But if you had known what this means,
“I desire mercy and not sacrifice,”
you would not have condemned the guiltless.
Gospel of Matthew 12:7
In this chapter we will deal with a particularly controversial theme, that of sacrifice, with which much of the biblical narrative is imbued. It is important to understand the meaning of this word and its associated uses for the Jews, and therefore also for Jesus and his disciples, otherwise we run the risk of interpreting the message through the lens of our culture, thus distorting the original meaning intended in the text. Misinterpretation can lead to serious inconsistencies as happened in the Middle Ages when, due to ignorance and stigmatisation of Jewish culture, the events surrounding Jesus' death were given an interpretation not supported by the historical and cultural context of his time. It is therefore essential for our study to re-appropriate all those elements that constitute the foundations on which we will build the theological construction of salvation.
16.1. Sacrifices in history
The practice of ritual sacrifices offered to the gods has its roots in the mists of time; in fact, since the dawn of civilisation, man has carried out sacrificial offerings of various kinds. There is no culture or era of antiquity that has not had these customs at the centre of the social and religious life of every community. Sacrifice is found in very similar forms in each corner of the planet, so much so that some scholars claim that all human societies were founded on sacrifice. René Girard, for example, contends that the practice of sacrificial scapegoating is a cornerstone of human society and religion.411 In the Bible, the first sacrifice of which we have an account goes back as far as Cain and Abel, to the very beginnings of mankind; the fact is that there has not been a single moment in human history that has not been soaked in the blood of sacrificial victims.
What role did sacrifices play and why did all peoples, in every age and at every latitude, engage in such practices? What were the objectives that they wanted to achieve? We can summarise the aims of the sacrifices as follows:
In any case, the direction of the sacrifice proceeded from the bottom (men), upwards (gods) and had a manipulative intent (persuading, flattering, appeasing, buying favour, etc.) aimed at obtaining benefits of various kind; this is the foundation of every religion. The sacrifices could consist of animals, but also of flour, oil, flowers, fruit, honey and prepared foods. Sometimes, in the most heinous cases, human sacrifices could take place, especially of slaves, young virgins, children or even babies. The history of mankind has thus been characterised, for long stretches, by unspeakable brutality; even in the Bible there is evidence of extreme and inhumane violence against children who were thrown into the fire in order to win the favour of the gods:
Jeremiah 32:35 And they built the high places of Baal which are in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.
Some scholars have gone so far as to affirm that the need for sacrifice, especially blood sacrifice, derives from a certain bloody tendency hidden in the human unconscious, and from the resulting sense of guilt; sacrifice would in this sense function as an outlet for individual and social tensions. It is based on these assumptions, common to all civilisations, that we must understand how the Jewish people already exercised sacrificial practices long before they were regulated in the Bible. In fact, the law given by Moses, the Torah, simply regulated sacrifices and set limits to avoid the extreme cases mentioned above. We must therefore understand that the God of Israel, unlike the pagan gods, never demanded sacrifices, it was rather the people who needed them from a psychological and social point of view, therefore the law regulated this practice. First of all, the habit of human sacrifice was forbidden, which God considered an abomination. Then, through the prophets, God began to dismantle the very idea of sacrifice; it was a cultural shift that lasted for several centuries and that had the aim of moving the people of Israel from the sacrificial practices, typical of the primitive ages, towards morally and ethically acceptable behaviour:
Jeremiah 7:21-23 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat meat. For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. But this is what I commanded them, saying, “Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.”
Micah 6:6-8 With what shall I come before the Lord, And bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, With calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, Ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?
1 Samuel 15:22 So Samuel said: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams.”
Psalms 50:9-14 I will not take a bull from your house, Nor goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is Mine, And the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains, And the wild beasts of the field are Mine. “If I were hungry, I would not tell you; For the world is Mine, and all its fullness. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, Or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God thanksgiving, And pay your vows to the Most High.
Hosea 6:6 For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
Isaiah 1:11-14 “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?” Says the Lord. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, Or of lambs or goats. “When you come to appear before Me, Who has required this from your hand, To trample My courts? Bring no more futile sacrifices; Incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies— I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting. Your New Moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; They are a trouble to Me, I am weary of bearing them.”
Amos 5:21-24 I hate, I despise your feast days, And I do not savor your sacred assemblies. Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings. Take away from Me the noise of your songs, For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments. But let justice run down like water, And righteousness like a mighty stream.
It is evident from the prophets, that God considered the practice of sacrifices to be useless and senseless, and that he valued obedience, humility, justice, mercy and sincere repentance. Then came Jesus, who declared, in line with the prophets, the futility of sacrifices in the eyes of God: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice!”412 This view is also particularly evident in the New Testament authors who began to use metaphorical language, that sought to depart from sacrificial practices and replace them with moral conduct based on love and justice: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service”413 said the Apostle Paul and certainly did not mean that they should burn their bodies on the altar, rather it was an exhortation to lead a life of integrity and righteousness, faithful to the principles preached by Jesus:
The early Christians moved radically away from ideas of literal sacrifice, spiritualising and moralising the notion instead. They began to use sacrificial language to refer to correct conduct, rather than using literal animal slaughters. Christians became their own temple and their own priests and gave God acceptable “sacrifices” and “offerings” by living morally “pure” lives in obedience to his will.414
In order to leave no room for further doubt, God finally allowed the temple in Jerusalem, the only place where the Jews were authorised to offer sacrifices, to be completely destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., and ever since, all sacrifice ceased materially. It is therefore clear the parable on which God has led, and is leading the whole of humanity, to guide it away from the logic of sacrificial practices that have characterised millennia of history:
In cultures from Asia to Europe to Africa there is a progressive and observable development away from violent sacrificial practices toward a concentration on ethics and an increased valuation of the individual’s spiritual motive, a process that can be called spiritualization: The sacrificer “sacrifices only in himself”, says and Indian text, while Jewish texts say God wants the sacrifice of a “contrite heart” or of “thanksgiving” more than an “ox or a bull.”415
16.2. The Jewish sacrifice - Korbàn
We have seen how sacrificial practices have always been a burden for God, and that, as part of the process of the development of the people of Israel, he ensured that they were gradually phased out. Instead, for many centuries, these practices were understood as a service due to God, turning into a useless and meaningless cult. Nevertheless, they were central to religious action and played a fundamental role in the Jewish culture with which Jesus often clashed. Moreover, the language used by the New Testament authors was still imbued with these traditions, albeit in a more symbolic way. Therefore, to understand what these authors were trying to communicate to us, we need to know the purpose of the sacrifices that were performed, so that we can trace their original meaning.
The Hebrew word for sacrifice was korbàn (plural korbànot) from the root qof-resh-bet, meaning “to draw near”, and indicated the primary purpose of the offerings: to draw near to God. From this we can already see a first difference with pagan sacrifices, which were mainly aimed at manipulating the deity to obtain benefits. In the Jewish tradition there are five main korbànot:416
Olah: burnt offering [ascending offer or holocaust]
Perhaps the best-known class of offerings is the burnt offering. It was the oldest and commonest sacrifice and represented submission to God's will. It expresses the desire to enter into communion with God and atones for sins incidental to the process because how can one enter into communion with God if one is defiled by sins? [Lev. 1].
Zevach Sh'lamim: peace offering
A peace offering is an offering expressing thanks or gratitude to God for His bounties and mercies [Lev. 3]. The Hebrew term for this type of offering is zebach sh'lamim, which is related to the word shalom, meaning “peace” or “whole.” This category of offerings includes thanksgiving-offerings [Lev. 7:12], free will-offerings [Lev. 7:16] and offerings made after fulfilment of a vow [Lev. 7:30].
Chatat: sin or purification offering
A sin offering is an offering to atone for and purge a sin. It is an expression of sorrow for the error and a desire to be reconciled with God. A chatat could only be offered for unintentional sins committed through carelessness, not for intentional, malicious sins.
Asham: guilt offering
A guilt offering is an offering to atone for sins of stealing things from the altar, for when you are not sure whether you have committed a sin or what sin you have committed, or for breach of trust.
Minchah: food and drink offerings
A meal offering minchah [Lev. 2] represented the devotion of the fruits of man's work to God, because it was not a natural product, but something created through man's effort.
