Leviticus 9:10

Leviticus 9 opens on “the eighth day” (Leviticus 9:1), when the seven days in which Aaron and his sons were consecrated (Leviticus 8) had ended. God had commanded that ordination in Exodus 29, the tabernacle had just been set up, and now its regular service begins. Moses tells Aaron which offerings to bring, first for himself and then for the people, and he gives the reason: “This is the thing which the LORD commanded that ye should do: and the glory of the LORD shall appear unto you” (Leviticus 9:6). The day ends exactly so. The glory of the LORD appears to all the people, and fire comes out from before the LORD and consumes the burnt offering and the fat on the altar (Leviticus 9:23–24). Everything in these seven verses prepares for that moment, and God’s fire is his acceptance of it.

“Aaron therefore went unto the altar.” The word “therefore” ties his going to what Moses has just told him, so his first act as high priest is plain obedience. Aaron, ʼAhărôwn, is the brother of Moses, chosen by God and consecrated as Israel’s first high priest. The verb for “went” is qârab, to approach or come near, and here it is the priest coming near to the altar to serve. The altar, mizbêach, is the structure on which sacrifices were burned. This one is the altar of burnt offering that stood in the tabernacle court, made to the pattern God gave in Exodus 27:1–8. Blood was put on it, offerings were burned on it, and atonement was made there.

Two offerings follow for Aaron himself. A sin offering comes first (verses 8–11), and a burnt offering second (verses 12–14). The people’s own offerings come after these. Sin is dealt with first, and then the offering of complete devotion goes up to God.

Aaron offered for himself because the high priest was a sinful man like the people he served, and he had to be cleansed before he could bring their offerings to God. His anointing gave him an office, and he still needed atonement like everyone else. The law had already provided for this. When the anointed priest sinned, he was to bring a young bullock as a sin offering (Leviticus 4:3), and on the Day of Atonement Aaron would again offer “his bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself” (Leviticus 16:6). The words “for himself” in verse 8 make the point plainly. The one who stands between God and the people has to be made right with God first, and the high priest’s own offering shows that no one comes to God on his own merit.

The animal is a calf, ʻêgel, a young bull, which was a valuable animal to give. The law likewise called for a young bullock when the whole congregation sinned (Leviticus 4:14), so the offerings that covered a priest or the whole people were costly ones. Aaron “slew” it with his own hands. The verb shâchaṭ means to slaughter, and here, as often in the law, it is used of killing an animal in sacrifice. A life was given, and the cost of dealing with sin was there for everyone to see.

The name of the offering, chaṭṭâʼâh, is the ordinary Hebrew word for sin. The same word names the offering made for sin, and in a few places it means purification. The sin offering dealt with sins committed unintentionally and with uncleanness, so that the offerer was restored to fellowship with God and the tabernacle could stay holy with God’s people camped around it. Aaron needed that cleansing before anything else could happen on this day.

Aaron’s sons bring the blood to him in verse 9, and he does the rest himself. He dips his finger in it, ṭâbal, to dip, and puts it on the horns of the altar. Then he pours out the rest of the blood at the bottom of the altar. “Blood” stands three times in this verse, and the Hebrew behind it, dâm, is the plain word for blood.

The horns, qeren, were projections that stood up from the altar, and in Scripture a horn often speaks of strength. Putting the blood on them cleansed and consecrated the altar, so that it was fit for God’s service and for the atonement made on it. The horns of the altar were also a place of refuge. When Adonijah was afraid of Solomon, he “caught hold on the horns of the altar” (1 Kings 1:50). The blood that remained was poured out at the altar’s base, so the whole of it was given up there, handled with reverence and as God directed.

Blood stands at the center because God gave it for atonement. He told Israel, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:11). In the sacrifice, the life of the animal was given in place of the life of the one who offered it. Israel’s covenant with the LORD at Sinai had been sealed with blood, when Moses sprinkled it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant” (Exodus 24:8). The letter to the Hebrews sums up the law’s teaching: “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). Paul says that God set forth Christ “to be a propitiation through faith in his blood” (Romans 3:25), and the blood on Aaron’s altar helps us understand those words.

Verse 10 names the parts of the sin offering that went on the altar: “the fat, and the kidneys, and the caul above the liver.” The fat, cheleb, is the fat around the inner organs, counted the richest part of the animal. Israel was forbidden to eat it, and it belonged to the LORD alone. The law had already laid down these same parts for the sin offering (Leviticus 4:8–10) and for the offering at the priests’ consecration (Exodus 29:13). What went up from the altar was the best, and Proverbs gives the same rule for all of life: “Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase” (Proverbs 3:9).

“As the LORD commanded Moses” closes the verse. The LORD is Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of God, which the KJV prints as “LORD”. The phrase runs through the books of Moses, and here it confirms that Aaron did each part exactly as God had said. Israel’s worship was given by God, down to which parts of the animal were burned, and its acceptance rested on that. Samuel later told Saul, “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22). On Aaron’s first day the fat and the obedience go up together.

