Leviticus 9:15

These verses belong to the day the tabernacle’s public worship began. The tabernacle had just been built and set up at the foot of Mount Sinai (Exodus 35–40), the dwelling place of God among his people (Exodus 40). God had already given the instructions for consecrating the priests (Exodus 29), and Aaron and his sons had spent seven days being set apart for their office (Leviticus 8). Leviticus 9 records the eighth day, when they act as priests for the first time.

Aaron begins with himself. Moses tells him what to bring, and Aaron offers a sin offering and a burnt offering for his own sin before he does anything for the nation (Leviticus 9:1–14). A priest who stands between God and the people has to be clean himself. Our passage opens at the moment he turns from his own offerings to theirs, and it closes with his blessing. Straight afterwards the glory of the LORD appears to all the people and fire comes out from before the LORD and consumes what is on the altar (Leviticus 9:23–24), which is God’s own answer that the worship has been accepted.

Aaron “brought the people’s offering”. The verb is qârab, which means to approach, or to bring something near. The priest’s work is to bring the people’s offering near to God on their behalf, and the first thing he brings near is the goat for their sin.

The word for sin offering, chaṭṭâʼâh, means sin itself and also the offering made for sin. When the KJV says Aaron “offered it for sin”, the Hebrew uses the related verb châṭâʼ, the ordinary verb “to sin”, which here has the sense of making a sin offering, or purifying. The offering takes its name from the thing it deals with. Its work was to cleanse as well as to forgive, because God was living among his people in the tabernacle and their sin defiled the place where he dwelt. Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement, shows the sin offering cleansing the sanctuary itself from the sins of Israel.

This offering is for “the people” as a whole. Sin belongs to a community as well as to each person in it, and the whole nation needed atonement before it could worship. The animal dies in the people’s place, and its blood is shed, for “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). On the Day of Atonement the same truth is acted out with a second goat, over which the sins of Israel are confessed before it carries them away into the wilderness (Leviticus 16:21–22).

The burnt offering is the ʻôlâh, a word that comes from a root meaning to go up. The whole animal was burned on the altar, apart from the hide, which went to the priest, and it went up to God in smoke. Other offerings were shared as food, but this one was given over entirely. It stood for complete surrender and devotion to God, and it made atonement in a general way. The law for it is given in Leviticus 1, which begins with the animal the worshipper must bring (Leviticus 1:3).

Aaron “offered it”, and the verb is ʻâsâh, the broad Hebrew word for doing or making. He did the offering, which takes in every step of it: the slaughter, the blood, the preparing of the pieces and the laying of them on the altar.

He did it “according to the manner”. The word is mishpâṭ, which means a verdict or judgment, and from there an ordinance, a custom or the due order of a thing. Aaron carried out the burnt offering in the order God had laid down. This short phrase carries one of the great lessons of Leviticus, that God is approached on his own terms. Israel was warned at length what disobedience would bring (Deuteronomy 28), and the very next chapter shows how serious this is, when Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu offer “strange fire” and die before the LORD (Leviticus 10:1–2). Jesus teaches the same principle for our worship when he says that those who worship God “must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).

The third animal sacrifice is the peace offering, and for it Aaron slays a bullock and a ram. The word is shelem, which is related to shalom, the Hebrew word for peace in its fullest sense of wholeness, well-being and harmony. The peace offering celebrated a good relationship with God. It could be brought in thanksgiving, to keep a vow or simply as a freewill gift (Leviticus 3:1–17). It was the one sacrifice in which the worshipper ate: the fat went to the altar, a share went to the priests, and the rest became a meal eaten before God. Here it is offered “for the people”, the whole nation together.

“Slew” translates shâchaṭ, the Hebrew verb for slaughtering an animal. Aaron does this with his own hands, and then his sons hand him the blood, so that the whole priestly family works together in good order. Aaron “sprinkled” the blood on the altar round about. The verb, zâraq, means to scatter, sprinkle or toss, so the blood was thrown against the sides of the altar.

The blood matters because of what God says about it: “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” (Leviticus 17:11). A life is given in place of the worshipper’s life, and God himself appointed this as the way of atonement.

Verse 19 lists what was taken from the bullock and the ram for the altar. The word for fat, cheleb, means the rich inner fat of the animal, and it also stands for the best or choicest part of anything. The list is exact:

• The rump, ʼalyâh, is the heavy, fatty tail of the sheep kept in that part of the world, which was prized as a delicacy.
• That which covereth the inwards, mᵉkaççeh, is the layer of fat that covers the inner organs.
• The kidneys, kilyâh, lie wrapped in fat. The same word is used in Scripture for a person’s inmost self.
• The caul above the liver is the yôthereth, the lobe or flap that hangs on the liver, kâbêd, a word that names the liver as the heaviest of the organs.

The same portions were burned when the priests themselves were consecrated (Exodus 29:13). The law of the peace offering states the reason in a few words, “all the fat is the LORD’s” (Leviticus 3:16), and Israel was forbidden to eat it (Leviticus 3:17, Leviticus 7:23–25). The richest part of the animal went to God, which set Israel’s worship apart from that of the nations, where the worshippers might eat the fat themselves or give it to their gods. It is the principle behind the firstfruits as well: “The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the LORD thy God” (Exodus 23:19), and “Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase” (Proverbs 3:9). God is worthy of the best, and his people give it to him first.

