting here is that the rest of the animal’s body is taken outside of the encampment, away from the people and placed on a pile of wood. This is exactly what happened to Christ when He was crucified, he was taken outside of the city, away from the people, and killed on a pile of wood.