The Law of Moses

This page is about an Old Testament study on the Offerings, Sacrifices, & Festivals.

This is something I’ve been working on, at the time of writing, for almost a year. Very off-and-on, for sure, but also, so much material to sift through, and I was very inefficient at first. The rough methodology was as follows: read through all the relevant passages and paraphrased all the details into note form; went back and began organizing the notes under broad categories (such as “Regular offerings”); then, organized each category into topics (“burnt offering”); tried to remove redundancies and repetition by listing general rules in the appropriate place; and finally, expanded topics into the form you will see here.

Kinds of Offerings: Many of the prescriptions of the Law of Moses dealt with the offerings and sacrifices the Lord expected and required from Israel.

The Jewish Festivals: The commands about offerings provided the foundation for the holidays and festivals.

Other significant aspects of offerings and sacrifices in the religious life of Israel: I include here things such as ordinations of leaders and the provision for Levites (priests).

Practical lessons from a better understanding of the offerings and festivals: The justice of God is displayed in the commands—but not only towards sin, but in provision for the poor and outcast. We learn about and see examples of leadership. We are challenged to be more generous and given part of the model for Biblical giving.

Later, I hope to get to our understanding of the New Testament in the context of these particular aspects of the Law of Moses.

Glossary
-Ofg = offering
-Bold words generally indicate an offering name and are followed by the specific “ingredients” in whatever situation is being discussed.
-Block quotes will be used for citing Bible commentaries, with the author names in caps next to each quote.
-An ephah is equal to approx 36 liters.
-A Hin is equal to 4 qts or 3.5 liters
-MHP: Most Holy Place
-HiPt: High Priest
-ToM: Tent of Meeting (Sanctuary of the wandering Israelites built under Moses, precursor to Solomon’s Temple)