LECTURE III.
INDICATIONS OF THE RITE IN THE BIBLE.
And now, before entering upon an examination of the Bible text, in the light of these disclosures of primitive and universal customs, it may be well for me to say, that I purpose no attempt to include or to explain all the philosophy of sacrifice, and of the involved atonement. All my thought is, to ascertain what new meaning, if any, is found in the Bible teachings concerning the uses and the symbolism of blood, through our better understanding of the prevailing idea, among the peoples of the ancient world, that blood represents life; that the giving of blood represents the giving of life; that the receiving of blood represents the receiving of life; that the inter-commingling of blood represents the inter-commingling of natures; and that a divine-human inter-union through blood is the basis of a divine-human inter-communion, in the sharing of the flesh of the sacrificial offering as sacred food. Whatever other Bible teachings there are, beyond these, as to the meanings of sacrifice, or as to the nature of the atonement, it is not my purpose, in this investigation, to consider.
In the days of Moses, when the Pentateuch is supposed to have been prepared, there were—as we have already found—certain well-defined views, the world over, concerning the sacredness of blood, and concerning the methods, the involvings, and the symbolisms, of the covenant of blood. This being so, we are not to look to the Bible record, as it stands, for the original institution of every rite and ceremony connected with blood-shedding, blood-guarding, and blood-using; but we may fairly look at every Bible reference to blood, in the light of the primitive customs known to have prevailed in the days of the Bible writing.
The earliest implied reference to blood in the Bible text, is the record of Abel’s sacrifice. “And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.”[425] An inspired comment on this incident is: “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness in respect of [or, over] his gifts: and through it he [Abel] being dead yet speaketh.”[426]
Now, on the face of it, in the light of all that we know of primitive customs in this matter of the blood-covenant, and apart from any added teachings in the Bible concerning the nature and meanings of different sacrifices, this narrative shows Abel, lovingly and trustfully reaching out toward God with substitute blood, in order to be in covenant oneness with God; while Cain merely proffers a gift from his earthly possessions. Abel so trusts God, that he gives himself to him. Cain defers to God sufficiently to make a present to him. The one shows unbounded faith; the other shows a measure of affectionate reverence. It is the same practical difference as that which distinguished Ruth from Orpah, when the testing time of their love for their mother-in-law, Naomi, had come to them alike. “And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law; but Ruth clave unto her.”[427] No wonder that God counted Abel’s unstinted proffer of himself, in faith, an acceptable sacrifice, and received it, as in inter-communion on the basis of inter-union; while Cain’s paltry gift, without any proffer of himself, won no approval from the Lord.
Then there followed the unhallowed shedding of Abel’s blood by Cain, and the crying out, as it were, of the spilled life of Abel unto its Divine Author.[428] “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground,” said the Lord, to the guilty spiller of blood. “And now cursed art thou from the ground, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand.” Here, as elsewhere, the blood is preeminently the life; and even when poured out on the earth, the blood does not lose its vitality. It still has its intelligent relations to its Author and Guardian;[429] as the world has been accustomed to count a possibility, down to modern times.[430]
After the destruction of mankind by the deluge, when God would begin anew, as it were, by the revivifying of the world, through the vestige of blood—of life—preserved in the ark,[431] he laid new emphasis on the sacredness of blood, as the representative of that life which is the essence of God himself. Noah’s first act, on coming out from the ark, was to proffer himself and all living flesh, in a fresh blood-covenant with the Lord. “And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.”[432] From all that we know of the method of the burnt-offering, either from the Bible-text or from outside sources, it has, from the beginning, included the preliminary offering of the blood—as the life—to Deity, by its outpouring, around, or upon, the altar, with or without the accompaniment of libations of wine; or, again, by its sprinkling upon the altar.[433]
It was then, when the spirit of Noah, in this covenant-seeking by blood, was recognized approvingly by the Lord, that the Lord smelled the sweet savor of the proffered offering,—“the savor of satisfaction, or delectation,”[434] to him, was in it,—and he established a new covenant with Noah, giving commandment anew concerning the never-failing sacredness of blood: “Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you; as [freely as] the green herb, have I given you all [flesh]. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof [flesh with the blood in it], shall ye not eat. And surely your blood, the blood of your lives, will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it: and at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.”[435] Here, the blood of even those animals whose flesh might be eaten by man, is forbidden for food: because it is life itself, and therefore sacred to the Author of life.[436] And the blood of man must not be shed by man,—except where man is made God’s minister of justice,—because man is formed in the image of God, and only God has a right to take away—directly or by his minister—the life, from one bearing God’s likeness.
