Worship and the nations

Jewish Seasons, Sacrifices and Oblations

Blackwood’s Comprehensive Aids to the Study of the Bible · Vol. I, pp. 61–62

Begins on Vol. I, p. 61

Their Typical Reference to Christ, His Work and Institutions.

§Sacrifices and Oblations

The distinction between sacrifices and oblations consisted in this, that in the former the thing offered was wholly or partially destroyed, as being Jehovah's only; in the latter, it was acknowledged to be His gift, and then enjoyed by the offerer.

The sacrifices were divided into burnt-offerings, with the accompanying meat-offerings (meat-food in general, especially corn and flour), peace-offerings, sin-offerings, for sins committed ignorantly, and trespass-offerings, for wilful sins and for ceremonial uncleanness.

I. The Burnt-Offering, or perfect sacrifice, was so called because it was wholly consumed by fire upon the altar of burnt-offering, and so, as it were, sent up to God on the wings of fire. It signified that the offerer belonged wholly to God, and that he dedicated himself soul and body to Him. Burnt-offerings were made on behalf of the whole people or by one or more individuals who must bring them of their own free will (Lev. i., vi. 8-13). Three kinds of animals, free from blemish, might be offered: (1) a young bullock of not more than three years; (2) a lamb or kid, a male of the first year; (3) turtle doves or young pigeons. Burnt-offerings were made on the following occasions, viz.:

The Daily Sacrifice of a yearling lamb or kid was offered at the times of the morning and evening prayer before the priest went into the tabernacle to burn incense.
The Sabbath Burnt-Offering was the daily sacrifice doubled (Num. xxviii. 9, 10).
The Burnt-Offerings at the festivals of the New Moon, the three great feasts, the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Trumpets, were generally two bullocks, a ram and seven lambs (Num. xxviii. 11; xxix. 39).
Private Burnt-Offerings prescribed by the law, at the consecration of priests, the purification of women, the removal of leprosy or other ceremonial uncleanness, the performance or the accidental breach of the vow of a Nazarite.

II. The Meat-Offering and the Drink-Offering always accompanied the burnt-offering, for which, indeed, the meat-offering might be substituted by the poor. As the burnt-offering signified the consecration of life to God, so in the meat-offering the produce of the land was presented before Him as being His gift, with the devout acknowledgment in both cases, "Of thine own have we given thee" (1 Chron. xxix. 14).

III. The Peace-Offering was not an atoning sacrifice to make peace with God, but a joyful celebration of peace made through atoning provisions of the covenant. Jehovah, as it were, was in His House inviting the worshiper who had been reconciled and accepted to feast with Him. Only a part of the offering was burnt on the altar and was thus offered to Jehovah; the breast and the shoulder belonged to the priests, and the rest might be eaten by the worshiper.

IV. The Sin-Offering was an expiatory sacrifice for sins of ignorance committed by a priest, or by any of the people. Special victims were enjoined in different cases with special ceremonies (Lev. vi. 24-30).

V. Trespass-Offerings were for sins committed knowingly, as well as for acts of ceremonial uncleanness.

And thus in all these sacrifices and offerings, which were continued from year to year, the Jews had before their minds the great facts of their guilt and exposedness to condemnation because of their violation of God's righteous law. They were taught their inability to satisfy the demands of the law which they had broken, and, above all, that when they deserved judgment, deliverance was graciously prepared for them by way of substitution and atonement. They were taught that it was not possible "that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins," yet these shadows intimated the substance of good things to come when the Great Deliverer, by one perfect offering, which needed no repetition, should finish the work of redemption, and for ever sit down at the right hand of God. As in the type, the blood of an innocent victim was shed, so in the case of the great Antitype, the holy and righteous One who knew no sin, who was pure and undefiled, gave His life as a ransom for the guilty, His vicarious death and sufferings atone for guilt, and thus peace with God is the portion of the believer in the Saviour. The believing Jew was permitted to eat of the peace-offering as an intimation of the fact that reconciliation and acceptance had been secured; so now the Christian is assured that, being justified by faith (Rom. v. 1), he has peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

VI. Oblations are not clearly distinguished from those sacrifices which were of the nature of gifts; they included incense, things vowed, first-fruits of corn, of wine, oil and wool, the first-born of man and beast, and tithes of the produce of the land.

