What is the significance of burning the flesh of the bull outside the camp (Exodus 29:14)?

It is impossible to follow all the manifold types in connection with the sin offering for the priest, the ruler, and the congregation. The details of it demand a very careful and minute study which we cannot attempt here. We can treat the sin offering only in a general way. The bullock is the sin offering for the anointed priest and for the whole congregation (verses 4 and 13). Like in the burnt offering, the offerers had to identify themselves with the offering by laying their hands on the head of the bullock. But this difference must be noticed: in the burnt offering the believer is seen identified with Christ and accepted in Christ; in the sin offering Christ became identified with us in our sin. Sin was transferred to Him as our substitute. "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." The blood then was sprinkled seven times before the Lord. Some of it was put upon the horns of the altar of incense; while the blood of the bullock, the greater portion of it, was poured at the bottom of the altar of burnt offering.

The skin of the bullock with the whole bullock was burned without the camp. The Hebrew word for "burned" is different from that used in the burnt offering. The word used in connection with the sin offering is "saraph"; it speaks of the burning of judgment. The commentary to this is Hebrews 13:11-12. "The bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood suffered without the gate." With the case of a ruler having sinned the offering was a kid of the goats, a male; and in the case of any one of the common people having sinned through ignorance still other instructions are given.

Now there was just the difficulty — to maintain the proof of Christ's perfectness, even where God shows the consequences of our evil laid to His account. These two conditions had to be met, and equally met in the sin-offering. Man never could have done it; indeed he is uncommonly slow to learn it even where it has been written by God before his eyes. We have all read and have all passed by these most striking lessons; but let us now notice that in the sin-offering where the victim was identified with the guilt of the offerer, this was provided; "the skin of the bullock and all his flesh, with his head, and with his legs, and his inwards, and his dung, even the whole bullock (the animal as such with a very slight exception), shall he carry forth without the camp unto a clean place, where the ashes are poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire, where the ashes are poured out shall he be burnt." There was this sign in taking it without the camp, that the victim identified with the evil of the offerer had to be put away far from God. The camp was the place where the people of God were, as the sanctuary was where He Himself dwelt. To express thus the holy abhorrence of evil, not only could the sin-offering not be burnt near the sanctuary in the court but not even in the camp. It must be taken without the camp and there burnt solemnly in a clean place. This surely shows the transfer of the evil of the offerer to the victim in a most striking way.

And this all the details show: the very word used for it is not alah, "to ascend," "mount up," or hiqtir, "to consume as incense," but saraph, simply "to burn." The meaning of this is not, as Oehler supposes, to show that the burning is not sacrificial, but simply, as with what remained over of the paschal lamb, or of the peace-offerings, to destroy what could not be eaten! He must surely have forgotten Heb. 13. But it distinguishes between what was sweet savor and what typified or implied the wrath of God. It thus contradicts also the view of those who with still less propriety would make the fire every where a type of wrath. Thus the meal-offering, the incense, and the burning of the fat would be confounded with the burning here. Rather, the fire is the type of that holiness of God which if it try One perfectly obedient could only develop the sweet savor, but as against sin, or one made sin, indeed becomes wrath by the very necessity of its being holiness. Then it is on the ground without an altar, where, if the altar speak of Christ Himself as we have seen, the burning on the ground would signify that it is not now Christ in His own person, as it were, that is in question, but the sin or sinner with whom God is dealing. While the place "outside the camp," outside of what is in recognized relationship to God, speaks, like that "without the gate" of the epistle to the Hebrews, of distance from God, that real "forsaking" which in the twenty-second psalm we see to be the agony of all others, the one exception to all God's dealings with the righteous since the world was.

The victim, then, identified with the sinner by the laying of his hands on its head was never seen by him again. If he had sought for it he could not have found it, nor could the question of that particular sin have been re-opened; for the death of the animal had taken place, and its blood been duly dealt with. How carefully did God thus provide that the sinner's conscience should be at rest about the sin. This is God's way, and He would signify to the soul what can be effected by sacrifice. *By the burning of the carcase by fire God's judgment on sin was expressed, the fire of His wrath having fallen on it; but, burnt outside the camp, it also typified Him who, "that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate." (Heb. 13:12.) So, when sacrifices shall again be offered up with acceptance on God's altar at Jerusalem, the carcase of the sin-offering will be "burnt in the appointed place outside the sanctuary." Outside the camp, outside the gate, outside the sanctuary, speak of the heinousness of sin in God's eyes; but the holy character of the flesh (for it was most holy) tells of the untarnishable holiness of the sin-offering; and as God showed what sin was before Him, He also manifested, by the injunctions about the flesh, the holy nature of the antitype. If the flesh was eaten, it could only be eaten in the holy place, or, as Numbers 18:10 expresses it, in the most holy place — "Whosoever shall touch the flesh thereof shall be holy;" "All the males among the priests shall eat thereof: it is most holy." And none but the males of the priests could eat of it, for it was the work of a priest alone to put away for ever out of sight the sin now identified with the victim.

For what meant that darkness which in full day wrapped the cross? People talk about nature sympathizing with her Lord, and all that. It was no such thing. God is light, and darkness is the withdrawal of light. God had withdrawn. Out of the midst of it He proclaims its nature when there breaks from the lips of the Holy One that terrible cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou 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 body of the heifer that had been slain was burned outside the camp. It was the same with the victim offered for the sin of the high priest or the people (Lev. 4), and the offering on the great day of atonement; for it is said, "No sin offering, whereof any of the blood is brought into the tabernacle of the congregation to reconcile withal in the holy place, shall be eaten: it shall be burnt in the fire." (Lev. 6:30.) The body burnt outside the camp denoted the holiness of God, who must banish sin from His presence, even when borne by Christ. What then was the severity of His judgment, since this judgment consumed the holy victim who bore the sin! The victim, it is said, was a thing most holy. But the ashes of the burnt heifer loudly proclaimed at the same time that sin was not imputed to the sinner, and that this great question had been definitely settled between Christ and God.

In the burning of the whole bullock outside the camp, we see typically the complete consumption in holy judgment of what was so offensive to God; and the ashes speak of judgment eternally exhausted.

The flesh, entire, burnt without the camp prefigures the judgment of nature, sin in the flesh condemned.

But the rest of the animal was taken outside the camp and all burned. It reminds us that, as the sin offering, the Lord Jesus suffered “outside the gate” (Heb. 13:12) as under the curse of God, bearing alone the great burden of sin.

The rest of the bullock - his flesh, his skin, his dung - was burned outside the camp. It was a Sin Offering, which was always burned outside the camp. Outside the camp was a place of reproach. We read, "The bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the Sanctuary by the High Priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate" (Heb. 13:11-12). The camp was a large place. Some three million souls surrounded the Tabernacle. According to the Jewish historian, the camp had a circuit of twelve miles. It must have been a solemn and awe-inspiring spectacle to see the Sin Offering being carried outside the camp, there to be burned as symbolizing God's utter detestation of sin, and the death of our Lord as alone meeting the judgment of God.