Outside the Camp · The Symbolism of Scripture
Outside the Camp
One patch of ground held two things that should never share an address: the refuse and the condemned — and the holiest sacrifice Israel had. Hebrews puts one person in both columns, in two consecutive sentences.
What It Stands For
a boundary, and the two reasons for crossing it
The camp had an edge, and the law treats that edge as real. Some things could not be inside it. What surprises a reader working through Leviticus and Numbers is not the exclusion — that is expected — but the company it keeps. The same outside that received the lepers received the sin offering of the Day of Atonement.
“Command the Israelites to send away from the camp anyone with a skin disease, anyone who has a bodily discharge, and anyone who is defiled by a dead body. You must send away male and female alike; send them outside the camp so they will not defile their camp, where I dwell among them.”The reason is attached to the command, and it is about proximity: in the midst whereof I dwell.
By which God would intimate the danger of being made guilty by other mens sins, and the duty of avoiding intimate converse with wicked men.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765Methodist
Numbers 5:3
It is worth correcting the picture most readers carry. “Outside the camp” was not exposure in an empty desert; there was a designated area, and Adam Clarke thinks there were structures in it:
According to the preceding plan, it is sufficiently evident that each camp had a space behind it, and on one side, whither the infected might be removed, and where probably convenient places were erected for the accommodation of the infected; for we cannot suppose that they were driven out into the naked wilderness.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Numbers 5:2
Clarke is reasoning from the layout of the camp rather than from a verse, and the language shows it. The law itself is blunter, and harder to read:
As long as he has the infection, he remains unclean. He must live alone in a place outside the camp.Not a visit outside. A dwelling, the word the verse uses is 'habitation'.
One Place, Two Categories
the ground that holds both, and what Hebrews does with it
Sent out because it may not stay
the unclean, and the condemned
Every leper, and everyone defiled by the dead
Numbers 5:2-3The leper's dwelling, for as long as it lasts
Leviticus 13:46The man who blasphemed, taken out to be stoned
Leviticus 24:14Stephen, dragged out of the city and stoned
Acts 7:58
Sent out because of what it is
the holiest sacrifice, and the place God met a man
The sin offering whose blood went into the holy place
Leviticus 16:27The red heifer, killed in front of the priest
Numbers 19:3Her ashes, kept there, in a clean place
Numbers 19:9The tent of meeting, after the golden calf
Exodus 33:7
And then, in two consecutive sentences
Hebrews puts one person in both columns: 13:11 — the bodies of the sin offerings are burned outside the camp; 13:12 — Jesus suffered outside the gate, which is where the city executed criminals. The holiest reason and the most shameful one, in the same place, on the same afternoon.
The bull for the sin offering and the goat for the sin offering, whose blood was brought into the Most Holy Place to make atonement, must be taken outside the camp; and their hides, flesh, and dung must be burned up.Read the relative clause: 'whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy place'. That is the same animal.
Then a man who is ceremonially clean is to gather up the ashes of the heifer and store them in a ceremonially clean place outside the camp. They must be kept by the congregation of Israel for preparing the water of purification; this is for purification from sin.Outside the camp, and, in the same phrase, in a clean place. The law does not treat the outside as uniformly defiled.
That last phrase is the one that stops a tidy reading. The outside is not simply the unclean zone, it contains a clean place, and something needed for purification is stored there. Whatever else “outside the camp” means, it does not mean abandoned ground.
The defilement was viewed as transferred to the victim that was to be offered for its removal. Under these circumstances the victim, like the defiled persons themselves, would be removed outside the camp.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Numbers 19:3
Partly because it was reputed an unclean and accursed thing, being laden with the sins of all the people; and partly to signify that Christ should suffer without the camp, in the place where malefactors suffered.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765Methodist
Numbers 19:3
The detail that makes the collision unmistakable, handling the holiest thing made you uncleanLeviticus 16, and what the men who carried it out had to do afterwards
The two men who did the most sacred disposal work of the year , the one who led the goat away and the one who burned the bodies of the offerings, could not walk back in. They had to wash and bathe first.
Both he who led away the goat, and he who burned the parts of the sin-offerings had to purify themselves. They who went out of the camp during a religious solemnity incurred uncleanness; hence, the need of purification.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Leviticus 16:26
Not only the person who led him away, but the priest who consecrated him, was reputed unclean, because the goat himself was unclean, being considered as bearing the sins of the whole congregation. On this account both the priest and the person who led him to the wilderness were obliged to wash their clothes and bathe themselves, before they could come into the camp.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Leviticus 16:26
Adam Clarke also explains why the sin offering, alone among the sacrifices, could not be eaten, which is what sends it out of the camp in the first place:
Though in making covenants, and in some victims offered according to the law, the flesh of the sacrifice was eaten by the offerers; yet the flesh of the sin-offering might no man eat: when the blood was sprinkled before the holy place to make an atonement for their souls, the skins, flesh, entrails, etc., were carried without the camp, and there entirely consumed by fire
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Hebrews 13:11
The flesh of both those sin-offerings whose blood was taken within the veil was to be all burnt, not upon the altar, but at a distance without the camp, to signify both our putting away sin by true repentance, and the spirit of burning, and God's putting it away by a full remission, so that it shall never rise up in judgment against us.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Leviticus 16:25
The Day God Moved Out
Exodus 33, and a sentence that reverses the whole geography
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it at a distance outside the camp. He called it the Tent of Meeting, and anyone inquiring of the LORD would go to the Tent of Meeting outside the camp.Read the last clause slowly. Seeking the LORD has just become a walk out of the camp, past the edge, and back.
This happens immediately after the golden calf, and it is a judgment — the people have made themselves a god and the meeting place is withdrawn from among them. But the verse does not end there. It ends with a door left open: every one which sought the LORD went out unto the tabernacle. The withdrawal is real, and it is not a locked door. It is a walk.
What is here meant is a tent appointed for this temporary purpose by Moses, possibly that in which he was accustomed to dwell. Pitched it without the camp, afar off from the camp - That the people might feel that they had forfeited the divine presence
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Exodus 33:7
A place was appointed for them to go to without the camp, to solicit God's return to them. Thus when Ezra (a second Moses) interceded for Israel there were assembled to him many that trembled at God's word, Ezra ix. When God designs mercy, he stirs up prayer.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Exodus 33:7
Adam Clarke is careful about which tent this is, not the tabernacle, which had not been built yet, and passes on the rabbinic estimate of the distance:
not את המשכן eth hammishcan, the tabernacle, the dwelling-place of Jehovah, see Exo 36:11, for this was not as yet erected; but probably the tent of Moses, which was before in the midst of the camp, and to which the congregation came for judgment, and where, no doubt, God frequently met with his servant. This is now removed to a considerable distance from the camp, (two thousand cubits, according to the Talmudists)
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Exodus 33:7
The two thousand cubits is a figure from the Talmud, roughly half a mile, and Clarke reports it as what the Talmudists say, which is the right way to carry it. It is a tradition preserving a memory of the distance, not a number Exodus gives.
Moses alone, who saw God, had his tabernacle without the camp when he talked with God; and the blood indeed of the victims which were offered for sin, was brought to the altar, but the bodies were burnt without the camp
Ambrose of Milan· Epistle 63, 397Latin, fourth century
Exodus 33:7
Ambrose has both halves of the symbol in one sentence in the fourth century, the tent where God was met, and the bodies that were burned, on the same ground.
The Execution Ground
the other traffic across the same boundary
“Take the blasphemer outside the camp, and have all who heard him lay their hands on his head; then have the whole assembly stone him.The command that establishes the practice, and the witnesses lay their hands on his head first, the way a hand is laid on a sacrifice.
They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile the witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.Fifteen hundred years later, and nobody has to explain the procedure. They cast him out of the city first.
This blasphemer was the first that died by the law of Moses. Stephen the first that died for the gospel, died by the abuse of the law.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765Methodist
Leviticus 24:23
Wesley makes the connection in one line, and the phrasing is exact: the first man to die by the law, and the first to die for the gospel by the abuse of it, taken out through the same kind of gate.
