The Order of Sacrifice
“Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When any man of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of animals from the herd or the flock.’” Leviticus 1:2 NASB
Of you – Do you remember Kushner’s comment about word order in translation? (see November 10, 2015). She noted that “In the Hebrew Bible, a verb often appears before a noun; . . . For translators, this one seemingly small difference in sentence structure can create big problems, because once the order of a sentence is altered, the meaning can be up for grabs too.”[1] Jonathan Sacks points to this mistake in Leviticus 1:2. The translators have moved the phrase, “of you,” from its original position in the sentence. In Hebrew the prepositional phrase is attached to the word “sacrifice,” not “man.” The literal translation says, “When any man brings a sacrifice of you.” Sacks notes that the rabbis consider this original word order to mean that we bring ourselves in the sacrifice. “The real sacrifice is mikem, ‘of you.’ We give God something of ourselves.”[2] Changing the word order significantly alters the meaning of the text.
Did you realize that sacrifice is about you, not about the animal that is merely the symbol of you? Once you embrace the real word order of the text, is it still possible to imagine that sacrifice is a legal requirement annulled by the death of Yeshua on the cross? How could that be if the sacrifice is really you? Doesn’t this change everything? Doesn’t this mean that sacrifice, in whatever form it is offered, cannot cease until you no longer need to present yourself before the Lord? Yes, the Temple is not standing, but does that really make any difference at all to the intention and significance of sacrifice? Yes, Temple sacrifices have been temporarily halted and rabbinic teaching has substituted study and charity, but does that alter the real purpose? Aren’t you and I still the ones who symbolically must climb onto the altar and be burned? What difference does the process make, other than to be as close as possible to the instructions of YHVH?
How disappointing to discover that the translation of the text changes the intention of the ritual! What happened to us? Why were we so willing to make sacrifice something external to us, something that involved merely following ritual directions? Didn’t we hear His voice telling us that He hates the stink of bulls? Sacrifice was never about the animal, was it? Sometimes it seems as if we have clouded the text so much that we can barely see the face of YHVH in the darkness of the translation. And how will we ever remove the cover-up? How can we as English readers ever find our way through the layers of translation revisions in order to really know what the Lord of all creation says to us? Oh, some days we just want to throw up our hands and plead, “Lord, oh Lord, the God I love, how can I ever know You when men have so carefully disguised You from me? Help me, Father, to diligently uncover your true voice.”
Topical Index: sacrifice, of you, Leviticus 1:2
[1] Aviya Kushner, The Grammar of God, p. 27.
[2] Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation, p. 80.
I think we can begin to find our way through the layers by reading books like The Grammar of God, grappling with the posts and comments on this blog, and slowing down to really study and meditate upon His word. There are days the task seems too daunting to even begin, and then there are days where the excitement of finding and experiencing treasure overflows. Thank you for bringing Ms. Kushner’s book to our attention. It is a great explanation, through beautiful memoirs completely devoid of condescension, of the paradigmatic difference between Hebraic and Greek thought. It moved me. I will read it again.
“Sacrifice was never about the animal, was it?”
….. or as Heschel says of mitzvoth, “the goal is not that a ceremony be performed, it is that man be transformed.”
Absolutely!!! It has been the cry of my heart and my near undoing at times, to know that I read but do no see and listen but do not hear! What a sad state we live in, so far removed from the text we cling to for the very source of our understanding. Frustration can be overwhelming. I am only now learning Hebrew so for those of us who don’t know the language we are left nearly helpless in our endeavor to study the scriptures. Add our cultural and historical world view differences from those who wrote and read the original and we seem hopeless to understand anything in the Word. Have mercy on us Father!
…and all the sheep and cattle on a thousand hills shout: AMEN!!!
I hope you have prepared an answer to your question posed Skip! Every day I want to cry ‘madness’ Lord! My ‘time alone’ with God seems to have become an endeavor of searching on the internet for Qal form, imperfect/perfect, what tense, what precedes and what follows the primary root, and watch out for an understanding of poetry, sarcasm, on and on. Forget what I understood yesterday, today is a whole new ballgame of cartoon figures that each have a triple meaning and I don’t know why it needs to be declared proto and paleo. I feel stuck in a scholarly endurance run of understanding. I feel like I know more about how it happened than I do about what happened.
Then I see that ‘chesed’ was replaced tens of times by ‘mercy’, ‘kindness’ and other static terms that defy the true dynamics of this Hebrew word we could never grasp, unless our King tells a story of our hated enemy displaying it on the side of a road, and admonishes us to engage such as this, by doing the same. And this word ‘chesed’ shows up as mercy, kindness, compassion, depending on which version I am reading…but to that sage Yeshua spoke to, it had was probably ‘chesed’ qualified by an inadequate Greek term or was it? And I think, is that what Abraham and those who followed had in their hearts that pointed them out as God’s people? Is that the ‘light’ the world needs to see in us, in me? “Do this”… chesed.
It’s the same thing in the oral/ written, Phoenician, post Babylonian Block, ancient/current Hebrew, Latin, English, on any of the ten pages I have open on the computer.
