An Unanswered Question

In a foregoing article from ten months ago, the following question was posed: “Why cattle?”¹ Why must the Levitical sacrifice come from among the herd or the flock? I have noted already two reasons that God prescribed cattle.

First, God through Moses gave to his people a sacrificial material that could undergo the sentence of death, thereby testifying of his gospel that another was coming to stand in their place and to experience the bitter and shameful death that their sins justly merited. Cattle are soulish creatures that possess their life in their blood, so that when the blood of these animals was spilled during slaughter, they experienced death instead of the sinner.

Furthermore, God through Moses gave to his people a sacrificial material that was guiltless, thereby testifying of his gospel that the one who would spill his lifeblood and suffer death in their place was able to satisfy the strict justice of God because the same was free from guilt. Cattle are nonmoral creatures that do not stand in a spiritual relationship with their creator as man does. Cattle cannot be imputed the sin of Adam because their soul-life is entirely earthly. Though not ethically holy and positively obedient and righteous, cattle are nonetheless incapable of bearing guilt before God and may be reckoned in an entirely negative way as innocent. Cattle are guiltless.

By prescribing cattle as the material for sacrifices, God gave to his people a symbol that he would provide innocent blood in order to make atonement for their guilty souls. These are two reasons that Jehovah God told Moses to use cattle.

However, these two reasons cannot be the end of the matter, for all animals could fulfill such a role. All other animals—every kind of creeping thing, beast, fowl, and fish—are guiltless and have blood. But God limited the sacrificial material to oxen, goats, sheep, and, in cases of poverty, pigeons and turtledoves. God required that his people bring domesticated and ceremonially clean animals to the altar. Therefore, it is evident that we do not have a complete response to the question, why cattle? Something important is missing.

How the Scholar Doth Answer

But if one expected to elicit a quick and satisfactory answer to the matter at hand from biblical scholars, he would be sorely disappointed. Not only is there a glaring lack of consensus among scholars as to why God required his people to bring cattle for sacrifices, but everything that I have read—which was by no means an exhaustive topical study—leaves something to be desired.

On the one hand, it comes as no surprise that Jewish rabbis have nothing useful to say in their responses to the question, why cattle? Moses Maimonides, hailed as one of the foremost intellectuals of medieval Judaism and a prolific Torah scholar, taught that God permitted animal sacrifices in his law only as a temporal provision to gratify the juvenile desires of his nation. Maimonides argued that the sacrificial rites of the heathen were too deeply entrenched into Israel’s mode of worship. Therefore, God accommodated the practice of animal sacrifices for use in his temple service, while always intending to wean his people from this practice.² And in answer to the question, why cattle? Maimonides suggested that God specifically required the use of oxen and sheep and goats in order to prevent Israel from worshiping their cattle like the surrounding pagan nations.³ Such folly needs no refutation.

On the other hand, nothing better is found in the writings of certain high scholars of Christendom.

For example, Arie Noordtzij, a former professor of Israelite religion and literature at Utrecht, after stating that the animal sacrifice must be the offerer’s own possession, asserted without explanation or proof that “in a sense, it was necessary that one be made poorer by what he brought near to the Lord.”⁴ Noordtzij’s answer to the question, why cattle? is that cattle constituted a personal loss on the part of the offerer, and wild animals could not satisfy this requirement. But since Noordtzij did not substantiate this claim, it remains his own private interpretation and nothing more.

More unacceptable is the teaching that the peculiar sacrificial material for the Levitical sacrifice represented the consecration of the offerer’s life—with all its toil and fruits of toil—unto God. This was the view of two contemporary nineteenth-century German theologians, C. F. Keil and J. H. Kurtz.

