Commenting on how, like pagans, the Old Testament authors did have a belief in the propitiation of deity, Benjamin Wheaton offered the following examples of some of the significant differences between the Old Testament and pagans on this issue:
The Old Testament includes this idea
as well, although modified. For example, when Noah offers a burnt offerings to
God after the flood, we are told, “The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said
in his heart: ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though
every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I
destroy all living creatures, as I have done’” (Gen 8:21). Here we have a key
phrase denoting a sacrifice of propitiation in the Old Testament: “The Lord
smelled the pleasing aroma.” It is important to see that there is not
necessarily a penal element to this; it is Noah’s gift, his act of obedience,
that pleases God and reverses his attitude toward his creation. On the other,
other iterations of sacrifices of propitiation do have a penal element. The
first chapter of Leviticus states, “He [i.e., the offeror] is to lay his hand
on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on is behalf to make
atonement for him . . . It is a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, an
aroma pleasing to the Lord” (Lev 1:4, 9). So, propitiation is essentially a
sacrifice that make God propitious towards someone. How exactly this happens is
somewhat mysterious, although both the obedience of the offeror and the penalty
symbolically exacted by the offering are often clear elements. (Benjamin
Wheaton, Suffering, Not Power: Atonement in the Middle Ages [Bellingham,
Wash.: Lexham Academic, 2022], 22)
