Leviticus1chapter 1

Leviticus 1:1-2

Exodus closes with the glory filling the tent and Moses unable to go in at Exodus 40:34-35, and Leviticus opens with a voice calling him from inside it. The books join at that seam, and what the voice says runs to the end of the book. The word rendered offering in verse 2 is korban, built on a root meaning to come near, so the animal is named for what it is for.

Leviticus 1:3-4

No sin has been named and no occasion is given, so the first sacrifice in the book is one a man brings because he wants to. Verse 4 then lays his hand on the head of the animal and says it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him, which is substitution stated at the start of Leviticus in one sentence. Adam Clarke reads the laid hand as the offerer owning the victim as his own and asking that its life be taken in the place of his. The two verses stand together, a gift given freely and a death counted for the giver.

Leviticus 1:5-6

The man who brought the animal is the one who kills it, and the priests take over at the blood. He also flays it and cuts it into its pieces, so his part runs from the hand on the head to the carcase laid open. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the pouring out of the blood as the essential part of the sacrifice and the sprinkling of it as the application.

Leviticus 1:7-9

Verse 7 is where the priests take up their own work, fire and wood laid in order, and from verse 8 they handle every piece. Then all of it goes up, the washed inwards and legs with the rest, and that is what sets the burnt offering apart from the other four offerings of chapters 1 to 7, where a priest or the offerer eats a portion. Sweet savour falls here for the first time in Leviticus and sixteen times in the book, and never once of the sin offering or the trespass offering. Ephesians 5:2 takes the phrase up for Christ, who gave himself an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.

Leviticus 1:10-13

The rite runs again at a lower price and loses nothing in the retelling. A sheep or a goat is handled as the bullock was, and the one new detail is the place of killing, on the side of the altar northward, which later chapters point back to as the place where they kill the burnt offering at 4:24, 4:29, 4:33 and 7:2. The text fixes the spot and gives no reason for it. Verse 13 closes in the same words as verse 9, so the smaller animal is a sweet savour on the same terms.

Leviticus 1:14-15

A bird is what a man brings when he has nothing else, and Leviticus 5:7 and 12:8 name it as the provision for one who cannot reach a lamb. Luke 2:24 has Mary and Joseph bringing a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons at the temple, which is that provision in use. Here the priest does the killing rather than the offerer, wringing off the head at the altar with his hands, so the poorest offering is the one its owner is not asked to butcher.

Leviticus 1:16-17

The crop and the feathers are thrown east of the altar by the place of the ashes, the far side from the holy place. The bird itself is opened and left whole, cleft by the wings and not divided asunder, which is the restraint Abram kept at Genesis 15:10 when he divided every animal and left the birds. Verse 17 then ends in the words that ended the bullock at verse 9 and the sheep at verse 13, a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD. The formula does not shrink with the price of the animal.