Do We Even Care?

Why cattle? Why must the Levitical sacrifice come from among the herd or the flock?

Cattle designates the genus under which is subsumed both herd and flock animals. The herd animals in view were oxen (also known in the King James Version as beeves, a beef creature), both the males (bullocks) and the females (heifers). The flock animals in view were goats and sheep, both males and females. Only from among these clean¹ and domesticated animals were sacrifices permitted. Domesticated but unclean animals—such as asses, camels, and swine—were prohibited as sacrifices. Game animals that were clean and edible—such as the hare, stag, roebuck, and gazelle—were likewise prohibited. Two kinds of clean birds, a turtledove and a young pigeon, were permitted for certain sacrifices in the place of cattle, but these birds were given to the impoverished Israelite who could not bring the normal offering.²

Why cattle? This is the question that we must consider before we enter into the specifics of the five sacrifices that Jehovah prescribed to Moses in the opening chapters of Leviticus.

And there is only one reason that we care to consider this question.

This one reason stands over against the barren curiosity of a host of unbelieving biblical scholars. For them the inquiry into why Israel used cattle and birds as sacrifices is interesting in its own right. Such scholars talk about how the selection of sacrificial material reflected the limited natural means and commodities that were at the Israelites’ disposal as they traveled through the wilderness and settled in the land of Canaan. These scholars ramble on about how Israel adopted certain aspects of its sacrificial system from the cultus of heathen nations with whom Israel had contact—deceitful nonsense. They make of no significance that Jehovah prescribed these animals as sacrifices, calling unto Moses from God’s royal judgment seat upon the ark, shrouded by his cloud of glory and the wings of golden cherubim.

But it is not difficult to see that this material requirement of oxen and goats and sheep and turtledoves and young pigeons was God’s choice for sacrificial animals from the beginning. If we look backward in time from Sinai, we come first to the eve of Israel’s departure from Egypt, wherein the passover lamb was slaughtered and its blood pasted on the doorposts of the Israelites’ dwellings. (Let me briefly interrupt here and point out that a lamb frequently refers to a youngling of the flock, either of the sheep or of the goats, as is evident from the description of the passover lamb in Exodus 12:5: “Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats.”) Isaac was also accustomed to seeing a lamb offered as a sacrifice, since he asked his father in the land of Moriah, “Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (Gen. 22:7). And in Isaac’s stead God provided a ram from among all the creatures of the earth. In Genesis 15 when God gave to Abraham that grand symbol and vision of the unilateral establishment of God’s covenant, do you remember what animals God required Abraham to slaughter and part so that God could walk between them? The animals were a heifer, a she-goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon—the same animals that God specified to Moses at Sinai. Noah offered sacrifices to Jehovah of the clean cattle and fowl that in the ark passed through the cataclysm of the flood. Abel brought the firstlings of his flock. And we may even surmise that the animal skins that God used to clothe the nakedness of Adam and Eve had come from the slaughter of herd or flock animals. It was always these distinct animals that belonged to the sacrifices of the old dispensation. God chose these creatures for sacrifices according to his infinite wisdom and eternal counsel. God is one in will and purpose.

God prescribed these animals, giving a visible word concerning the only suitable substitute who could bear the iniquities of his people. Here we arrive at the sole reason that we have any interest in such a study. What we behold in the bulls and goats is a shadow of a body. This subject of sacrificial animals is not glorious in itself. There is nothing particularly interesting about a shadow except that the shadow belongs to a body, and that body is not just some body but a glorious body. If I fall under the shadow of a peasant, I hardly take notice; but if I fall under the shadow of a king… And shadows were cast long into the Old Testament, but they began to fade and grow shorter as the one who cast that shadow drew near: the image of the invisible God; the firstborn from the dead, by whom and for whom all things were made; the elect, concerning whom God decreed, “Let all my fullness dwell in him bodily, for he shall be the perfect revelation of my glory, and in him will my name dwell.” Unbelief stares blindly at mere beasts and perceives not the glorious body that cast such a shadow into the old dispensation. But God gave these creatures as sacrifices to typify and symbolically represent the Christ.

Further, in the revealing of the only suitable substitute who could bear the iniquities of his people through bulls and goats, God spoke the gospel concerning the righteousness of God. Frankly, if the material used for sacrifices cannot confirm us in the doctrine of the gospel, then my writing and your reading are vain and wasted efforts. But indeed, these things speak the gospel of the righteousness of God. This righteousness to which I refer is not that divine perfection of God’s glorious and eternal being according to which his willing and acting are always in complete harmony with his own infinite goodness by his own irreproachable judgment. The righteousness of God to which I refer is that righteousness of Romans 3:21–22:

21. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;

22. Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference.

It is that otherworldly righteousness that God worked out in his Son, Jesus Christ, by his incarnation and lifelong obedience unto the suffering of death. It is a righteousness that belongs, first, to the reality that God imputed unto Christ, as head of God’s covenant, all the sins of its members, so that Christ became the embodiment of all that is loathsome to God and suffered the penalty of death. Furthermore, it is that heavenly righteousness that God imputes unto the ungodly but elect sinner wholly apart from any of his own working or willing. It is that glorious righteousness that simply cannot be increased because the covenant head rendered unto God all the love and obedience that God was due. It is that everlasting righteousness that cannot be marred or corrupted or touched by any of that elect sinner’s gross disobedience. In the light of the one who was to become this righteousness and who was to be manifest in the fullness of time, God prescribed cattle to be slaughtered.

Thus I liken this study of the sacrificial material to Lord’s Days 5 and 6 of the Heidelberg Catechism, the first two Lord’s Days under the second section, which concerns itself with man’s deliverance. These two Lord’s Days sketch an outline or silhouette of a perfect man by searching out what sort of mediator and deliverer we must seek for in light of the justice of God. And the climax of these Lord’s Days is that grand answer to the question, “Who then is that Mediator?” “Our Lord Jesus Christ” (Q&A 18, in Confessions and Church Order, 89).

Let us then proceed and consider the question, why cattle?

A Soulish Creature

Satisfaction of God’s justice for sin requires the shedding of blood. This is exactly what scripture teaches when it says that “without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins” (Heb. 9:22). But when we speak of blood in connection with the satisfaction of divine justice, we must not have in mind merely the red fluid that spills from a body that is pierced or cut. Rather, we must think of the life that has been offered through the shedding of blood. When blood has been shed, a life has passed under the sentence of death.

God provided animals as the sacrificial material because, unlike the rest of the brute creation, animals are soulish creatures that possess their life in their blood. Animals have a soul, a soulish life. Permit me to use the word soul-life.³ According to this reality animals not only are distinct from the realm of plants, but animals also bear a resemblance to earthly man, so that they can stand in a relationship with earthly man. Certainly, the soul-life of an animal is not as deep as the soul-life of a man, for the soul-life of an animal has no spiritual relationship with its creator as a man does. (I shall have more to say on this momentarily.) Nonetheless, animals possess a soul-life, and that soul-life is found in their blood. This fact is evident in God’s instruction to Noah after the flood:

3. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

4. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. (Gen. 9:3–4, emphasis added)

This fact is also evident in God’s instruction to Moses at Sinai:

10. And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people.

11. For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. (Lev. 17:10–11, emphasis added)

When scripture forbad the consuming of blood, it also made clear that an animal’s soul-life was in the blood.

Therefore, the animal was a creature that could undergo death. When its blood was spilled during slaughter, the life poured out of that creature and was spent. Though God also prescribed vegetable offerings for the altar, these bloodless sacrifices never stood independent from the bloody sacrifice of an animal.⁴ In the sacrifices God provided blood to his people, to make symbolic atonement therewith for their souls upon the altar and to testify of the gospel that another would undergo the sentence of death and the bitter experience of death in the place of his people.

We must pause here and reflect on that last sentence. Let me say, “Selah.”

When God provided sacrificial animals, whose blood could be shed and who could taste death instead of the sinner, God through Moses gave to his people a heavenly and divine thought. Such a thought no wise man could have ever dreamt up. The fact that there is another who can bear a man’s guilt and be punished in man’s stead belongs solely to the proclamation of the gospel, which gospel God conceived and God revealed and God worked for his own eternal glory and honor. Such a thought is otherworldly, for all that man can know of himself is that God burns in anger against all man’s unrighteousness and ungodliness. All that man can know of himself is that he daily increases his debt. All that man can do of himself is to flee in terror from before the presence of Jehovah and attempt to cover up his nakedness by his own carnal works, which works only further offend the most high majesty of God. But God, through the giving of an animal to be slaughtered, instilled into the elect sinner’s mind—a mind and conscience burdened with the damning testimony and work of the law—a wondrously new and gracious and mighty and peaceful thought: “I, who am by nature an enemy of God, can escape punishment! I do not need to pay for my sins! There is another who can bear my guilt before the face of God, undergo the sentence of death, and spill out its life by bloodshed.” For what saith scripture? “Jehovah called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto me…” That is a heavenly and divine thought! For man on his part declared war against the living and eternal God and made God man’s enemy by his own willful disobedience. But God is not only willing that this enmity be overcome, but God is also the one who from before the foundation of the world determined how he would overcome this enmity. At Sinai God gave Moses the animal as a type to show how in the fullness of time God would be in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing the trespasses of his elect unto them. Through the sacrifices God gave a visible word for how he would accomplish this: it required the giving of a life through the shedding of blood.

Since death is the wages for sin, the consequence of bearing sin before the presence of the Holy One is that the sinner must be cut off from the land of the living and undergo the suffering of penal death. As the Heidelberg Catechism teaches us, God’s justice “requires that sin which is committed against the most high majesty of God be also punished with extreme, that is, with everlasting punishment of body and soul” (A 11, in Confessions and Church Order, 87). And when God prescribed animal sacrifices, he testified that there is another who can stand in the sinner’s place and undergo the horrors of death. God forgives sin that offends his majesty only by satisfaction, only by a bloody death, and only a soulish creature—whose life is in its blood—could symbolically and typically represent this.

An Innocent Creature

But why an animal? Permit me to entertain a little folly and ask, why not a human sacrifice?

