NOTES for Lev 4:1-35

The next most important kind of sacrifice is the sin offering. As we can see, the very rite by which this sacrifice is offered contains many indications that its essence differs greatly from that of other offerings. No one eats the flesh of the animal offered “for sin.” After it is slaughtered before the Tabernacle, its blood is brought into the sanctuary before the veil (to show God symbolically that blood has been shed), its entrails are burned on the altar, and its flesh is destroyed outside the camp (compare Hebrews 13:11). This is not a “sacred meal shared by God and human beings,” but the symbolic punishment of the animal for human sins (recall the rite of laying hands on the victim’s head). This ritual binds together the spiritually inseparable concepts of sin—falling away from God, the source of life—and death and destruction as the consequence of that falling away.