God the Priest

Klawans helpfully reminds us of the pre-preparations for sacrifice (Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple). To offer an animal, an Israelite has to have one, and it has to be unblemished. Worshipers begin by being shepherds and herdsmen, and they have to be careful ones.

Careful like Yahweh: “Israel’s theologizing frequently depicts God performing precisely that [shepherding] role vis-a-vis Israel, tending the flock. . . . As Israel is to Israel’s herds and flocks, so too is God to Israel, the flock of God.” This is part of what makes sacrifice an imitatio Dei (61).

The conclusion is jarring, because Israel raises animals to slaughter them. Klawans doesn’t (entirely) flinch from the import of this, but insists that what the worshiper and priest do to the animal in the sanctuary is also an imitatio Dei. God examines livers and kidneys (Psalm 7:10; Jeremiah 11:20; 12:3); He is the divine haruspex. The priest certainly sees the internal organs; perhaps he inspects them too (64). Yahweh is sometimes depicted as the divine warrior spattered with blood (Isaiah 63:1-6) and armed with a sacrificial sword (Isaiah 34:6-7). Yahweh not only kills but “consumes” His enemies, as He comes as consuming fire to devour the sacrificial victim; dressed in his shining glory-cloud, the priest comes to dismember and burn the sacrficial animal (65).

In short,”The process of ritual purification may well involve the separation of people from those aspects of humanity (death and sex) that are least God-like. The performance of pastoral responsibilities – caring, feeding, protecting, and guiding – can easily be understood in the light of imitatio Dei, as can the more dramatic acts of selective breeding. Closer to the altar, the selection, killing, dissection, and consumption of sacrificial animals are also activities that have analogues in the divine realm. God too selects, kills, looks inside things, and appears on earth as a consuming fire” (65-6).

Indeed, but the texts that depict Yahweh as sacrificial slaughterer and fire are talking about His war against His enemies. Do sacrifices depict Yahweh’s utter destruction of His enemies? Yahweh is to Israel as priest is to animal; but the priest kills the animal. Is that the best Israel can expect from Yahweh? Klawans winces a little here; he doesn’t ever explain himself.

I think we can answer that last question with a Yes: Sword and fire are precisely what Yahweh offers Israel, and Yahweh’s slaughter and consumption of Israel is enacted by Yahweh’s priests in every sacrificial rite. 

What that means is this: The animal is slaughtered and dismembered and burned so that it can be transformed to join Yahweh’s own fire. Or, in Pauline terms, the flesh is slaughtered so that it can be transformed into Spirit. Or, in other Pauline terms, the law kills, but it kills so that God can raise us to new life. Or, in Christological terms, Jesus dies to the flesh to rise in the Spirit, so that we can follow Him in dying to the flesh and walking in the Spirit. 

The priest is a mortal holy warrior, spattered with blood like his divine Father, slaughtering here and burning there, carrying out Yahweh’s own war with flesh. That’s the gospel enacted every evening and morning from Sinai on.