Thoughts and teaching on Lev 6:8-7:38

Lev 6:8-7:38 represent laws that are possibly best labelling ‘priestly instructions’. Seeing as they’re relevant to the instructions that precede the passage, I’ve incorporated them into the comments and teaching wherever relevant, in the same manner as North did in his chapters.

Should the reader wish to see if there are any comments on a particular verse, then they should refer to the relevant web page of the offering in which the verse is found.

One final comment on the order in which the offerings are presented to us. We saw at the beginning of this section that North uses the order on 1:1-6:7

burnt - cereal - peace - sin - guilt

to propose a concept of a fivefold covenant structure that he sees equally applying to the first five books of the Bible. I went on to comment that the order of the sacrifices in 6:8-7:36 was different and was listed as

burnt - cereal - sin - guilt - peace

which undermines this rigid interpretation. However, the summary statement of 7:37-38 (which are two concluding verses which summarise the entire passage which runs from 1:1 through to 7:36) lists the offerings as following the order

burnt - cereal - sin - guilt - Aaron’s consecration - peace

proposing not five Levitical offerings but six (and the consecration offering appears here as out of sequence as it’s situated in the text between the cereal and sin offerings - Lev 6:19-23).

These orders of sacrifices are, therefore, purely arbitrary and nothing too much should be read into the order in which they appear. If we were to arrange the five offerings today, knowing what we do about the fulfilment of them in Christ, then we would probably choose the order

sin/guilt - burnt - cereal/peace

as, in this way, they show a progression for an individual from being reunited with God after having been separated by sin (sin/guilt) to their restoration (burnt) and renewed fellowship (cereal/peace). But that they appear in a different order needn’t concern us or waste too much of our time.

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