Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/782

 The patriarchs, when sojourning in Canaan, had already worshipped the God who revealed Himself to them, with both burnt-offerings and slain-offerings. Whether their descendants, the children of Israel, had offered sacrifices to the God of their fathers during their stay in the foreign land of Egypt, we cannot tell, as there is no allusion whatever to the subject in the short account of these 430 years. So much, however, is certain, that they had not forgotten to regard the sacrifices as a leading part of the worship of God, and were ready to follow Moses into the desert, to serve the God of their fathers there by a solemn act of sacrificial worship (Exo 5:1-3, compared with Lev 4:31; Lev 8:4, etc.); and also, that after the Exodus from Egypt, not only did Jethro offer burnt-offerings and slain-offerings to God in the camp of the Israelites, and prepare a sacrificial meal in which the elders of Israel took part along with Moses and Aaron (Exo 18:12), but young men offered burnt-offerings and slain-offerings by the command of Moses at the conclusion of the covenant (Exo 24:5). Consequently the sacrificial laws of these chapters presuppose the presentation of burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, and slain-offerings as a custom well known to the people, and a necessity demanded by their religious feelings (Lev 1:2-3, Lev 1:10, Lev 1:14; Lev 2:1, Lev 2:4-5, Lev 2:14; Lev 3:1, Lev 3:6, Lev 3:11). They were not introduced among the Israelites for the first time by Moses, as Knobel affirms, who also maintains that the feast of the Passover was the first animal sacrifice, and in fact a very imperfect one. Even animal sacrifices date from the earliest period of our race. Not only did Noah offer burnt-offerings of all clean animals and birds (Gen 8:20), but Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock an offering to the Lord (Gen 4:4). The object of the sacrificial laws in this book