Numbers 6

People ritually unclean were not supposed to touch others or go to the worship center because they ritually defiled by whatever they touched. Israelites were able to get ritually clean again by following a set of procedures that included bathing, washing their clothes, getting sprinkled with “water of purification” (Numbers 19), and waiting for a stretch of time, often seven days.

A sin offering here refers to something the people of Israel brought to God after they realized they accidentally broke one of God’s laws earlier. Some scholars say a better translation is the opposite of “sin” because the sacrifice is intended to “un-sin” people, to purify them. So those scholars call it a “purification offering.”.

This was the most common animal sacrifice. Worshipers burned the entire animal. The writer doesn’t say why it takes two sacrifices: a sin offering and a burnt offering, each with different procedures. Scholars speculate that it may have taken both birds and both offerings to accomplish what one offering of a larger animal did. Blood of the first bird was sprinkled on the sides of the altar (Exodus 4:5-7). That blood ritually purifies the altar and atones for the sin, making the person right with God again. But there’s hardly anything left of the bird to burn after that. The second bird was burned on the altar (Exodus 1:14-17) perhaps to help provide a respectable amount of flesh for the altar. But these are educated guesses.

In older lingo, the guilt offering was called the trespass offering, as in, “Forgive us our trespasses” or sins. In fact, scholars can’t seem to figure out what the difference is between a “sin offering” and a “guilt offering.” One guess is that guilt offerings are more serious and often involve making restitution. Leviticus 5:14-7:7 talks about when a person needs to make a guilt offering. Leviticus 7:1-10 talks about how to make the sacrifice.

A peace offering, described in Leviticus 3, is one of several prescribed offerings in Jewish tradition. When Jewish people wanted to give thanks to God for something, such as good health or safety, they would sacrifice a sheep, goat, cow, or bull. They would burn part of the animal, including the kidneys and fat covering the intestines. They would eat the rest in celebration, often with family and friends. It takes a fair number of hungry people to eat a cow. But people were eager to eat meat because it was rare in Bible times for common folks to eat meat, many Bible scholars say.

Scholars translate “thick loaves” and “thin loaves” in various ways: cakes, wafers, flat loaves. The two Hebrew words are ḥallâ (thick loaf, ring-shaped loaf, bread cake) and rāqîq (thin loaf, wafter, flat cake). Whatever they looked like or tasted like, they were made of wheat or barley flour, ground fine and then mixed with olive oil. No yeast added to make the bread dough rise. So, the loaves were likely flat, heavy, and chewy.

A blessing is the opposite of a curse. Instead of wishing harm on people, it’s a wish and a prayer for good things to happen to them. It praises people. It encourages them. It asks God to show kindness to them. Many people seemed to believe that the words, with God’s help, had the power to make the wish come true.