Come Together
When any of you presents an offering of cattle to the LORD, he shall choose his offering from . . . Leviticus 1:2
Offering – Do you think that God is mad? It seems that most religious people (of all faiths) certainly see God as an angry judge. He looks down upon the wickedness of the world and punishes those who haven’t been good. Apparently His aim isn’t so good because a lot of bad things happen to good people. But maybe that’s because we all deserve to be punished and God is only reminding us of our unholy condition.
What a tragic mistake it is to think of God in this way. God is mad, but He is crazy mad, not angry mad. He is insane because He is willing to die for those who have rejected His benevolence. That isn’t normal! But is God angry with us? If we knew anything about the Hebrew word for offering (korban), we would never make this mistake. Why? Because korban comes from the verb karav that means “to draw close.” That’s right! The purpose of a sacrifice is not to appease an angry God. It is to draw close to His love. An offering displays God’s desire to have us come to Him and enjoy His presence and fellowship. It is exactly the opposite of the offerings made to false gods. From the Hebrew point-of-view, an offering is an invitation to fellowship, not an attempt to placate.
Consider this in relation to your understanding of the sacrifice of Yeshua. How many times have you been told that His death was an appeasement for God’s righteous anger over sin? That theology suggests that God is very, very angry. So angry that it takes the death of His own Son to appease His wrath. That kind of thinking belongs to idolatry. The sacrifice of Yeshua is as bold an invitation as God could make. It is an invitation to life. It is the guarantee that the promise made to Abraham will come to pass. It is the way God removes the punishment we deserve in order that we may approach Him. It is the ultimate sign of drawing close.
There is one other important thing to notice here. The supplicant has choice. The offering is conditional. “When” you present an offering is followed by “If” the offering is such-and-such. In other words, while God gives directions about how to draw close, He allows us to voluntarily choose to draw close. Appeasement can be demanded. Invitation can only be requested.
The great God of glory opens a way to His heart. It is a way of compassion, mercy and forgiveness. We must choose to accept His invitation and draw near to Him. God isn’t mad. He’s just waiting.
Topical Index: angry, mad, offering, korban, karav, sacrifice, Leviticus 1:2
I’m not sure how to view God in this way. He has always had a clenched fist and a glaring eye. No, that was my dad and my ex. How can I begin to view Him as He is – soverign and benevolent – so that I can finally see Him as He is? I know this is the key to freedom for me.
Hi Carol,
I think it is true that our feelings for and perceptions of God are conditioned by our relationships (or lack thereof) with our fathers.
And that the “sins” of our fathers are passed on from one dysfunctional generation to another.
In my view and experience, we need to understand how our “historical” relationship with our father is effecting our “present” relationship to God and other people.
Ultimately we need to accept and forgive ourselves and our fathers or we will be condemned to “repeat the past.”
I have always found good psychological counselling to be very helpful.
But not a substitute for God 🙂
So good to see that you have written Carol…I have continued to pray for you. I, too, have seen God in early years with glenched fist…truly it came from my Roman Catholic upbringing. To answer your question…”how can I begin to view him…” the only answer is God’s Word along with the work of the Holy Spirit. I will ask the Holy Spirit to open your mind and heart as you read His Word and rest in His presence. You are loved, Kelly:)
Referring to the first sin, back yonder in the Garden, HaSatan unleashed one of his favorite ploys upon the first couple. He (successfully) was able to get Adam and his ‘ezer to think negatively about G-d. G-d was “holding back” on them, and not allowing them to enjoy life to the full by this “selfishness.” G-d, selfish?? We smile today on this thought because we know how giving our Father is. He has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. “Has given” & “all things.” Adam and Eve succumbed to temptation and “messed up” by disobeying G-d. We know the rest of that story, for we all have “messed up.” Ok.. so where do we stand today? We have a holy G-d, (according to the Book) and we have sinful man (all have sinned). How can (G-d who is) light, have fellowship with (man who walks in) darkness? How can Adam be restored to the intimacy he once knew with His Creator, “back in the day?” Reading a little further down in today’s Scripture, we see in verse four, the word “atonement.” When Noah built the big boat, the cracks and chinks were covered within and without with “atonement.” It was a covering. What is the central focus of the mercy-seat in the holy of holies? What did the high priest offer once every year in this holy place as an “offering” for sin? “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. ” 2 Corinthians 5.21. We (all) (now) have a covering, an atonement for our uncleaness and have been washed and sanctified by this holy “offering” of the Son of righteousness. “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” Hebrews 9.12. What can wash away my sin? What can make me whole again? O precious is the flow.. that makes me white as snow.. no other fount I know.. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. It is written..”when I see the blood, I will pass over you”, Exodus 12.13. Is G-d “selfish”? Is G-d “holding back” on us? “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all..” Romans 8.32
Skip … I agree. Far too many believers confuse ELOHIM’s untainted and perfect righteousness with anger. Going back to Marcion and his many followers … who believed the Jews served an evil-hateful-angry G_D, we can see this confusion in the early church!
We should look at ELOHIM’s sacrifice on our behalf as the ultimate act of self righteousness! HE created us … HE should save us! And praise HIS Holy Name … HE DID! What greater love could there ever be? NONE!
But a G_D that is wholly self righteous (so much so that HE would sacrifice HIMSELF) will not deal with us accept under the conditions HE has declared in HIS Torah/Word as being righteous. And we as Greeks had better stop trying to over rationalize matters. Let us not kid ourselves …. for all people ELOHIM will be a Righteous Judge and sadly for most people HE will be a “DESTROYER” …. just as in Egypt!
I know undoubtedly that YHVH is LOVE … but we don’t like to keep in mind (zikron) that HE is all things …. and if you are a goat …. well it ain’t going to be pretty! And there are plenty of goats who think they are sheep! 🙁
I was once on the goat end of spectrum …. and I finally realized how scary THE LIVING G_D can be! Why do we continually attempt to push aside this “Righteous Nature” of the creator? (Not saying that you are doing so Skip … 🙂 )
For crying out loud do we not read the Book Of Revelations …. it ain’t pretty!
I do have a difficult time understanding the all encompassing love of the Father in the Akedah. Nahum Sarna says that “the Akedah in its final form is not an attempt to combat existing practice,but it is itself a product of a religious attitude that recoils naturally from associating God with human sacrifice and which felt the need to explain the ancient tradition as an unprecedented and unrepeatable event, as a test of faith. The story, that is, has now evolved from it’s ancient primitive nucleus to become reflective of Israel’s normative standpoint. This development explains several unusual features of the Akedah. The absence of an explicit unambiguous renunciation of child- sacrifice now falls into place. It is absent because it is unnecessary from the narrative viewpoint. That God rejected the practice as utterly abhorrent was taken for granted. The narrator’s problem was to reconcile this obvious fact with the details of the ancient nucleus. This he did by shifting the focus from God to Abraham, and by emphasizing the test of faith. The same explanation covers an unexpected omission from the epitaphs of Isaac. It is well known in those times that child sacrifice was primarily conditioned by the concept of a special degree of sanctity attached to the first born male. Thus it was his first born that the king of Moab sacrificed at a critical moment in battle. The omission of the epithet “first born” from the description of Issac, even though its addition would have made the magnitude of the sacrifice still more pronounced, underscores the desire to portray the divine command as sui generis, totally unrelated to the usual pagan rites.”[Understanding Genesis, pg.162]
This was written by a non-messianic Jew.
How do we reconcile the fact that God allowed His Son to be sacrificed for our sake?
Akedah in its final form …. is itself a product of a religious attitude that recoils naturally from associating God with human sacrifice and which felt the need to explain the ancient tradition as an unprecedented and unrepeatable event, as a test of faith.
Hi Antoinette,
Great question!!! Just to get the facts straight, is Nahum Sarna saying:
– the “ancient tradition” was a Moabite (non Jewish) tradition of human sacrifice?
– that sacrificing the first born son was never a practice of the Jews?
