The Burnt Offering (Olah)

Sacrifices & Feasts of the Old Testament collection. The olah = the one nobody eats. Costliest sacrifice, whole animal burned. Two purposes: general atonement + total consecration.

What Makes This One Different

• Nothing is eaten by anyone. That's the defining feature and everything follows from it.

The burnt offering was the most costly sacrifice: it had to be burned up completely on the altar. Unlike grain, purification and reparation offerings (of which the priests ate), and unlike fellowship offerings (of which the priest and the offeror ate), no-one ate any of the burnt offering: it was all given to the Lord.

• Jay Sklar, Leviticus (TOTC)

• Only the hide goes to the priest (Lev 7:8). Otherwise the whole animal.
• 'ōlâ*, from the root "to go up." One rendering = "an offering of ascent." Smoke ascends, carries it to God.
• Requirements: male, without blemish. Three grades scaled to means - cattle (1:3-9), sheep/goats (1:10-15), birds for the poor (1:14-17). Graded provision runs right through Leviticus - nobody priced out of worship.
• Purpose clause in v.3 is "that he may be accepted before the LORD." Acceptance, not appeasement of an arbitrary temper.
• Almost never offered alone. Grain offering + drink offering accompany it. Numbers 15:1-16 fixes proportions. Together = meat, bread, drink. See The Grain Offering (Minchah), The Drink Offering (Nesek).

The Rite

• Hand-leaning (v.4) ties straight to outcome: "it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him." Identification > substitution.
• Offerer kills it himself (v.5), Not the priests. The person whose sinfulness required this is the person holding the knife.
• Blood thrown against the altar sides. Simpler rite than the finger-daubing of the purification offering > points to ransom rather than purification (as in Lev 17:11).
• Burning = hiqṭîr. Technical cultic term, distinct from sārap (ordinary burning). Means transformation into smoke. Shares a root with qēṭōret, incense.
  • The olah is this rite at full strength - the whole animal, not a token portion.
• No communion rite. Which is the point.

Two Purposes

• 1. Atonement - but general, not specific. Specific sins > purification or reparation offering. General human sinfulness in the presence of a holy God > burnt offering (Lev 8:18-21, 34; 9:7; 16:24; Num 8:12).
  • Sklar's reading of the whole-burning: by giving the entire animal, offerors acknowledged their sinfulness before a holy God was so great that only a full and costly ransom would do.
• 2. Emphasis in prayer. Sklar calls it an exclamation point.
  • Underscoring a petition (1 Sam 7:9; 13:8-12; Ps 20:1-5) - total dependence on God's help.
  • Underscoring praise (Ps 66:13, 15) - God alone worthy of glory.
  • Either way: I mean this with everything I have.

The Narrative Hinges - Good to Preach

• The olah shows up at the pivot points of the biblical story, always where wrath is turned aside or promise established.
  • Noah (Gen 8:20-21) - resolves the flood narrative, YHWH appeased.
  • Abraham + Isaac (Gen 22:1-19) - the son carrying the promise offered as an ascension offering.
  • David (2 Sam 24:24-25) - plague that killed 70,000 stopped, on the threshing floor that becomes Solomon's temple site (2 Chr 3:1).
• On that evidence one scholar's translation of rēaḥ-nîḥōaḥ is "propitiating savor" rather than the softer "pleasing aroma."
• Berman on what the offering symbolises - good quote:

The word olah means 'one that rises,' meaning, within a sacral context, toward God above… When an animal is offered as a korban olah, it functions in the same way as the ram that was offered in the place of Isaac. It symbolizes our willingness to devote our entire existence to the service of God.

• Joshua Berman, quoted in L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?

The Altar Is Named after This Offering

• Called specifically "the altar of the ascension offering" (mizbaḥ hā'ōlâ). 7x in Exodus, 7x in Lev 4, 4x in Chronicles.
• Even when purification-offering blood is being applied, still called that (Lev 4:25).
• Name almost certainly from the tāmîd - continual burnt offering, a yearling lamb every morning and evening (Exod 29:38-42; Num 28:1-8). Bookended every day of Israel's life.

the altar exists for Israel's cultic ascent to God. In other words, it is the ascension offering that fulfils the telos of the altar, and the telos of Israel is fulfilled through the altar.

• L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?

• Everything else offered that day was an addition to the tāmîd. The token burning in other sacrifices = a miniature ascension offering.
• The fire never goes out (Lev 6:9, 12, 13 - stated 3x). Sklar reads it two ways: for Israel, continual dependence; for priests, an exhortation to diligence, since a fire only burns continually if someone keeps feeding it. Eli's sons are the counterexample (1 Sam 2:12-36).

New Testament Fulfilment

• Paul uses the offering's own vocabulary. Not inferred.
  • Eph 5:2 - "a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." Greek osmēn euōdias = the LXX's standing translation of rēaḥ-nîḥōaḥ.
  • Sklar makes the link explicitly (compare Lev 1:9 with Eph 5:2): Jesus is the ultimate burnt offering that ransoms guilty sinners once and for all, that they might be reconciled to God. As in Heb 10:1-10.
• Fit is close on every point. Without blemish > Heb 9:14 "offered himself without blemish." Male, from the offerer's own possession > Christ offers Himself. Wholly consumed, nothing retained > Gethsemane and the cry of dereliction.
• Genesis 22 is the main thing here. Morales: God is drawing out the means by which the promise to bless the nations will be fulfilled, through a seed of Abraham fully consecrated to the will of God.
  • The line: the ram in the thicket substitutes for Isaac. The Son on Moriah's ridge has no substitute.
• Rom 12:1 = the second application, and it works because the olah was about consecration not only atonement.
  • "Holy and acceptable" picks up the acceptance language of Lev 1:3-4.
  • What Paul changes is living. Moo: a sacrifice that does not die as it is offered but goes on living and therefore continues in its efficacy until the person who is offered dies.

The Payoffs

• Doctrine: a holy God can only be approached by someone holding nothing back.
• Christ has been that person on our behalf, entirely. Nothing left to add.
• So Rom 12:1 isn't asking us to earn the acceptance the burnt offering secured. It's asking us to live like people who already have it.