Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/793

 the exercise of his God-appointed calling, as a symbol of the spiritual food which endureth unto everlasting life (Joh 6:27, cf. Lev 4:34), and which nourishes both soul and body for imperishable life in fellowship with God, that in these sacrificial gifts he might give up to the Lord, who had adopted him as His own possession, not so much the substance of his life, or that which sustained and preserved it, as the agens of his life, or his labour and toil, and all the powers he possessed, and might receive sanctification from the Lord in return. In this way the sacrificial gifts acquire a representative character, and denote the self-surrender of a man, with all his labour and productions, to God. But the idea of representation received a distinct form and sacrificial character for the first time in the animal sacrifice, which was raised by the covenant revelation and the giving of the law into the very centre and soul of the whole institution of sacrifice, and primarily by the simple fact, that in the animal a life, a “living soul,” was given up to death and offered to God, to be the medium of vital fellowship to the man who had been made a “living soul” by the inspiration of the breath of God; but still more by the fact, that God had appointed the blood of the sacrificial animal, as the vehicle of its soul, to be the medium of expiation for the souls of men (Lev 17:11). The verb “to expiate” (כּפּר, from כּפר to cover, construed with על htiw d objecti; see Lev 1:4) “does not signify to cause a sin not to have occurred, for that is impossible, nor to represent it as not existing, for that would be opposed to the stringency of the law, nor to pay or make compensation for it through the performance of any action; but to cover it over before God, i.e., to take away its power of coming in between God and ourselves” (Kahnis, Dogmatik, i. p. 271). But whilst this is perfectly true, the object primarily expiated, or to be expiated, according to the laws of sacrifice, is not the sin, but rather the man, or the soul of the offerer. God gave the Israelites the blood of the sacrifices upon the altar to cover their souls (Lev 17:11) The end it answered was “to cover him” (the offerer, Lev 1:4); and even in the case of the sin-offering the only object was to cover him who had sinned, as concerning his sin (Lev 4:26, Lev 4:35, etc.). But the offerer of the sacrifice was covered, on account of his unholiness, from before the holy God, or, speaking more precisely, from the wrath of God and the manifestation of