Sacrificial Lambs

For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly practice justice between a person and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the stranger, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, nor follow other gods to your own ruin, then I will let you live in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever. Jeremiah 7:5-7 NASB

Not shed – Don’t pour out innocent blood.  Basically, that’s the meaning of the verb שָׁפַך (šāpak) pour, pour out.^[1]  It’s the same verb used to describe pouring water, emptying a container, and pouring the oil of consecration on a subject.  “. . . the pouring of blood, constitutes the single most frequent use of the verb. In this connection it may be used in the ordinary sense of pouring, almost always as a part of the sacrificial ritual. More often it is used of the pouring out of a man’s lifeblood, i.e., the shedding of blood. Thus in Num 35:33 God states that unpunished bloodshed (šāpak) pollutes the land.”^[2]  But notice that the qualified is “innocent” blood (nāqîʾ), not the blood of the guilty.  The Hebrew term means more than legally innocent.  It entails the blameless, the pure, and the spotless.  Even our modern judicial systems decry execution of those who are not guilty.  The biblical idea, however, does not set aside capital punishment for those who are guilty.

However, verses like this create a potential problem.  Sacrifice expects the shedding of innocent blood.  In fact, it demands it.  How can the same cultic procedures that demand sacrifices be of spotless animals also insist that the shedding of innocent blood pollutes the land and the people in it?  The answer seems to be not that animal blood is less important than human blood.  Both represent life.  The answer is that spilling innocent blood in an animal sacrifice underscores the deliberate seriousness of the offense.  Pouring out innocent blood is one of the disqualifying acts, one of the sins that forces God to remove the people from their promised inheritance, and so, every time an animal sacrifice is performed, the people are reminded of their contingent relationship with God.  The relationship isn’t contingent from His point of view.  He is committed to Israel and His commitment does not waver, but Israel must also demonstrate commitment, and when they don’t, consequences incur.  Sacrifice is the visual, visceral reminder of just how serious this commitment needs to be.  Sacrifice isn’t just ritual, cultic practice.  It’s life-taking!  It’s blood on the hands, feeling the life drain from the innocent animal, knowing that our lives are just as contingent, just as fragile, just as temporal were it not for God sustaining us.  Killing the animal is meant to shake us to the core, to impress on us the sober reality of our connection to God.  That’s why the Passover lamb is first a family pet, and then a family pardon.  To shed innocent blood under any other circumstances except sacrifice as God instructs, and only for animals, never human beings who are the image of God, is not just to illicitly take life, it is to steal from God because life belongs to Him.  When sacrifices stopped, we lost something.  We lost the solemnity, the significance of living.  Some day, maybe, we’ll get it back.

Topical Index:  pour out, shed, šāpak, sacrifice, life, Jeremiah 7:5-7

^[1] Austel, H. J. (1999). 2444 שָׁפַך. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 949). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[2] Austel, H. J. (1999). 2444 שָׁפַך. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 950). Chicago: Moody Press.