Leviticus6chapter 6

Leviticus 6:1-8

A wrong done to a neighbour is called a trespass against the LORD, and the wrongs listed under it are ordinary business: a deposit denied, a partnership cheated, goods taken by violence, a lost thing found and kept. Verse 5 fixes the timing at the day of his trespass offering, so what was taken goes back to the man before the ram goes to the altar. Exodus 22:9 sets double payment on a thief the judges condemn, while the principal and a fifth part more here belong to a man who came forward on his own. The Hebrew text ends chapter five at verse 7 and begins chapter six at verse 8, a division Adam Clarke and John Gill both record, so the priest's half of the book opens where a new speech opens.

Leviticus 6:9-13

This is the law of the burnt offering: The five offerings are given here a second time from the side of the priest who handles them, each section opening as this is the law of, and the first duty laid on Aaron and his sons is carrying out ashes. He takes them up in his linen, then puts off those garments and puts on others to carry the ashes outside the camp to ground the text calls clean, so what is left of a burnt offering is handled as holy rather than thrown away. Around that housekeeping stands the one command this passage gives three times, at verse 9, at verse 12 and again at verse 13: the fire of the altar is kept burning and never goes out. Leviticus 9:24 has fire coming out from before the LORD to consume the first offering laid on that altar, and the wood the priest lays on every morning feeds a fire he did not light.

Leviticus 6:14-18

A handful of the flour, the oil and all the frankincense goes up as the memorial, and the rest of it is food. The burnt part is called a sweet savour, a phrase that falls sixteen times in Leviticus and lands almost every time on the burnt, meat and peace offerings; the one exception is the fat of a sin offering at 4:31, and the trespass offering never carries it. What remains is eaten unleavened by the males of Aaron in the court of the tabernacle, and verse 17 says why they have it, that God gave it them for their portion of the offerings made by fire. Verse 18 ends with holiness moving outward by contact, every one that toucheth them shall be holy, and the same clause returns on the sin offering at verse 27.

Leviticus 6:19-24

Every other meat offering feeds the priest, and the priest's own feeds nobody. A tenth part of an ephah, half in the morning and half at night, is offered in the day he is anointed and by each successor anointed in his stead, and verse 22 has the whole of it burnt. Adam Clarke reads in the day when he is anointed as the opening of a standing obligation rather than one occasion, since verse 20 calls it a meat offering perpetual. A fourth speech begins at verse 24, and this single chapter carries four of the thirty-three places in Leviticus where the LORD spake unto Moses.

Leviticus 6:25-27

This is the law of the sin offering: The sin offering is killed in the same spot as the burnt offering, and the flesh is eaten by the priest who offered it. The chapter gives no reason for that, and the reason arrives later at Leviticus 10:17, where Moses says God gave it them to bear the iniquity of the congregation. Verse 27 treats holiness as something that transfers, since whatever touches the flesh becomes holy and a garment caught by the sprinkled blood is washed inside the holy place rather than carried home. Leviticus 10:16-20 is the one place the eating rule is broken, when Aaron's surviving sons burn a goat they were to have eaten and Moses calls them to account.

Leviticus 6:28-30

An earthen vessel the flesh was boiled in is broken, and a brass pot is scoured and rinsed and stays in use. The text draws that line and leaves it unexplained, and the readings on offer run from the porousness of clay to the worth of the metal. Verse 30 then lifts one class of sin offering out of the eating rule, since where the blood was carried into the tabernacle the flesh is burnt in the fire and no priest eats it. That is the offering of the day of atonement in chapter 16, and Hebrews 13:11-13 takes up the burning outside the camp and sets the suffering of Jesus without the gate beside it.