14 And it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage:

15 And it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the Lord slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man, and the firstborn of beast: therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the matrix, being males; but all the firstborn of my children I redeem.

16 And it shall be for a token upon thine hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes: for by strength of hand the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt.

Verse 15 makes it clear that the purpose for which the firstling flocks were to be sanctified to the Lord was for sacrifice. They were not going to become the priests’ flocks, they were not going to be used by the community, they were simply being offered up as a sacrifice to God.

And what is the point of making an offering to God anyway? Why is it good for a person to destroy some of his resources, thus harming his personal status and also his society’s economy? What is the benefit in deliberately giving up a benefit?

To comprehend this paradox we must recognize that the act of sacrifice, in and of itself, naturally increases our connection to the sacred. It is good for us to take that which we have and give it away to the Lord, as doing so simultaneously debases the value of that worldly thing and elevates the value of God in our hearts. It is in our nature to respect and revere the things that we give away our resources to, as doing so signals to our minds that those things must be worth more than what we have given up. Thus, even today, while the Christian is not expected to make an animal sacrifice, he is expected pays his tithes and consecrate his time in worship services. If he does not do those things, then he is sending a signal to himself that God is not worthy of respect or reverence. What is more, he sends the same signal to his children and that sows a terrible future for them.

No wonder then that in these verses it is again made clear that the rising generation is to see and hear what sacrifices their parents are making to God and why. Again it is stressed that these rituals and traditions are to be a “token upon the hand, and for frontlets between the eyes” of the children. Their minds and their spirits are to be trained by these offerings, bringing them to have the proper estimation of God in their hearts. They are to impress upon the children just how mighty that “strength of hand that the Lord brought them out of Egypt” must have been that their parents would still mark it years afterward by offerings up every firstling of their flocks. The benefit of the sacrifice was how it would orient the children to the divine instead of the mundane.