They were burned outside the camp because the law required it whenever a sin offering was made for the priest or for the whole congregation. The priest was to carry the rest of the bullock “without the camp” to a clean place and burn it there (Leviticus 4:11–12), and the congregation’s offering was to be burned in the same way (Leviticus 4:21). The meat of many other sin offerings was eaten by the priests in a holy place. When the sin offering was the priest’s own, nothing of it was eaten, and the flesh and even the hide were taken out and burned.

The verb in verse 11 is sâraph, to burn. When the burnt offering goes on the altar in verse 13, the verb is qâṭar, to make smoke, to turn into fragrance by fire, the word used for sending an offering up to God. So the fat of the sin offering went up from the altar, and the rest of the calf was burned away from the place where God dwelt among his people.

“Without” is chûwts, outside, and the camp, machăneh, is the place where people live in tents for a time, and by extension the company camped there. Israel’s camp had the tabernacle at its center, and it was to be kept holy because the holy God lived in its midst. “Ye shall be holy; for I am holy,” he told them (Leviticus 11:44–45). The ashes of the red heifer were likewise laid up outside the camp in a clean place (Numbers 19:9). Burning the calf there showed that the sin it was offered for was carried away from God’s dwelling and from his people.

The letter to the Hebrews applies this law to Christ: “For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate” (Hebrews 13:11–12). Jesus went out bearing his cross to Golgotha, and John records that the place was near the city (John 19:17–20). He who bore our sin was put outside, as the sin offering was. Hebrews goes on, “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach,” so the place of shame where he suffered becomes the place where his people meet him.

With the sin offering complete, Aaron kills the burnt offering. Verse 12 uses the same verb as verse 8, shâchaṭ, to slaughter. The burnt offering, ʻôlâh, takes its name from a root meaning to go up, because the whole animal, apart from its hide, was burned on the altar and went up in smoke to God. It stood for complete devotion, and it was offered for atonement as well.

Once more Aaron’s sons hand him the blood, and this time he “sprinkled” it “round about upon the altar”. The verb is zâraq, to scatter, sprinkle or toss, usually of someone scattering something by hand, so the blood was thrown against the altar on every side. The sin offering’s blood went on the horns and the base of the altar, and the burnt offering’s blood goes all around it. Each was applied where God said.

In verse 13 the sons bring the burnt offering to Aaron “with the pieces thereof, and the head”. The verb behind “presented” there is mâtsâʼ, whose usual meaning is to find or to attain, and here it is used of the pieces being brought to Aaron. The animal had been cut into its pieces as the law of the burnt offering directs (Leviticus 1:6), and the head is named so that the whole animal is accounted for. Aaron burns them on the altar, and the verb is qâṭar, to turn into smoke and fragrance by fire.

Verse 14 completes the offering. Aaron washes the inwards and the legs and burns them on top of the rest. The verb râchats means to wash or bathe, usually with water, and the inwards, qereb, are the inward parts, the middle of the animal. This too was what the law commanded: “But his inwards and his legs shall he wash in water: and the priest shall burn all on the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD” (Leviticus 1:9). The parts were made clean before they joined the rest of the offering, and then all of it went up together, with nothing held back. A psalm asks the same cleanness of those who come before God: “Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart” (Psalm 24:3–4).

The order of Aaron’s two offerings holds for God’s people in every age. Sin is dealt with first, by blood that God has provided, and then the whole life is given to him.

Aaron’s offering “for himself” is the very point at which the letter to the Hebrews sets Jesus apart from every priest before him: “For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself” (Hebrews 7:26–27). Aaron had to begin with his own sin. Jesus was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:14–16), so the whole of his offering was for us.

The blood Aaron put on the altar came from a calf. Hebrews says of Christ, “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,” and asks, “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Hebrews 9:11–14). The animal sacrifices were a shadow of what was to come, “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins” (Hebrews 10:1–4). They were repeated, and they could only point ahead. Christ came to do the Father’s will (Hebrews 10:5–7), and “we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10), “For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).

He is both the sin offering and the burnt offering. John the Baptist pointed to him as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and Peter says we were redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18–19). The burnt offering’s complete devotion is fulfilled in him as well. He “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8), and he “hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Ephesians 5:2). Through his blood we now have “boldness to enter into the holiest” (Hebrews 10:19–22), into the presence of God that Aaron’s offerings were made to approach.

These verses show a holy God who makes a way for sinners to come near him. He gave Aaron the blood, the altar and every instruction, and when Aaron had done as he was told, the glory of the LORD appeared and God’s own fire came down on the offering. They also show that service to God begins with God’s cleansing. The first high priest started his work at the altar with an offering for his own sin.

We have a better high priest than Aaron, one who needed no offering for himself and who offered himself once for all. His blood has done for us what the calf’s blood pictured, and through him the way into God’s presence is open. The burnt offering, washed and given whole, is the picture of the life that answers such mercy, the “living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God” that Paul speaks of, offered “by the mercies of God” (Romans 12:1).