Leviticus 1: What the Burnt Offering Asked of an Israelite

Leviticus is where a lot of reading plans go to die, and mine has died there at least twice. I finished Exodus yesterday morning with the cloud over the tabernacle and felt pretty good about myself, and then this morning I turned the page and found a bullock in the first five verses. Fair enough. It's not an easy chapter to take in over a bowl of cereal on a Thursday, the day I work from home and have about twenty minutes before the laptop opens.

What stuck was a hen, of all things, one of ours. Back in April our Waffle got through the fence into the neighbor's yard, and I went over and picked her up and carried her home under one arm. She weighed less than I expected. She was warm, and her heart was going so fast I could feel it through my sleeve. That's what I had in my head when I got to verse 14.

What is a burnt offering in the Bible?

The Hebrew word is olah, and it means something close to "that which goes up." Everything in a burnt offering goes up. Other offerings in Leviticus get divided, with a portion for the priests and sometimes a portion for the family that brought it, and a meal gets eaten. This one doesn't. Verse 9 puts it plainly after the washing of the inwards and the legs:

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.

The man who brought it walks home with nothing. That has to be settled before the rest of the chapter makes sense, because it makes the offering a gift in the plain sense. You don't get any of it back.

"Sweet savour" reads like a smell, and in this chapter it means the offering was received. Verse 3 matters more to me, because it says the man should offer it "of his own voluntary will." Nobody was dragged to the door of the tabernacle. This is the offering you brought because you wanted to be close, and the Hebrew root behind the general word for offering, korban, carries that same sense of drawing near.

I'd always filed the whole business under sin, as if every animal on the altar was somebody's apology. Some offerings were, and Leviticus gets to those later. This one is mostly worship, which is why all of it burns.

If you read Exodus 38 you've already met the altar this happens on, and it's worth going back to the altar of burnt offering in Exodus 38 with Leviticus 1 open next to it. The furniture makes more sense once you've watched somebody use it.

Why did God accept a bird from poor people?

Here's the part I read past in every earlier attempt. A male without blemish from the herd, or the same from the flock of sheep or goats, and then in verse 14 this:

And if the burnt sacrifice for his offering to the Lord be of fowls, then he shall bring his offering of turtledoves, or of young pigeons

That's the family who couldn't swing a bullock or even a lamb, and the verse doesn't apologize for them or hand them a lesser version of the ritual. The priest wrings the head and burns it, and the bird is split open by its wings but not divided asunder, and at the end of verse 17 it is "a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord." Same words, in the same order, as the ones that close the bullock in verse 9. A turtledove is a good deal smaller than Waffle, and the Lord says of it exactly what he says of a bull.

Leviticus 5 goes a step further down and allows flour for people who can't afford even birds. That's for another day. What I'd point to now is that the Lord called to Moses and gave a law with a door in it low enough for the poorest family to walk through, and nobody at the altar was handed a smaller blessing for it.

Paul makes a related point to the Corinthians about the Macedonians, who gave out of deep poverty and begged to be allowed to. I wrote about that in 2 Corinthians 8 and the Macedonian example if you want to set the two chapters side by side.

What does laying a hand on the head mean?

Verse 4 is the one I picked for the top of this post, and it's short.

And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.

I had this chapter wrong in one detail until this morning. I'd have told you the priests did the killing, and I'd have said it with confidence, because that's how I pictured the tabernacle: men in linen doing the hard part so the family could stand back. Then I read verse 11 for the flock, "he shall kill it on the side of the altar northward before the Lord," and the "he" is the man with the animal. The priests, Aaron's sons, come in after that to sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar. The one exception is the bird, where the priest wrings the head.

So the order is a hand on a living head, and then the same hand does the killing. The text says the atonement is "for him," and the animal stands where he would otherwise stand. He could not have held it at arm's length. Whoever laid his hand on that bullock knew what it cost because he was the one who paid it, and I think that's the harder thing to read past once you see it. I thought of the hen again here, the weight of her and how fast she was going, and how much easier it would have been to hand her to somebody else at the fence. Nobody was standing by to take her.

I don't know why the law builds it this way, with the offerer doing the killing and the priest taking over only for the blood and the altar. The chapter doesn't explain it. Maybe it doesn't need to.

How does Leviticus 1 point to Christ?

Amulek, preaching to the Zoramites in Alma 34, says the law of Moses was pointing somewhere:

And behold, this is the whole meaning of the law, every whit pointing to that great and last sacrifice; and that great and last sacrifice will be the Son of God, yea, infinite and eternal.

Hebrews says it from the other side, that Christ made one offering and by that one offering "hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified."

When I teach Gospel Doctrine I tend to hurry past the lamb without blemish, since anybody in the room can make that match. The one I'd stop on is the burn-it-all. Nothing was kept back for the one making the offering, and the Savior's gift was given the same way, entire, to people who brought nothing to it.

Nobody I know offers bullocks. What we have is the sacrament on Sunday, a small piece of bread and a little cup of water, and I'd note that it comes to everyone in the chapel the same way, down the same rows.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why were burnt offerings completely burned?

Other offerings in Leviticus were shared, with the priests and sometimes the family eating a portion. The burnt offering wasn't. The whole animal went up on the altar and the person who brought it kept nothing, which suits an offering made for worship.

Could poor Israelites really take part?

Yes. A person who couldn't bring a bullock or a sheep could bring turtledoves or young pigeons, and verse 17 uses the same closing words for the bird as verse 9 does for the bullock. Leviticus 5 later allows flour for those who can't afford even birds.

Who killed the animal in a burnt offering?

The man who brought it. Verses 5 and 11 have him kill the animal himself, and the priests then sprinkle the blood and handle the altar. With a bird, the priest wrings off the head.

Do Latter-day Saints still offer burnt offerings?

No. We understand the sacrifices of the law of Moses to have been fulfilled in Christ, and the ordinance we keep is the sacrament. What carries over is coming willingly and bringing what you actually have.

Leviticus 2 is flour and oil, and I'm told it goes down easier than this one did.

— D.