and thou shalt take of the blood of the bullock, and put it on the horns of the altar with thy finger, and shalt pour all the blood at the bottom of the altar.
Aaron and his sons were being made priests, and that work began not with robes or oil but with a dead animal and its blood. God told Moses to put some of it high on the horns of the altar and pour the rest out at the base — two very different motions with one substance.
The blood in this verse is not for the nation. It is for the family who would stand nearest to God. One commentator gives the reason, and names who applied it.
Yet, picture of Christ though he was, Aaron needed a sin offering and sacrifice no less than his sons: no sinful man could stand on any other ground before the LORD. Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the bull for the sin offering. It was killed, and Moses applied its blood; here Moses represents Christ. The priests, even more than any ordinary Israelite, needed atonement. How else could they approach the LORD without defiling His sanctuary?
The horns are the four upward points at the corners of the altar. Blood on them changes what the altar means for a guilty person.
The horn is a symbol of strength. So when the blood was sprinkled on the horns, the whole strength of the altar was displayed in all its completeness. That strength had been against the sinner; now it works on his behalf. In this way the horns of the altar became a place of refuge, a safe place no one could violate, for all who had a right to their protection on the ground of the sprinkled blood. Joab sought this protection when he fled from Solomon (1 Kings 2:28); but he had no claim on it, since he was a murderer, and he was killed. Wherever there is trust in the value of the sacrifice offered to God on the altar, no power on earth or in hell can touch the soul that rests under its shelter.
The horns stood above the crowd, so blood placed there was in plain sight. One writer draws out what that sight did for the forgiven person.
Sprinkled blood on the four horns was a complete display, above the heads of the people, of the blood that had made atonement for the transgression. It was a public memorial of atonement accomplished. No misgiving or doubt could arise about this. The sinner most of all would rejoice to see it done. He would know for himself the forgiveness of his guilt, and could point anyone to that open witness as proof that God had cleared him. How satisfied and content he would return home.
Most of the blood went nowhere near the horns. Moses emptied it on the ground under the altar fire, and commentators read that position closely.
The fire is always burning on the altar, expressing the consuming judgment of God. The blood is poured out below that fire. This suggests the blessed truth that our Lord Jesus Christ laid down His life — His blood — under the judgment of God. His death was not merely the surrender of life. It was bound up with the righteous wrath of God against sin, and in it He submitted Himself to that wrath... Only so could God's righteous claims be settled, and His grace flow out.
Blood at the bottom is blood at the foundation. Another writer applies that to where a sinner now stands.
Certain of the sin offerings had their blood poured out at the bottom of the altar. This surely means that our approach to God as sinners is founded on the blood of Christ. We could not be in God's presence without cleansing from our sins, and it is "the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7).
Here the blood goes on the furniture, not on the men. One commentator explains why the altar needed it, and what it means to sanctify something.
Aaron and his sons had to be consecrated over seven days. On each of those days a sin offering had to be killed for atonement, and so the altar where they would serve was cleansed. Having been cleansed by the blood, it was then to be anointed and so set apart for God. A lifeless thing, such as an altar, could be sanctified, since "to sanctify" simply means "to set apart for God."
- Need — Aaron and his sons could come to God only through a sin offering. The men closest to the sanctuary needed atonement most.
- Strength — blood on the horns turns the altar's full power from being against the sinner to being for him. It becomes a refuge for everyone who shelters under that blood.
- Witness — high and in the open, that blood was a public memorial of atonement accomplished. The forgiven person went home with no doubt left.
- Judgment — the blood at the base, under the fire, speaks of a life laid down under God's judgment. That settled His righteous claims, so grace could flow out.
- Approach — blood at the foundation means every approach to God rests on blood. Even the altar was cleansed by it first, then set apart for God.
And thou shalt take all the fat that covereth the inwards, and the net of the liver, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, and burn them upon the altar.
Exodus 29 tells how God set Aaron and his sons apart as priests. It begins with a death. A bull dies, its blood goes on the altar, and God then claims certain inner parts of the animal for the fire. Why single out the fat, a fold of tissue near the liver, and the two kidneys? And why do these parts go up on the altar, when the next verse calls this a sin offering?
These men brought nothing that made them fit for the work. A sin offering had to come first, and one writer explains why.
Aaron needed none. There is no sweet savour in the sin-offering or trespass-offering. It must be burnt outside the camp. Here it is a sin-offering — sin must be totally put away before our consecration. It is the nature judged before God. Christ is made sin for us, that we may be made priests. … In the Hebrew there is no difference between "sin" and "sin-offering."
The "long lobe of the liver" — "the caul" in older versions — is a real piece of anatomy:
The diaphragm or midriff, which stretches above the liver all across the thorax.
All these parts are hidden inside the animal. One writer reads them as a picture of what was inside Christ:
The fat speaks of the inward energy of the Lord's devotion to the Father's will. The kidneys filter and purify the blood, and they symbolize the inner motives of the Lord Jesus in all His ways, always perfectly pure. These were offered on the altar to God, for they are for His own pleasure.
Israel was never allowed to eat the fat. The reason lies in what fat stands for.
A very beautiful expression appears here: the fat "is the food of the offering made by fire for a sweet savour; all fat is the Lord's. It shall be a statute … that you eat neither fat nor blood." So God forbade eating the fat, just as He forbade the blood. The fat shows the energy of the inward will; compare Deuteronomy 32:15, "Jeshurun grew fat and kicked" — the will was in opposition to God. There the fat was not the Lord's. In the Lord Jesus, there was perfect subjection and devotedness: "Behold, I have come to do your will, O God." There the fat was all the Lord's.
Here is the surprise in the verse. The rest of the animal burned outside the camp, but these inner parts went up on the altar.
The Hebrew term for "burning" the fat of the inner parts, and so on, is the same as the term for burning incense. That holds even for a sin-offering — so fully does it express acceptance. Meanwhile the flesh, the skin, and the dung burned with fire outside the camp. What a witness to Christ — most holy, and the object of God's delight! And never more so than when God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us!
Another writer says what God found in that offering.
It is burned on the altar because the sin-offering was a picture of Christ. So it teaches us this: while He was charged with the sins of His people, God found in Him what completely answered to His own mind — truth in the inward parts, just as He did in the burnt-offering. His infinite acceptability to God was never more fully proved than when He bowed His head under the sins of His people. In grace He took our place. Yet even as He accepted the stroke of judgment that was our due, every thought of His heart, every movement of His will, every energy of His soul was perfect before God.
The order here carries a lesson for daily life.
Notice here that the Lord had His part first. That part was the inward worth and excellence of the victim. He alone knew, or could measure, the real worth and inward energy and affection of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is an important point. We may be sure that those who walk in fellowship with the Father seek His glory and His things first. Others make a rule of attending to the things of God only after they have done their own things. They know little of communion, even if they do know peace.
- Cause — Priesthood does not begin with human qualification. It begins with sin put away: "sin must be totally put away before our consecration."
- Hidden — The parts named are all internal. They stand for what only God could see: inward energy of devotion and pure motives.
- Claimed — All fat is the Lord's. Jeshurun grew fat and kicked, and his will stood against God; in Christ the whole inward energy went to God.
- Accepted — In a sin offering, these parts are "burned" with the same word used for incense. God delighted in Christ at the very moment He was made sin for us.
- Result — God takes His portion first, and that portion is the inward worth of the sacrifice. Those in fellowship with the Father seek His things before their own.
And the flesh of the bullock, and its skin, and its dung, shalt thou burn with fire outside the camp it is a sin-offering.
Exodus 29 describes the week-long ceremony that made Aaron and his sons priests, and it starts with a bull dying for them. Verse 14 disposes of that body in a way found nowhere else: the priests carry it away from the people and burn it, because it is a sin offering.
Before Aaron could serve at the altar, the ceremony dealt with his own sin — and said so in public:
Aaron appears here as a sinful man along with his sons, the one sin offering serving for them all. Aaron was clothed and anointed in connection with the sanctuary and its vessels, and in this he pictured the Lord Jesus Himself. Aaron and his sons shared in the results of the sin offering. They were really gaining from the atoning death of the One whom he alone pictured as High Priest. Aaron was not a person without sin, but the Lord was (Heb. 7:26); so Aaron was anointed before they killed the sin offering. But Aaron as a sinful man had need of a sin offering, and here confessed it before everyone. So God's holiness was maintained, Christ's spotlessness declared, and man's sinfulness met.
The bull did not just die. A few verses earlier, Aaron and his sons pressed their hands on its head:
This action showed that the offerers were identified with the victim they were about to offer. So after they laid their hands on it, the bull that was about to die stood before God as the representative of Aaron and his sons in their sins. The symbol transferred their guilt and charged it to the victim, which is now seen as bearing their sins. By that act they owned their guilt, that they deserved death, and their need of a substitute.
The verse names the skin and even the dung: the whole animal goes out, and the fire it meets is not the altar fire:
The skin of the bull, with the whole bull, was burned outside the camp. The Hebrew word for "burned" is different from the one used for the burnt offering. The word used in connection with the sin offering is "saraph"; it speaks of the burning of judgment.
The place chosen says as much as the fire:
Taking it outside the camp was a sign. The victim was identified with the evil of the offerer, and so had to be put far away from God. The camp was the place where the people of God were, as the sanctuary was where He Himself dwelt. To express this holy hatred of evil, they could not burn the sin offering near the sanctuary in the court, or even in the camp. They had to take it outside the camp and burn it there, solemnly, in a clean place. This surely shows the transfer of the offerer's evil to the victim in a most striking way.
One writer reads the darkness at the cross as the reality this pictured:
God is light, and darkness is the withdrawal of light. God had withdrawn. Out of the middle of that darkness He declares its nature. The terrible cry breaks from the lips of the Holy One: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That was the sin offering; that was the Victim burned outside the camp. It was the One away, in our place of distance — away from God.
The New Testament makes the link itself:
In the Old we have the types, for instance, of the sin offering burned "outside the camp" (Ex. 29:14); in the New we have Christ suffering "outside the gate" (Heb. 13:12), and this is distinctly linked up with "outside the camp" (vv. 11, 13).
Believers are called outside too, but not to the same thing:
Here, though, we must note carefully that this outside place is no longer the place of judgment from God. It is the place of reproach from men. We are not called to go outside under the judgment of God. We are called to go outside under the reproach of men, and that to the full. He suffered as the holy victim under the judgment of God; He endured as the patient martyr under the reproach of men. We cannot share His sufferings at the hand of God, but it is our privilege to share the insults He received from the hands of men. He went outside the camp to bear our judgment; we go outside the camp to bear His reproach.
- Inside first. Aaron could not serve until a sin offering covered him. The man who pictured a spotless Priest confessed he was not one.
- Transferred. Their hands on the bull's head moved the guilt across. The death that followed was a substitute's death.
- Consumed. The word for this burning, saraph, is not the word used for the burnt offering. It speaks of judgment.
- Outside. They carried the body away from the camp and the sanctuary. What carries sin cannot stay near God. The cross answered the picture in darkness and the cry of being forsaken.
- Outside again. Jesus suffered outside the gate under God's judgment. We are called outside to Him — not to bear judgment, but reproach.