Leviticus 4:4

And he shall bring the bullock unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD; and shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head, and kill the bullock before the LORD.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(4) Unto the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation.—Better, unto the entrance of the tent of meeting. (See Leviticus 1:3.) The regulations about the bringing of the sin offering up to the sprinkling of the blood are the same as those about the other sacrifices.

Benson Commentary

Leviticus 4:4. On the head — To testify both his acknowledgment of his sin, and faith in God’s promise for the expiation of his sins through Christ, whom that sacrifice typified.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

4:1-12 Burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, and peace-offerings, had been offered before the giving of the law upon mount Sinai; and in these the patriarchs had respect to sin, to make atonement for it. But the Jews were now put into a way of making atonement for sin, more particularly by sacrifice, as a shadow of good things to come; yet the substance is Christ, and that one offering of himself, by which he put away sin. The sins for which the sin-offerings were appointed are supposed to be open acts. They are supposed to be sins of commission, things which ought not to have been done. Omissions are sins, and must come into judgment: yet what had been omitted at one time, might be done at another; but a sin committed was past recall. They are supposed to be sins committed through ignorance. The law begins with the case of the anointed priest. It is evident that God never had any infallible priest in his church upon earth, when even the high priest was liable to fall into sins of ignorance. All pretensions to act without error are sure marks of Antichrist. The beast was to be carried without the camp, and there burned to ashes. This was a sign of the duty of repentance, which is the putting away sin as a detestable thing, which our soul hates. The sin-offering is called sin. What they did to that, we must do to our sins; the body of sin must be destroyed, Ro 6:6. The apostle applies the carrying this sacrifice without the camp to Christ, Heb 13:11-13.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The priest that is anointed - i. e. the high priest. (Compare Leviticus 8:12; Leviticus 21:10; Exodus 29:7). On the anointing of the other priests see the note at Leviticus 8:13.

The graduation of the sin-offerings is remarkable. It might seem that the distinction addressed itself more pointedly to each individual according to his rank and consequent responsibility (see Leviticus 4:32).

According to the sin of the people - Rather, to bring guilt on the people. The whole nation is concerned in every transgression of its representative.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

Le 4:3-35. Sin Offering for the Priest.

3. If the priest that is anointed do sin—that is, the high priest, in whom, considering his character as typical mediator, and his exalted office, the people had the deepest interest; and whose transgression of any part of the divine law, therefore, whether done unconsciously or heedlessly, was a very serious offense, both as regarded himself individually, and the influence of his example. He is the person principally meant, though the common order of the priesthood was included.

according to the sin of the people—that is, bring guilt on the people. He was to take a young bullock (the age and sex being expressly mentioned), and having killed it according to the form prescribed for the burnt offerings, he was to take it into the holy place and sprinkle the atoning blood seven times before the veil, and tip with the crimson fluid the horns of the golden altar of incense, on his way to the court of the priests,—a solemn ceremonial appointed only for very grave and heinous offenses, and which betokened that his sin, though done in ignorance, had vitiated all his services; nor could any official duty he engaged in be beneficial either to himself or the people, unless it were atoned for by blood.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

He shall lay his hand upon the bullock’s head, to testify both his acknowledgment of his sin, and his faith in God’s promise for the expiation of his sins through Christ, whom that sacrifice typified.

And kill the bullock, to wit, by one of the priests, whom he shall cause to do it; for this priest is distinguished from the anointed priest, Leviticus 4:5.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And he shall bring the bullock unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord,.... As the bullock of the burnt offering; See Gill on Leviticus 1:3,

and shall lay his hand on the bullock's head; the Targum of Jonathan says his right hand; See Gill on Leviticus 1:4,

and kill the bullock before the Lord; at the door of the tabernacle, that is, in the court, as Gersom observes; according to the above Targum, the butcher killed it, and not the priest: See Gill on Leviticus 1:5 all this is typical of the imputation of sin to Christ, and of his death.

Geneva Study Bible

And he shall bring the bullock unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD; and shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head, and {c} kill the bullock before the LORD.

