15 And the priest shall bring it unto the altar, and wring off his head, and burn it on the altar; and the blood thereof shall be wrung out at the side of the altar:

16 And he shall pluck away his crop with his feathers, and cast it beside the altar on the east part, by the place of the ashes:

17 And he shall cleave it with the wings thereof, but shall not divide it asunder: and the priest shall burn it upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire: it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.

With how much smaller a bird is than a livestock animal, it is not surprising that the method of slaughtering and offering it would be quite different. While it does not say so in this chapter, the Talmud explains that livestock animals were killed with a slash across the throat. The bird, however, had its entire head wrung off. Both cases, then, featured a severance of mind and heart.

The now-headless bird would have the crop and feathers pulled away, then torn partway in half, though not all the way through, and was finally burned upon the altar. This seems to reflect the way that the ram or bullock were divided into their various parts. These offerings were not cast upon the flame as an enclosed body. They were opened sufficiently for the purifying fire to touch every part, to play upon every secret place within.

So, too, it is meant to be with us. It doesn’t do to just commit ourselves to the Lord, generally. We must open ourselves up and give Him our heart, and our mind, and our strength, and our time, and our sexuality, and our reactions, and our hopes, and all our other individual and secret parts. His purifying fire must play on all we are made up of.

Sacrifice	Eligible animals	Steps	Explanation
Burnt offering	Ram, Bullock, Pigeon, Turtledove		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
		Slaughtered on the North	Recommitment on the side of our journey
		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
		Crop pulled off, torn nearly in half	Each inner part of us exposed to God’s purifying fire
		The whole thing burned on the altar	Our lives consumed in service to God

Full table.