Sacrifice does not directly relate to anger, although some well-intentioned evangelicals contend otherwise in an effort to defend the historic doctrine of the atonement as portrayed in the New Testament. An attempt by Goldingay¹ to deny a connection between anger and sacrifice in Leviticus has some merit but ultimately fails due to his rejection of the penal substitutionary aspect of sacrifice. The better way is not to deny Goldingay’s conclusion that sacrifice does not directly relate to anger, but rather to accept the Levitical emphasis on sacrifice in the context of covenant.

 

Cleansing and Restoring: Goldingay

Goldingay understands sacrifice in the double context of sin and relationship.
First, Goldingay sees sacrifice as a means of removing sin. Importantly, Goldingay sees “sin as impurity” as but one image among many.² If true, it is unjustifiable to import one image into a text using another image—for example, reading a text that spoke of sin as “the ungrateful forgetfulness of a child”³ as through it also meant to include the rebellious attitude of a treasonous subject.⁴ They are both true portrayals of sin, but reading one into the other does an injustice to the meaning of the text.⁵ Similarly, an informed New Testament understanding of the sacrifice of Christ as a propitiation of God does not require that Leviticus treat sacrifice in the same way though both are true.

Goldingay takes advantage of this freedom to argue that because anger is seldom referred to in Leviticus⁶ and because of the Levitical emphasis on removing impurity rather than on paying the penalty for a transgression, Leviticus does not directly relate sacrifice and anger.⁷ Simplistically, rather than removing wrath from God, sacrifice removes impurity from man.

Secondly, Goldingay portrays sacrifice as a means of expression within a relationship. Although he still sees sacrifices as piacular, he sets them in the context of a loving relationship.⁸ With the analogy of the gift of flowers to a lover, he is able to invest the act of sacrifice with multiple levels of significance. His framework allows him to show that sacrifices do not per se “make up for…wrongdoing.”⁹ Rather, they express the fact of debt, although not actually paying it. This concept is particularly important for Goldingay, who has a strong view of sin and total depravity¹⁰ and is understandably reluctant to let a ritual performed by a man force God to overlook sin, as some semi-pagan¹¹ interpretations suggest sacrifice does.

 

Satisfying Anger: Peterson

Explicitly, Peterson’s response to Goldingay is merely to dismiss his floral analogy as “inadequate with respect to atonement offerings.”¹² But Peterson sees himself as profoundly opposed to Goldingay,¹³ and at the root of his argument in response, Peterson sets up two claims that bear on the question of the relationship of sacrifice to anger. First, Peterson relies on scholarship¹⁴ arguing for a closer relationship between כּפֶּר (traditionally, atone) and כֹּפֶר (ransom payment), suggesting that the substitutionary nature of the כֹּפֶר implies a substitutionary aspect to sacrifice. Second, Peterson suggests that it is insufficient merely to consider the result of sacrifice: a cleansed believer. Rather, as important as the purity produced by sacrifice is the process by which one is cleansed; “sinful men and women can only draw near to the Holy One and continue in his presence by the means which he himself provides.”¹⁵ That process is primarily one of a penal substitutionary sacrifice bearing the wrath of God, which Peterson argues¹⁶ becomes explicitly clear in the case of the Day of Atonement.¹⁷

Peterson’s first criticism is interesting and well worth considering. Sklar’s monograph¹⁸ on the uses of כּפֶּר is masterful and exhaustive although his conclusion is not novel.¹⁹ However, given verses, such as Psalm 79.9,²⁰ that use the verb in a manner inconsistent²¹ with the meaning “to propitiate,” and given the lack of any interchange between the two words,²² all that can be concluded is that, in any situation, “it is possible”²³ that כּפֶּר may have an overtone of ransom. While good supporting evidence for an otherwise defensible position on sacrifice, this first point is tenuous without one.

