The first post in the laws of sacrifice dealt with spontaneous sacrifice. Yesterday's post covered sacrifice of expiation. Today's post lists sacrifices in their order of sanctity.
Instructions Concerning Sacrifices: Leviticus 6.8-7.10
The Lord instructs Moses to relay the following to Aaron and his sons:
Burnt Offering
When a burnt offering has been reduced to ashes, the priest, wearing the linen vestments and undergarments, should take the ashes and place them beside the altar. He should then change clothes and carry the ashes to a clean place outside the camp. [This keeps the garments from becoming sullied by the outside world.]
The fire on the altar should perpetually burn, with wood added every morning.
Grain Offering
As prescribed before, a priest should take a handful of the choice flour/oil/frankincense mixture and burn it. The priests will eat what is left in the form of unleavened cakes in a holy place, the court of the tent of meeting. No leaven should be added; it is a portion allotted by God and most holy. The holy bread makes the priests holy in turn, and anything that touches them becomes holy.
Offering of a priest's anointing
On the day a priest is anointed, he should offer one-tenth an ephah of choice flour, half in the morning and half at night. It shall be prepared with oil in a griddle. The entire grain offering should be burned - the priests cannot partake of it.
Sin Offering
The sin offering should be slaughtered in the same place as the burnt offering. The priest who offers it shall eat it in the court of the tent of meeting. Anything that touches the flesh of the sacrifice will become holy, but if blood splatters on a garment, it is to be washed in a holy place. Likewise, an earthen vessel holding blood should be destroyed and a bronze basin holding blood should be scrubbed.
Every priest should eat the flesh of the sin offering. However, if blood its is brought into the tent of meeting to atone the place, the animal is to be entirely burned.
Here the dual nature of blood is evident. Sacrificed blood is a cleansing force for the altars, but outside the holy place contact with blood leads to ritual impurity.
Guilt Offering
The guilt offering should be slaughtered in the same place as the burnt offering. The blood should be dashed on the sides of the altar. The fat, broad tail, kidneys, and appendage of the liver should be removed. After these are burnt, the sacrificing priest is to eat the flesh it in a holy place.
Misc.
The priest that makes atonement with an animal is given the right to eat its flesh. Likewise, a priest who offers a grain offerings that baked or prepared in a pan or griddle eats the portion leftover after the sacrifice. All other grain offerings, though, those uncooked, are split among the priests.
Further Instructions: Leviticus 7.11-38
Thanksgiving Sacrifice
What follows is the ritual of the sacrifice of well-being.
If the sacrifice is offered in thanksgiving, it should be accompanied by a thank offering of unleavened cakes mixed with oil, unleavened wafers spread with oil, and cakes of choice flour well soaked in oil. Clearly two traditions are intertwined here, as the next instruction states a thanksgiving sacrifice should be accompanied by cakes of leavened bread. One cake will be sacrificed, and the rest will go to the priest who performs the sacrifice.
Next the accounts are clearly conflated. Here bread does not act as the thanksgiving aspect of a sacrifice of well-being. Rather, the text contradicts itself so that the thanksgivings sacrifice is the bread and meat.
In any case, the flesh of a thanksgiving sacrifice should not be left until morning.
Then the text refers to votive and freewill offerings, which have not even been introduced yet! (The Bible is not necessarily meant to be read through "front-to-back," though this is the method I have chosen because it is easy.) These two offerings may be eaten on the day after the sacrifice, but must be burned on the third day. Anyone who eats meat past its expiration date incurs guilt.
Eating Flesh
It's okay to eat flesh as long as it hasn't touched anything unclean and you yourself are clean. If you eat flesh from a sacrifice of well-being while in a state of uncleanliness, you will be cut of from your kin.
Fat and Blood
The people of Israel may not eat the fat of an ox, sheep or goat.
You can do what you want with the fat of an animal that dies or is torn apart by wild animals - except eat it. Otherwise you'll be cut off from your kin.
You may not eat the blood of anything. Don't you want to remain with your kin?
If you make a sacrifice of well being, you personally must bring the fat and breast to the fire. The breast will be raised as an elevation offering and then be given to the priests, along with the right thigh, which belongs specifically to the priest that dashes the blood.
Sacrifice is a perpetual due of the people, the priests perpetually there to ensure it is performed properly.
The bible wraps it up nicely:
This is the ritual of the burnt-offering, the grain-offering, the sin-offering, the guilt-offering, the offering of ordination, and the sacrifice of well-being, which the Lord commanded Moses on Mount Sinai, when he commanded the people of Israel to bring their offerings to the Lord, in the wilderness of Sinai.
(Lev. 7.37-38)
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