A separation
between it and the daily life was inevitable, and Deuteronomy
itself paved the way for this result by permitting profane
slaughtering. A man lived in Hebron, but sacrificed in Jerusalem;
life and worship fell apart. The consequences which lie dormant in
the Deuteronomic law are fully developed in the Priestly Code.
This is the reason why the sacrifice combined with a meal,
formerly by far the chief, now falls completely into the
background. One could eat flesh at home, but in Jerusalem one's
business was to do worship. Accordingly, those sacrifices were
preferred in which the religious character came to the front with
the utmost possible purity and without any admixture of natural
elements, sacrifices of which God received everything and man
nothing,--burnt-offerings, sin-offerings, and trespass-offerings.
If formerly the sacrifice had taken its complexion from the
quality of the occasion which led to it, it now had essentially
but one uniform purpose--to be a medium of worship. The warm
pulse of life no longer throbbed in it to animate it; it was no
longer the blossom and the fruit of every branch of life; it had
its own meaning all to itself.
Pages:
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197