Peterson’s second criticism of Goldingay is also one well worth making. His emphasis on the process rather than the result is helpful, given the attention in Leviticus to procedure and given Goldingay’s corresponding lack of attention. Indeed, Goldingay’s argument that sacrifice “facilitates movement” into God’s presence²⁴ seems borne out of his awareness that destroying an offering (elsewhere described as a type of “complete exhaustion of wrath”²⁵) is not entirely compatible with treating that offering as merely a gift to God. Goldingay’s suggestion that the sacrificed animal belongs to the realms of spirit and flesh²⁶ and serves as a “ferry boat between heaven and earth”²⁷ conjures a disturbing, almost Egyptian, picture of sacrifice.  But if Goldingay’s answer to the puzzle is unsatisfying, so is Peterson’s. The notion that the sacrifice substitutes for the worshipper does not explain the מנחה or grain offering, which involves no substitute life.²⁸ Similarly, although clearly some sacrifices are penal substitutionary, Peterson does not adequately explain why sacrifice should evoke anger. A consistent explanation of the Levitical sacrifices in particular is necessary before it is possible to say something about a relationship between sacrifice and anger.

Covenant and Covenant-Breakers

Arguably the Levitical sacrifices are linked by the Sinaitic covenant. That view would provide room for a substitutionary aspect to sacrifice. But it would also emphasize the context of grace which distinguishes the Levitical sacrifices from pagan practices otherwise “entirely consistent with the Levitical sacrifices.”²⁹

Central to the argument is the covenant ceremony in Exodus 24.³⁰ The people of Israel have been saved from Egypt and after journeying through the desert, have stood at the foot of Sinai. The Lord has spoken the Ten Words, and more, but only Moses has been able to come into the Lord’s presence.³¹ However, in Exodus 24, the whole people become involved in ratifying the covenant.³² Similarly to the prototypical covenant with Abram,³³ we find a set of promises in Exodus 20-23 and the assent of the people.³⁴ We would also expect to find an imprecatory division, as the phrase “to cut a covenant” (כרת ברית) implies.³⁵ Although not obvious, there are a number of divisions present in the ceremony. Exodus 24.5 has worshippers performing the only two offerings in Leviticus (עלה and שׁלמים) that would have involved cutting the sacrifice into pieces.³⁶ Furthermore, the blood of the offerings, presumably symbolizing the whole of the cut offerings of the Israelites, is divided in two and cast on the two parties to the covenant: the Israelites and altar (in lieu of the “fire pot and…torch”³⁷ Abram saw).

Subsequent sacrifices thus refer back to Exodus 24. Not only are individual sacrifices evocative of the covenant ceremony, but Leviticus also seems to set them in the context of the covenant.³⁸ For example, the עלה acknowledges³⁹ the sacrificer’s breaking of the covenant⁴⁰ by failing to obey “all the words that the Lord has spoken.”⁴¹ Then the worshipper substitutes the animal’s symbolic death for the death a covenant-breaker deserves.⁴² This view maintains the penal substitutionary aspect of the sacrifice although without reference to anger. Or take, for example, the מנחה that Peterson’s argument had difficulty explaining. In covenant context, the sacrifice of grain can be either a response to God’s gracious blessing of the harvest or (in the case of the poor-man’s חטאת) an acknowledgement of covenant-breaking and the symbolic portrayal of the effect of a broken covenant on the land.⁴³ In the latter case, what is expressed by the sacrifice is not the substitution of the grain in some way for the sinner, but a substitutionary sacrifice of the grain in place of the penalty on the harvest due to covenant breaking.

A number of important consequences flow from such a covenantal treatment of sacrifice. First, the grace of God is apparent. The nature of the sacrifice was to acknowledge that the covenant had been broken by the believer and thus deserved to suffer the consequences of covenant breaking.⁴⁴ Furthermore, the penalties of a broken covenant were not nugatory and simply to be waived.⁴⁵ So to offer a sacrifice was to acknowledge one’s guilt, bring oneself under the protection of God, and trust in the means appointed to avert judgement by the Lord⁴⁶ who had promised to honour his covenant despite his people’s disobedience.⁴⁷ Second, the theme in Leviticus of sacrificial substitution is maintained. There is clearly a sense in which the sacrificed creations are suffering a penalty instead of the people and their land that is lost in Goldingay’s interpretation of Levitical sacrifice.⁴⁸ Third, the Levitical use of the “anger of God” is preserved for the context of persistent covenant breaking⁴⁹ rather than being invoked at every transgression of the covenant law. (This is not to say that God is not angry at sin,⁵⁰ nor even that sacrifice is never treated as appeasing God,⁵¹ but rather that Leviticus does not treat sacrifice as doing so.) In this context, it makes sense that Leviticus 26 should regard God’s anger as a remote consequence of persistent covenant disobedience⁵²—scarcely to be expected if the anger of God were a daily occurrence for which appeasing sacrifices were needed. Fourth, the New Testament texts on sacrifice are most consistent with a covenantal reading of Leviticus. Paul, for example, in Romans argues for present sacrificial justification but future relief from a future wrath.⁵³ Similarly, Hebrews ties sacrifice and covenant together, both by causally linking Jesus’ death as sacrifice with his death as covenant-initiator,⁵⁴ and with the phrase “the blood of the covenant,” thereby hearkening back to the covenant at Sinai.⁵⁵ Or again, Jesus cuts a covenant, dividing the bread as the animals were divided for Levitical sacrifices and then partaking of it, as in the שׁלמים (which Luther called the eucharistic sacrifice⁵⁶), before implicitly stating that he has been instituting a new covenant.⁵⁷ The New Testament consciously uses the sacrifice of Jesus as a covenant-instituting sacrifice along the lines of the Exodus 24 sacrifices, and where it uses Jesus’ sacrifice along those lines mention of the sacrifice as an appeasement of God is absent.

Ultimately, Goldingay’s view of sacrifice, although offering a number of helpful observations about the relational aspect of sacrifice, provides a poor explanation of penal substitutionary elements in Levitical sacrifices. But Peterson’s suggested replacement involves implying anger into Levitical sacrifice in a way that seems foreign to its author and is neither consistently applicable across the sacrifices nor compatible with the view of covenantal anger in Leviticus 26. Instead, a strong view of the Exodus 24 covenant allows sacrifice to be seen as penal substitutionary—but not as appeasing anger—in a way that is compatible with the New Testament treatment of the death of Christ both as sacrifice and as a propitiation of the wrath of God.

Bibliography

 

Bonar, Andrew. A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus: expository and practical, with critical notes. London: James Nisbet, 1875

Buchanan, Alex. Anger, Mercy and the Heart of God. Nashville, Tenn.: Sovereign World, 2000

Goldingay, John. “Old Testament Sacrifice and the Death of Christ.” Pp. 3-20 in Atonement Today: A Symposium at St John’s College, Nottingham. Edited by John Goldingay. London: SPCK, 1995

Goldingay, John. “Your Iniquities Have Made a Separation Between You and Your God.” Pp. 39-53 in Atonement Today: A Symposium at St John’s College, Nottingham. Edited by John Goldingay. London: SPCK, 1995

Hanson, Anthony Tyrrell. The Wrath of the Lamb. London: SPCK, 1957

Hayes, John H. “Atonement in the Book of Leviticus.” Int 52 (1998): 5-15

Henry, Matthew. Exposition of the Old and New Testament. 6 vols. London, James Nisbet

Jenson, Philip. “The Levitical Sacrificial System.” Pp. 25-40 in Sacrifice in the Bible. Edited by Roger T. Beckwith and Martin J. Selman. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 1995

Kurtz, J. H. Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament. Translated by James Martin. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1863

Latvus, Kari. God, Anger and Ideology: The Anger of God in Joshua and Judges in Relation to Deuteronomy and the Priestly Writings. JSOTSup 279. Bath: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998

Marx, Alfred. “The Theology of the Sacrifice According to Leviticus 1-7.” Pp. 103-120 in The Book of Leviticus: Composition & Reception. Edited by Rolf Rendtorff and Robert A. Kugler. Leiden: Brill, 2003

Montgomery, John Warwick. Chytræus On Sacrifice: A Reformation Treatise in Biblical Theology. Saint Louis, Missouri: Concordia Publishing House, 1962

Morris, Leon. The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross. London: The Tyndale Press, 1955

Peels, H. G. L. The Vengeance of God: The Meaning of the Root NQM & the Function of the NQM-Texts in the Context of Divine Revelation in the Old Testament. Leiden: Brill, 1994

Peterson, David. “Atonement in the Old Testament.” Pp. 1-15 in Where Wrath & Mercy Meet: Proclaiming the Atonement Today. The Oak Hill School of Theology Series. Edited by David Peterson. Glasgow: Paternoster, 2001

Peterson, David. “Introduction.” Pp. xi-xix in Where Wrath & Mercy Meet: Proclaiming the Atonement Today. The Oak Hill School of Theology Series. Edited by David Peterson. Glasgow: Paternoster, 2001

