Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Leviticus 4:13 - 4:21
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
For the Whole Congregation
v. 13. And if the whole congregation of Israel sin through ignorance, that is, through inadvertence due either to unconsciousness of the act's sinfulness or to lack of information on certain points of the Law, and the thing be hid from the eyes of the assembly, and they have done somewhat (something)against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which should not be done, and are guilty, although, for the time being, still in ignorance of that fact;
v. 14. when the sin, which they have sinned against it, is known, then the congregation, as a body,shall offer a young bullock For the sin, and bring him before the Tabernacle of the Congregation.
v. 15. And the elders of the congregation, as the representatives of the entire people, shall lay their hands up on the head of the bullock before the Lord, both in confessing the sin and expressing the transfer of the sin to the sacrificial animal; and the bullock shall be killed before the Lord.
v. 16. And the priest that is anointed, the high priest, shall bring of the bullock's blood, which was caught up as usual,to the Tabernacle of the Congregation, to the Holy Place;
v. 17. and the priest shall dip his finger in some of the blood, and sprinkle it seven times before the Lord, even before the veil, behind which was the throne of the Lord, the mercy-seat of the ark.
v. 18. And he shall put some of the blood up on the horns of the altar which is before the Lord, that is in the Tabernacle of the Congregation, the golden altar of incense,and shall pour out all the blood at the bottom of the altar of the burnt offering, which is at the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation.
v. 19. And he shall take all his fat from him, and burn it up on the altar.
v. 20. And he shall do with the bullock as he did with the bullock for a sin-offering, that offered by the high priest, so shall he do with this; and the priest shall make an atonement For them, and it shall be forgiven them.
v. 21. And he shall carry forth the bullock without the camp and burn him as he burned the first bullock, it is a sin-offering for the congregation, The high priest here acted as the mediator of the people, and the meaning of the entire ceremony was this, that the sin was covered, put out of sight, not, of course, as if the wrong could be undone, but that God had so hidden it as to have the sinner stand in His presence without fault. The sin-offering, in this case especially, was a symbol of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ, as He gave Himself for the sins of the whole world, and of the atonement which He gained by it. At the same time we Christians must riot lose sight of the fact that, if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, Heb_10:26.