Leviticus 1:17
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He shall tear it open by its wings, without dividing the bird completely. And the priest is to burn it on the altar atop the burning wood. It is a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
I. Laws and Ordinances Determining the Covenant Fellowship Between the Lord and Israel - Leviticus 1-16 The Laws of Sacrifice - Leviticus 1-7 When the glory of the Lord had entered the tabernacle in a cloud, God revealed Himself to Moses from this place of His gracious presence, according to His promise in Exo 25:22, to make known His sacred will through him to the people (Lev 1:1). The first of these revelations related to the sacrifices, in which the Israelites were to draw near to Him, that they might become partakers of His grace. (Note: Works relating to the sacrifices: Guil. Outram de sacrificiis libri duo, Amst. 1688; Bhr, Symbolik des mos. Cultus ii. pp. 189ff.; Kurtz on the Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament (Clark, 1863); and Oehler, in Herzog's Cyclopaedia. The rabbinical traditions are to be found in the two talmudical tractates Sebachim and Menachoth, and a brief summary of them is given in Otho lex. rabbin. philol. pp. 631ff.) The patriarchs, when sojourning in Canaan, had already worshipped the God who revealed Himself to them, with both burnt-offerings and slain-offerings. Whether their descendants, the children of Israel, had offered sacrifices to the God of their fathers during their stay in the foreign land of Egypt, we cannot tell, as there is no allusion whatever to the subject in the short account of these 430 years. So much, however, is certain, that they had not forgotten to regard the sacrifices as a leading part of the worship of God, and were ready to follow Moses into the desert, to serve the God of their fathers there by a solemn act of sacrificial worship (Exo 5:1-3, compared with Lev 4:31; Lev 8:4, etc.); and also, that after the exodus from Egypt, not only did Jethro offer burnt-offerings and slain-offerings to God in the camp of th…
Open source ↗1:17 tear . . . without tearing it apart: Cutting larger animals into pieces (1:6, 12) probably reflects the ancient rite of covenant-making, in which the participant passed between the two halves of a sacrificed animal (see Gen 15:10). Because of their small size, birds were not cut in half. If it was necessary to pass between them, they were arranged in pairs.
Open source ↗Cross-references
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So Abram brought all these to Him, split each of them down the middle, and laid the halves opposite each other. The birds, however, he did not cut in half.
He is to bring them to the priest, who shall first present the one for the sin offering. He is to twist its head at the front of its neck without severing it;
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit,
When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished.” And bowing His head, He yielded up His spirit.
When Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, He yielded up His spirit.
For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay.
He was delivered over to death for our trespasses and was raised to life for our justification.
The entrails and legs must be washed with water, and the priest shall bring all of it and burn it on the altar; it is a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
When the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.