Within a single soul, an entire universe is hidden
1 And take thou unto thee Aaron thy brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that he may minister unto me in the priest’s office, even Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron’s sons.
We now turn from the details of the tabernacle structure to the dress and preparation of the priests that would carry out its duties. First of all, there were specific men appointed to the office of the priest. At this point it was to be Aaron and his sons. In all, there were only five of them, and we heard previously that there were 600,000 men who participated in the Exodus. If that means 600,000 households, and all of them were only to make a single offering in a year, then it would be approximately 329 households serviced per priest every day of the year.
Of course, eventually the priesthood would be expanded to the entire tribe of Levi, but even then, there is an even smaller bottleneck when we consider that there was only one altar in the tabernacle courtyard upon which to sacrifice animals. According to the numbers that we have, that one altar would have to facilitate 1,644 sacrifices per day for each household to make one offering per year.
And we have not even addressed special times of the year, such as the festivals, when everyone would be bringing an offering at once! In short, I don’t know how the logistics of sacrifices at the tabernacle worked. I don’t think we have all enough details to understand how the work was distributed so that every Israelite could make an offering when he needed to.
But presumably there was a robust enough system that it did work, and there were dedicated men whose whole labor would be carrying out these most sacred rituals, connecting every individual soul in Israel to God.
17 And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer, and of the kings that were with him, at the valley of Shaveh, which is the king’s dale. 18 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God. 19 And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: 20 And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.
There is very little that we know of this King Melchizedek. We do not know his genealogy, we don’t know anything about the land of Salem that he was king over (unless this is a shortened version of Jerusalem), and we don’t know what happened to him after these events.
We do hear some later references to him, though. In Hebrews chapters 5 and 7 it is stated that Jesus was a priest “after the order” of Melchizedek. So clearly he was a figure of importance to the ancient Israelites, and evidently Abram respected him as an emissary of God as he paid his tithes to him.
So much of the biblical account is exclusively about the Abrahamic line that it becomes surprising to hear about a legendary, righteous king that existed outside of that lineage. It makes me wonder how many other good people in history have their ripples washing over us today, and we don’t even know anything about them.
Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.
And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words.
For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
COMMENTARY
Those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice
Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you
For this is my blood of the new testament
There are some passages of scripture that I read, and I feel like I understand their reasoning immediately. Then there are some that I read, but I frankly do not understand them. Instead I get the sense that I am teasing at ideas that are still beyond me. One such example of feeling out of my depth is when I consider the three verses that I shared above.
It seems that there is something about sacrifice being a necessary component of our covenants with God. I’m not entirely sure why these two are so connected, but I get a sense that they really are. The Law of Moses was a covenant instituted by regular animal sacrifice, and the Higher Law was a covenant instituted by the great sacrifice of Christ.
In Hebrews 9:15-22, Paul gives us a small treatise on covenants and sacrifices, in which he states that no testament is in force until after the death of its testator. Why, exactly, I do not know, but there it is even so.
I suppose that performing a sacrifice as part of entering into a covenant makes the experience far more impactful in the heart of the disciple. Also, making that sacrifice would be a representation of what the covenant life will surely require multiple times in the years that follow.
But still I think there are things here that I do not understand, and so my mind continues to turn these verses over. I hope my thinking-out-loud on them is helpful for you, it certainly has been useful for me.
Spiritual Wanderings 