Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/792

 cannot be correctly and fully deduced from the term corban, which was common to them all, or from such names as were used to denote the different varieties of sacrifice, or even from the materials employed and the ritual observed, but only from all these combined, and from an examination of them in connection with the nature and design of the Old Testament economy. Regarded as offerings or gifts, the sacrifices were only means by which Israel was to seek and sustain communion with its God. These gifts were to be brought by the Israelites from the blessing which God had bestowed upon the labour of their hands (Deu 16:17), that is to say, from the fruit of their regular occupations, viz., agriculture and the rearing of cattle; in other words, from the cattle they had reared, or the produce of the land they had cultivated, which constituted their principal articles of food (viz., edible animals and pigeons, corn, oil, and wine), in order that in these sacrificial gifts they might consecrate to the Lord their God, not only their property and food, but also the fruit of their ordinary avocations. In this light the sacrifices are frequently called “food (bread) of firing for Jehovah” (Lev 3:11, Lev 3:16) and “bread of God” (Lev 21:6, Lev 21:8, Lev 21:17); by which we are not to suppose that food offered to God for His own nourishment is intended, but food produced by the labour of man, and then caused to ascend as a firing to his God, for an odour of satisfaction (vid., Lev 3:11). In the clean animals, which he had obtained by his own training and care, and which constituted his ordinary live-stock, and in the produce obtained through the labour of his hands in the field and vineyard, from which he derived his ordinary support, the Israelite offered not his victus as a symbolum vitae, but the food which he procured in