In verse 20 “they”, Aaron’s sons, lay the fat on the breasts of the animals, and “he”, Aaron, burns the fat on the altar. The breast, châzeh, was the cut that would go to the priests, so the LORD’s portion is carried on the priests’ portion and then given to the fire before the priests receive anything. “Burnt” is again qâṭar, the verb used for the handful of grain: the fat is turned to smoke as an act of worship.

Two cuts of the peace offerings are kept back from the fire, the breasts and the right shoulder. The word translated “shoulder”, shôwq, means the leg or thigh, so the cut in view is the right thigh. Aaron “waved” them. The verb nûwph means to move something to and fro or up and down, and the noun tᵉnûwphâh, “wave offering”, comes from it. Holding the pieces out and moving them before the altar was a sign that they were meant for God.

He waves them “before the LORD”. The word is pânîym, face, and from there presence, and the name is Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of the God of Israel. The pieces are presented in his presence as his. Then he gives them to his priests as their food (Leviticus 7:30–34), as he had said at their consecration (Exodus 29:24–28) and would say again: “all the wave offerings of the children of Israel: I have given them unto thee” (Numbers 18:11). The priests gave their whole time to the service of the tabernacle, and God fed them from his own table.

The verse closes with “as Moses commanded”. The verb tsâvâh means to enjoin or appoint, and the name Môsheh is Moses, through whom God gave all these instructions. Obeying Moses was obeying God. The phrase runs through the account of the tabernacle. When the tabernacle was set up, “Thus did Moses: according to all that the LORD commanded him, so did he” (Exodus 40:16), and Moses numbered the Levites “according to the word of the LORD, as he was commanded” (Numbers 3:16). Worship that God accepts is worship that follows what he has said.

With the offerings made, Aaron, ʼAhărôwn, the brother of Moses and Israel’s first high priest, turns to the people. He “lifted up” his hand, and the verb nâsâʼ means to lift, carry or bear. The KJV has “hand”, and the gesture is usually understood as both hands raised over the congregation. Raised hands were the posture of prayer and of solemn blessing, and they showed that the blessing came through Aaron from God above.

He “blessed them”. The verb bârak is used both of people blessing God in worship and of God blessing people with good. A priest’s blessing was spoken on God’s behalf, a declaration of God’s favour over his people. This verse does not record the words Aaron used. The LORD later gives Aaron and his sons the words with which to bless Israel, beginning “The LORD bless thee, and keep thee” (Numbers 6:24–26).

Then Aaron “came down”, yârad, the plain verb for going down. He comes down from the altar, the raised place of sacrifice, to the level of the people, because his work there is finished.

Everything Aaron does here points forward to Jesus. The law had “a shadow of good things to come”, and its sacrifices had to be repeated year after year because “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins” (Hebrews 10:1–4). Christ is the reality the shadow was cast by.

He is the sin offering. John the Baptist calls him “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and God set him forth “to be a propitiation through faith in his blood” (Romans 3:25). He is the burnt offering, wholly given, who came saying “Lo, I come ... to do thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7), the Son who came to fulfil the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17). He gave himself “an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Ephesians 5:2). And he is our peace offering: “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1), “for he is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14).

He is also the priest, and a better one than Aaron. Aaron had to offer for his own sins before he could offer for the people. Jesus had no sin of his own to offer for, and he offered himself once (Hebrews 7:27). He entered the holy place “by his own blood”, “having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:11–12), and his blood cleanses the conscience itself (Hebrews 9:14). He appeared once “to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26), and by that one offering he has perfected his people for ever, so that the animal sacrifices have come to their end (Hebrews 10:10–14).

Aaron came down from the altar when the work was done, and Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30). Aaron then blessed the people, and Christ, with his sacrifice complete, blesses his people from heaven. In him God has blessed us “with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3). Risen and exalted, he is at the right hand of God, where he makes intercession for us (Romans 8:34) and lives for ever to do so (Hebrews 7:25), and from there he has poured out the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:33).

This passage gives us the order in which God deals with his people, and it is good news. He provides the sacrifice, he accepts it, and then he blesses. Our standing with him rests on an offering he appointed and Christ made, so we have a great high priest and can “come boldly unto the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:14–16), drawing near “by the blood of Jesus” with a true heart (Hebrews 10:19–22).

The offerings themselves have been fulfilled, and what they stood for is still our worship. The burnt offering becomes a whole life given to God, as Paul urges when he asks us to present our bodies “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God” (Romans 12:1). The grain offering and the peace offering become thanks and generosity: “the sacrifice of praise to God continually”, and doing good and sharing, “for with such sacrifices God is well pleased” (Hebrews 13:15–16). The fat on the altar teaches that God is given the best and given it first. And the care Aaron took “according to the manner” shows that reverence for God includes doing what he has said.

Aaron’s raised hands belong to us in another way too. God’s people are now “an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5), “a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9). Those who have been blessed through the sacrifice of Christ are sent to carry that blessing to others.