And then…without computers, without 53 (?) different versions of ‘God’s written word’, without men who have handfuls of PhD’s (no offense meant Skip) without thousands of years of midrash, commentary, rabbi’s and sages…Abraham.
I’m left with only one question, WHAT?
Ah, you feel like I do. I think I need to move closer to Abraham and away from all the compounded information. The question is HOW.
Or we could just go read Romans chapter 6, which seems to me to be a midrash (I hope I am using that word right) that overlays what a Jew would have already understood about substitutionary sacrifice and the role blood played in a life for a life; mikvahs, or ritual washing (baptism), and the necessity of the removal of sin to draw near to God with what Yeshua came to do for us. What is so hard to understand?
Yeshua is the only way and means in which we’re able to be made righteous and stand before a Holy God. All sacrifices point to Him and what He did. I think the text is clear enough, even in translation, we know we’re to turn from our wicked ways, and return to His. As Paul tells us over and over, “in Messiah Yeshua”.
Yes, I agree with you, Laurita. I honestly don’t think it’s hard to understand.
The simple isn’t hard. It’s the complex that’s difficult.
Yes I agree,Skip. But, wouldn’t you say we sometimes get lost in the need to figure it all out over the simplicity to DO what we know we should be? Even from what the plain reading of much of what the text tells us?
Yes,indeed. The simple message is simple enough for everyone to take the necessary steps. But this “simple” message is also complex enough, deep enough, rich enough to keep us exploring for the rest of our lives. “Simple” faith may be sufficient to start the process, but it won’t satisfy one who searches for the truth.
Sometimes I think that all of the education in the world is not enough to truly understand God’s words to us. I can see where that too, can become a burden.
I am sure there is a reason why scripture says knowledge puffs us up. And no, I am not against education at all. I think the puffing up has a lot to do with the person’s attitude of life and why they have the education.
Scripture also says that the words are given to the simple (faith like a child) and not to the complex folks of the day.
It is possible for those who do not know Torah to do Torah-Paul says so.
I often feel as though I need to back off the complex and trying to wade thru so much translation and the like and get simple. Do what is right and take care of the widows and orphans. Make chesed a natural part of my daily life. We all have a propensity to do evil. We must learn to take every thought captive and use that power within for things that please Y-H. Self worship must be put outside the gates so to speak!
It is the paradigms that I have grown up with that so stymie my thinking! I am learning to question most everything and to think for myself. Most of all, to speak with God regularly about everything!
Awesome thought-provoking post!
Yes, the sacrifice is about us offering ourselves. We also wash ourselves with the water of the word. And what of those who will not do either? They get eventually thrown into the lake of fire. Yet, we find that they are those who must remain outside the new Jerusalem. Indeed, it is better to offer ourselves to God daily so we can eventually enter in.
Here Am I
The Prayer of Presentation
~ I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God ~
~ they gave themselves first to the LORD ~
I am thine, O LORD, I have heard Thy voice,
and it told Thy love to me;
but I long to rise in the arms of faith
and be closer drawn to Thee.
Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed LORD,
to the cross where Thou hast died.
Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer, blessed LORD,
to Thy precious, bleeding side.
Consecrate me now to Thy service, LORD,
by the power of grace divine;
Let my soul look up with a steadfast hope,
and my will be lost in Thine.
O the pure delight of a single hour
that before Thy throne I spend,
when I kneel in prayer, and with Thee, my God,
I commune as friend with Friend!
There are depths of love that I cannot know
till I cross the narrow sea;
there are heights of joy that I may not reach
till I rest in peace with Thee.
Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed LORD,
to the cross where Thou hast died.
Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer, blessed LORD,
to Thy precious, bleeding side.
~ Draw near to God and He will draw near to you ~
“Come unto Me..” all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of [directly from] Me.. for I AM meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
I appreciate what you are doing, Dr. Skip. You and a few other authors have opened up the Bible for me in a way that makes it alive and relatable. I believe part of what you are trying to do, although certainly not all, is trying to make us see that our understanding of the Word from our Western paradigm is similar to saying someone in Russia reading Faulkner is going to have the same understanding as someone in the United States reading him. Or break it down even more and say someone in California is going to have the same understanding as someone in Mississippi. And that’s just last century.
Some things are very straightforward, but I’m certainly on this intriguing journey of understanding more.
Does what the cross meant have to be an either or situation? Could it have multiple meanings? If what it means to me is different than what it means to someone else, does that negate my “experience” or theirs?
Are people trying to say that what Billy Graham did was all in vain. I really appreciated what his daughter-in-law had to say and your response.
Maybe you could elaborate more on sacrifice and what that means in our time. And what are you saying about the world to come?
Is YHVH big enough for all of us?
Ack! This post speaks to my biggest frustration. I am never quite sure if what I’m reading is what was actually written. And, apart from learning Hebrew (any classes around here?), I feel hobbled in my ability to really get into the meat. So, thank you Skip and all you commenters, who take me places where I haven’t yet learned to go, and who help me to see the complexity of the text and the richness of His word.