Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/785

 revealed to him, that the true God did not require human sacrifice from His worshippers, but the surrender of the heart and the denial of the natural life, even though it should amount to a submission to death itself, and also that this act of surrender was to be perfected in the animal sacrifice; and that it was only when presented with these motives that sacrifice could be well-pleasing to God. Even before this, however, God had given His sanction to the choice of clean or edible beasts and birds for sacrifice, in the command to Abram to offer such animals, as the sacrificial substratum for the covenant to be concluded with him (Gen 15). Now, though nothing has been handed down concerning the sacrifices of the patriarchs, with the exception of Gen 46:1., there can be no doubt that they offered burnt-offerings upon the altars which they built to the Lord, who appeared to them in different places in Canaan (Gen 12:7; Gen 13:4, Gen 13:18; Gen 26:25; Gen 33:20; Gen 35:1-7), and embodied in these their solemn invocation of the name of God in prayer; since the close connection between sacrifice and prayer is clearly proved by such passages as Hos 14:3; Heb 13:15, and is universally admitted. To the burnt-offering there was added, in the course of time, the slain-offering, which is mentioned for the first time in Gen 31:54, where Jacob seals the covenant, which has been concluded with Laban and sworn to by God, with a covenant meal. Whilst the burnt-offering, which was given wholly up to God and entirely consumed upon the altar, and which ascended to heaven in the smoke, set forth the self-surrender of man to God, the slain-offering, which culminated in the sacrificial meal, served as a seal of the covenant fellowship, and represented the living fellowship of man with God. Thus, when Jacob-Israel went down with his house to Egypt, he sacrificed at Beersheba, on the border of the promised land, to the God of his father Isaac, not burnt-offerings, but slain-offerings (Gen 46:1), through which he presented his prayer to the Lord for preservation in covenant fellowship even in a foreign land, and in consequence of which he received the promise from God in a nocturnal vision, that He, the God of his