For me, the thought of human sacrifice has always boggled my mind and been a fascinating subject because of its theorized relationship to the “origin of tragedy.”
There is a common hypothesis that Greek tragedy was a kind of evolution/sublimation of human sacrifice and that in the beginning there was 1. human sacrifice, then 2. “scapegoats,” then 3. tragic, dramatic, “heroes.”
In any case, I like to think that on the one hand God already knows that Abraham will pass the test; and on the other, God is sacrificing Himself in the form of his Son. He feels the pain.
BTW I visited your website yesterday and listened to Rabbi Gorelik’s “Born Again.” Very good idea!
Thanks,
Mike
Hi Michael,
Thanks for visiting my website, I actually updated the look on the Parsha section, so that the comments will be easier to read (the font was too light).
I also changed the format a bit. But the site does not get many visitors, so it is a pretty lonely midrash at this point.
Back to the question concerning human sacrifice.
According to Sarna, “Turning to the ancient Near Eastern World, we note that, if human sacrifice had ever, in fact, been widely and regularly practiced, by the second millennium B.C.E., the age of the patriarchs, it had long been accepted that animal offering was, in normal circumstances, a perfectly satisfactory surrogate… Canaan however, seems to have been an exception in this respect, for there is much archaeological evidence to show that human sacrifice was more in vogue here than elsewhere, from very early times until far into the second millennium…. a belief in the efficacy of human sacrifice as a means of propitiating the deity was not unknown even in Israel. The mere fact thatthe armies of Israel and Judah desisted from further military engagement as a result of the rite just referred to, (Moab sacrificing his son) shows the impression it made on the popular imagination… kings Ahaz and Manasseh may well have been consciously aping alien cults. But the prophets were certainly preaching popular Israelite beliefs when they felt repeatedly called upon to disassociate God from this horrible aberration”…. even in Israel this monstrous idea was not totally eradicated from the popular consciousness until the Babylonian Exile.”
I hope that answers your question.
When you envision the period of time Abraham lived in, he would not have been shocked that this was asked of him, as God was still teaching His people how to be His separated people, and even at that time they were “being a light to the world” by learning and expressing the will of the God of Abraham as a compassionate and trustworthy God.
Hello again Antoinette,
I have visited your website a number of times and always enjoy the visit; it is very informative and I really like the “look and feel.”
Finding Rabbi Gorelik’s audio on Devarim was a pleasant surprise and listening to him speak on it was a wonderful way to spend some time Saturday afternoon.
Thank you for your very detailed and interesting answer to my question, I now have a much better understanding of this amazing biblical event.
Without introducing another line of “deep” questions, it doesn’t seem to me that the Hebrew account bears the weight of “God already knowing how Abraham would react”. That comes from a Greek model of time – one that is rife with fallacious metaphors, principally about the confusion of space and time. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on this subject. Suffice it to say for now, it is no degradation of omniscience for Abraham to have an impact on the future – as do all free agents. His test of faith really is a test, not a foregone conclusion simply hidden from him.
If that is the case, and the Hebrew phenomenological verbal structure bears it out, then agency is the most powerful force in human existence – and the most serious. The Butterfly Effect is real. (to a limit which would have to be discussed in detail).
Voila. The “test” of Abraham is real. But it is a test. Therefore, as Sarna points out, it is never a question of the status of child sacrifice. The point of the Adekah is not a polemic against child sacrifice. It is a story about the depth of one man’s trust in the living God.
I am sure that this comment will cause a great deal of discussion about omniscience. I only suggest that before you go crazy with the implications, you consider the fact that the early church fathers developed the doctrine of omniscience in relation to the Greek idea of metaphysical perfection, not knowledge.
Hi Skip,
I agree, “it doesn’t seem to me that the Hebrew account bears the weight of God already knowing how Abraham would react”.
I said “I like to think” that God already knows Abraham will pass the test, but don’t see any evidence for onniscience in the text 🙂
What do you mean by agency?
