Exodus 29:10-11

29:10 “You are to present the bull at the front of the tent of meeting, and Aaron and his sons are to put ¹  their hands on the head ²  of the bull. 29:11 You are to kill the bull before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting

Exodus 24:5

24:5 He sent young Israelite men, ³  and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls for peace offerings ⁴  to the Lord.

Exodus 29:1

The Consecration of Aaron and His Sons

29:1 ⁵ “Now this is what ⁶  you are to do for them to consecrate them so that they may minister as my priests. Take a young ⁷  bull and two rams without blemish; ⁸ 

Exodus 29:3

29:3 You are to put them in one basket and present ⁹  them in the basket, along with ¹⁰  the bull and the two rams.

Exodus 29:12

29:12 and take some of the blood of the bull and put it on the horns of the altar ¹¹  with your finger; all the rest of ¹²  the blood you are to pour out at the base of the altar.

Exodus 29:14

29:14 But the meat of the bull, its skin, and its dung you are to burn up ¹³  outside the camp. ¹⁴  It is the purification offering. ¹⁵ 

Exodus 29:36

29:36 Every day you are to prepare a bull for a purification offering ¹⁶  for atonement. ¹⁷  You are to purge ¹⁸  the altar by making atonement ¹⁹  for it, and you are to anoint it to set it apart as holy.

[29:10]  ¹ tn The verb is singular, agreeing with the first of the compound subject – Aaron.

[29:10]  ² sn The details of these offerings have to be determined from a careful study of Leviticus. There is a good deal of debate over the meaning of laying hands on the animals. At the very least it identifies the animal formally as their sacrifice. But it may very well indicate that the animal is a substitute for them as well, given the nature and the effect of the sacrifices.

[24:5]  ³ tn The construct has “young men of the Israelites,” and so “Israelite” is a genitive that describes them.

[24:5]  ⁴ tn The verbs and their respective accusatives are cognates. First, they offered up burnt offerings (see Lev 1), which is וַיַּעֲלוּ עֹלֹת (vayya’alu ’olot); then they sacrificed young bulls as peace sacrifices (Lev 3), which is in Hebrew וַיִּזְבְּחוּ זְבָחִים (vayyizbÿkhu zÿvakhim). In the first case the cognate accusative is the direct object; in the second it is an adverbial accusative of product. See on this covenant ritual H. M. Kamsler, “The Blood Covenant in the Bible,” Dor le Dor 6 (1977): 94-98; E. W. Nicholson, “The Covenant Ritual in Exodus 24:3-8,” VT 32 (1982): 74-86.

[29:1]  ⁵ sn Chap. 29 is a rather long, involved discussion of the consecration of Aaron the priest. It is similar to the ordination service in Lev 8. In fact, the execution of what is instructed here is narrated there. But these instructions must have been formulated after or in conjunction with Lev 1-7, for they presuppose a knowledge of the sacrifices. The bulk of the chapter is the consecration of the priests: 1-35. It has the preparation (1-3), washing (4), investiture and anointing (5-9), sin offering (10-14), burnt offering (15-18), installation peace offering (19-26, 31-34), other offerings’ rulings (27-30), and the duration of the ritual (35). Then there is the consecration of the altar (36-37), and the oblations (38-46). There are many possibilities for the study and exposition of this material. The whole chapter is the consecration of tabernacle, altar, people, and most of all the priests. God was beginning the holy operations with sacral ritual. So the overall message would be: Everyone who ministers, everyone who worships, and everything they use in the presence of Yahweh, must be set apart to God by the cleansing, enabling, and sanctifying work of God.

[29:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “the thing.”

[29:1]  ⁷ tn Literally: “take one bull, a ‘son’ of the herd.”

[29:1]  ⁸ tn The word תָּמִים (tamim) means “perfect.” The animals could not have diseases or be crippled or blind (see Mal 1). The requirement was designed to ensure that the people would give the best they had to Yahweh. The typology pointed to the sinless Messiah who would fulfill all these sacrifices in his one sacrifice on the cross.

[29:3]  ⁷ tn The verb קָרַב (qarav) in the Hiphil means to “bring near” to the altar, or, to offer something to God. These gifts will, therefore, be offered to him for the service of this ritual.

[29:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “and with.”

[29:12]  ⁹ sn This act seems to have signified the efficacious nature of the blood, since the horns represented power. This is part of the ritual of the sin offering for laity, because before the priests become priests they are treated as laity. The offering is better described as a purification offering rather than a sin offering, because it was offered, according to Leviticus, for both sins and impurities. Moreover, it was offered primarily to purify the sanctuary so that the once-defiled or sinful person could enter (see J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB]).

[29:12]  ¹⁰ tn The phrase “rest of” has been supplied in the translation for clarification.

[29:14]  ¹¹ tn Heb “burn with fire.”

[29:14]  ¹² sn This is to be done because there is no priesthood yet. Once they are installed, then the sin/purification offering is to be eaten by the officiating priests as a sign that the offering was received. But priests could not consume their own sin offering.

[29:14]  ¹³ sn There were two kinds of “purification offering,” those made with confession for sin and those made without. The title needs to cover both of them, and if it is called in the traditional way “the sin offering,” that will convey that when people offered it for skin diseases, menstruation, or having babies, they had sinned. That was not the case. Moreover, it is usual to translate the names of the sacrifices by what they do more than what they cover – so peace offering, reparation offering, and purification offering.

[29:36]  ¹³ tn The construction uses a genitive: “a bull of the sin offering,” which means, a bull that is designated for a sin (or better, purification) offering.

[29:36]  ¹⁴ sn It is difficult to understand how this verse is to be harmonized with the other passages. The ceremony in the earlier passages deals with atonement made for the priests, for people. But here it is the altar that is being sanctified. The “sin [purification] offering” seems to be for purification of the sanctuary and altar to receive people in their worship.

[29:36]  ¹⁵ tn The verb is וְחִטֵּאתָ (vÿhitte’ta), a Piel perfect of the word usually translated “to sin.” Here it may be interpreted as a privative Piel (as in Ps 51:7 [9]), with the sense of “un-sin” or “remove sin.” It could also be interpreted as related to the word for “sin offering,” and so be a denominative verb. It means “to purify, cleanse.” The Hebrews understood that sin and contamination could corrupt and pollute even things, and so they had to be purged.

[29:36]  ¹⁶ tn The construction is a Piel infinitive construct in an adverbial clause. The preposition bet (ב) that begins the clause could be taken as a temporal preposition, but in this context it seems to express the means by which the altar was purged of contamination – “in your making atonement” is “by [your] making atonement.”