First, God gave clear prohibition of human sacrifices elsewhere in the law. When Moses reiterated the law before the entering of Canaan, he warned Israel against searching out how the other nations served their gods. The practices of those nations whom God would destroy were an abomination to him, and “even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods” (Deut. 12:31).

But we may say more. God provided sacrificial material that symbolized innocent blood.

Both men and animals have an existence on this side of the grave that is earthly and conducted through the senses of their bodies. But an animal’s soul-life is entirely earthly and non-spiritual. Man, on the other hand, also has to do with God. Man is unique above the creatures because man has a spiritual side to his soul-life. According to God’s twofold act of forming man from the dust of the earth and breathing into man the breath of life, man stands related to the earth and related to God. Man cannot ever escape God. Man stands either in friendship with God and is blessed by God, or man stands at enmity against God and is cursed by God. Man always has to do with God. When an animal is slaughtered and the blood drained from its body, then that animal ceases to exist. There is no heaven for cats and dogs. But man is different. You can drain all my blood and destroy my body, yet that spiritual aspect of my soul does not perish. When man’s earthly life ceases, his soul is violently separated from his body, and either his soul is purged by the God who justifies him, and he goes to be with God in heaven; or he is cast into hell by the God who condemns him, and he suffers death everlastingly.

Since animals do not bear this spiritual relationship to their creator, they can be reckoned as non-moral and, in an entirely negative way, as innocent. Though not ethically holy and positively obedient and righteous, yet animals cannot become morally corrupt and be punished with extreme, that is, with everlasting punishment of body and soul. They cannot bear the image of God or the image of the devil. God made the sacrificial material stand out as innocent in the mind of the Israelite who presented it for a sacrifice. No sacrificial material from among the human race could have provided such a testimony. None are righteous, no not one. Man’s nature had become so corrupt that he was conceived and born in sin and wholly incapable of doing any good and inclined to all wickedness. Even the priests needed daily to offer up sacrifices, first for themselves and then for the people. The blood of the sacrifice must be innocent blood.

This innocence was also manifest in that the animal’s condition must be pure and without blemish. The sacrificial material could not be blind, crippled, cut or mutilated in any way, or exhibit scabs or itching sores or ulcers (“having a wen” [Lev. 22:22]). The animal could not be emasculated. It could not have any deformity or abnormality.

God gave sacrificial material to his people that was innocent and pure, for this innocence and purity belong to the heart of the gospel.

This is scripture’s word in the New Testament:

18. Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;

19. But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. (1 Pet. 1:18–19, emphasis added)

And again,

13. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh:

14. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Heb. 9:13–14, emphasis added)

This belongs to the gospel of the apostles. Paul declared to those in Antioch’s synagogue concerning Jesus Christ that the rulers of Jerusalem “found no cause of death in him” (Acts 13:28). What is necessary for the church of all ages to know? Christ was perfectly innocent! Without spot and without blemish. A pure blood. He “did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth” (1 Pet. 2:22).

Innocent blood means that the sacrifice to come must have no actual sins. And Christ was very conscious of his own sinlessness. He challenged those who opposed him, “Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?” (John 8:46). Innocent blood also means that the sacrifice to come must not be liable to the original guilt of Adam. Christ could not belong to the corporation of Adam. And how this could be belonged to the wonder of grace that was revealed in the fullness of time. Adam was not Christ’s head because Jesus Christ did not have a human person. Guilt is always imputed to the person. It was impossible that Adam’s guilt be imputed to Christ’s person, for he it is who descends from heaven and whose person is otherworldly and divine. Furthermore, Mary’s womb was a place of death, as is every other womb. Every other sibling of Christ begotten by Joseph and conceived in Mary was corrupt. In the womb of Mary, part of the ineffable and inconceivable wonder is that God brought the clean out of the unclean. The Holy Spirit kept Jesus Christ as that holy thing. Jesus emerged from that septic tank of the womb clean and spotless by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Innocent blood. This was brought to light in Christ’s trial. God made man acknowledge this. In the Praetorium God put the world on trial, though man tried vigorously to avoid it. The Jews did not want to bring Jesus into the public courts. The Jews wanted to do away with Jesus in secret. But God would have that court date, and so Christ forced the Jews into action by sending Judas away. And Pilate wanted nothing with that case. “Try Jesus in your own courts! Send him away to Herod!” But God would have his Son’s innocence stand out clearly in the minds of all. Thrice Pilate declared in judgment, “I find no fault in him.”

No fault. Nothing at all to condemn him. Let that sink in. Who among men could receive such a verdict? Who among men would willingly subject himself—did Jesus not go willingly with his captors?—for a meticulous scrutiny for any vice by a world at enmity against him? Innocent blood.

God forgives sin that offends his majesty only by satisfaction, only by a bloody death, and only an innocent and soulish creature could symbolically and typically represent this.

Thus far we have seen the need for an animal to symbolically make the required satisfaction of God’s divine justice. Yet we have not arrived at the precise reason for cattle. However, the deadline to submit this article for editing and typesetting has come upon me, so this will have to wait for next time.