Generally, an agent is someone who has the ability and the opportunity to act independently of constraint. Of course, this definition has to be refined since we are all in some respect or another constrained. But agency means that I am able to choose against the natural propensity or physical circumstances. It is the ability to do otherwise.
Okay. Thanks.
BTW I did not mean to imply that I thought Abraham was not a free agent.
As you know, The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century.
Chaucer likes to play with the idea that his characters (pilgrims on the way to Canterbury) live their lives as free agents, but their actions are in reality determined by the author (Chaucer) who like God already knows how the story ends and who can create a his own “butterfly effect” at will 🙂
I probably had something like the “picture” above in my mind.
Thanks,
Mike
As you note, even non-Messianic Jews see the enormous sacrifice inherent in the Akedah. It must (and does) shock them, knowing that their Messiah will somehow embrace the pattern of Isaac. Thank you for offering this quote. I like Sarna.
Now to your question. How could God offer up His first born? Ah, but God didn’t. His first born volunteered to be offered up. God accepted the sacrifice of the first born. It is as if Isaac had asked to be sacrificed.
There is another element here as well. Yeshua is GOD manifest in the flesh. The real mystery is how it is possible for God Himself to be sacrificed for us.
It would have been easier to understand as a lesson in self sacrifice if Yeshua had not come as God’s son, but as God Himself in Human form. But I believe the point must be, letting his son die that we would experience His victory over death. He shows us that life on earth is but a short time, but life in Him is eternal. Yeshua had to come as God’s son (seed, I also learned that son means builder) so that he could be the first fruit of the harvest. You got me going … Praise God for this community, that has the confidence to question and comment so that the truth is revealed His awesome Word lives!
I believe, brother Skip, you have rightly defined love as- “benevolence toward another at cost to myself.”
This love was demonstrated to the highest degree at Calvary. These six words are from the central and crucial verse found in John 3.16. “For G-d so loved.. He gave..” If we only could somehow become conscious of the cost of the cross. Until we contemplate the cross, we will not know the love of G-d. We do not know love like this. The demonstration of this love is foreign to our minds, to our culture and to our way of life. The binding of Isaac was voluntary, just as our later Sacrifice “lay down His life for His friends.” I’m asking G-d, through the power of His holy breath to take me to this life-giving cross and for eyes to”see Him”, wounded and bleeding, for sinners pleading, (yet we are) blind and unheeding, (He was) dying for me! Provision has been made for us to be reconciled to our Creator. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.”
Indeed Carl …. an omnipotent creator of all things …. suffering to buy our redemption with the most precious of all substances …. HIMSELF …. it is beyond human comprehension and as you aptly state can only be glimpsed through contemplation of “the cross” in and through Ruach HaKodesh!
When the nature and extent of this perfect love is appreciated it is much easier to understand why rejection of such divine reconciliation is dealt with so harshly. The severity of punishment is not due to our failures (just as our salvation is not due to our successes) but rather due to rejection of ELOHIM HIMSELF!
We read in the G-d’s Book of the past,present and future and see the words of those who reject G-d’s gift of Himself, “there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.” This is strictly a “carlism” (actually just a guess), but I see this as an eternity of regret. “How could I have been so blind not to receive the abundant provision of atonement G-d has made for me.” Abraham’s prophetic words of faith were, “G-d will provide Himself a Lamb.” This is another glimpse of the Lamb of G-d which taketh away the sins of the world. (and this is the Master theme of the entire Book- “behold, the Lamb of G-d.”!) In all covenants, the old and the new, G-d’s plan for the redemption,restoration and renewal of relationship is slowly and methodically revealed in each Bible story we encounter. Our Bible is not only history and mystery, but rich in the revealed love of the Creator toward His creation, and of the Bridegroom toward His future Bride. Our Messiah has conquered death, sin and the grave by this voluntary and vicarious Sacrifice of Himself. He became sin who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of G-d in Him. His victory is now our victory, and He allows us to be partakers of His Divine nature because of His cross.
How marvelous! How wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
How marvelous! How wonderful
is my Savior’s love for me!