§The Sacred Seasons

These fell under three heads.

I. Those connected with the Sabbath, namely:

The weekly Sabbath itself.
The Feast of the New Moon.
The Sabbatical Month, and the Feast of Trumpets.
The Sabbatical year.
The Year of Jubilee.

II. The three great historical festivals, namely:

The Passover.
The Feast of Pentecost.
The Feast of Tabernacles.

III. The Day of Atonement.

§I. The Sabbatical Seasons

The Sabbath is so named from a Hebrew word which signifies rest. That this was one of the primeval institutions adopted by Moses from the ancient patriarchal usage is implied in the very words of the law, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." The institution was not intended to promote idleness, but to prohibit work for worldly gain.
The Feast of the New Moon marked the completion of the lunar month. The first sight of her new crescent was announced by the sound of two silver trumpets (Num. x. 10).
The Sabbatical Month and the Feast of Trumpets. The month of Tisri, the first of the civil but the seventh of the sacred year, had a kind of Sabbatic character (Lev. xxxiii. 24). The calendar was arranged so that the first day of this month fell on a Sabbath. This, the civil New Year's day, was ushered in by the blowing of trumpets, and hence was called the Feast of Trumpets. On the tenth of this month the great Day of Atonement was kept, and from the fifteenth to the twenty-second of the month the Feast of Tabernacles, the greatest of the whole year, was celebrated. All the great festivals were observed within a Sabbatic cycle of seven months.
The Sabbatical Year. Each seventh day, and each seventh month and each seventh year were holy. The land belonged to Jehovah, and it also had to keep its Sabbaths to Him. It was to be a season of rest and especially of great kindness to the poor. The land was not to be sown, nor the vineyards and the olive-yards dressed; no fruit or produce of any kind was to be gathered from the soil, but all was to be left to the poor, the slave and the stranger (Ex. xxiii. 10, 11). This was a "year of release," because in it creditors were bound to release poor debtors. Slaves also were to be set free (Deut. xv. 12-18). From the first the people neglected these injunctions, and it was one of the national sins which were punished by the Babylonian captivity.
The Year of Jubilee occurred every fiftieth year. It completed every half century. It began on the tenth of the seventh month, the great Day of Atonement. Sacrifice being offered, the trumpet of jubilee proclaimed "liberty to the captive and the opening of the prison doors to those that were bound." The land was left uncultivated as in the Sabbatic year, and all alienated possessions returned to the families to whom they had been allotted in the first division of the holy land. The institution was based on the principle that the land was God's, who granted to each family its portion, and thus the principle was asserted that the land, the people, all belonged to God, were His servants and incapable of belonging to any one but Him; and thus the jubilee completed the great Sabbatic cycle of years at the close of which, in a limited sense, "all things were made new."

§II. The Three Great Historical Festivals

Thrice in the year at these feasts all the males were required to appear before Jehovah at the tabernacle, and afterward at the temple. No age was prescribed: Jesus went up to the Passover at the age of twelve (Luke ii. 42), Samuel still younger (1 Sam. i. 24).

The Passover, which was the most solemn of the three festivals, as the memorial of the nation's birth and the type of Christ's death, was kept for seven days, from the evening which closed the fourteenth to the end of the twenty-first day of the first month of the sacred year, Abib or Nisan (April). Certain differences existed between the ordinance as observed in Egypt and the "Perpetual Passover." The latter was thus observed: On the fourteenth day of Nisan all leaven was put away out of their houses, and on the same day all males who were not infirm had to appear with an offering of money at the national sanctuary, according to his means (Deut. xvi. 16, 17). As the sun was setting the lambs were slain, and the fat and the blood given to the priests. The lamb was then roasted whole, and eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, no portion of it being left until the morning. The same night the fat was burned by the priests after the fifteenth day had commenced, and the blood was sprinkled on the altar. On the fifteenth no work, except preparing food, was done, as it was a holy day. On the sixteenth of the month, the morrow after the Sabbath, the first sheaf of the harvest was presented and waved by the priest before the Lord, and a male lamb was offered as a burnt-sacrifice, with a meat and drink-offering. Special offerings were made during all the period, and the seventh day, the twenty-first of Nisan, appears to have been one of peculiar solemnity. Cheerfulness was to prevail during all the week, and in later years the Hallel, Psalm cxiii.-cxviii., was sung (Matt. xxvi. 30). The Passover has the profoundest and yet the clearest significance of any typical rite. Its teaching is summed up in the words, "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Cor. v. 7), who was in fact put to death at the very season of the Passover, as "a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Pet. i. 19; Isa. liii. 7; John i. 29; Acts viii. 32).