Rooker, Mark F. Leviticus. The New American Commentary series. Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000

Sklar, Jay. Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement: The Priestly Conceptions. Hebrew Bible Monographs 2. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005

Smith, William Robertson. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. London: A & C Black, 1927

de Spinoza, Benedict. The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza: A Theologico-Political Treatise and A Political Treatise. Translated by R. H. M. Elwes. New York: Dover Publications, 1955

Tasker, R. V. G. The Biblical Doctrine of the Wrath of God. London: The Tyndale Press, 1957

Turrettin, Francis. The Atonement of Christ. Translated by James R. Wilson. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1978

Wenham, Gordon. The Book of Leviticus. New International Commentary on the Old Testament series. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1979

Wenham, Gordon. “The Theology of Old Testament Sacrifice.” Pp. 75-87 in Sacrifice in the Bible. Edited by Roger T. Beckwith and Martin J. Selman. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 1995

 

 

Footnotes

1. Especially in the two articles:
   • John Goldingay, “Old Testament Sacrifice and the Death of Christ,” in Atonement Today: A Symposium at St John’s College, Nottingham (ed. John Goldingay; London: SPCK, 1995).
   • John Goldingay, “Your Iniquities Have Made a Separation Between You and Your God,” in Atonement Today: A Symposium at St John’s College, Nottingham (ed. John Goldingay. London: SPCK, 1995).

   ↑

2. Goldingay, “Your Iniquities Have Made a Separation Between You and Your God,” 42. ↑
3. Goldingay, “Your Iniquities Have Made a Separation Between You and Your God,” 42. ↑
4. Goldingay, “Your Iniquities Have Made a Separation Between You and Your God,” 40. ↑
5. Nor does it relieve a beleaguered doctrine, as both are amply supported elsewhere. ↑
6. The anger of God is mentioned once in the context of the sons of Aaron offering “unauthorized fire before the LORD” (Leviticus 10.6, ESV). There is also one mention of wrath in Leviticus 26.28. ↑
7. Goldingay, “Your Iniquities Have Made a Separation Between You and Your God,” 51. ↑
8. Goldingay, “Old Testament Sacrifice and the Death of Christ,” 3. ↑
9. Goldingay, “Old Testament Sacrifice and the Death of Christ,” 9-10. ↑
10. Goldingay, “Your Iniquities Have Made a Separation Between You and Your God,” 50. ↑
11. cf. Spinoza, “Anything which excites [people's] astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying the anger of the Gods or of the Supreme being, and, mistaking superstition for religion, account it impious not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice.” — Benedict de Spinoza, The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza: A Theologico-Political Treatise and A Political Treatise, (tr. R. H. M. Elwes; New York: Dover Publications, 1955), 3. ↑
12. David Peterson, “Atonement in the Old Testament,” in Where Wrath & Mercy Meet: Proclaiming the Atonement Today (The Oak Hill School of Theology Series; ed. David Peterson; Glasgow: Paternoster, 2001), 9. ↑
13. David Peterson, “Introduction,” in Where Wrath & Mercy Meet: Proclaiming the Atonement Today (The Oak Hill School of Theology Series; ed. David Peterson; Glasgow: Paternoster, 2001), xiii. ↑
14. Jay Sklar, Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement: The Priestly Conceptions (Hebrew Bible Monographs 2; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005). ↑
15. Peterson, “Atonement in the Old Testament,” 23. ↑
16. Peterson, “Atonement in the Old Testament,” 12. ↑
17. Leviticus 16. ↑
18. Sklar, Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement. ↑
19. Kurtz, writing in 1863, is aware of it and refers to it as a “very peculiar notion.” — J. H. Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament (tr. James Martin; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1863), 70. ↑

20. עָזְרֵ֤נוּ ׀ אֱלֹ֘הֵ֤י יִשְׁעֵ֗נוּ עַל־דְּבַ֥ר כְּבֹֽוד־שְׁמֶ֑ךָ וְהַצִּילֵ֥נוּ וְכַפֵּ֥ר עַל־חַ֝טֹּאתֵ֗ינוּ לְמַ֣עַן שְׁמֶֽךָ׃