And this injunction, together with this covenant, preceded the ceremonial law of Moses; and it survived that law, as well. When the question came up in the apostolic conference at Jerusalem, on the occasion of the visit of Paul and Barnabas, concerning the duty of Gentile Christians to the Mosaic ceremonial law, the decision was explicit, that while nothing which was of that ritual alone should be imposed as obligatory on the new believers, those essential elements of religious observance which were prior to Moses, and which were not done away with in Christ, should be emphasized in all the extending domain of Christianity. Spirituality in worship, personal purity, and the holding sacred to God, all blood—or life—as the gift of God, and as the means of communion with God, must never be ignored in the realm of Christian duty. “Write unto them, that they abstain from the pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from what is strangled, and from blood,”[437] said the Apostle James, in announcing the decision of this conference; and the circular letter to the Gentile churches was framed accordingly. Nor does this commandment seem ever to have been abrogated, in letter or in spirit. However poorly observed by Christians, it stands to-day as it stood in the days of Paul, and in the days of Noah, a perpetual obligation, with all its manifold teachings of the blessed benefits of the covenant of blood.[438]
Again the Lord made a new beginning for the race, in his start with Abraham, as the father of a chosen and peculiar people in the world. And again the covenant of blood, or the covenant of strong-friendship as it is still called in the East, was the prominent feature in this beginning. The Apostle James says, that “Abraham ... was called the friend of God.”[439] God himself, speaking through Isaiah, refers to Abraham, as “Abraham my friend”;[440] and Jehoshaphat, in his extremity, calling upon God for help, speaks of “Abraham, thy friend.”[441] And this application of the term “friend” to any human being, in his relations to God, is absolutely unique in the case of Abraham, in all the Old Testament record. Abraham, and only Abraham, was called “the friend of God.”[442] Yet the immediate narrative of Abraham’s relations to God, makes no specific mention of this unique term “friend,” as being then applied to Abraham. It is only as we recognize the primitive rite of blood-friendship in the incidents of that narrative, that we perceive clearly why and how God’s covenant with Abraham was preeminently a covenant of friendship.
“I will make[443] my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly,” said the Lord to Abraham.[444] And again, “I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee; and to thy seed after thee.... And as for thee, thou shalt keep my covenant, thou, and thy seed after thee throughout their generations.”[445] And then there came the explanation, how Abraham was to enter into the covenant of blood-friendship with the Lord; so that he might be called “the friend of God.” “This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you, and thy seed after thee; every male among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of a covenant betwixt me and you.”[446] The blood-covenant of friendship shall be consummated by your giving to me of your personal blood at the very source of paternity—“under your girdle”;[447] thereby pledging yourself to me, and pledging, also, to me, those who shall come after you in the line of natural descent. “And my covenant [this covenant of blood-friendship] shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.”[448]
So, “in the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised,” and thenceforward he bore in his flesh the evidence that he had entered into the blood-covenant of friendship with the Lord.[449] To this day, indeed, Abraham is designated in all the East, as distinctively, “Khaleel-Allah,” “the Friend of God,” or “Ibrâheem el-Khaleel,” “Abraham the Friend”[450]—the one Friend, of God.
When a Jewish child is circumcised, it is commonly said of him, that he is caused “to enter into the covenant of Abraham”; and, his god-father, or sponsor, is called Baal-bereeth,[451] “Master of the covenant.”[452] Moreover, even down to modern times, the rite of circumcision has included a recognition, however unconscious, of the primitive blood-friendship rite, by the custom of the ecclesiastical operator, as God’s representative, receiving into his mouth, and thereby being made a partaker of, the blood mingled with wine, according to the method described among the Orientals, in the rite of blood-friendship, from the earliest days of history.[453]
It is a peculiarity of the primitive compact of blood-friendship, that he who would enter into it must be ready to make a complete surrender of himself, in loving trust, to him with whom he covenants. He must, in fact, so love and trust, as to be willing to merge his separate individuality, in the dual personality of which he becomes an integral part. Only he who believes in another unreservedly and fearlessly, can take such a step intelligently. The record concerning Abraham stands: “He believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness.”[454] The Hebrew word, heëmeen (הֶאֱמִין) here translated “believed in,” carries the idea of an unqualified committal of self to another. It is from the root aman (אָמַן) with the two-fold idea of “to be faithful” and “to trust.”[455] Its correspondent in the Arabic, (amana, امن) carries the same double idea, of a confident and an entire committal of self to another, in trust and in trustworthiness.[456] Lane’s definition[457] of the substantive from this root is: “The becoming true to the trust, with respect to which God has confided in one, by a firm believing of the heart.”[458] Abraham so trusted the Lord, that he was ready to commit himself to the Lord, as in the rite of blood-friendship. Therefore the Lord counted Abraham’s spirit of loving and longing trust, as the equivalent of a spiritual likeness with himself; and the Lord received Abraham, by his circumcision, into the covenant of blood-friendship.[459] Or, as the Apostle James states it: “Abraham believed [in] God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God.”[460] Here is the doctrine of “imputation,” with real life in it; in lieu of a hard commercial transaction, as some have viewed it.
