Leviticus3chapter 3

Leviticus 3:1-2

This offering stands third in the list a worshipper is given in chapters 1 to 5, and it moves to last when the same five are handed to the priests at 7:11. Male or female is accepted here, where the burnt offering of 1:3 required a male. The hand goes on the head, the animal is killed at the door and the blood is sprinkled round about, exactly as in chapter 1. What separates this sacrifice from the rest is stated later at 7:15, where the flesh goes back to the man who brought it, so this is the one offering the offerer eats from.

Leviticus 3:3-5

The parts claimed are inward parts nobody sees, the fat over the entrails, the two kidneys with the fat by the flanks, and the caul above the liver. Verse 5 lays them on the burnt sacrifice already burning, so the peace offering goes onto a fire the daily offering lit. It is called a sweet savour, a phrase that falls sixteen times in Leviticus and never once on the sin offering or the trespass offering.

Leviticus 3:6-8

The same rite runs again for a sheep, and the text writes it out in full rather than saying as before. Nothing changes in the hand on the head, the place of killing or the blood on the altar. A man who can bring a bullock and a man who can bring one lamb are given identical words, and the animal is the only thing that differs between them.

Leviticus 3:9-11

The sheep yields one part the bullock did not, the whole fat tail taken off hard by the backbone. Broad-tailed sheep of that country carry a tail weighted with fat, and the law claims it whole. Verse 11 calls the burnt portion the food of the offering made by fire, and Leviticus 21:6 calls the same thing the bread of their God, which gives the altar the shape of a table.

Leviticus 3:12-13

A goat is the third animal named and the cheapest of the three. Birds are received for the burnt offering at 1:14 and from the poor for the sin offering at 5:7, and no bird appears anywhere in this chapter. Commentators tie the omission to the meal that follows, since a bird furnishes no feast for a household, and the chapter itself gives no reason.

Leviticus 3:14-16

The goat's list drops the tail, since a goat's tail carries no fat worth burning, and everything else stands as before. Verse 16 closes all three cases in one sentence, that all the fat is the LORD'S. Fat was reckoned the best of the animal, so the portion a man would most want is the portion he never receives.

Leviticus 3:17

The rule walks out of the sanctuary and into the house, because throughout all your dwellings puts it in every kitchen in Israel. It is repeated at 7:23-27 and again at 17:10-14, and the blood half of it is given a reason at 17:11, that the life of the flesh is in the blood. The fat is given no reason anywhere in the book. Acts 15:20 and 15:29 carry the blood rule into the first council of the church, which is worth knowing where a reader assumes every rule in Leviticus stopped.