Keil wrote that by offering cattle the Israelite gave what “he procured in the exercise of his God-appointed calling…that he might give up to the Lord…the agens [doing or acting] of his life.”⁵

And Kurtz wrote,

The fact that even clean animals were not all admissible in sacrifice, but only such of them as were the objects of their own care and rearing, of their daily thought and need, had…its good and obvious foundation in the spiritual worth of this [offering], and in the personal self-dedication of the sacrificer, of which it was the representation.⁶

E. J. Young conveyed the same sentiment:

The sacrifice came from that which sustained the life of the offerer and from that which the offerer produced by the toil of his life. Hence it may be said that in the sacrifice the entirety of the offerer’s life was consecrated to the Lord.⁷

My objection to this teaching is weighty, for—whether it was intentional or not—these theologians instilled man’s doing and man’s accomplishments into the symbolism of the bloody sacrifice for atonement, which sacrifice peculiarly and strictly represented Christ’s satisfaction of God’s justice against sin. The theology of these scholars differs little from the theology of Cain, who presented unto God the fruits of his own doing but received no testimony that he was righteous.

In a different vein of thought, John Gill answered the question, why cattle? by drawing symbolic comparisons between the natural characteristics of cattle—which characteristics would have been well-familiar to the Israelites—and the spiritual, ethical character of Jesus Christ. For example, Gill wrote that “the ox or bullock was a proper emblem for [Christ’s] strength and laboriousness, and the sheep for his harmlessness, innocence, and patience.”⁸ But as commendable as this kind of approach may be, the weakness of Gill’s argument becomes apparent when the only point of comparison that he gave between a goat and Jesus Christ was the likeness of sinful flesh:

The goat [was a proper emblem of Christ], as he was not in himself, but as he was thought to be, a sinner, being sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, and being traduced as such, and having the sin of his people imputed to him.⁹

I can only assume that when Gill made this point of comparison, he did so based on the tired, old trope that goats always symbolize evil. However, goats were clean animals that could be eaten, and their hair was even used to make coverings for the tabernacle. Besides, Gill did not venture to explain how the characteristics of pigeons and turtledoves—the other two permissible animals for sacrifices—symbolized Jesus Christ. Thus the answer to the question, why cattle? will not be found by making such symbolic comparisons.

Among all the scholars that I read, it is my judgment that George Ophoff and Walter Moule came closest to the main point of why God appointed cattle for bloody sacrifices. Both theologians pointed out that cattle, among all other animals, had a peculiar affinity with the offerer.

Moule wrote,

The selection of the victims of sacrifice from the flock and the herd is because these domestic animals were most closely associated with men in their daily life; and because men from the earliest times had depended upon them for food and for clothing. If for the purposes of a prophetic picture a substitute for man was to be found amongst the animals, what animals could be more suitable than those who are nearest to man in life and in death? And what could afford a more true, however imperfect, picture than these of the Son of Man Who would give His life a ransom for many? And if, under special circumstances, an extension was permitted to birds of the heaven, the choice must still be confined to those who make their homes with men, the dove and the pigeon.¹⁰

And Ophoff wrote,

Now the fact is that in the sacrifice of the old covenant the affinity between the offerer and the victim was close; and it was this firstly on account of the similarity in origin and in structure between the animal and man’s physical nature…Yet, it was not any animal that might be taken. To make the gap between the offerer and the victim as small as possible, the selection was limited to the herd and the flocks and to such fowls as the pigeon and the turtle-dove, thus to the class of tame domesticated animals. It was precisely these creatures that stood in closest relation to the physical nature of the offerer. The milk of the goats was to him drink. And the flesh of all these animals was to him food. In a certain sense therefore these creatures might be regarded as of one flesh with the offerer.¹¹

Ophoff, like Moule, then went on to explain how such close affinity stood in the service of symbolizing the nature of the true sacrifice, Jesus Christ, who as the eternal Son of God was made like unto his brethren in all things, sin excepted.

So, in sum, these two theologians answer the question, why cattle? by saying that God appointed a creature nearest to man’s own nature to most closely resemble the true humanity that Christ would assume in the incarnation. Here, we get close to a satisfactory answer. Close, I say, because there remains a most important element that has not yet been properly developed.

Crucified with Christ

A foundational principle for interpreting the symbolism of the Levitical sacrificial system is that Jesus Christ is an eternal reality stamped into the moldable substance of the entire Old Testament. Jesus Christ, being the same yesterday, today, and forever; Jesus Christ, being the firstborn of every creature in the counsel of God; Jesus Christ, being the lamb that was slain from before the foundation of the world—this eternal reality of Christ is what shaped and formed the selection of cattle for bloody sacrifices. God gave cattle for bloody sacrifices because he appointed these creatures in highest wisdom to represent the death of his only-begotten and beloved Son. Only considering cattle in this light does justice to the matter at hand.

On this basis I altogether reject the notion that God adapted his selection of sacrificial material to cattle, which term you can find in various writings. Whether intentional or not, those who speak this way portray the matter as if God looked down from heaven and searched out what creature would best function for his temple service. But to use the term adapt profanes God’s infinite wisdom and God’s eternal purpose to sanctify and glorify himself in all his works, wherein his power, wisdom, goodness, justice, mercy, and truth are clearly displayed. God is a God who determines the end from the beginning. God does not adapt things to perform his good pleasure, but God creates the perfect means to accomplish his good pleasure.

Thus, when on the sixth day God called forth the cattle out of the earth, he set apart cattle from creeping things and all other beasts for the distinct purpose that these animals be used as bloody sacrifices for his temple service. And by his foreordination of cattle for sacrifices, God ordained a peculiar affinity between clean, domesticated animals and their owner. God did so, as both Ophoff and Moule taught, to make the gap between the offerer and his sacrifice as small as possible, so that the believing Israelite could perceive in a figure how God’s justice—which “requires that the same human nature which has sinned should likewise make satisfaction for sin”—would be satisfied by a bloody sacrifice (Heidelberg Catechism, A 16, in Confessions and Church Order, 88).

But that is not all!

God ordained a peculiar affinity between the offerer and his cattle so that the offerer not only associated with the nature of that sacrifice, but he also associated his very person with that sacrifice. The offerer had a personal affinity with the creature that suffered death in the offerer’s place. When the animal was presented before the Lord at the altar and underwent the sentence of death, the believing Israelite also could perceive in a figure this glorious, eternal reality: “I am crucified with Christ!”

This is a most important element that I believe has not yet been properly developed, at least not in the literature that I read. It is my argument that a very dim reflection of that mystical union between Christ and his church was also stamped into the moldable substance of the old testament sacrificial system. Why were cattle, which stood in a very close biotic relation with mankind, appointed by God for the bloody Levitical offering? In order to seal the mysterious unity between Jesus Christ and his people, according to which they associated their own persons with Christ’s suffering and death.

It should be no surprise to us that the mystical union was present in the sacrificial material that God had given to his people through Moses. Union with Christ is the central motif of salvation. Union with Christ is the glorious testimony of the gospel: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Because it is the glorious testimony of the gospel, union with Christ is what is taught by the sacraments. What baptism witnesses and seals unto us is that God incorporates us into the fellowship of Christ’s death and resurrection, so that we are sanctified to be members of Christ (see Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 70; Form for the Administration of Baptism, in Confessions and Church Order, 109, 258). What lies at the heart of eating and drinking Christ in the Lord’s supper is that we are more and more united unto his sacred body by the Holy Spirit, so that we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone (see Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 76, in Confessions and Church Order, 113).

So that this point is better demonstrated, let me flesh out that personal affinity between the Israelite and his cattle.

A Personal Affinity with Cattle

We are not old testament Hebrews, and in our present age many of us are far removed from the agrarian life of the Israelite in the old dispensation of the covenant. Today men and women can spend all their years without having once interacted with oxen, sheep, or goats. But back then a man had a common, earthly existence with his cattle, a personal affinity with his cattle.¹²

In those days, if you wanted to locate one of the patriarchs, you would first search for his flocks and herds. Just read how frequently scripture mentions cattle in connection with Abraham, Jacob and his sons, and the nation of Israel as the Israelites wandered through the wilderness and as they trekked through the land of Canaan. When the Israelites took possession of their promised inheritance, not only oxen and sheep and goats but also dovecotes that housed pigeons and turtledoves were found in every village.¹³ Sometimes even a youngling from the flock was brought inside an Israelite’s house, to which custom the prophet Nathan alluded in his parable to the king:

The poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. (2 Sam. 12:3)

A personal affinity between men and their cattle is evident from how a man’s name and reputation were determined by his cattle. For example, scripture simply introduces Abel as a keeper of sheep. Jacob’s sons were an abomination to the Egyptians because they were shepherds. Jesse referred to his youngest son simply as the one who kept the sheep. And King Mesha of Moab was known as a sheepmaster. Furthermore, a man’s name and reputation were determined by the size of his flock and herd. Much cattle meant much social status. Job is introduced as “the greatest of all the men of the east,” possessing “seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household” (Job 1:3). Riches were synonymous with cattle. Esau departed from Jacob his brother and from Canaan, “for their riches were more than that they might dwell together; and the land wherein they were strangers could not bear them because of their cattle” (Gen. 36:7). A stalled ox, being kept from field labor to be fattened for the table, is used as a metonymy in Proverbs to signify earthly abundance: “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith” (15:17).

A personal affinity between men and cattle is evident from scripture’s innumerable metaphors relating them together. Israel was Jehovah’s flock and the sheep of his pasture. Amos referred to a group of lazy, well-fed, and oppressive women in Israel as the cows of Bashan. Like the ox that treads grain upon the threshing floor, so the laborer in the word and doctrine was not to be muzzled. And when the Shulamite’s lover commended her beauty, he referred to her eyes as the eyes of a dove.

A personal affinity between men and cattle arose from the shared experiences of their earthly life together. Oxen toiled alongside men in the field, shouldered men’s burdens, and stamped out their grain on the threshing floor. Cattle enjoyed the rest of the Sabbaths. Cattle partook of the blessings and cursings of the law. And when the angel of death passed over the blood-stained houses in Egypt, the firstlings of the cattle were spared just as the firstborn of the Israelites.

Besides, because much of man’s sustenance was derived from cattle, there was an essential relationship between the two. What distinguished cattle from other domesticated animals was that they were good for meat and milk products. Cattle, sheep, and goats were all used as meat for the table. Solomon’s daily provision included ten fatted oxen, twenty pasture-raised oxen, and one hundred sheep and goats. Though the chief use of the ox was as a draft animal under the yoke, the custom of keeping a fatted calf for any festive occasion prevailed throughout the old testament age, from the days of Abraham, who killed and dressed a goodly calf for his three heavenly guests, to the days of Christ, who in his parable spoke of that glad father who prepared the fatted calf for his repentant son. Sheep were also eaten at the occasion of some rejoicing, whether that were a marriage feast or the advent of a guest, but the principal part of the food supplied by sheep was their milk. Like the sheep, the goats were extremely valuable as milk producers. Goats were also used more extensively for food than sheep, particularly the young male kids (adult males having a repulsive odor and females being reserved for birthing). Because oxen and sheep and goats were for meat and drink, it was as Ophoff wrote in the aforementioned quote: “In a certain sense therefore these creatures might be regarded as of one flesh with the offerer.”¹⁴

Furthermore, so many articles of daily use were derived from various cattle parts that cattle were an objective portion of man’s life even apart from providing meat and drink. Wool was a commodity of great national value, since nearly all clothing was made of wool. Sheep shearing was always a time of great rejoicing for the Israelite, as is evident by Nabal’s revelries when he gathered his three thousand sheep in Carmel for shearing. Goat hair was also used in the manufacturing of clothes, some breeds producing such fine quality hair that it was even listed among the costly offerings gathered for use in the tabernacle:

22. And they came, both men and women, as many as were willing hearted, and brought bracelets, and earrings, and rings, and tablets, all jewels of gold…

23. And every man, with whom was found blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair, and red skins of rams, and badgers’ skins, brought them. (Ex. 35:22–23)

Horns were used for trumpets and as vessels for carrying liquids and oil, both uses being mentioned in 1 Kings 1:39: “Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people said, God save king Solomon.” Goat skin was frequently used for leather, forming bottles and sacks. The bottle of water that Abraham put on Hagar’s shoulder, the sacks wherein Joseph’s brethren discovered their money, the bottle of wine that Hannah brought at the time of Samuel’s dedication, and the bottle of milk that Jael opened for Sisera were all likely made from goat skins.

Although, as I mentioned earlier, Kurtz drew an egregious conclusion about why God required cattle, saying that cattle represented the self-surrender of the offerer who presented the fruit of his toil unto God, I do fully agree with Kurtz’s observation that “it was requisite that [the sacrifice] should stand in a close, inward, essential relation, a psychical rapport, to the person of the worshipper.”¹⁵ This “close, inward, essential relation” and “psychical rapport” of cattle to the person of the offerer is not to be so explained as to bring man’s activity and doing into the symbolism of the bloody sacrifice for atonement. No, this personal affinity was ordained by God from before the foundation of the world to serve as a type of the glorious, eternal reality that Jesus Christ and his members are one body. And by faith the Israelite received through a dim picture that he was united personally with Jesus Christ, so that as the Israelite personally associated with the death of his offering, so Christ’s death was the Israelite’s death.

Faith’s Thought at the Altar

When one comes into God’s court, he enters into the place where dwells the name of the living God. God is purest light. He is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and he cannot look on iniquity. He is a consuming fire that devours all that is not holy, all that is not absolutely consecrated to him. In devouring wrath he licks up all that is profane. His anger waxes hot against all rebellion against his law.

When one comes into God’s court, he enters as a sinner. He enters as one who has grossly transgressed the commandments of God and has kept none of them. The sinner enters as one in whom dwells a loathsome disease and a fountain of all pollution. He enters knowing that by nature he hates God and despises God’s magnificent and glorious name. He enters as one who has not said, “Let thy name, O Lord, be magnified and all else be abased,” but he says, “Let thy name be trampled in the dust and altogether reckoned as chaff in the wind, while my name is exalted in the earth.”

And that sinner must die. The sinner must bear the punishment for his offenses, for that is God’s justice and the testimony of the law: “Cursed is every one who does not continue in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.” The sinner must die under the curse. The sinner must die as the holy God drives the living word of his wrath into the sinner’s heart and sinks him down into hell.

But Jehovah God called unto Moses and spoke 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 the Lord, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock.” Jehovah God in his eternal love for his people and in zeal for the eternal testimony of the cross gave to them a creature, an animal that shared their own earthly existences and an animal to which they had close personal connections. And coming before the Lord as a sinner, the Israelite placed his hands upon the head of that creature, took hold of a knife, slit that creature’s throat, and watched its lifeblood pour out as it underwent the sentence of death. And seeing that creature die, the Israelite saw in a figure that his old, polluted, sinful, and damnworthy self was dead. That self had been cursed and sent to hell. That self that had lived under the just wrath and punishment of God was brought to an end. The death of the animal was the Israelite’s death.

Today we clearly behold the Lord in all his sufferings and the glory that followed. Today, by means of the preaching of the gospel that evidently sets forth Jesus Christ before our eyes, him being crucified among us, the Spirit works that marvelous confession of faith in each of his children: “I was crucified with Christ. I am crucified with Christ. I am crucified with Christ every day, so that my old, polluted, sinful, and damnworthy self is dead. I was cursed and sent to hell. My sin-life under the just wrath and punishment of God has been brought to an end. And the truth is that when Christ died, I died.” And by faith the saving efficacy of the death of Christ comes into our hearts, so that we truly are crucified with Christ.