Which is the plain historical reason Jesus died where He did, and it has nothing symbolic about it:
Hence, he was conducted out of the city, because no criminal was executed within the walls of Jerusalem. Without the gate - Without the gate of Jerusalem; Joh 19:17-18. The place where he was put to death was called Golgotha, the place of a skull
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Hebrews 13:12
It is implied here that it was voluntary on the part of Jesus that he suffered out of the city; that is, it was so ordered by Providence that it should be so. This was secured by his being put to death as the result of a judicial trial, and not by popular tumult
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Hebrews 13:12
Barnes’s second point is the one worth keeping. Because it was a judicial execution rather than a lynching, the procedure was followed, and the procedure required the city gate. The place was determined by law, not by the mood of a crowd.
Where It Points
two sentences that put one man in both columns
Although the high priest brings the blood of animals into the Holy Place as a sacrifice for sin, the bodies are burned outside the camp.Leviticus 16:27, quoted as the premise.
And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate, to sanctify the people by His own blood.And the conclusion, joined by a single word: wherefore.
The blood → inward
Carried past the veil into the holiest place in Israel, once a year, by one man.
Leviticus 16:27 · Hebrews 13:11The body → outward
Carried the other way, past the edge of the camp, and burned to nothing where the unclean lived.
Hebrews 13:12The fiery ordeal of His suffering on the cross, answers to the burning of the victims; thereby His mere fleshly life was completely destroyed, as their bodies were; the second part of His offering was His carrying His blood into the heavenly holiest before God at His ascension
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Scottish, nineteenth century
Hebrews 13:12
Then those things were a type of these and thus Christ, suffering "without," fulfilled all. Here he makes it plain too that He suffered voluntarily, showing that those things were not accidental, but even the Divine arrangement itself was of a suffering "without." He suffered without, but His Blood was borne up into Heaven.
John Chrysostom· Homily on Hebrews 33, 407Greek, fourth century
Hebrews 13:11-12
Chrysostom adds the thing a modern reader can miss: the location was not an accident of Roman policy. He suffered outside because that is where the sin offering goes, and He went there voluntarily, the arrangement itself, Chrysostom says, was of a suffering “without”.
Therefore let us go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace He bore.And the instruction. Note the object of the sentence: unto HIM.
This verse has carried a great deal of freight. It is worth saying simply what it does and does not contain. It names a destination, and the destination is a person — let us go forth therefore unto him. It names a cost — bearing his reproach. It does not name a group to leave, and it does not describe anyone being shut out. The commentaries of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries frequently read it as an instruction to abandon Israel’s worship and its people; those readings are honestly held and they are not what the sentence says, so this page follows the sentence.
that is, suffering the same things; having communion with Him in His sufferings. He was crucified without as a condemned person: neither let us then be ashamed to "go forth out" of the world.
John Chrysostom· Homily on Hebrews 33, 407Greek, fourth century
Hebrews 13:13
As if we were going forth with him when he was led away to be crucified. He was put to death as a malefactor. He was the object of contempt and scorn. He was held up to derision, and was taunted and reviled on his way to the place of death, and even on the cross.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Hebrews 13:13
If then we partake not of "reproach" only but of sanctification, the "reproach" is the cause of the sanctification. For as He was reproached, so also are we. If we go forth "without" therefore, we have fellowship with Him.
John Chrysostom· Homily on Hebrews 33, 407Greek, fourth century
Hebrews 13:13
For here we do not have a permanent city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.The reason the walk out is bearable, given in the very next sentence.
The symbol closes where it opened, and reversed. The camp was where God dwelt in the middle and the unwanted were put out. Then the tent moved out and seeking God meant walking to the edge. Then the sin offering went out, and then the Son of God went out — and the letter tells its readers that the way to be near Him now is to go out too. There is no continuing city here to be turned out of.
What Scripture says outright
- Leviticus 16:27
The verse identifies the animal by what happened to its blood, brought in to make atonement, and then says the body is carried out. Both movements, one sentence.
- Numbers 19:9
The ashes are kept outside the camp in a clean place. The law says outright that the outside is not uniformly unclean.
- Exodus 33:7
Everyone who sought the LORD went out to the tent. The reversal of the geography is reported, not implied.
- Hebrews 13:12-13
Jesus suffered outside the gate, and the instruction that follows names Him as the destination, “unto him”, bearing His reproach.
What readers have heard in it
Readings of long standing, named as readings.
- Hebrews 13:13
That “outside the camp” here means outside the world — Oecumenius, in the sixth century: “Since Christ suffered outside the gate, let us go out to Him outside the camp, that is, outside the world, bearing nothing worldly, neither earthly nor carrying the filth of the earth.” A serious reading with a long history; Hebrews’ own camp is a specific city with a specific gate.
- Hebrews 13:13
That the verse commands believers to leave Israel’s worship and its people behind. Common in the older commentaries; the sentence names a person to go to and a reproach to carry, and names nobody to leave.
- Numbers 19:3
That every detail of the red heifer maps onto a detail of the crucifixion. The location and the outside-ness are drawn by Hebrews itself; the rest is a reader’s work, and it has been done many different ways.
Its Presentation Through Scripture
the traffic across the boundary, in order
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it at a distance outside the camp. He called it the Tent of Meeting, and anyone inquiring of the LORD would go to the Tent of Meeting outside the camp.
After the golden calf, Moses moves the tent out, and the sentence turns: everyone who sought the LORD went OUT to find Him.
As long as he has the infection, he remains unclean. He must live alone in a place outside the camp.
The other kind of going out, and the harder one: a man's home is now outside, for as long as the disease lasts.
The bull for the sin offering and the goat for the sin offering, whose blood was brought into the Most Holy Place to make atonement, must be taken outside the camp; and their hides, flesh, and dung must be burned up.
The Day of Atonement, and the verse Hebrews will quote: whose blood was brought in, and whose body is carried out.
“Take the blasphemer outside the camp, and have all who heard him lay their hands on his head; then have the whole assembly stone him.
And the same ground used for an execution. The first man to die under the law of Moses is taken out to it.
“Command the Israelites to send away from the camp anyone with a skin disease, anyone who has a bodily discharge, and anyone who is defiled by a dead body. You must send away male and female alike; send them outside the camp so they will not defile their camp, where I dwell among them.”
Three categories put outside, and the reason given in the next breath: that they defile not their camps, in the midst whereof I dwell.
Give it to Eleazar the priest, and he will have it brought outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence.
The red heifer is not killed at the altar. She is brought out, and killed in front of the priest, in the place the unclean live.
Then a man who is ceremonially clean is to gather up the ashes of the heifer and store them in a ceremonially clean place outside the camp. They must be kept by the congregation of Israel for preparing the water of purification; this is for purification from sin.
And then the phrase that will not fit either column: her ashes are laid up outside the camp, in a CLEAN place.
They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile the witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
The pattern carries into the New Testament without comment: they cast him out of the city, and stoned him.
Although the high priest brings the blood of animals into the Holy Place as a sacrifice for sin, the bodies are burned outside the camp.
Leviticus 16 quoted as the premise of an argument, the blood in, the bodies burned outside.
And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate, to sanctify the people by His own blood.
And the conclusion, in the next sentence: Jesus suffered without the gate. Both columns, one man, one afternoon.
Therefore let us go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace He bore.
The instruction that follows, and note where it points: not out of somewhere, but out UNTO HIM.
For here we do not have a permanent city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
And the reason it is bearable: here we have no continuing city anyway.
The Voices
with the work named
John Chrysostom is the centre of this page. Preaching through Hebrews in the fourth century he sees the double movement whole — the body out, the blood borne up into heaven — insists the location was chosen rather than suffered, and lands on fellowship rather than separation: if we go forth without, we have fellowship with Him. Albert Barnes supplies the two facts the page needs most: that no criminal was executed inside the walls of Jerusalem, and that it was a judicial process rather than a mob, so the procedure was followed.
Adam Clarke explains why the sin offering alone could not be eaten, and corrects the picture of exile into an empty desert. Matthew Henry sees that the burning at a distance is about sin being put away rather than managed. John Wesley draws the line from the blasphemer of Leviticus 24 to Stephen in one sentence. Ambrose, in the fourth century, already has the tent and the burned bodies on the same ground.
Where to Go Next
What went out, and why
Where the argument is made
Where the picture goes on
Its neighbours in the index
The Symbolism of Scripture gathers every picture the Bible thinks in. This one sits with: