Leviticus 3: Peace Offerings

In my post on Leviticus 2 I speculated that chapters 1 and 2 provide procedures to be incorporated into other kinds of sacrifices and offerings. In chapter 3, we seem to get the sort of offering that might incorporate the chapter 1 laws about burnt offerings of animals. But the combination strikes me as uncomfortable.

The main feature of chapter 3 that makes me wonder if it is meant to incorporate the rules in chapter 1 is its specificity. It doesn't say, "When bringing a peace offering, bring a male or female without blemish from the herd or flock, or a male or female goat without blemish, and offer it as a burnt offering." Instead, specific instructions are given for cows and bulls, lambs (but not sheep), and goats, and the instructions are almost exactly the same for all three. One is to lay one's hand on the head of the animal, kill it at the entrance to the tent of meeting, splash the blood on the sides of the altar, cut out the kidneys and half the liver with their fat, and burn them as a food offering on the altar. Now, these instructions are consistent with the instructions given in chapter 1, in the sense that one could carry out both sets of directions simultaneously, but they partly overlap in odd ways. For instance, if the peace offering instructions were meant to supplement the chapter 1 instructions, why say in chapter 3 that one must lay one's hand on the head of the animal, which was already instructed in chapter 1? But, one is apparently allowed to offer male and female sheep as peace offerings, but instructions are only given for offering lambs (v. 6). This suggests that one should use the chapter 1 instructions when giving sheep as peace offerings (since no other instructions have been given). Unfortunately, it is not clear how this affects our interpretation of the rest of chapter 3. The lack of instructions for sheep could suggest that the instructions given for goats and herd animals are alternatives to the chapter 1 instructions, or it could suggest that since the chapter 1 instructions are used in one case, they should be used in the others as well. The final difficulty is that it is not really clear when one is supposed to give a peace offering. Presumably it is to establish peace, but after what kinds of conflicts? If answers to these questions start presenting themselves, I will have to make a supplemental post.

I also find it interesting that the smell of the burnt offerings is called, "a pleasing aroma to the Lord" (v. 5, 16). My assumption is that what is offered on the altar is not cooked to be eaten (see v. 16-17), but burned until it will burn no longer and in my experience burnt food products produce rather off-putting odors. There would also be blood all over the place, what with animals being butchered and blood being splashed on the sides of the altar. While I haven't been sniffing puddles of animal blood lately, I imagine it doesn't smell great. (As an aside, I'll bet the priests also had a rough time trying to keep the place clean.) So why say the aroma is pleasing? Well, this could mean at least two things. One is that the smell itself of the offering is pleasant, and the other is that it is pleasant that the smell of the offering is being produced. I find the latter interpretation more plausible. First, the notion of God smelling the offering seems clearly metaphorical. God isn't a material being like us, and while I don't know what sorts of senses God has, they probably aren't like ours. Thus, He is likely communicating metaphorically using images we can relate to. Furthermore, the second interpretation places the focus on the purpose the offering--to make peace--rather than the offering itself. So on the second reading, what pleases God about the offering is the relational restoration. It's not like He just wants to smell burning fat and organs, He wants restored relationships. And since that is what the peace offering accomplishes, its smell is pleasing.

If I am right about why the aroma of a peace offering is pleasing, there is also an interesting juxtaposition of pleasant and unpleasant. The process of sacrificing an animal is bloody and dirty, smelly, and disgusting, whereas the outcome is good and pleasant, cleansing, and restoring. It's occurred to me before in reading Deuteronomy that one lesson of the Law might be that once some kind of injustice has been committed, we're already way outside the realm of pleasant solutions even when good outcomes are still possible. I suspect we'll see similar ideas playing out in Leviticus.

Well, I guess that's enough for now! I hope you have a wonderful Christmas Eve, and God bless you, every one!