Continues on Vol. I, p. 62

The Pentecost, or Harvest Feast, or Feast of Weeks, was a supplement to the Passover. It lasted only one day. The people had presented, at the Passover, the first sheaf of the harvest, and thereafter had returned to their homes to gather in the crops of the year. Then they returned to keep this feast before Jehovah. It was kept fifty days after the sixteenth of Nisan, and fell about the end of May. The Pentecost was the Jewish harvest home, and the people were enjoined to rejoice before Jehovah with their families, their servants, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow, as they brought a free-will offering to the Lord (Deut. xvi. 9-12). The great feature was the presentation of two loaves made from the first-fruits of the harvest, and until these were offered none might eat of the grain newly gathered, nor could any other than first-fruits be presented to the Lord.
The Feast of Tabernacles, or Feast of Ingathering, completed the round of annual festivals. It was a thanksgiving for the harvest and a memorial of the time when the Israelites dwelt in tents in the wilderness. It fell in the autumn, when the chief fruits of the earth, the corn, the wine and the oil, were gathered in. Its duration was strictly only seven days (Deut. xvi. 13), but it was followed by a day of holy convocation. During the seven days the Israelites were commanded to dwell in booths (tabernacles) formed of the boughs of trees.

§III. The Day of Atonement.

This was the one single fast, or day of humiliation, prescribed by the Mosaic law, whence it is called the Fast (Acts xxvii. 9). It was observed five days before the Feast of Tabernacles, and all were obliged to omit their work of every kind and to "afflict their souls" on pain of being cut off from among the people. Its ceremonies signified the humiliation of the people for all the sins of the year, and the remission of those sins by the atonement made within the veil by the high-priest, who alone performed all the sacrifices of the day (Lev. xxiii. 26-32). The victims were (1) a young bullock for a sin-offering and a ram for a burnt-offering for the high-priest himself and his family, and (2) a ram for a burnt-offering and two young goats for a sin-offering for the people. Two goats were presented at the door of the tabernacle; the high-priest cast lots on them, the one lot being inscribed "for Jehovah," the other "for Azazel." The latter was called the scape-goat. The high-priest then offered first the young bullock as the sin-offering for himself and his family. Having slain it at the altar, he took some of its blood, with a censer filled with live coals from the altar, and a handful of incense, and entering into the most holy place, he threw the incense on the coals, thus enveloping the ark in a fragrant cloud and partially shrouding it from his own eyes, lest he should die for a profanely curious gaze, and then he sprinkled the blood seven times before the mercy-seat.

The goat "of Jehovah" was then slain as a sin-offering for the people, and the high-priest again went into the most holy place and performed the same ceremonies with its blood. As he returned through the holy place, in which no one else was present, he purified it by sprinkling some of the blood of both the victims on the altar of incense. This completed the purification of the sanctuary, the second stage of the atonement. Then followed the remission of the people's sins by the ceremony of devoting the scape-goat, the one on which the lot had fallen "for Azazel." The high-priest laid his hands upon its head, and confessed over it the sins of the people, and the victim, loaded as it were with those sins, was led out by a man, chosen for the purpose, to the wilderness, into "a land not inhabited," and there let loose. The meaning of this type of the true Atonement, not by the blood of bulls or of goats, but by the precious blood of Christ Himself, is set forth in the Epistle to the Hebrews (chap. ix., x.), showing us, that, as the scape-goat typically carried away into a land of forgetfulness the sins for which atonement had been made, so our great Deliverer, on whose head we lay our burden, carries away our transgressions, and our sins are remembered no more.

§IV. Festivals after the Captivity.

The Feast of Purim, or of Lots, was observed annually to commemorate the preservation of the Jews in Persia from the massacre to which they were devoted by Haman (Esth. ix. 24).
The Feast of Dedication commemorated the purging of the temple and the rebuilding of the altar after Judas Maccabæus had driven out the Syrians, B.C. 164. It is named only once in the canonical Scriptures, John x. 22.