The recognition of the covenant of blood in the rite of circumcision, throws light on an obscure passage in the life of Moses, as recorded in Exodus 4 : 20-26. Moses, himself a child of the covenant, had neglected the circumcision of his own first-born; and so he had been unfaithful to the covenant of Abraham. While on his way from the Wilderness of Sinai to Egypt, with a message from God to Pharaoh, concerning the un-covenanted first-born of the Egyptians,[461] Moses was met by a startling providence, and came face to face with death—possibly with a bloody death of some sort. “The Lord met him, and sought to kill him,” it is said. It seems to have been perceived, both by Moses and his wife, that they were being cut off from a farther share in God’s covenant-plans for the descendants of Abraham, because of their failure to conform to their obligations in the covenant of Abraham.
“Then Zipporah took a flint, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at [made it touch] his [Moses’] feet; and she said, Surely a bridegroom of blood [one newly bound through blood], art thou to me. So He [the Lord] let him [Moses] alone [He spared him, as one newly true to the covenant of Abraham, and newly safe within its bounds]. Then she [Zipporah] said [again], A bridegroom of blood art thou, because of the circumcision;” or, as the margin renders it: “A bridegroom of blood [art thou] in regard of the circumcision.”[462]
The Hebrew word, khathan (חָתָן), here translated “bridegroom,” has, as its root idea, the binding through severing, the covenanting by blood;[463] an idea that is in the marriage-rite, as the Orientals view it,[464] and that is in the rite of circumcision, also. Indeed, in the Arabic, the corresponding term (khatan, ختن), is applied interchangeably to one who is a relation by the way of one’s wife, and to one who is circumcised.[465] Hence, the words of Zipporah would imply that, by this rite of circumcision, she and her child were brought into blood-covenant relations with the descendants of Abraham, and her husband also was now saved to that covenant; whereas before they were in danger of being covenanted with a bloody death. It is this idea which seems to be in the Targum of Onkelos, where it renders Zipporah’s first word: “By the blood of this circumcision, a khathna [a blood-won relation] is given to us;” and her second speech: “If the blood of this circumcision had not been given [to us; then we had had] a khathna [a blood-won relation] of slaughter [of death].” It is as though Zipporah had said: “We are now newly covenanted to each other, and to God, by blood; whereas, but for this, we should have been covenanted to slaughter [or death] by blood.”
After the formal covenant of blood had been made between Abraham and Jehovah, there was a specific testing of Abraham’s fidelity to that covenant, as if in evidence of the fact that it was no empty ceremony on his part, whereby he pledged his blood,—his very life, in its successive generations,—to Jehovah, in the rite of circumcision. The declaration of his “faith,” and the promise of his faithfulness, were to be justified, in their manifest sincerity, by his explicit “works” in their direction.
All the world over, men who were in the covenant of blood-friendship were ready,—or were supposed to be ready,—to give not only their lives for each other, but even to give, for each other, that which was dearer to them than life itself. And, all the world over, men who pledged their devotedness to their gods were ready to surrender to their gods that which they held as dearest and most precious—even to the extent of their life, and of that which was dearer than life. Would Abraham do as much for his Divine Friend, as men would do for their human friends? Would Abraham surrender to his God all that the worshipers of other gods were willing to surrender in proof of their devotedness? These were questions yet to be answered before the world.
“And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham [did put him to the test, or the proof, of his friendship], and said unto him, Abraham; and he said, Here am I. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee unto the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”[466] And Abraham rose up instantly to respond to the call of his Divine Friend.
Just here it is important to consider two or three points at which the Western mind has commonly failed to recognize the Oriental thought, in connection with such a transaction as this.
