Blood Sacrifice: Some Considerations

And he turned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen and slaughtered them and cooked their flesh, using the implements of the oxen, and gave it to the people, and they ate.  Then he rose up and followed Eliyahu, and became his servant. 1 Malakim 19:21 (1 Kings 19:21 – Institute for Scripture Research)

Slaughtered – The calling and commissioning of Elisha is a pivotal point in Israel’s history.  The great prophet Elijah (Eliyahu in Hebrew – as above) will depart.  His leadership is passed to Elisha.  But before Elisha steps into place, he does two things.  First, he says goodbye to his parents and he offers a sacrifice.  The Hebrew verb zabah is the usual verb for slaughtering, whether it is an act of a butcher or a priest.  In spite of the assumption that the process is carefully regulated, little is actually known from Scriptures about the details of sacrificial slaughter.  What we know comes from associations with other verbs, poetic verses and narrative.  Most of the time, the text recounts a sacrifice but the actual procedure is assumed to be understood by the audience.  But in this passage, we are given a glimpse of at least some of the sacrificial routine.

Here’s what we learn.  The animal is taken (laqah) and slaughtered (zabah).  It is cooked (bashal) and given (nathan) to the participants who eat (achal) the flesh.  Then the people get up (qum) and go (halach).  Sometimes this process is connected to an invitation or call and to the pouring out of blood (shaphakh).  As you can see, this narrative recounts a basic outline of the process, not the details.  Everything we know about the proper procedure of animal sacrifice comes from other sources especially the oral Torah.  A careful study of the verb zabah reveals some extraordinarily interesting facts.  The noun derived from this verb is connected with many different kinds of sacrifice, not just animal slaughtering.  In the ancient world, only Egypt followed similar patterns of sacrifice including the slaughter and communal meal.  There is no such pattern in Mesopotamia.  This helps us see the reason why the children of Israel did not require Scripture to spell out the process after they left Egypt, but it raises a question about the occurrences of the sacrificial ritual in Genesis, especially since Abraham’s ancestry came from Mesopotamia.  However, when we look, we find zabah in only two verse in Genesis (31:54 and 46:1) and in both cases the phrase is zabah zebhah, a Hebrew pun (to sacrifice sacrifices).  In other words, there is no reason for us to conclude that the sacrifices in Genesis have anything to do with animals.  The word used to describe God’s action following the sin of Adam and Havvah is not zabah but rather asah (to do or make).  God made garments of skins, but do we assume too much to conclude this means God “sacrificed” animals in order to obtain the skins?  All the text really says is that God made them.

Two other considerations are important.  First we need to understand the purpose of the sacrificial meal in surrounding cultures.  In Egyptian religious practice, sacrifice was a symbolic representation of eating your enemy, the enemy of your god.  Furthermore, the balance of the cosmos depended on this symbolic conquering since the meal served as a link between the living and the dead.  Mesopotamian pagan religions surrounding Israel believed that the meal associated with the cult was necessary for the provision of the gods.  The gods depended on the meal for their food.  In Phoenicia animal sacrifices were part of religious practice and eating the sacrifice meant participating in the life of the god.  This idea finds its way into ancient Greek culture in the concept of thysia, a practice where the ingestion of the ritual sacrifice was the occasion of involvement with the god.  There are some New Testament passages that show just how the Jews reacted to these pagan practices (consider, for example, the response to Yeshua’s comment in John 6:52-60).  Perhaps the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation is more Greek than we imagine.

Secondly, pesach is a form of zabah, originating in Egypt.  This explains why so little detailed instruction is needed.  Egyptian culture provided the context.  All that was needed was the alteration to make the practice part of the worship of YHWH.  When Moses came to Pharaoh and asked that the people be freed to go into the wilderness to worship and sacrifice to YHWH, both men understood the cultural process.  It is not too far fetched to say that Abraham could not have made that request.  If we look carefully at pesach, we discover that even though there is an animal sacrifice, the meaning of the ritual revolves around God’s saving act resulting in establishing family, solidarity and community.  Israel is the one passed over and that includes anyone in the house.  Unlike Egyptian religion, Israel’s experience with sacrifice does not involve mythological legend.  It is derived from a real event, an event that marks a decisive point in history.

What have we learned from this little exploration?  Perhaps we have learned that culture has a great deal more influence on the way God chooses to communicate than we thought.  If animal sacrifice comes to Israel after Egypt, and there is no record of animal sacrifice in Mesopotamia, then we see once again that God takes what the culture has defiled and turns it into an expression of righteousness.  Perhaps we also have discovered that the doctrine of the eucharist that dominated the Christian church under Rome for fifteen centuries really finds its roots in Greek pagan religion, not in pesach.  And finally, maybe we have uncovered just how little we really knew about our own religious heritage and how influential our assumptions are in blinding us to the truth.