The whole burnt-offering, of the Mosaic ritual, symbolised the entire surrender to God, of the individual or of the congregation, in covenant faithfulness; the giving of one’s self in unreserved trust to Him with whom the offerer desired to be in loving oneness. It was an indication of a readiness to enter fully into that inter-union, which the blood-covenant brought about between two who had been separated, but who were henceforth to be as one. This offering also must be made with blood; for it is blood--which is the life--that gives the possibility of inter-union. All the outpoured blood of this offering, however, went directly to the altar upon which the offering itself was laid;[527] not toward the Most Holy Place, of the Lord’s symbolic presence. This offering was not, indeed, understood as in itself compassing inter-union; it indicated rather a desire and a readiness for inter-union--anew or renewed: so, both the substitute-body and the substitute-blood were offered at the altar of typical surrender and consecration. When other sacrifices were brought, the burnt-offering followed the sin-offering, but preceded the peace-offering;[528] again, it might be offered by itself. He who was of the blood-covenant stock of Abraham, thereby sought restoration to the full privileges of that covenant, to which he had not been wholly true; and even he who was not of that stock might in this way show his desire to share in its privileges; “for the burnt offering was the only sacrifice which non-Israelites were permitted to bring”[529] to the altar of Jehovah.
Following the communion-seeking, or the union-seeking, sin-offering (with its connected, or related, trespass-offering, or guilt-offering), and the self-surrendering burnt-offering, there came the joyous communion-symbolizing peace-offering, with its type of completed union,[530] in the sharing, by the sinner and his God, of the flesh of the sacrificial victim at a common feast. And this banquet-sacrifice[531] corresponds with the feast of inter-communion which commonly follows the primitive rite of blood-covenanting, and which marks the completion of the inter-union thereby sought after.
All the other sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual follow in the line of these three classes. Even those which are in themselves offered without blood, presuppose the individual’s share in the blood-covenant, by the rite of circumcision, and through the high priest’s sin-offering for the entire congregation. “The Rabbis attach ten comparative degrees of sanctity to sacrifices; and it is interesting to mark, that of these the first belonged to the blood of the sin-offering; the second to the burnt-offering; the third to the sin-offering itself; and the fourth to the trespass-offering.”[532] The blood which is to secure the covenant-union--anew or renewed--is of preeminent importance. Then comes the symbol of self-surrendering devotedness. First, the possibility of inter-union; next, the expression of readiness and desire for it. After this, the other sacrifices range themselves according to their signification, until the culmination of the series is reached in the joyous inter-communion feast of the peace-offering.