An Oriental father prizes an only son’s life far more than he prizes his own. He recognizes it, to be sure, as at his own disposal; but he would rather surrender any other possession than that. For an Oriental to die without a son, is a terrible thought.[467] His life is a failure. His future is blank. But with a son to take his place, an Oriental is, in a sense, ready to die. When therefore an Oriental has one son, if the choice must be between the cutting short of the father’s life, or of the son’s, the former would be the lesser surrender; the latter would be far greater. Preeminently did this truth have force in the case of Abraham, whose pilgrim-life had been wholly with reference to the future; and whose earthly-joy and earthly-hopes centered in Isaac, the son of his old age. For Abraham to have surrendered his own toil-worn life, now that a son of promise was born to him, would have been a minor matter, at the call of God. But for Abraham to surrender that son, and so to become again a childless, hopeless old man, was a very different matter. Only a faith that would neither question nor reason, only a love that would neither fail nor waver, could meet an issue like that. The surrender of an only son by an Oriental, was not, therefore, as it is often deemed in the Western mind, a father’s selfish yielding of a lesser substitute for himself;[468] but it was the giving of the one thing which he had power to surrender, which was more precious to him than himself. The difference here is as great as that between the enforced sending, by an able-bodied citizen, of a “substitute” defender of the sender’s country in a war-time draft, and the willing sending to the front, by an aged father, of his loved and only son, at the first signal of his country’s danger. The one case has in it more than a suggestion of cowardly shirking; the other shows only a loyal and self-forgetful love of country.
Again, we are liable to think of the surrender of a life, as the dooming to death; and of a sacrificial outpouring of blood, as necessarily an expiatory offering. In the case of the only son sent into battle by his patriotic father, death may be an incident to the transaction; but the gift of the son is the gift of his life, whether he shall live or die. And although the war itself be caused by sin, and be a result, and so a punishment, of sin, the son is sent into it, not in order that he may bear punishment, but that he may avert its disastrous consequences, even at the cost of his life—with the necessity of his death.
This idea of the surrender of an only son, not in expiation of guilt, but in proof of unselfish and limitless affection, runs down through the ages, apart from any apparent trace of connection with the tradition of Abraham and Isaac. It is seen:—in India, in the story of the sacrifice of Siralen, the only son of Sirutunden and Vanagata-ananga, as a simple proof of their loving devotedness to Vishnoo;[469] in Arabia, in the story of the proffered slaying of the two only children of a king, in order to restore to life by their blood, his dearly loved friend and servant, who had been turned to stone;[470] in the Norseland, in the similar story of the king and his friend and servant “Faithful John;”[471] in Great Britain, in the story of Amys and Amylion, the one of these friends sacrificing his two only children for the purpose of curing the other friend of the leprosy;[472] and so in many another guise.[473] Whatever other value attaches to these legends, they show most clearly, that the conception of such a surrender as that to which Abraham was called in the sacrifice of Isaac, was not a mere outgrowth of the customs of human sacrifices to malignant divinities, in Phoenicia and Moab and the adjoining countries, in the days of Abraham and earlier.[474] There was a sentiment involved, which is everywhere recognized as the noblest and purest of which humanity is capable.
If, indeed, there were any reluctance to accept this simple explanation of an obvious view of the test of friendship to which God subjected Abraham, because of its possible bearing on the recognized symbolism of the transaction, then it would be sufficient to remember, that one view of such a transaction is not necessarily its only view. Whatever other view be taken of the fact and the symbolism of God’s call on Abraham, to surrender to him his only son, it is obvious that, as a fact, God did test, or prove, Abraham his friend, by asking of him the very evidence of his loving and unselfish devotedness to him, which has been, everywhere and always, reckoned the highest and surest evidence possible of the truest and holiest friendship. And this may well be looked at, also, as a symbol of God’s purpose of surrendering his only Son, in proof of his fidelity to his blood-covenant of friendship with Abraham and Abraham’s true seed forever.
“Greater love [in friendship] hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends;”[475] and no man, as the Oriental mind views it, can so utterly lay down his life, as when he lays down the larger life of his only son. Abraham showed himself capable of even such friendship as this, in his blood-covenant with Jehovah; and when he had manifested his spirit of devotedness, he was told to stay his hand and spare his son: the will was accepted for the deed. “Yea, he that had gladly received the promises, was offering up his only begotten son; even he of whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God is able to raise up even from the dead; from whence he did also in a parable receive him back.”[476] Then it was, that “the Angel of the Lord called unto Abraham a second time out of heaven and said, By myself have I sworn [by my life], saith the Lord, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed: because thou hast [even to this extent] obeyed my voice.”[477] The blood-covenant of friendship between Jehovah and Abraham had more meaning in it than ever, through its testing and its triumph, in this transaction.
And it is on this record, and apparently in this view of the record, that the Apostle James says: “Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar? Thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect [consummated]; and the Scripture was fulfilled which saith, And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God.”[478]
There came, again, a time when the Lord would give fresh evidence of his fidelity to his covenant of blood-friendship with Abraham. Again, a new start was to be made in the history of redemption. The seed of Abraham was in Egypt, and the Lord would bring thence that seed, for its promised inheritance in Canaan. The Egyptians refused to let Israel go, at the call of the Lord. The Lord sent a series of strokes, or “plagues” upon the Egyptians, to enforce their obedience to his summons. And first, he turned the waters of Egypt into blood; so that there was nothing for the Egyptians to drink save that which, as the representative of life, was sacred to their gods, and must not be tasted.[479] So on, from “plague” to “plague”—from stroke to stroke; until the Lord’s sentence went forth against all the uncovenanted first-born of Egypt. Then it was, that the Lord gave another illustration of the binding force of the unfailing covenant of blood.
