Peace Offering

The meat offering was the communion of friendship with God —as when friend gives a gift to friend out of pure love. But the peace offering by its very name imported the idea of making peace, and, therefore, of removing cause of dispeace. The cause would be on the offerer’s side wholly, for there is never cause of dispeace from God when men walk in harmony with His requirements. A man might feel cause of dispeace without being guilty of any open act of trespass. He might not feel bad enough, as we might say, to bring a sin offering or a trespass offering, which would be for some particular act of nonconformity with the law; yet he might feel a sense of general shortcoming sufficient to make him fear the divine disapproval: or he might feel special cause for thanksgiving which he had not fully met. He might in such case bring a peace offering. His offering in such a case must be more than a mere present. It is only man that can be propitiated with a gift. We cannot give anything to God in this sense—in the sense of enriching Him. We must give Him that which pleases Him; and in the case of fault, it is not giving Him something that can conciliate Him: it is abasement even unto death. Hence, a peace offering had to be a living creature for sacrifice: the recognition of God’s greatness and prerogative: the acknowledgment that the continued life of the owner was by favour and not of right.

The peace offering might be of the cattle, sheep, or goats, and, as regards the two first, it might be male or female (Lev. 3:1, 6, 12), in which latter point, there is a distinction between the peace offering and the sin offering, and all the leading offerings instituted; in these, “a male without blemish” was the requirement: but here “male or female”, We have already considered the meaning of the male element in sacrifice: how are we to understand the admissibility of the female element in the peace offerings? It certainly shows that woman is not excluded from the work of salvation, though she was not to figure in the first degree. It was a man that was to be the saviour, yet the man was to be by the woman. She was to contribute her part. If woman was the means of man’s downfall in Eden, she was the means of his redemption in Bethlehem. See her bending over the manger. This was evidently the relation of ideas before the mind of Paul when he said: “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in child-bearing (or “by the child-bearing “, as it is in the original) if they continue”, etc. If she was not to be the Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world, she was to provide him. “The seed” was to be “her seed”. In this way, she was admitted to a close fellowship in the work of redemption. Therefore, the female animal was allowed a place in the subordinate sacrifices, though not eligible for those sacrifices that directly typified the sin-bearing Man of Sorrow.

Whether a bullock, sheep, or goat, the peace offering was to be brought by the offerer himself, and not sent by deputy: “His own hands shall bring the offering” (Lev. 7:30). What can this typify but the hearty humble energy of personal service as contrasted with the modem effeminacies of sentimental pride that can send a cheque from the lordly seclusion of a country seat, but cannot stoop to a personal condescension. “You know how it is”, says Jesus, “with the great ones of the Gentiles: it shall not be so among you: he that is great among you, let him be as the servant, even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister.” Bringing the offering, he was to lay his hand on the animal’s head, thus identifying himself with it, in self-condemning humility, and then he was to kill it, and the priest was to sprinkle the blood upon the altar, and cut up the creature for use as a peace offering: that is the fatty linings of the interior were to be laid upon the altar-fire and consumed, and the leading joints (the breast and the right shoulder) were to be taken possession of by the officiating priest: “He among the sons of Aaron, that offereth the blood of the peace offerings, and the fat, shall have the right shoulder for his part. For the wave breast and the heave shoulder have I taken of the children of Israel from off the sacrifices of their peace offerings, and have given them unto Aaron the priest and unto his sons by a statute for ever from among the children of Israel” (Lev. 7:33–34).


Roberts, R. (1987). The Law of Moses (electronic ed.). Birmingham, UK: The Christadelphian.