Leviticus 17:2-16 Speak to Aaron, and to his sons, and to all the children of Israel, and say to them; This is the thing which the LORD has commanded… "Blood" is one of the characteristic, regent words of Scripture, occurring in it more than four hundred times. A word so recurrent must mean something fundamental. In fact, it is the blood of Christ which is the basis of Christianity, the very pivot of the Christian religion. I. First of all, let us ponder what in light of modern physiology is certainly a remarkable Scripture. Moses, in forbidding the eating of blood, assigns for his prohibition the following reason: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul" (ver. 11). 1. The fact asserted: "The life (soul) of the flesh is in the blood."(1) This is, in fact, one of the instinctive beliefs of humanity; and instinct is often prophetic, holding latent history. How thoroughly the idea that blood is the seat of life has taken possession of the race is evident from such instinctive idioms as these: "shedder of blood," "man of blood," "imbrue in blood," "bloody-minded," "blood-thirsty," "avenger of blood," "blood-guiltiness," "cold-blooded," "prince of the blood royal," "blooded-stock," "blood-relation," "next of blood," "consanguinity," "sanguine of success," "sanguine temperament," &c., &c. So that marvellous diviner and formulator of human instincts, Shakespeare — the word "blood" occurs seven hundred and thirty-one times in his plays — for example: — "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red." ("Macbeth," II:2.) Again — "Sluic'd out his innocent soul through streams of blood: Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries, Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth, To me, for justice and rough chastisement." ("King Richard II.," I:1.) So England's poet-laureate— "Defects of doubt, and taints of blood." ("In Memoriam," 53.) Again "Through all the years of April blood." ("In Memoriam," 108.) So Virgil — "His purple life (purpuream animam) he poureth forth." ("AEneid," 9:349.) So Homer, and very frequently, thus — "The soul comes floating in a tide of gore." ("Iliad," 4:537.) Again— "He sobs his soul out in the gush of blood." ("Iliad," 16:419.) Once more— "And the soul issued in the purple flood." ("Iliad," 16:624.) So the Scriptural writers; for example: "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground"; "Earth, cover not thou my blood"; "Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God"; "Precious shall their blood be in His sight"; "All the righteous blood shed upon the earth from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zachariah the son of Barachiah"; "I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood." "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" The blood being thus instinctively conceived as the seat of life, and so the representative of the soul or person, no wonder that blood has ever been regarded as a sacred thing. Here is the secret of the Mosaic prohibition to eat blood, a prohibition frequently repeated, and in vers. 10-14 with solemn minuteness of detail. The blood being regarded as the symbol and home of the personality, to eat it was to be guilty of sacrilegious cannibalism. Here is the key to that chivalrous, pathetic incident in David's life: "Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should do this; is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives?" (2 Samuel 23:15-17). But the Divine prohibition was not peculiar to the Jews. A millennium before Moses, when the new stock of humanity, just escaped the Deluge, was still young, God commanded Noah, saying, "Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you .... But flesh with the life (soul) thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat" (Genesis 9:1-4). As the prohibition antedated the Mosaic Dispensation, so it postdated it. A score of years after Christ was crucified, a controversy arose in the Church at Antioch respecting the subjection of Gentile converts to circumcision and the Mosaic institutions generally (Acts 15:1-35). So much for the instinctive belief that the life, or soul, of the flesh is in the blood. (2) And modern science remarkably confirms this instinctive belief. The blood, in respect to its composition, consists of two principal parts: a liquid plasma, and countless microscopic corpuscles, or blood-discs, floating in it, by far the larger part of which are red, and the rest colourless. The office of the colourless corpuscles, called "Leucocytes," is not yet distinctly understood. This thing, however, must be said about them, When blood is taken from the living system, these leucocytes, or white corpuscles, if kept at something like their normal temperature, present for some time remarkable life-like phenomena; they protrude and retract numerous arms or processes, and even move about from place to place, as though things of life; in fact, so much do the motions of these corpuscles resemble the protean changes in figure and motions of the microscopic Rhizopod called "Amoeba," that they have received the name, amoeboid movements. The red corpuscles constitute nearly one half of the mass of the blood, tinging it so thoroughly as to give it its red colour. The office of these red globules, or blood discs, is, in the main, to serve as carriers of oxygen. To use the words of Prof. Flint, the red corpuscles "are respiratory organs; taking up the greater part of the oxygen which is absorbed by the blood in its passage through the lungs, and conveying it to the tissues, where it is given up, and its place supplied by carbonic acid." One more remark must be made about these red blood discs. Although the diagnosis of blood stains is not yet sufficiently advanced to enable us in all cases to discriminate with absolute certainty between the blood corpuscles of man and those of all mammals, yet it is far enough advanced to enable the microscopical expert to pronounce, in certain cases, with accuracy on the character of blood stains in murder trials; thus converting these tiny globules, having