In the original covenant of blood-friendship, between Abraham and the Lord, it was Abraham who gave of his blood in token of the covenant. Now, the Lord was to give of his blood, by substitution, in re-affirmation of that covenant, with the seed of Abraham his friend. So the Lord commanded the choice of a lamb, “without blemish, a male of the first year”;[480] typical in its qualities, and representative in its selection. The blood of that lamb was to be put “on the two side posts and on the lintel” of every house of a descendant of Abraham; above and along side of every passer through the doorway.[481] “And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are,” said the Lord to this people: “and when I see the blood [the token of my blood-covenant with Abraham], I will pass over you, and there shall no plague be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.”[482]
The flesh of the chosen lamb was to be eaten by the Israelites, reverently, as an indication of that inter-communion which the blood-friendship rite secures; and in accordance with a common custom of the primitive blood-covenant rite, everywhere.
To this day, as I can testify from personal observation, the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim (where alone in all the world the passover-blood is now shed, year by year), bring to mind the blood-covenant aspects of this rite, by their uses of that sacred blood. The spurting life-blood of the consecrated lambs is caught in basins, as it flows from their cut throats; and not only are all the tents promptly marked with the blood as a covenant-token, but every child of the covenant receives also a blood-mark, on his forehead, between his eyes,[483] in evidence of his relation to God in the covenant of blood-friendship.
It will be remembered that in the primitive rite of blood-friendship a blood-stained record of the covenant is preserved in a small leathern case, to be worn as an amulet upon the arm, or about the neck, by him who has won a friend forever in this sacred rite.[484] It would even seem that this was the custom in ancient Egypt, where the red amulet, which represented the blood of Isis, was worn by those who claimed a blood-friendship with the gods.[485] It is a noteworthy fact, that it was in conjunction with the institution of this passover rite of the Lord’s blood-friendship with Israel, as a permanent ceremonial, that the Lord declared of this rite and its token: “It shall be for a sign upon thine hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes.”[486] And it is on the strength of this injunction, that the Jews have, to this day, been accustomed to wear upon their foreheads, and again upon their arm—as a crown and as an armlet—a small leathern case, as a sacred amulet, or as a “phylactery”; containing a record of the passover-covenant between the Lord and the seed of Abraham his friend. Not the law itself, but the substance of the covenant between the Lawgiver and his people, was the text of this amulet record. It included Exodus 13 : 3-10, 11-16, with its reference to God’s deliverance of his people from bondage, to the institution of the passover feast, and to the consecration of the redeemed first-born; also Deuteronomy 6 : 4-9, 13-22, with its injunction to entire and unswerving fidelity, in the covenant thus memorialized.
The incalculable importance of the symbolism of the phylacteries, in the estimation of the Lord’s people, has been recognized, as a fact, by both Jewish and Christian scholars, even after their primary meaning has been lost sight of—through a strange dropping out of sight of the primitive rite of blood-covenanting, so familiar in the land of Egypt and in the earlier and later homes of the Hebrews. The Rabbis even held that God himself, as the other party in this blood-covenant, wore the phylacteries, as its token and memorial.[487] Among other passages in support of this, they cited Isaiah 49 : 16: “Behold I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands”; and Isaiah 62 : 8: “The Lord hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength.” Farrar, referring to this claim of the Rabbis, says, “it may have had some mystic meaning”;[488] and certainly the claim corresponds singularly with the thought and with the customs of the rite of blood-covenanting. To this day many of the Syrian Arabs swear, as a final and a most sacred oath, by their own blood—as their own life;[489] and in making the covenant of blood-friendship they draw the blood from the upper arm, because, as they explain it, the arm is their strength.[490] The cry of the Egyptian soul to his god, in his resting on the covenant of blood, was, “Give me your arm; I am made as ye.”[491] It is not strange, therefore, that those who had the combined traditions of Egypt and of Syria, should see a suggestion of the covenant of blood-friendship in the inspired assurance: “The Lord hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength.” It is by no means improbable, indeed, that the universal custom of lifting up the arm to God in a solemn oath[492] was a suggestion of swearing by one’s blood, by proffering it in its strength, as in the inviolable covenant of sacred friendship with God. So, again, in the “striking hands” as a form of sacred covenanting[493]; the clasping of hands, in blood.
