Pre-Sinaitic Sacrifices (Part 2)

If the patriarchal sacrifices were instituted by the Creator, it is reasonable to suppose that they were not positive and arbitrary requirements, with no hint of the reasons on which they were grounded — man’s dependence on omnipotent power and his exposure to offended justice. This revealed reason would involve the element of propitiation. But if sacrifices were the natural outgrowth of man’s religious nature — the expression of his deepest spiritual necessities — they must have had some reference to sin, the saddest fact in his consciousness. In either case, whether they were ordained of God or were spontaneous with man, the notion of expiation would not have been entirely absent.

At the same time it is reasonable to suppose that this idea was not distinct and prominent in the minds of the patriarchs, because the holiness of God had not yet been emphatically disclosed — that bright background on which the grim deformities of sin are portrayed. To the patriarchs God always turned the benignant and merciful side of his nature. He talks with Abraham as a friend, putting him quite at ease in his presence, and his wife laughs with incredulity while hearing the words of promise from the Lord’s lips. There is no inspiration of painful awe, no putting off the sandals to stand upon ground sanctified by the tread of the most holy Jehovah. From Adam to Moses there is no specific revelation of the holiness of the Supreme One. We look in vain in the book of Genesis, the record of patriarchal life, for the words holy and holiness as descriptive of the Divine character.

The hour for the revelation of this attribute did not arrive till the exiled Moses, at Horeb, turned aside from his flock to “see this great sight,” the bush burning yet not consumed. Exodus 3:3. The footsteps of the inquisitive Hebrew shepherd are suddenly arrested by the awful words, “Draw not nigh hither!” A new aspect of Jehovah’s nature is from this hour to be unfolded with ever-increasing splendour: “I am holy.” Sin having now, for the first time since the fall, its proper measure, becomes, by contrast, “exceeding sinful,” and needs to be purged from the conscience by blood distinctly expiatory.

We arrive at the same conclusion when we trace the history of man through the period in which he had only that internal sense of right and wrong called the unwritten law; which, indeed, constitutes him a subject of God’s moral government, and renders him amenable to the penalties of violated law, but is without that vivid apprehension of guilt which overwhelms his soul when that law, still legible within, takes on the form of an objective code written in stone by the finger of God amid the quakings of burning Horeb. Now, as never before, he regards himself as a sinner. “The law entered, that the offence might abound.” Romans 5:20. Now he needs relief from conscious guilt by a method of expiation bearing the unmistakable signature of his offended God. His forgiveness must be as authentically announced as his guilt has been glaringly demonstrated. Hence the provision for the typical purgation of the conscience is the logical sequence of the decalogue. Sinai has rendered the institution of the sin offering a necessity for the peace and salvation of the penitent sinner. 

— Commentary on Leviticus.

The Seventh Day

QUESTION: In Gen. 2:2 why is it said that "God ended his work on the seventh day," and then follows the contradictory statement that he rested on that day?

ANSWER: It is the general voice of the Scriptures that the whole creation was finished in six days. See Ex. 20:11 and 31:17. There is a good reason for the opinion of A. Clarke that this is a mistake of a transcriber who read the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet for the seventh, which very closely resembles it. The Jews did not have our nine digits but used letters instead. The Greek version, made about 200 B. C., and quoted in the New Testament more than 1,000 times, reads, "God ended his work on the sixth day." Thus reads also the Samaritan Hebrew, and the Syriac version.

— Steele's Answers p. 181.

The Biblical Chronology of Creation

QUESTION: Harmonize the Biblical chronology of the Creation of Adam 4004 years B. C. with the Babylonian, 6158 years.

ANSWER: The Bible is an infallible directory to eternal life, but not to the age of the world or to an accurate scientific chronology. McClintock & Strong name forty-four authors, all of whom arrive at different results. The Septuagint, the Greek version often quoted in the New Testament, makes the period from Adam to Abraham 1486 years more than the Hebrew text does. Most modern writers adopt the Septuagint numbers in preference to the Hebrew.

— Steele's Answers p. 159.