a diameter of only 1/3200 of an inch, into solemn, resistless witnesses. The melancholy Dane is right: "Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak, With most miraculous organ." ("Hamlet," II:2.) Ay, "blood will tell." Thus the blood is in an eminent sense the seat and organ of life. The language of Hervey, the demonstrator at least, if not the discoverer, of the circulation of the blood, is striking: The blood is the "primigenial and principal part, because that in it and from it the fountain of motion and pulsation is derived; also because the animal heat or vital spirit is first radicated and implanted, and the soul takes up her mansion in it The blood is the genital part, the fountain of life, primum vivens, ultimum moriens." It is a solemn thing to observe the rhythmical systole and diastole of the heart, especially as recorded by that delicate instrument, the sphygmograph. The blood is a very river of life, the arterial and venous systems of circulation constituting an intricate network of canals, making the body a corporeal Amsterdam or human Venice. Each corpuscle is a barge, moving with various rates of speed in different parts of the body, toiling through the capillaries at the rate of two inches a minute, rushing through the arteries at the rate of from twelve to twenty feet a second, ceaselessly carrying on the organic functions of the body by perpetually exchanging freight, depositing at the depot of this and that tissue oxygen, and taking up carbonic acid. What money is to society, that blood is to the bodily system; it is the means of exchange, or the circulating medium. The scientific accuracy of the assertion, "the life of the flesh is in the blood," is strikingly shown in such facts as blood-letting, strangling, fainting, pyoemia, or blood-poisoning, and especially transfusion — a sometimes beneficent surgical operation, in which blood from a strong and healthy person, or from one of the lower animals, is injected into the veins of a feeble or anaemic patient. The life or soul of the flesh is in the blood. Thus the Bible of Scripture and the Bible of Nature is one; Scripture announcing a truth, Nature echoing it. 2. The rite appointed: "And I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls."(1) "I have given it to you upon the altar." Blood is emphatically the characteristic thing in the Levitical ritual, the very basis of the old sacrificial economy. Particularly is this true of the eminently sacred rites of the paschal lamb, the sin-offering, the day of atonement, and the mercy-seat; all the significance of these elaborate ceremonies turned on the element of blood. Indeed, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, summing up the Old Covenant in respect to ritual, expressly says, "Almost all things are by the law purified with blood; and without shedding of blood there is no remission" (Hebrews 9:22). The Old Testament is in very truth a scarlet dispensation. (2) "To atone for your souls." To atone; literally, to cover, hide, shelter. But in what sense to atone? Certainly not in the heathen sense of placating as with presents, or expiating as by offering a quid pro quo; but in the gracious sense of reconciling by sacrificial, vicarious interception. 3. The reason assigned: "For it is the blood that maketh atonement" — i.e., by the life thereof, in virtue" of the soul in it. (1) "It is the blood that maketh an atonement." It atones not, of course, absolutely; for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away the consciousness of sins. But the blood atones, so to speak, constructively, pictorially, prophetically. (2) "For the life (or soul) of the flesh is in the blood." And this on the principle that the blood, as being the seat of the life, is the representative of the person. Life for life, soul for soul; this is the meaning of the old sacrificial ritual. And it is all based on the admitted physiological principle — the life of the flesh is in the blood. II. And now we have the key to the Scriptural doctrine of blood. 1. The blood of Jesus Christ it is which is the antitype or fulfilment of the blood of the Levitical victims. To prove this forms a great part of the argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Take chap. 9., verses Hebrews 9:13, 14, as a typical specimen of the argument. 2. The blood of Jesus Christ is the antitypal, real atonement for our souls on the same principle which held under the Old Dispensation — the principle of vicarious representation. That is to say, Christ's blood, as being the vehicle and representative of His own personality, was vicariously shed; and in this way He became the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. This, then, is the Scriptural doctrine of blood. It is based on the ancient Mosaic affirmation and on the modern scientific observation — "The life of the flesh is in the blood." How significant now the New Testament allusions to the efficacy of Christ's blood. For example: "Purchased with His own blood"; "Set forth as a propitiation through faith in His blood"; "Justified by His blood"; "Redemption through His blood"; "Made peace through the blood of His Cross"; "Boldness to enter into the holiest through the blood of Jesus"; "The blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel"; "The blood of the everlasting Covenant"; "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin"; "Washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb," &c. Thus blood is the scarlet thread winding through both the Covenants, their crimson rubric. This, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter — blood is the natural, physiological basis of the Scriptural doctrine of the Atonement. "Science" inexorably holds us to "orthodoxy" in the prime, pivotal article of the Christian religion. (G. D. Boardman, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Speak unto Aaron, and unto his sons, and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto them; This is the thing which the LORD hath commanded, saying, |
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