The main purpose of the sacrifices was therefore to draw closer to God, express contrition, enter into communion with him and thank him for his mercy. The offering of choice meats and the most delicious portions was part of the tradition, still in force today in Middle Eastern cultures, for which eating together and offering the best portion to a guest is a gesture of great respect and desire for communion. But in order to approach God, it was first necessary to purify oneself with the blood of the animal because, as we saw in the previous chapter, blood was life and impurity death, so the blood of the animal, as life, could liberate from death. For this reason, the blood was sprinkled on people, places, objects, sacred vestments, utensils, etc., to free them from impurity. Thus, the meat offered was a request for communion and the sprinkled blood a ritual of purification.417 However, sacrifices could only purify and atone for mistakes committed through carelessness or ignorance of the law, that had brought the person into contact with impurity, while, if someone had knowingly and intentionally sinned, he was called upon to sincere repentance (if he had sinned against God) and reparation of the victim by restitution (if he had sinned against a person)418 in order to be reconciled. No sacrifice alone could ever atone for sins committed intentionally:
Certain Qorbanot are brought purely for the purpose of communing with and becoming closer to Him. Others are brought for the purpose of expressing thanks to God, love or gratitude. Others are used to cleanse a person of ritual impurity (which does not necessarily have anything to do with sin). And yes, many Qorbanot are brought for purposes of atonement. The atoning aspect of Qorbanot is carefully circumscribed. For the most part, Qorbanot only expiate unintentional sins, that is, sins committed because a person forgot that this thing was a sin. No atonement is needed for violations committed under duress or through lack of knowledge, and for the most part, Qorbanot cannot atone for a malicious, deliberate sin. In addition, Qorbanot have no expiating effect unless the person making the offering sincerely repents his or her actions before making the offering, and makes restitution to any person who was harmed by the violation.419
An exemplary case, which describes what we have just seen, is found in the Gospel of Luke, where it tells of Zacchaeus, a chief of Publicans,420 a very rich and corrupt man who, when he met Jesus, welcomed him with joy and told him: “Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.” In doing so, he showed repentance and a desire to change his life, compensating the victims for the sins he had committed; Jesus appreciated this and confirmed that salvation had entered his house.421 Clear provisions concerning the penalties and restitution were in fact laid down in the law, particularly in Chapters 21st and 22nd of the book of Exodus. Sacrificial offerings, therefore, had little to do with the forgiveness of sins; sacrifices were rather an outward manifestation of an inward change and testified to the willingness of an individual or community to return to God and be reconciled with him after having departed. They never had the power to exempt from the consequences of sin, much less were they offered to God as a “price” for sin or compensation for damage. Tracey Rich again points out: “It is important to note that in Judaism, sacrifice was never the exclusive means of obtaining forgiveness, was not in itself sufficient to obtain forgiveness, and in certain circumstances was not in any way effective in obtaining forgiveness.”422 Only teshuva, turning one's back on sin to return to God with a regretful heart, could atone for it: “Amend your ways and your doings423… return to the Lord. Say to Him, “Take away all iniquity; Receive us graciously, For we will offer the sacrifices of our lips.”424
God, in fact, detested sacrifices and “the blood-soaked hands” of the offerors, i.e., hands that committed crimes and thought they could atone for them through sacrifices; what he required instead was a humble heart, willing to listen to his voice and to change way of life: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?425Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel?”426 In Luke's Gospel, Jesus told of a man, a publican, who went to the temple to pray and beat his chest, saying: “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” Well, that man, Jesus said, went home justified; no sacrifice, no burnt offering, no blood shed, only sincere repentance and a contrite heart, and that man was forgiven. “So rend your heart, and not your garments.”427
In conclusion, we can say that sacrifices served the people of Israel and certainly not God, who never had any need of them. The social reasons for which they were permitted, for a time, are manifold and allowed the people to overcome certain psychological resistances. Mainly, the purposes for which they were instituted can be summarised as follows:
16.3. Purification from sin
We have seen that the sacrifice had, for the Israelites, the primary objective of drawing closer to God and was not necessary for the forgiveness of sins, however, the blood of the animal was considered indispensable for purification, i.e., for the removal of the effects of sin from the conscience. In the previous chapter, we pointed out that sin was understood differently from how we understand it today, it was considered a transgression of the law that led man to contaminate himself with death. This evil and deadly “infection” therefore needed to be “washed away” from the person in order to return to a relationship with God; with what could this force of death be overcome if not with equal and opposite vital force? Quite simply, death could be banished from life, and the life of a person or animal was in its blood, so much so that, deprived of blood, any living thing would perish.428 Therefore, blood was considered to be the solution; sprinkling a place, an object or a person with blood would cleanse them of death by means of life. The killing of the animal was not the purpose, but only a means of extracting from it the blood and consequently the life that would serve for purification. The Hebrew word used, translated into our language as “expiation”, has a different meaning from the one we give it today. In fact, for us expiation means reparation for a fault committed and release from it through the endurance of punishment, but the Hebrew term, kāpar, meant instead “to cover”; it was a matter of covering the sins that had defiled man so that they might be erased, removed from God's sight, so that he might be brought nearer to him. Whenever we find the word kāpar in the Bible, it would therefore be more correct to translate it as purification or reconciliation rather than expiation. Even today, Jews still celebrate Yom Kippur (from kāpar), the day of purification, as the most important day of the year, with the aim of fostering reconciliation with God and among people. The theologian Carlo Molari, in an enlightening article on the meaning of sacrifice, says:
The symbolic meaning of the rite derives from the conviction that blood was the seat of the life force communicated by God, and that, inserted in a sacred rite, it was the sphere of his saving action. [...] The Hebrew text thus assigns, without a shadow of a doubt, the expiatory [purifying] function to blood as the principle of life. […] The fundamental message of the sacrifice of atonement is that the divine power concentrated in the blood gives life and purifies from sins.429
Kāpar therefore means to cover one's sins in order to get closer to God. This idea goes back to the very beginnings of mankind; think of Adam and Eve who, immediately after sinning, were afraid and ashamed, hid and “covered themselves”.430 This is the sense of guilt that we have already mentioned, which would seem to be rooted in the unconscious of every man, it would be to say that mankind is under the guilt of sin, that is, the simple idea of having sinned, and of not being worthy for this reason, engenders shame and fear, hindering our relationship with God. It should be noted that it is not God who requires man to “cover up” his sins, it is man who needs to cover them up in order to feel reassured. God has never denied himself to mankind in spite of sin, for his purpose is to instruct us in love and righteousness, so much so that Jesus spent much of his time with so-called sinners. The children of Israel, on the other hand, thought that God was angry because of their sins and that they therefore needed protection of some kind to approach him. God, consequently, accommodating their weaknesses, “covered” their sins (as he covered Adam and Eve with skins) so that they would not be afraid and feel worthy to approach him. “Within this horizon, the dynamic of biblical atonement becomes clear. God purifies the sinner, ‘covers’ his sins, erases them, takes no account of them.”431 After all, giving something precious, like sacrificing an animal, gives us a sense of peace, makes us feel that we have accomplished something special. In reality, there is nothing that can hinder our relationship with God and require offerings on our part; God is always willing to forgive and reconcile, the real hindrance, which requires the need for sacrifices, is psychological and resides in us, not in God:
Sacrifice provides a release valve to the lust for blood that wells up in the heart of every human (sociological sacrifice), relieves our sense of guilt (psychological sacrifice), and helps people think that they have purified themselves from the pollution of sin (spiritual sacrifice).432
God does not need blood to forgive, his grace is sufficient, rather we need it to overcome our guilt and feel forgiven. God never wanted the blood of goats and calves, just as he did not need the blood of Jesus to forgive and welcome us into his presence. Jesus forgave several people without any sacrifice and well before his death, and even from the cross.433 We can therefore conclude that it is not we who offer the blood to God, but it is he who offers it to us to make up for our limitations, purify our conscience and free us from the bonds in which the weight of guilt keeps us bound. So much did the blood of bulls and goats do, how much more did the precious blood of his Son Jesus, who gave himself for us.
Jesus’ death isn’t necessary because God has to have innocent blood to solve the guilt equation. Redemptive violence is our equation. Jesus didn’t volunteer to get into God’s justice machine. God volunteered to get into ours. God used our owns sin to save us.434
Let us review, in the light of what has just been said, the parable of the prodigal son. When the young man returned to his father, he thought of saying to him: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you (guilt), I am no longer worthy to be called your son (unworthiness), make me like one of your hired servants” (punishment). But the father, without even giving him time to say a word, hugged and kissed him (forgiveness); then he had the fatted calf brought in to be slaughtered (sacrifice), its blood spilled (purification) and a feast prepared (communion). What was the point of having the calf slaughtered, if not to convince the son that he had been