3 If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord.

4 And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.

5 And he shall kill the bullock before the Lord: and the priests, Aaron’s sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

6 And he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into his pieces.

7 And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire upon the altar, and lay the wood in order upon the fire:

8 And the priests, Aaron’s sons, shall lay the parts, the head, and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar:

9 But his inwards and his legs shall he wash in water: and the priest shall burn all on the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.

The first sacrifice described in Leviticus is a burnt offering. We heard about this kind of offering in the second half of Exodus. The description given here largely follows the pattern of that earlier record, though it provides a few new details.

First, we now know that a bullock was also an acceptable animal for the burnt offering, previously we only knew of a ram. Secondly, we learned that the offering must be an unblemished male. The significance of being unblemished is clear, one was to offer to God from the very best of his flocks.

As for being male, obviously one healthy male is able to impregnate many healthy females. Many shepherds might even have a couple dozen females for each one male. The other males would be destined for slaughter or sold as beasts of burden. Thus, to offer a male is to offer your root of life, or your personal food, or your strength of labor. Excellent symbols for the burnt sacrifice, which stood for committing one’s life and efforts to God.

I have updated our table of sacrifices with this new information, marking the new portions in bold. I have realized that this table will probably get quite large, so I will only post the most relevant portion of it here in these daily posts, but the entire table can be viewed at any time over here.

Sacrifice	Eligible animals	Steps	Explanation
Burnt offering	Ram, Bullock		Giving our life to God’s purposes
		Male, without blemish	Give our very best
		Hands placed on head, slaughtered	Animal takes the place of us
		Blood sprinkled around altar	Our life is sprinkled over God’s work
		Cut in pieces, and washed	Each part of us measured and made clean
		The whole thing burned on the altar	Our lives consumed in service to God