The Peace Offering (Shelamim)

Sacrifices & Feasts of the Old Testament collection. The only sacrifice the worshipper eats. Covenant meal. This is the one Jesus connects to the Last Supper.

Requirements

• Male or female (3:1) - this is unusual, the burnt offering had to be male. The reason is not stated; either way the best part still went to God.
• Without blemish. From herd, sheep or goats.
• Three subtypes (Lev 7:11-36):

• Praise offering looks like the most sacred of the three. It had more elaborate breads, some leavened and some not (7:12-13); meat was eaten same day only.
• Vos flags that the classification is not logically tidy - first class named from purpose served (praise), second and third from the subjective attitude of the offerer (vow, freewill).
  • He also notes what's absent: the Mosaic law makes no provision for a prayer-offering. Possibly to avoid the superstition that a sacrifice could compel the blessing sought.
• Two things absolutely off limits to the eater: fat + blood (3:17). Chapter closes with this because it's the only sacrifice the offerer eats from, so it's the only place the boundary needed drawing.

The Rite

• Presentation, hand-leaning, slaughter, blood-throwing all follow the burnt offering pattern.
• Atonement is still happening even though it isn't the focus. The blood rite indicates atonement is taking place, unsurprising since a sinful offerer is still approaching a holy God (as in 17:11).
• Only the fat is burned: fat covering the entrails, both kidneys with their fat, long lobe of the liver, and for the broad-tailed sheep (Ovis laticaudata) the entire fat tail - which could weigh up to 13kg.
• In Israel meat was rare and the sweet fat was the delicacy. "Fat" = the very best of anything (Ps 147:14, the "finest of wheat").
  • Eli's sons demanded the meat before the fat was burned (1 Sam 2:15-17, 29). Text calls it honouring his sons above the Lord.
• Remainder is then divided. Breast > wave offering > all priests. Right thigh > contribution offering > officiating priest. Everything else goes home with the offerer. See The Wave & Heave Offerings.

Covenant Meal - the Key to the Whole Offering

• In Israel the closest relationship possible between non-relatives was a covenant. Covenants were confirmed by a shared meal.
  • Isaac + Abimelech make a covenant, then feast (Gen 26:28-30).
  • Jacob + Laban, same (Gen 31:44-54).
  • Sinai: after Israel enters covenant (Exod 20-24), Moses and the elders go up, see God, and eat (24:9-11) - most likely from the fellowship offerings of v. 5.
• Two directions at once:
  • Celebration. Covenant partner is the redeeming God who rescued them from Egypt and now dwells in their midst. Honoured as King with joy, given the best of the meal.
  • Rededication. Recommits Israel to reflect the King's holiness. And since it was eaten with household + wider community (Deut 12:7, 17-19), it reminds them they belong to a covenant family who are to care for one another.
• Lev 3:11 calls the fat "food, a food offering to the LORD." Underscores that the offering functioned like a meal in which three parties partook - the Lord, the priest, the offerer.

Communion as the Goal of the Whole Cult

• This is the final rite that reveals what the entire sacrificial journey was for. Having ascended towards God through the rites, the worshipper "enjoys the hospitality of the house of God."
• Psalms that relate: table prepared before enemies (23:5); abundance of God's house and the river of His delights (36:8-9 - "delights" shares a root with Eden); the man chosen, caused to approach, satisfied with the good of God's house (65:4).
• Etymology worth knowing: zebaḥ (sacrifice) and mizbēaḥ (altar, derived from it) may have this covenantal feast as their central idea - zebaḥ as "meal," mizbēaḥ as "table" (Levine).

this final rite may adequately be labelled 'union', for it, along with the theology of Leviticus as a whole, is but the silhouette of the New Testament's pulsing heart: union with Christ.

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

"Peace" Is More Positive than English Suggests

• Vos corrects the standard misreading. "Peace" in Scripture is far more positive than the English sense of absence-of-conflict.

The peace-offering accordingly symbolizes the state of positive favour and blessedness enjoyed in the religion of Jehovah, which at all times includes more than the sacrificial relief obtained from sin.

• Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology

• Note who's hosting. The state of peace is symbolised as a gift of God, "for it is He, not the offerer, who prepares the meal. Hence the meal is to be held at the tabernacle, the house of God."
  • The Israelite brings the animal but doesn't host the dinner. He's a guest at a table he didn't set.

Why the Blood Prohibition Sits Here

• Lev 3:17 prohibits fat and blood "wherever you live" - extends past the sanctuary to every meal at home.
• Rationale for the blood: it represented the animal's life and belonged to the Lord, Creator of all life (17:10-12). Israelites were prohibited from consuming a life as though it were theirs.
• Stated positively: abstaining acknowledged that the Lord is sovereign over every life.
• Effect: every meat meal an Israelite ate, anywhere, carried a small liturgical reminder that the creature's life was not theirs to take without acknowledgement.

New Testament Fulfilment - the Connection Is Jesus' Own

• Luke 22:20. "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood."
• The concept of the covenant meal is the very concept Jesus employs when he establishes the Lord's Supper for members of the new covenant (compare Luke 22:20 with Exod 24:8).
• Correspondences track closely:
  • Celebration of redemption - the Supper celebrates the redemption won through Jesus' death (1 Cor 11:26).
  • Rededication - remembrance propels believers to reaffirm commitment to the Lord and to one another (1 Cor 10:17; cf. 11:20-22).
  • Communal, not private - both eaten with the covenant family. Paul's rebuke of Corinth is precisely that they'd made a covenant meal into a private one.
  • God hosts - Vos's point is what Paul assumes in 1 Cor 10:21, "the table of the Lord."
• Wright on the koinōnia language (1 Cor 10:16-21). Those who eat from the sacrifices are koinōnoi tou thysiastēriou, "sharers of the altar." Paul builds his warning against idol feasts on the assumption that eating at a table means participating in the life of the one whose table it is.
• Doctrinal working-out on Communion is elsewhere: Holy Communion, Koinonia - Participation in the Body and Blood, Spiritual Presence. Biblical-theological arc from Eden to the marriage supper: Eating in the Presence of God.

Two Smaller Things

• Sacrifice of praise. Heb 13:15 - "the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name." The tôdâ is precisely a sacrifice of acknowledgement for a specific deliverance, publicly declared.
  • Ps 66:13, 16 shows the pattern: burnt offerings and vows paid, then "Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul."
  • Sklar notes a sacrificial vow was fulfilled publicly so the offerer could share the Lord's praises with covenant brothers and sisters. Testimony isn't a modern invention. It was a liturgical obligation.
• Peace as achieved state. Rom 5:1 - "we have peace with God." Vos's insistence that biblical peace is positive rather than merely negative is what makes Rom 5:1 more than a ceasefire. What the shelamim enacted in an afternoon has been permanently established.

The One Thing That Doesn't Carry Over

• The peace offering still involved blood thrown against the altar. A sinful offerer approaching a holy God needed atonement even at a joyful meal.
• The Supper has no altar and no blood, because the atonement it depends on happened once and is finished.