Leviticus 7:13

“And this is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings” opens fresh instructions for an offering the LORD first described in Leviticus 3. The opening chapters of the book set out the burnt, grain, sin, trespass and peace offerings (Leviticus 1–7), and Leviticus 6–7 turns to the priests’ duties and to how each offering was eaten. The rules for the peace offering start here and run on to the end of the chapter (Leviticus 7:11–38). The word for law, tôwrâh, means instruction, a precept or statute, and it also names the Ten Commandments and the books of Moses. God gave these rules to Moses at Mount Sinai, for a people he had brought out of Egypt to live with him around the tabernacle.

The peace offering is the shelem, a word that means requital, a voluntary sacrifice in thanks. It is related to shalom, peace in its full sense of wholeness, well-being and a right relationship. The burnt offering was wholly consumed on the altar, and the sin and trespass offerings dealt with atonement for wrongs done (Leviticus 4). The peace offering celebrated peace with God. Its fat was burned on the altar for the LORD, the priests received their portions, and the offerer ate the rest with his household and his guests. Among the major sacrifices this was the one that gave meat back to the worshipper, so that he ate in the presence of the God he worshipped. Moses told Israel of the place God would choose, “ye shall eat before the LORD your God, and ye shall rejoice” (Deuteronomy 12:5–7), and when the covenant was confirmed at Sinai the elders of Israel “saw God, and did eat and drink” (Exodus 24:11).

Verse 11 says the Israelite “shall offer” this sacrifice “unto the LORD”. The verb is qârab, to bring near, so every peace offering was a way of drawing near to God. The name used is Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD, God’s own covenant name, and the meal is shared with the God who bound himself to Israel. The offering was usually brought by choice, and the law gives three occasions for it: thanksgiving in verse 12, and a vow or a freewill offering in verse 16.

The first kind is the offering “for a thanksgiving”. The word tôwdâh means confession, thanksgiving, or a thank offering, and it comes from yâdâh, to throw or cast, as a hand is held out. It is thanks said aloud, owning before others what God has done. An Israelite brought it when God had answered his prayer, healed his sickness, or carried him through danger or a hard journey. The psalmist calls the redeemed to it: “And let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and declare his works with rejoicing” (Psalm 107:22).

The thank offering came with bread of four kinds. There were unleavened cakes mingled with oil, unleavened wafers anointed with oil, cakes of fine flour mingled with oil and fried, and leavened bread besides. The unleavened bread is matstsâh, thin bread made without yeast, and the cakes are challâh. “Mingled” is bâlal, to mix, so the oil was worked into the dough before baking. The oil, shemen, was olive oil, and the word comes from a root meaning to be fat. The wafers, râqîyq, were thin flat breads, and “anointed” translates mâshach, to smear or rub with oil, which here describes wafers spread with oil after baking. The third kind was made of çôleth, fine flour ground from the inner kernel of the wheat, the best flour there was. “Fried” is râbak, dough soaked in oil or cooked in a pan. All of it was rich food carefully made for a feast, and the thankful worshipper brought his best.

Unleavened bread recalls the night Israel ate it with the Passover lamb (Exodus 12:8), and leaven is often a picture of corruption in Scripture, so the unleavened cakes fitly picture thanks that is sincere and pure. Oil was used to anoint priests and kings and to light the lampstand of the tabernacle, and many believers see in it a picture of the Holy Spirit.

From all he brought, the worshipper was to give “one out of the whole oblation for an heave offering unto the LORD”. “Oblation” is qorbân, an offering, literally something brought near, the noun that comes from qârab. Here it means the whole of what the worshipper brought, and “one” most likely means one cake or loaf of each kind of bread. The heave offering, tᵉrûwmâh, takes its name from a root meaning to lift up or raise. It was presented to the LORD first and then given to the priest, so his food came to him from God’s hand.

This portion went to “the priest’s that sprinkleth the blood of the peace offerings”. The verb zâraq means to scatter, sprinkle or toss, and the priest scattered the blood on the altar. That was the most solemn act of the sacrifice, for “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11), and the priest who did it shared in the meal that followed. The priests had no share in the land, and the LORD told Aaron, “I am thy part and thine inheritance among the children of Israel” (Numbers 18:20). God fed them from the offerings, as he did from the grain offering (Leviticus 2:3), so that they could give themselves wholly to his service. Paul rests on the same rule when he writes, “Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14), and he tells those who are taught the word to share good things with the one who teaches them (Galatians 6:6).

The meat of a thank offering “shall be eaten the same day that it is offered”, and the worshipper was to leave none of it “until the morning”. The word for day, yôwm, means a day or a span of time, and “the same day” sets a firm limit. With a whole animal to eat, that made for a large meal shared with family and guests before the day was out.

A vow or a freewill offering had a little longer. It was eaten on the day of the sacrifice, “and on the morrow also the remainder of it shall be eaten”. The sacrifice is zebach, a slaughter, the animal killed and its meat. A vow, neder, is a solemn promise made to God, or the thing promised, often made while asking for his help, and God requires that it be paid (Deuteronomy 23:21–23). A psalm sets thanksgiving and vows side by side: “Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High” (Psalm 50:14). A freewill offering, nᵉdâbâh, is a gift given spontaneously out of a willing heart, with nothing owed. Israel brought vows and freewill offerings beside the sacrifices of their set feasts (Numbers 29:39). The verb for eating, ʼâkal, is the everyday word “to eat”, and it runs all through these rules because the offering was a meal.

Verse 17 marks the end: “the remainder of the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day shall be burnt with fire.” yâthar means to remain or be left over, shᵉlîyshîy is the ordinal “third”, sâraph means to burn, and ʼêsh is fire. Whatever was left was burned, so that meat once brought to the LORD was destroyed before it could rot or be handled as common food. The Passover lamb was kept by a similar rule: “And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire” (Exodus 12:10).

