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 the Israelites, and prepare a sacrificial meal in which the elders of Israel took part along with Moses and Aaron (Exo 18:12), but young men offered burnt-offerings and slain-offerings by the command of Moses at the conclusion of the covenant (Exo 24:5). Consequently the sacrificial laws of these chapters presuppose the presentation of burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, and slain-offerings as a custom well known to the people, and a necessity demanded by their religious feelings (Lev 1:2-3, Lev 1:10, Lev 1:14; Lev 2:1, Lev 2:4-5, Lev 2:14; Lev 3:1, Lev 3:6, Lev 3:11). They were not introduced among the Israelites for the first time by Moses, as Knobel affirms, who also maintains that the feast of the Passover was the first animal sacrifice, and in fact a very imperfect one. Even animal sacrifices date from the earliest period of our race. Not only did Noah offer burnt-offerings of all clean animals and birds (Gen 8:20), but Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock an offering to the Lord (Gen 4:4).[1]
The object of the sacrificial laws in this book
- ↑ When Knobel, in his Commentary on Leviticus (p. 347), endeavours to set aside the validity of these proofs, by affirming that sacrificial worship in the earliest times is merely a fancy of the Jehovist; apart altogether from the untenable character of the Elohistic and Jehovistic hypothesis, there is a sufficient proof that this subterfuge is worthless, in the fact that the so-called Elohist, instead of pronouncing Moses the originator of the sacrificial worship of the Hebrews, introduces his laws of sacrifice with this formula, “If any man of you bring an offering of cattle unto the Lord,” and thus stamps the presentation of animal sacrifice as a traditional custom. Knobel cannot adduce any historical testimony in support of his assertion, that, according to the opinion of the ancients, there were no animal sacrifices offered to the gods in the earliest times, but only meal, honey, vegetables, and flowers, roots, leaves, and fruit; all that he does is to quote a few passages from Plato, Plutarch, and Porphyry, in which these philosophers, who were much too young to answer the question, express their ideas and conjectures respecting the rise and progress of sacrificial worship among the nations.
