If
wrath is not constitutive of God’s character, then, it would be surprising if
the sacrificial system was given to Israel solely to avert that wrath. This is
perhaps too restricted a role for the system and does not seem to account for
the fact that other sacrifices are offered in thanksgiving or celebration.
Furthermore, the declarations ‘be forgiven’ ([Lev] 4:20c, 26c, 31c, 35c) or ‘be
clean’ in other passages (12:8; 14:18-20, 53; 16:30) after atonement is made
suggests a close link between the state of forgiveness and the state of being
ritually clean. So although the ḥaṭṭāt offering (4:1-5:13) atones for
sin and enables forgiveness to be declared, we must further recognise that the
verb kippēr is found in contexts of both moral wrongdoing and cultic or
ritual impurity When the priest makes atonement, he pronounces either forgiveness
or ritual purity as the situation warrants. Accordingly, we may suggest that
within kipper can at times connote propitiation, it does not entail
propitiation, or require atonement to be understood solely as or equal
to propitiation. Atonement deals with sin fundamentally by purifying that
which has been defiled by sin.
The
proper context for understanding the sacrificial system, then, is not as a
means to avert God’s anger—though that is not entirely foreign to the system,
but as a way to maintain the divine presence in Israel’s midst. Throughout
Leviticus, God is shown primarily not as wrathful but as holy and whose
holiness characterises all that he is and does and says (see, for example,
11:44-45; 19:2; 30:3, 8, 26; 22:32). It is in God’s holy presence that Moses
receives the instructions for making sacrifices and it is entirely apposite,
therefore, to understand the sacrificial system within this context of divine
holiness, as a response to Israel’s sin, her covenant unfaithfulness, which
stains that which should be holy. (Terry J. Wright, Providence Made Flesh:
Divine Presence as a Framework for a Theology of Providence [Paternoster
Theological Monographs; Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2009], 172-73)
Typically,
the hand-laying element in the ḥaṭṭāt offerings (4:4, 15, 24, 29, 33)
signifies that the animal for sacrifice truly belongs to the person offering it
and so, by this declaration of ownership, is to act for and in that person’s
place; there is little point in the blood of the animal being used to purify
the sacred things if the person who has contributed to their contamination has
not admitted responsibility for that act through this rite. (ibid., 178)
Further Reading: