Leviticus 1:9

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…

1:9 The offering was washed with water to remove dirt or debris that might contaminate the offering. Washing was also part of purification from ritual uncleanness, a prerequisite for Tabernacle service (6:27; 11:28). • special gift: The Hebrew term (’isheh) has traditionally been rendered “offering made by fire.” Although the offering was to be burned (1:13, 17), recent scholarship suggests that the word had the more generic meaning of “gift.” • pleasing aroma to the Lord (literally a restful odor; also in 1:13, 17): Pagan people of the ancient Near East believed that their gods smelled the offerings because they needed to eat them to sustain their lives. Although God’s response is sometimes represented in language that reflects the cultural setting (e.g., 21:6; Num 28:2), the Bible is clear that God did not need offerings as food (Ps 50:9-13). Instead, they pleased him as sincere offerings for the purpose of atonement.