3275.—Perfect Sacrifice
By Editor
Verses 21 and 22 read as follows: "And if it have any blemish, as if it be lame or blind, any ill blemish whatsoever, thou shalt not sacrifice it unto Jehovah thy God. Thou shalt eat it within thy gates: the unclean and the clean shall eat it alike, as the gazelle, and as the hart." The one point in the scripture is that the sacrifice offered to God shall be perfect. Every sacrifice offered typified in some sense the Lord Jesus Christ; and as He was a perfect moral sacrifice, so every beast offered for sacrifice should be physically perfect as typifying the perfect offering of Jesus. The permission to eat did not imply that everything rejected for sacrifice should be eaten. It merely granted permission to eat things that are good, meats that are clean, as the hart and the gazelle, and yet which might be physically imperfect; for instance, an animal might be lame and still be healthy. It is possible that our correspondent may refer to the 21st verse of the previous chapter, where permission was given to the children of Israel to give that which died of itself to strangers, but which they themselves should not eat. In thus doing they would only sell to the stranger when the stranger knew that the animal had died of itself. That would be taking no advantage of the stranger when he knew it. It was customary, and is still, in some lands, for people to eat that which died of itself. Therefore when Israel sold such a carcass the stranger bought it with the fullest knowledge of what it meant.