    ↑

21. To give כּפֶּר the meaning “propitiate” would suggest the nonsensical translation of “propitiating sins” rather than “cleansing,” “covering over” or even “forgiving” them. It is as inappropriate to “propitiate sins” as to “atone God’s wrath,” cf. Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship, 67. ↑
22. Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship, 71. ↑
23. Peterson, “Atonement in the Old Testament,” 12. ↑
24. Goldingay, “Old Testament Sacrifice and the Death of Christ,” 13. ↑
25. Andrew Bonar, A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus: expository and practical, with critical notes, (London: James Nisbet, 1875), 11. ↑
26. Goldingay, “Old Testament Sacrifice and the Death of Christ,” 12. ↑
27. Goldingay, “Old Testament Sacrifice and the Death of Christ,” 13. ↑
28. Regulations for the offering of the מנחה can be found in Leviticus 2, as well as Leviticus 6.14-17. It is not regulated in Leviticus 3-5, although there is an explicit distinction made between the poor man’s חטאת and the מנחה in Leviticus 5.11b: possibly pace Matthew Henry, Exposition of the Old and New Testament (6 vols.; London, James Nisbet), 1:Leviticus 2.1. ↑
29. John Warwick Montgomery, Chytræus On Sacrifice: A Reformation Treatise in Biblical Theology (Saint Louis, Missouri: Concordia Publishing House, 1962), 62. ↑
30. I am indebted in the following analysis to a very helpful treatment of this covenant in Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (London: The Tyndale Press, 1955). ↑
31. cf. Exodus 20.21: “The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.” (ESV) ↑
32. As had been written down in the Book of the Covenant by Moses. ↑
33. Genesis 15: Promise (Genesis 15.5), Assent (Genesis 15.6) and Threat (Genesis 15.9-10, 17). ↑
34. Exodus 24.3. ↑
35. I refer to the practice of cutting an animal into two as a threat for what should happen if one of the parties were to break the covenant. — William Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (London: A & C Black, 1927), 480-481. ↑
36. Respectively, Leviticus 1.6, where the cutting is explicit, and 3.3-4, where it is implicit. See Philip P Jenson, “The Levitical Sacrificial System” in Sacrifice and the Bible (ed. Roger T. Beckwith and Martin J. Selman; Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995), 26. ↑
37. Genesis 15.17. ↑
38. cf. Leviticus 2.13. ↑
39. Gordon Wenham, The Book of Leviticus (New International Commentary on the Old Testament series; Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1979), 63. ↑
40. "Failure to walk in God’s ways means the complete overthrow of the covenant" — Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 75. ↑
41. Exodus 24.3 (ESV). ↑
42. “The ‘cutting it into pieces’ would at last leave the sacrifice a mangled mass of flesh and bones. Entire dislocation of every joint, and separation of every limb and member, was the process. By this the excruciating torment due to the sinner seems signified.” — Bonar, A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus, 17-18. ↑
43. Leviticus 26.20. ↑
44. cf. Tasker: “To realize that we are under God’s wrath and in dis-grace is the essential preliminary to the experience of His love and His grace” — R. V. G. Tasker, The Biblical Doctrine of the Wrath of God (London: The Tyndale Press, 1957), 10. ↑
45. Ezekiel 18.4. ↑
46. Suggesting the imperfect nature of the Levitical sacrifices as unable themselves to achieve this end. — Francis Turrettin, The Atonement of Christ (tr. James R. Wilson; Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1978), 46-47. ↑
47. Leviticus 26.40-42, 44-45. ↑
48. Notably, Goldingay does not deny the substitutionary aspect of Christ’s death on the cross. — Goldingay, “Old Testament Sacrifice and the Death of Christ,” 14. ↑
49. Leviticus 26.27. ↑
50. Alex Buchanan, Anger, Mercy and the Heart of God (Nashville, Tennessee.: Sovereign World, 2000), 34. ↑
51. 1 Samuel 26.19, of which a helpful treatment is found in Anthony Tyrrell Hanson, The Wrath of the Lamb (London: SPCK, 1957), 3. ↑
52. God’s anger is only mentioned in the fourth chronological list of the consequences of breaking God’s covenant. ↑
53. Romans 5.9. ↑
54. Hebrews 9.14-15. ↑
55. Hebrews 12.24, intentionally evoking Hebrews 9.20. ↑
56. Montgomery, Chytræus On Sacrifice, 47. ↑
57. Matthew 26.26-28. ↑