NOTES for Lev 2:1-16

We continue our discussion of sacrifice, one of the central concepts of the book of Leviticus and of the whole Old Testament, which helped Christians understand what took place on Golgotha. The grain offering, then, one of the principal forms of sacrifice, is offered by a person to God through the priest, who is the mediator. It consists of staple foods—bread and oil—and is therefore an offering to God of what He first gave to humanity. Sacrifice implies, as it were, a shared meal between the person, the priest, and God, while the meal itself is a central element of communion in love—in the family, in the clan, when concluding a transaction or covenant, and so forth. Part of the offering is burned, symbolically becoming God’s food, and part is eaten by the priest: it is most holy, bread that belongs to the Lord. Our task here is to understand what sacrifice meant to the Israelites and why it became the most adequate description of what the Lord Jesus accomplished.