If any of the meat “be eaten at all on the third day”, the whole offering is lost: “it shall not be accepted, neither shall it be imputed unto him that offereth it”. “Imputed” is châshab, to think, regard, value or compute, so the offering would be counted to the worshipper’s credit in no way at all, as if it had never been brought. The meat becomes “an abomination”, piggûwl, a word from a root meaning to stink. It means foul, and so ceremonially unclean and abhorrent. The person who eats it “shall bear his iniquity”, carrying his own guilt before God and answering for it.

Eating a day late could look like a small slip, and God calls it an abomination. Holy things are received on his terms, and a worshipper who keeps them past the time God set has begun to treat them as his own. Scripture shows the same in Cain, whose offering the LORD did not respect (Genesis 4:5), in Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli, who treated the LORD’s offerings with contempt (1 Samuel 2:12–17), and in the priests of Malachi’s day who despised the LORD’s table (Malachi 1:7–8).

Verse 19 guards the meat: “the flesh that toucheth any unclean thing shall not be eaten; it shall be burnt with fire”. bâsâr is flesh, here the meat of the offering, and ṭâmêʼ is unclean, a state of religious impurity that makes a person or thing unfit for holy use. Meat that touched something unclean was burned like the leftovers of the third day. Uncleanness spread by touch, as Haggai’s question to the priests shows: “If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean” (Haggai 2:13).

The same verse opens the meal wide: “all that be clean shall eat thereof”. ṭâhôwr, clean, means free from contamination and fit for holy things. Every clean person in the household and among the guests could share the meat, and uncleanness was the one thing that kept anyone away.

Verse 20 guards the people who eat. “The soul” is nephesh, a breathing creature, life, self or person, and here it means the whole person at the meal. “His uncleanness” is ṭumʼâh, religious uncleanness or defilement as the law counts it. The meat is called the flesh of peace offerings “that pertain unto the LORD”: people ate it, and it still belonged to God.

Verse 21 names how a person becomes unclean, by touching (nâgaʻ, to touch, reach or strike) “the uncleanness of man, or any unclean beast, or any abominable unclean thing”. The uncleanness of man came from bodily discharges and skin disease (Leviticus 12–15) and from contact with a corpse (Numbers 19:11–22). An unclean beast was any animal the food laws of Leviticus 11 called unclean, and “any abominable unclean thing” gathers up everything else that defiles. Whoever touched any of these and then ate of the peace offering was cut off as well.

These laws taught Israel to put a difference between the holy and the common, and between unclean and clean (Leviticus 10:10). God first said, “Ye shall be holy; for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44–45), and Peter repeats it to the church (1 Peter 1:15–16). Hebrews calls us to follow peace and holiness, “without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). Israel saw how serious it is to come near to God carelessly when Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu died before the LORD after offering unauthorized fire (Leviticus 10:1–2).

The law that gave this offering had “a shadow of good things to come” (Hebrews 10:1–10), and Jesus Christ is the reality it pointed to. “For he is our peace”, Paul writes, and through his blood those who were far off are brought near and have access by one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:13–18). God has made “peace through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20), and “being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), a lamb “without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:19), as pure as the unleavened bread of verse 12. God gives him the Spirit without measure (John 3:34), and many believers see him pictured in the oil of the cakes.

The priest who sprinkled the blood points to Christ, our great high priest, through whom we come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:14–16). By his own blood he entered once into the holy place, obtained eternal redemption, and purges our conscience (Hebrews 9:11–14), so that we have boldness to enter the holiest (Hebrews 10:19–22). “For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:10–14). The meat of the old offering lasted a day or two before it had to be burned, and his sacrifice keeps its power for ever. He laid down his life of his own will (John 10:18), the truest freewill offering. The leftovers of the peace offering were burned on the third day, and on the third day Christ rose from the dead (Luke 24:46), for God would not suffer “thine Holy One to see corruption” (Acts 2:27).

Verse 18 says that the one who eats wrongly “shall bear his iniquity”, and Christ “his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). The unclean were kept from the meal and cut off from the people, and our sins separate us from God (Isaiah 59:2). Jesus put out his hand and touched a leper, and the leper was made clean (Mark 1:41). His blood makes his people clean, and in Revelation a great multitude has “washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14). He promises, “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).

The meal goes on in him. Jesus calls himself “the bread of life” (John 6:35) and says that whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life (John 6:53–58). Our fellowship “is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). At the Lord’s Supper the church shares a meal that remembers his sacrifice, and Paul warns that whoever eats and drinks it unworthily brings judgment on himself, so each one examines himself first (1 Corinthians 11:27–29). The thank offering lives on too: “By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name” (Hebrews 13:15–16), and the same passage counts doing good and sharing as sacrifices that please God. We present our bodies “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God” (Romans 12:1–2). We are a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices (1 Peter 2:5) and a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9), and in everything our requests go up to God with thanksgiving, with the peace of God keeping our hearts (Philippians 4:6–7).

In these verses God sets a table. He lets a thankful Israelite bring his finest flour and his best animal, gives part to the altar and part to the priest, and hands the rest back for the worshipper to eat with his family and friends before the LORD. Thanks in Israel was a feast, eaten on the very day the blessing was celebrated, and the bread on the table included the ordinary loaves of home.

The same law shows the holiness of the LORD. The meat on the worshipper’s plate still belonged to God, its times were fixed by him, and the clean were the ones who sat down to eat. Christ is now our peace, his blood makes us clean, and his sacrifice keeps its power for ever. So the passage shows us a God who welcomes his people to eat with him in joy, and whose table is holy, and in Christ we have both.