The Egyptian amulet of blood-friendship was red, as representing the blood of the gods. The Egyptian word for “red,” sometimes stood for “blood.”[494] The sacred directions in the Book of the Dead were written in red;[495] hence, follows our word “rubrics.” The Rabbis say, that when persecution forbade the wearing of the phylacteries with safety, a red thread might be substituted for this token of the covenant with the Lord.[496] It was a red thread which Joshua gave to Rahab as a token of her covenant relations with the people of the Lord.[497] The red thread, in China, to-day, as has been already shown, binds the double cup, from which the bride and bridegroom drink their covenant draught of “wedding wine”; as if in symbolism of the covenant of blood.[498] And it is a red thread which in India, to-day, is used to bind a sacred amulet around the arm or the neck.[499] Among the American Indians, “scarlet, or red,” is the color which stands for sacrifices, or for sacrificial blood, in all their picture painting; and the shrine, or tunkan, which continues to have its devotees, “is painted red, as a sign of active [or living] worship.”[500] The same is true of the shrines in India;[501] the color red shows that worship is still living there; red continues to stand for blood.
The two covenant tokens of blood-friendship with God—circumcision and the phylacteries—are, by the Rabbis, closely linked in their relative importance. “Not every Israelite is a Jew,” they say, “except he has two witnesses—the sign of circumcision and phylacteries”;[502] the sign given to Abraham, and the sign given to Moses.
In the narration of King Saul’s death, as given in 2 Samuel 1 : 1-16, the young Amalekite, who reports Saul’s death to David, says: “I took the crown that was upon his head, and the bracelet that was on his arm [the emblems of his royalty], and have brought them hither unto my lord.” The Rabbis, in their paraphrasing of this passage,[503] claim that it was the phylactery, “the frontlet” (totephta) rather than a “bracelet,” which was on the arm of King Saul; as if the king of the covenant-people of Jehovah would not fail to be without the token of Jehovah’s covenant with that people.
So firmly fixed was the idea of the appropriateness and the binding force of these tokens of the covenant, that their use, in one form or another, was continued by Christians, until the custom was denounced by representative theologians and by a Church Council. In the Catacombs of Rome, there have been found “small caskets of gold, or other metal, for containing a portion of the Gospels, generally part of the first chapter of John [with its covenant promises to all who believe on the true Paschal Lamb], which were worn on the neck,” as in imitation of the Jewish phylacteries. These covenant tokens were condemned by Irenæus, Augustine, Chrysostom, and by the Council of Laodicea, as a relic of heathenism.[504]
When rescued Israel had reached Mount Sinai, and a new era for the descendants of Abraham was entered upon, by the issue of the divinely given charter of a separate nationality, the covenant of blood-friendship between the Lord and the seed of the Lord’s friend, was once more recognized and celebrated. “And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath spoken will we do. And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning [or, ‘prepared for a new start’ as that phrase means],[505] and builded an altar under the mount, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord;” not sin-offerings are named, but burnt-offerings, of consecration, and peace-offerings, of communion. And now observe the celebration of the symbolic rite of the blood-covenant between the Lord and the Lord’s people, with the substitute blood accepted on both sides, and with the covenant record agreed upon. “And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basins; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book [the record] of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath spoken will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people [half of it he sprinkled on the Lord’s altar, and half of it he sprinkled on the Lord’s people. The writer of Hebrews[506] says that Moses sprinkled blood on the book, also; thus blood-staining the record of the covenant, according to the custom in the East, to-day], and [Moses] said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words [or, as the margin renders it, ‘upon all these conditions,’ in the written compact]. Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel.... And they beheld God, and did eat and drink”;[507] as in the social inter-communion, which commonly accompanies the rite of blood-friendship.
When Abraham was brought into the covenant of blood-friendship with Jehovah, it was his own blood which Abraham devoted to Jehovah. When Jehovah recognized anew this covenant of blood-friendship in behalf of the seed of his friend, Jehovah provided the substitute blood, for its symbolizing in the passover. When united Israel was to be inducted into the privileges of this covenant of blood-friendship at Mount Sinai, half of the blood came from the one party, and half of the blood came from the other party, to the sacred compact; both portions being supplied from a common and a mutually accepted symbolic substitute.
With the establishment of the Mosaic law, there was an added emphasis laid on the sacredness of blood, which had been insisted on in the Noachic covenant; and many new illustrations were divinely given of the possibilities of an ultimate union with God through inter-flowing blood, and of present communion with God through the sharing of the substitute flesh of a sacrificial victim.
“Ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or beast, in any of your dwellings. Whosoever it be that eateth any blood, that soul shall be cut off from his people.”[508] “Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that eateth any manner of blood; I will set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life [the soul] of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life [by reason of its being the life]. Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that is among you eat blood.”[509] “For as to the life of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life thereof; therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.”[510]
Because of sin, death has passed upon man. Man can have new life only from the Author of life. A transfusion of life is, as it were, a transfusion of blood; for, “of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life thereof.” If, indeed, the death-possessed man could enter into a blood-covenant with the Author of life,—could share the life of him who is Life,—then the dead might have new life in a new nature; and the far separated sinner might be brought into oneness with God; finding atonement in the cleansing flow of the new blood thus applied. So it pleased God to appoint substitute blood upon the altar of witness between the sinner and Himself, as a symbol of that atonement whereby the sinner might, through faith, become a partaker of the divine nature. “The wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life”[511]—in that foreshadowed divine blood, which the blood of beasts, offered on the altar, can, for a time, typify. Blood—even the blood of beasts—thus made sacred, as a holy symbol, must never be counted as a common thing; but it must be held, ever reverently, as a token of that life which is the sinner’s need; and which is God’s grandest gift and God’s highest prerogative.
In the line of this teaching, the command went forth: “What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat in the camp, or that killeth it without the camp, and hath not brought it unto the door of the tent of meeting, to offer it [with its blood] as an oblation unto the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord: blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood [improperly]; and that man shall be cut off from among his people: to the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they sacrifice in the open field, even that they may bring them unto the Lord, unto the door of the tent of meeting, unto the priest, and sacrifice them for sacrifices of peace-offering unto the Lord. And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tent of meeting; and burn the fat for a sweet savour unto the Lord.”[512] The children of Israel were, at all times and everywhere, to reach out after communion and union with God, through the surrender of their personal selves in the surrender of their substitute blood—with its divinely appointed symbolism of communion and union with God “in the blood of the eternal covenant” of divine friendship.[513]
And again: “Whatsoever man there be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, which taketh in hunting any beast or fowl that may be eaten; he shall pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with the dust.”[514] If he be at a distance from the tabernacle, so that he cannot bring the blood for an oblation at the altar, he must, at all events, reverently pour out the blood as unto God, and cover it as he would a human body in a grave. And to this day this custom prevails widely throughout the East; not among Jews alone, but among Christians and Muhammadans, as also among those of other religions.[515]
Under the Mosaic ritual, the forms and the symbolisms of sacrifice were various. But through them all, where blood was an element,—in the sin-offering, in the trespass-offering, in the burnt-offering, in the peace-offering,—blood always represented life, never death. Death was essential to its securing; but, when secured, blood was life. Death, as the inevitable wages of sin, had already passed unto all men; and “death reigned from Adam to Moses”; but, with the full disclosure of the law, in Moses, which made sin apparent, there came, also, a disclosure of an atonement for sin, and of a cure for its consequences. Death was already here; now came the assurance of an attainable life. The sinner, in the very article of death, was shown that he might turn, in self-surrender and in loving trust, with a proffer of his own life, by substitute blood, to God; and that he might reach out hopefully after inter-union with God, by the sharing of the divine-nature in the unfailing covenant of divine-human blood-friendship. Thus “not as the trespass [with its mere justice of punishment; but] so also [and ‘much more,’ of grace alone,] is the free gift [of life to the justly dead].”[516]
All the detailed requirements of the Mosaic ritual, and all the specific teachings of the Rabbis, as well, go to show the preeminence of the blood in the sacrificial offerings; go to show, that it is the life (which the blood is), and not the death (which is merely necessary to the securing of the blood), of the victim, that is the means of atonement; that gives the hope of a sinner’s new inter-union with God.
In a commentary on a Talmudic tract, on The Day of Atonement, Rabbi Obadiah of Barttenora, notes the fact,[517] that in the choice by lot, of the priests who were to have a part in the daily sacrifice, the priest first selected “obtained the right [of priority], and sprinkled the blood upon the altar, after he had received it in the vessel for the purpose; for he who sprinkled the blood [is the one who had] received the blood. The next priest to him killed the sacrifice, and this notwithstanding [the fact] that the slaying preceded the receiving of the blood; because the office of sprinkling was higher than that of slaying; for the slaying was lawful if done by a stranger; which was not the case with the sprinkling.” The death of the victim was a minor matter: it was the victim’s life,—its blood which was its life,—that had chief value and sacredness.
On this same point Dr. Edersheim says:[518] “The Talmud declares the offering of birds, so as to secure the blood [so as to secure that which was preeminently precious] to have been the most difficult part of a priest’s work. For the death of the [victim of the] sacrifice was only a means towards an end; that end being the shedding and sprinkling of the blood, by which the atonement was really made. The Rabbis mention a variety of rules observed by the priest who caught up the blood—all designed to make the best provision for its proper sprinkling. Thus, the priest was to catch up the blood in a silver vessel pointed at the bottom, so that it could not be put down; and to keep it constantly stirred, to preserve the fluidity of the blood. In the sacrifice of the red heifer, however, the priest caught the blood directly in his left hand, and sprinkled it with his right towards the Holy Place: while in that of the leper, one of the two priests received the blood in the vessel; the other [received it] in his hand, from which he anointed the purified leper.”
Recognizing the truth that in the sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual, “consecration by blood is consecration in a living union with Jehovah,” Professor W. Robertson Smith observes,[519] that, “in the ordinary atoning sacrifices, the blood is not applied to the people [it is merely poured out Godward, as if in sign of life surrender]; but in the higher forms, as in the sacrifice for the whole congregation (Lev. 4 : 13 seq.), the priest at least dips his hand in it, and so puts the bond of blood between himself, as the people’s representative, and the altar, as the point of contact with God.”[520] And so, on the basis of the root-idea of the primitive rite of the covenant of blood, an inter-union is symbolized between the returning sinner and his God.
The aim of all the Mosaic sacrifices was, a restored communion with God; and the hope which runs through them all is of a divine-human inter-union through blood. “The one purpose which is given after every sacrifice in the first chapters of Leviticus,”[521] says Stanley,[522] “is, that it ‘shall make a sweet savour unto the Lord’.” And Edersheim says,[523] of all the various sacrifices of the ritual: “These, were, then, either sacrifices of communion with God, or else [were] intended to restore that communion when it had been disturbed or dimmed through sin and trespass: sacrifices in communion, or [sacrifices] for communion, with God. To the former class belong the burnt and the peace-offerings; to the latter, the sin and the trespass offerings.”[524]
The sin-offering, of that ritual, was, in a sense, the basis of the whole system of sacrifices. The chief feature of that offering, was the out-flowing of its blood Godward. The offering itself was a substitute-offering, for an individual or for the entire people. Its blood was sprinkled upon the horns of the altar of burnt-offering, or poured out at the base of that altar,[525]—the altar of personal consecration; or, it was sprinkled within the Holy Place toward the Most Holy Place,[526]—the symbolic dwelling-place of Jehovah: and again it was made to touch the horns of the altar of incense, which sent up its sweet savor to God: in every case, it was the outreaching of the sinner toward inter-union with God, in a covenant of blood.
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.
But, with all the suggestions of the rite of blood-covenanting, in the sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual, there were limitations in the correspondences of that rite in those sacrifices, which mark the incompleteness of their symbolism, and which point to better things to come. In the primitive blood-covenant rite itself, both parties receive, and partake of, the blood which becomes common to the two. In all the outside religions of the world, where men reach out after a divine-human inter-union through substitute-blood, the offerer drinks of the sacrificial blood, or of something which stands for it; and so he is supposed to share the nature of the God with whom he thus covenants and inter-unites. In the Mosaic ritual, however, all drink-offerings of blood were forbidden to him who would enter into covenant with God; he might not taste of the blood. He might, it is true, look forward, by faith, to an ultimate sharing of the divine nature; and in anticipation of that inter-union, he could enjoy a symbolic inter-communion with God, by partaking of the peace-offerings at the table of his Lord; but as yet the sacrificial offering which could supply to his death-smitten nature the vivifying blood of an everlasting covenant, was not disclosed to him.[533]
Even the substitute blood which he presented at the altar, as he came with his outreaching after a blood-covenant union with the Lord, did not secure to him direct personal access to the symbolic earthly dwelling-place of the Lord. That blood could be poured out at the base of the altar of consecration, or it could be sprinkled upon its horns. That blood could, on occasions be sprinkled before the veil of the Most Holy Place; or could touch the horns of the altar of sweet incense. But that blood could never pass that veil which guarded the place of the Lord’s symbolic presence, save once in a year when the high-priest, all by himself, and that not without a show of his own unfitness for the mission, went in thither, to sprinkle the substitute blood before the mercy-seat; “the Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the Holy Place hath not yet been manifest[534]”; that the substitute “blood of bulls and of goats”[535] cannot be a means of man’s inter-union with God.
Lest, indeed, the Israelite should believe that a blood-covenant union was really secured with God, rather than typified, through these prescribed symbolic sacrifices and their sharing, he was repeatedly warned against that fatal error, and was taught that his true covenanting must be by a faith-filled recognition of the symbolism of these substitute agencies; and by the implicit surrender of himself, in loving trust, to Him who had ordained them as symbols. Thus in the Psalms: