The Requirement

Last time we considered the general material requirement for all bloody sacrifices that God gave to his people in Leviticus 1:2: “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.” What we notice if we proceed to the next verse is the commencement of God’s requirements for each of the different kinds of sacrifices, beginning first with the law for the burnt offering: “If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer…” (v. 3). Following the law for the burnt offering is the law for the non-bloody meat offering that accompanied certain bloody sacrifices (Lev. 2), then the law for the peace offering (Lev. 3), and finally the laws for the sin and trespass offerings (Lev. 4–6:17). We will consider these different kinds of sacrifices in the future. But for the purpose of the present article, let us proceed to Leviticus 1:4 and observe God’s requirement that the Israelite “shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering.”

This ritual in which the Israelite placed his hand upon the head of the sacrificial animal was common to every kind of bloody sacrifice. Every animal that was slaughtered at the altar passed under this imposition of the placement of a hand, and no animal was killed apart from it. Although verse 4 only refers to the imposition of hands upon the burnt offering, the ritual is also specifically mentioned in connection with the peace offering (Lev. 3:2, 8, 13) and the sin offering (Lev. 4:4, 15, 24, 29, 33). Scripture does not explicitly state that the ritual belonged to the trespass offering, but because of how closely the trespass offering was related to the sin offering, we have no reason to exclude this ritual from the trespass offering.¹ If blood was shed in the courts of the temple, then it was always preceded by this imposition of a hand upon the head of an animal.

“He shall put [samak] his hand upon the head of the burnt offering.”

Samak is a transliteration of the Hebrew word for this act that God required of his people. Samak means to lean upon. The word is translated thus in Amos 5:19: “As if a man…went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall.” Implied in samak is the exertion of much energy, so that the object is burdened with the weight of the subject. Such is the picture in Psalm 88:7, where the wrath of God is the subject of samak: “Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves” (emphasis added). Therefore, the scene described in Leviticus 1:4 is not that of an Israelite lightly tapping his fingers on the crown of his animal but rather that of an Israelite using all the strength of his body to force the animal’s head downward. And scholars agree on this point. For example, Alfred Edersheim wrote that samak was “to be done with one’s whole force—as it were, to lay one’s whole weight upon the [animal].”² And Johann Kurtz pointed out that Jewish rabbis taught samak as “an act which required the strongest energy and resoluteness both of mind and will…[being] performed with all the powers of the body.”³

Because God required that his people perform samak for every kind of bloody sacrifice, it behooves us to examine the significance of this ritual before we take up a consideration of the individual sacrifices. The question before us is, what was God’s purpose with samak? And to this question the following general answer may be given: samak denoted the vicarious nature of that bloody sacrifice to stand in the place of the sinner who appeared in the presence of Jehovah. Samak pointed to the eternal reality that Jesus Christ is the divinely appointed substitute whom God has made sin for all his elect, that they might be made the righteousness of God in him. But to arrive at this complete picture, we must note two aspects that belong to samak.

Transfer of Sin

What we must note first is that the offerer, who entered the doors of the tabernacle as a sinner, transferred his sin to the sacrificial victim through samak. The sinner pushed down with the full weight of his body upon the head of the animal and consequently burdened it with all the guilt of his sin. There can be no question about this first aspect of samak; neither can there be any room for disagreement. That samak effected a transfer of sin is clearly stated in Leviticus 16.

In Leviticus 16 God prescribed the law for the great feast of the old dispensation, the day of atonement. The day of atonement was the greatest annual feast among all the other feast days because on the day of atonement, the high priest went all the way past the veil of the inner sanctuary to stand for a few moments before the face of Jehovah. For the saint in the old dispensation, that particular event on the day of atonement was the most glorious moment that could possibly occur under the law. There was nothing higher than that: a man entered into the presence of Jehovah—and lived!

But when the high priest passed through the veil, he could not enter without blood. A bloody sacrifice was required, a sacrifice that stood at the head of all the other bloody sacrifices offered throughout the year. On the day of atonement, the high priest took two kids of the goats from the congregation of Israel and presented them before Jehovah at the door of the tabernacle “for a sin offering” (v. 5, emphasis added). Those two kids represented one sacrificial victim: the first was slaughtered in the ordinary manner and its blood was collected to sprinkle before Jehovah, and the second was sent away into the wilderness as a symbol of the complete removal of sin from the camp. The purpose of the second goat was to represent vividly the effect that the first goat’s death accomplished.

The relevance of Leviticus 16 to the present topic is made clear by what God required the high priest to perform upon the second goat before its dismissal from the camp:

21. Aaron shall lay [samak] both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness:

22. And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness. (Lev. 16:21–22)

What scripture makes abundantly clear is that the high priest put “all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins” upon the head of the live goat through samak. Samak bound and burdened all the sins of the people upon that animal, such that the Israelites saw no mere goat depart from the camp but rather saw their own sins being led away, never to be seen or heard of again.

If this is scripture’s testimony concerning the significance of samak on the day that stood at the head of the entire sacrificial system in the old dispensation, then we must conclude that in the case of every bloody sacrifice—regardless of whether the sacrifice was a burnt offering, peace offering, sin offering, or trespass offering—samak represented the transfer of sins. When the sacrifice had reference to the sins of an individual, that individual placed his hand upon the creature and burdened it with his sins. When the sacrifice had reference to the sins of the whole congregation, then the elders of the congregation, as representatives of the whole body, laid their hands upon the head of the victim to burden it with the congregation’s sins (Lev. 4:15). In either case, what was transferred to the victim was nothing more or less than sins.

What must be rejected is the fanciful notion of certain scholars that samak represented a transfer of something more or something other than sin. What is taught by such men is that the offerer transferred the inward feelings and disposition of his own heart through samak, which feelings or disposition varied depending on the kind of sacrifice that the offerer brought near to the altar. On this matter C. F. Keil wrote,

If the desire of the sacrificer was to be delivered from a sin or trespass, he would transfer his sin and trespass to the victim; but if, on the other hand, he desired through the sacrifice to consecrate his life to God, that he might receive strength for the attainment of holiness, and for a walk well-pleasing to God, he would transfer this desire, in which the whole effort of his soul was concentrated, to the sacrificial animal; so that in the latter, as in the former instance, the animal would henceforth take his place, and all that was done to it would be regarded as being done to the person who offered it. But if the intention was merely to express his gratitude for benefits and mercies received or hoped for, he would simply transfer this feeling of gratitude to the victim, so that it would represent his person only so far as it was absorbed into the good received or sought for.⁴

I do not deny that there is a final thought or end belonging to each bloody sacrifice that differentiated each one from the others. The final thought or end of the peace offering differed, for example, from the final thought or end of the trespass offering. But that does not necessarily infer that the meaning of samak must differ for every kind of bloody sacrifice. Neither must it be overlooked that samak never occurred when a non-bloody offering—a meat or drink offering—was brought into the temple. If the offerer sought to impart the disposition of his heart to his offering through samak, why was the ritual excluded when non-bloody offerings were brought?

This notion that the offerer transferred the inward feelings and disposition of his own heart seriously errs because it minimizes the reality that when the offerer entered the door of the tabernacle, he always entered as a sinner. He entered not merely as an offerer, but he entered as one who had grossly transgressed all the commandments of God and kept none of them. He entered as one who was still inclined to all evil. And that sinner came before God, who is terribly displeased with original as well as actual sins, who temporally and eternally punishes sin in his just judgment, who curses everyone who continues not in all things that are written in the book of the law, who does not suffer the fool to stand in his presence, and who is a consuming fire and communes only with those who are holy as he is holy. When one comes before the presence of Jehovah, the thought of his heart must be:

Thou, Jehovah, art a God
Who delightest not in sin;
Evil shall not dwell with Thee,
Nor the proud Thy favor win.
Evildoers Thou dost hate,
Lying tongues Thou wilt defeat;
God abhors the man who loves
Violence and base deceit.⁵

At Sinai the word of God came to Israel through the moral law with thunderings, lightnings, the sound of the trumpet, a smoking mountain, and with such oppressive weightiness that the Israelites exclaimed to Moses, “Let not God speak with us, lest we die!” In the presence of this God, the offerer stood. Thus the principal need of the sinner who entered God’s courts was forgiveness. The sinner had to know that God satisfied his justice against sin, that God in mercy did not impute to the sinner any of his iniquities nor any of his transgressions in all his sins. Only a fool would enter God’s courts with the first thought of his heart being, “Let me transfer to this sacrifice my desire for fellowship or my gratitude for God’s gifts or my longing for a holy walk.” Such a man had not reckoned with the terrible reality of his own sin and sinful nature nor the awful holiness and transcendent majesty of God.

But through samak the sinner imparted all his sins to the sacrificial victim. In perfect harmony with this aspect of samak, there is the unanimous testimony of Jewish tradition that samak was always accompanied with the following confession of sin: “I beseech thee, O Lord; I have sinned, I have trespassed, I have rebelled; I have done this or that…but now I repent, and let this be my expiation.”⁶ And the insistence of the rabbis was that “where there is no confession of sins, there is no imposition of hands, because imposition of hands belongs to confession of sins.”⁷

Furthermore, the notion that the offerer transferred the inward feelings and disposition of his own heart does not explain why in all the different kinds of bloody sacrifices, samak stood in the same local and temporal relationship to the subsequent slaughter of the animal. In all cases when samak was performed, the offerer put his sacrificial victim to death by slitting its throat with his own hand. That death of the animal was not a mere preliminary step to achieve the blood, fat, and flesh for the altar. Rather, that death was a penal death. That death was the wages of sin and the immediate consequence of bearing guilt in Jehovah’s presence. That death occurred because sin had been transferred to the sacrificial victim, and it had to be cut off from the land of the living. We are obliged to regard samak as a ritual by which the sinner transferred nothing more or less than sin and to uphold the same signification in every case.

Also, we must not ignore the second part of Leviticus 1:4, that after the Israelite pressed down upon the head of the animal, it was “accepted for him to make atonement for him.” Following samak the animal was accepted to make atonement. In the case of the burnt offering, samak did not have in view the offerer’s desire “to consecrate his life to God, that he might receive strength for the attainment of holiness, and for a walk well-pleasing to God,” as Keil taught. Rather, all the actions of the sinner and all the assistance that the sinner received from the priests were first and solely directed to the making of atonement.

As I pointed out in a foregoing article,⁸ the word atonement most basically means to cover. And when you consider atonement as a covering, then you must liken that to the covering of the best insurance policy that a man can receive. The word atonement has a very comprehensive idea in the Old Testament. Atonement is a covering that grants propitiation of the wrath of God, redemption from the curse of the law, forgiveness of sins, reconciliation, and peace with God. Atonement perfectly satisfies the justice of God, which justice demands that the sinner who has offended God’s most high majesty be punished with everlasting punishment in body and soul.

That the sacrificial victim was accepted to make atonement means, in the language of the New Testament, that the sacrificial victim was made sin and made a curse for the Israelite sinner (2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13). Being made sin through samak, the creature was cursed; and being cursed, the creature was condemned and sentenced to death. Following samak the sinner perceived in a figure what Isaiah saw in his prophetic ecstasy:

4. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

5. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isa. 53:4–5)

After samak the animal became the surety of the sinner. The Israelite sinner fell under the umbrella of its atoning work. This brings us to the second aspect of samak.

Designating the Substitute

I do not believe that the significance of samak can be limited to a transfer of sin. It is my judgment that God also required samak to designate the proper substitute for such a transfer of sin. According to this second aspect of samak, the ritual expressed that the sacrificial victim was both appointed to a position of sinner meriting punishment and also burdened with that responsibility instead of or in behalf of the sinner.

The other usages of samak in scripture compel me to draw this conclusion. Scripture must inform our understanding of samak in connection with the bloody sacrifices. I say this over against a large number of scholars who claim that the offerer declared through samak that he willingly surrendered his own possession for the service of Jehovah.⁹ As plausible as this suggestion might be, nowhere does samak indicate such a notion in scripture. To teach such a notion reflects lazy scholarship. If the scriptural data concerning samak is studied, it becomes evident that samak also set apart a substitute to stand in one’s place.

Samak is used this way in Numbers 8, when the children of Israel put their hands upon the Levites, separating the Levites to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation. God declared to Moses that the Levites “are wholly given unto me from among the children of Israel; instead of such as open every womb, even instead of the firstborn of all the children of Israel, have I taken them unto me” (v. 16). The Levites were set apart by God “instead of” the firstborn of the children of Israel to stand before him and to fulfill a lifelong service in his courts. This position to which the Levites were appointed was enacted by samak. “Thou shalt bring the Levites before the Lord: and the children of Israel shall put [samak] their hands upon the Levites” (v. 10). Through samak the Levites were set apart as substitutes in the place of every firstborn from among the other tribes of Israel.

Samak is also used this way in Numbers 27, when Moses installed Joshua into office over Israel that he might stand in Moses’ place, since Moses could not lead Israel into the promised land. God told Moses to “put some of thine honor upon him” (v. 20), which honor was the position or office that God had bestowed upon Moses. Moses then took Joshua before the high priest and all the congregation, “and he laid [samak] his hands upon him, and gave him a charge, as the Lord commanded by the hand of Moses” (v. 23). The substitution of Joshua for Moses was enacted by samak, and Joshua subsequently was set apart for the position and responsibility to lead Israel.

Therefore, in harmony with the usage of samak in Numbers 8 and 27, I conclude that samak not only transferred sin to the animal but also designated that the animal occupied a position of service in behalf of the sinner and was responsible for that sinner’s sin. When the Israelite sinner pushed down with all his weight upon the sacrificial victim, it became in a real sense his representative or substitute. It was his legal representative, responsible for his debt of sins that had offended God’s most high majesty. It stood in a vicarious position, so that the nature of its death was vicarious satisfaction of God’s inviolable justice.

The Imprint of Christ

In connection with the bloody sacrifices, samak looked forward to the vicarious nature of Christ’s own sacrifice to make atonement for sin. When Christ came, he bore witness to this reality in Matthew 20:28: “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” The word “for” is the Greek word anti, which means in the stead of or in the place of. Christ gave his life in the place of many as a substitute. Christ’s witness concerning himself was that he was the substitute of many—every single one of his elect people—to stand in their place and to represent them before the bar of divine justice. He presented himself before the Father in behalf of his elect to appease the Father’s wrath by full satisfaction, to restore that which he took not away, and to suffer, the just for the unjust.

Samak testified that another was able to make satisfaction for sin as a substitute. That Christ was able to make such a satisfaction for his elect people has five necessary elements to it.

First, Christ was able to make satisfaction because God willed to be satisfied. I would be remiss if I failed to emphasize that samak had significance only because God directed it. Just as God told Moses, “Take Joshua the son of Nun and lay thy hand upon him,” so God told Israel through Moses, “Put thy hand upon the head of the offering; and it shall be accepted for thee to make atonement for thee.” This divine direction for samak must not be neglected because only God can determine if he will have his justice satisfied by a substitute, and only God can make for himself such satisfaction. Over against man’s unpayable debt of sin, it is the work of God’s own mercy and justice to glorify himself by showing pity for the elect sinner and providing a surety for his salvation. God made the creature stand in the place of the sinner, and God made the sacrificial victim responsible for the sinner’s sin.

That is what is meant when Leviticus 1:4 states that the animal was “accepted” to make atonement. It was accepted to stand in the room and stead of the offerer because God was pleased that the substitute should do this. The animal was pleasing to God, not because God delights in the blood of bulls or goats but because by this appointment God was declaring, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth” (Isa. 42:1). Yes, God himself comes in Christ to satisfy his own justice in his eternal love for his people. It is not because of Christ’s satisfaction that God loves his elect people or willed to reconcile them to himself. Rather, it is because God loves his elect people and willed to reconcile them to himself that he gave Christ in their behalf. And Christ did not enter his place as substitute or take that responsibility upon himself on his own, but Christ was called of God to bring every last one of his elect unto God according to the eternal purpose of God and by the power of God’s decree.

Second, Christ was able to make satisfaction because he is God. As God, he was able to bear and exhaust the infinite wrath of God and not be consumed. And as God, his suffering had infinite value so that he was able to pay God what God is owed to possess the church. God himself in Christ became the surety of his elect.

Third, Christ was able to make satisfaction because he is also very man. As one who came out of the human race, he was able to stand in the place of the human beings whom God has ordained to eternal life and bear their punishment in the same human nature that has sinned.

Fourth, Christ was able to make satisfaction because in God’s will to be satisfied he has appointed Christ to be a new head. If there were no connection between Christ and the elect, then there could be no substitution for the elect. But by God’s decree there is both a legal connection and an organic connection between Christ as the head and the church as his body. He is the perfect representative of the elect sinner, and thus he is responsible for the fulfillment of the covenant both by obeying the will of God perfectly and by suffering the punishment that those in the covenant deserved. He is responsible for the righteousness of that covenant. He is responsible for the debt of the sins in that covenant.

Because of this headship, it must be emphasized that Christ did not die for the mere advantage or interest of his elect, but he died in their place. The importance of these words for the elect child of God is that it is as if I myself hung on the cross. For the saint in the old dispensation, this reality was given in a very dim picture when through samak he burdened with sin a creature with which he stood in a close and personal relationship.¹⁰ For the member of the Reformed church today, it belongs to his self-examination in connection with the Lord’s table “whether he doth believe this faithful promise of God that all his sins are forgiven him only for the sake of the passion and death of Jesus Christ, and that the perfect righteousness of Christ is imputed and freely given him as his own, yea, so perfectly as if he had satisfied in his own person for all his sins and fulfilled all righteousness” (Confessions and Church Order, 268, emphasis added).

Finally, Christ was able to make satisfaction because, as to his person, he is the eternally begotten Son of God who came from heaven and who was not in Adam’s corporation. This is required because guilt is imputed to the person; and if Christ was to be free from the responsibility of Adam’s sin and worthy of a perfect and uncorrupted human nature, then he must be the head of a new corporation. That he is the eternally begotten Son of God also means that in him is all of God’s pleasure. Nothing else is needed than the mediator Jesus Christ to be accepted before God.

Samak was yet another impression into the moldable substance of the old dispensation of the weighty, eternal reality of Christ, specifically of Christ the substitute of his people. Next time, I intend to harmonize the statement in Leviticus 1:4 that the sacrifice was accepted to make atonement for the sinner with scripture’s testimony in Hebrews 10:4 that “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.”