(c) By this confessing that he deserved the same punishment which the beast suffered.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

4–7. Cp. Leviticus 4:14-18. The first part of the ceremonial is like that of the Burnt-Offering. The disposal of the blood is different: the priest dips his finger into the blood, which has been caught in a bowl, and sprinkles it seven times before the veil of the sanctuary, i.e. the veil between the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place. He then puts some of the blood on the horns of the altar of incense with the finger (for each sprinkling and each touching the horns of the altar, tradition prescribes a separate dipping of the finger into the bowl), and, going outside the tent of meeting and back again to the west side of the altar, pours the rest (all the blood, Leviticus 4:7; Leviticus 4:18) at the base of the altar of Burnt-Offering.

The sprinkling of the blood before the veil, here ordered, is a later development of the ritual of Exodus 29:12, where it was merely to be put upon the horns of the altar. Thus we have here an example of ps[41]. Cp. expressions in next v. and see App. on P.

[41] (secondary enactments) combined with the earlier strata. See further, pp. 174 ff.

Leviticus 4:4

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The presentation, laying on of hands, and slaughtering, were the same as in the case of the other sacrifices (Leviticus 1:3-5). The first peculiarity occurs in connection with the blood (Leviticus 4:5-7). The anointed priest was to take (a part) of the blood and carry it into the tabernacle, and having dipped his finger in it, to sprinkle some of it seven times before Jehovah "in the face of the vail of the Holy" (Exodus 26:31), i.e., in the direction towards the curtain; after that, he was to put (נתן) some of the blood upon the horns of the altar of incense, and then to pour out the great mass of the blood, of which only a small portion had been used for sprinkling and smearing upon the horns of the altar, at the bottom of the altar of burnt-offering. A sevenfold sprinkling "in the face of the vail" also took place in connection with the sin-offering for the whole congregation, as well as with the ox and he-goat which the high priest offered as sin-offerings on the day of atonement for himself, the priesthood, and the congregation, when the blood was sprinkled seven times before (לפני) the capporeth (Leviticus 16:14), and seven times upon the horns of the altar (Leviticus 16:18-19). So too the blood of the red cow, that was slaughtered as a sin-offering outside the camp, was sprinkled seven times in the direction towards the tabernacle (Numbers 19:4). The sevenfold sprinkling at the feast of atonement had respect to the purification of the sanctuary from the blemishes caused by the sins of the people, with which they had been defiled in the course of the year (see at ch. 16), and did not take place till after the blood had been sprinkled once "against (? upon) the capporeth in front" for the expiation of the sin of the priesthood and people, and the horns of the altar had been smeared with the blood (Leviticus 16:14, Leviticus 16:18); whereas in the sin-offerings mentioned in this chapter, the sevenfold sprinkling preceded the application of the blood to the horns of the altar. This difference in the order of succession of the two manipulations with the blood leads to the conclusion, that in the case before us the sevenfold sprinkling had a different signification from that which it had on the day atonement, and served as a preliminary and introduction to the expiation. The blood also was not sprinkled upon the altar of the holy place, but only before Jehovah, against the curtain behind which Jehovah was enthroned, that is to say, only into the neighbourhood of the gracious presence of God; and this act was repeated seven times, that in the number seven, as the stamp of the covenant, the covenant relation, which sin had loosened, might be restored. It was not till after this had been done, that the expiatory blood of the sacrifice was put upon the horns of the altar, - not merely sprinkled or swung against the wall of the altar, but smeared upon the horns of the altar; not, however, that the blood might thereby be brought more prominently before the eyes of God, or lifted up into His more immediate presence, as Hoffmann and Knobel suppose, but because the significance of the altar, as the scene of the manifestation of the divine grace and salvation, culminated in the horns, as the symbols of power and might. In the case of the sin-offerings for the high priest and the congregation, the altar upon which this took place was not the altar of burnt-offering in the court, but the altar of incense in the holy place; because both the anointed priest, by virtue of his calling and consecration as the mediator between the nation and the Lord, and the whole congregation, by virtue of its election as a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:6), were to maintain communion with the covenant God in the holy place, the front division of the dwelling-place of Jehovah, and were thus received into a closer relation of fellowship with Jehovah than the individual members of the nation, for whom the court with its altar was the divinely appointed place of communion with the covenant God. The remainder of the blood, which had not been used in the act of expiation, was poured out at the bottom of the altar of burnt-offering, as the holy place to which all the sacrificial blood was to be brought, that it might be received into the earth.