Peace System

If we stay with the strict terminology of Leviticus, the word “sacrifice” (zabach) is not a generic term for offering animals on altars but is used specifically of the “peace offering,” often in phrases like “the sacrifice of the peace offerings.” The burnt  or ascension offering (olah) is never called a “sacrifice,” nor is the sin offering (hattat). 

The distinctive thing about the peace offering is that it ends with a meal that includes the ancient Israelite worshiper. zabach means, literally, “slaughter for food.”

But there are good reasons for calling the Levitical system a “sacrificial system.”  The verb zabach is used only twice in Genesis (31:54; 46:1), only one of which involves a sacrifice before God. There is a meal in Genesis 31, but there is no altar mentioned; the sacrifice in Genesis 46 is offered to God, but there is no mention of a meal or an altar (the phrase is zabach zebach, “sacrifice sacrifices”). Even if both of these are meals before Yahweh, it’s clear that throughout the patriarchal period, meals with God were either rare or non-existent. The most explicit meal with God in Genesis is in chapter 18, where Abraham, the friend of God, eats with three men who are Yahweh just before he intercedes for Sodom. But this is clearly not a regular or institutionalized practice. There is no explicit statement that Noah or Isaac or Jacob or Joseph ate with God.

By contrast, as James Jordan has pointed out, Leviticus keeps highlighting the shelemim (peace offering) or zabach. Shelem, related to shalom, is first used in Exodus 20:24, when Israel gets to Sinai, and then at 24:5, when Israel concludes the covenant before Yahweh with a meal.

In fact, as soon as the exodus is on the horizon, sacrifices and peace offerings are suddenly everywhere. Yahweh demands that Pharaoh let Israel go so they can sacrifice to Yahweh (Exodus 3:18; 5:3, 8, 17; 8:8, 25-29) and as soon as they get to Sinai, before the instructions for offering peace offerings are even given, they are offering ascensions and peace offerings (Exodus 20:24). Shelemim is never used in Genesis, used only four times in Exodus, but 60 times in Leviticus and 38 times in Numbers. 

As Jordan observes, this privileging of the peace offering is reinforced structurally by the way the offerings are presented in Leviticus. Chapters 1-3, as we’ll see, form a single unit of the book, and the sequence moves from ascension to tribute to peace offerings. In chapters 6-7, there’s another set of instructions about offerings, and again the peace offering comes at the climax, and is dealt with in the most detail (7:11-34). When there is a sequence of offerings, the peace offering is always the final moment in the sequence (e.g., Leviticus 9:22).

The exodus is a movement toward the peace offering, toward sacrifice. When Yahweh comes to dwell with Israel, He comes to host feasts. He sets up a house, and a table, and invites Israel to dinner. Exodus leads to Eucharist.