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Come and study the Holy Scriptures with us as Fr. Stephen DeYoung teaches verse-by-verse on the podcast The Whole Counsel of God. Fr. Stephen holds a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies and is an Orthodox priest serving at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Chapter 28 Now the Lord spoke to Moses saying, Command the children of Israel and say to them, My gifts, my presents, my burnt offerings, you shall take care to offer to me as a sweet aroma in my feasts. So this is a good, this is a good verse because this is where God describes what's going on in sacrifices. Notice there's a lot of words that aren't there. my victims those who I punish for your sins no, he describes them as gifts presents, right, and when you offer the burnt offering it's offered up to him as a sweet aroma and where are they offered? in the context of his feasts right, sacrifices are meals as we've said over and over again They don't always kill something, unless you're super metaphorical about killing wheat, right, or killing wine and oil, but they're always food, right? They're not sacrificing stones or wood or, right, because they're in the context of feasts, right? And so the sweet aroma, everybody who's human knows about the links, unless COVID did a number on you, between smell and taste, right? So the idea here is the way in which God partakes is the smoke rising up from the portion that's burnt and offered to him. And then we partake of our portions of the sacrifices by eating them, right? And therefore, we're joined together with God in the feasts. verse 3 so you shall say to them these are my burnt offerings okay so what we're going to get the rest of this chapter as i read and there's going to be several sections of this and what's left of numbers okay because in a lot of ways numbers is the last book of the torah proper deuteronomy is a different thing this is why you get lots and we'll talk a lot more about this in introduction to deuteronomy in a few weeks when we get there but deuteronomy is in a lot of ways its own thing it has its own structure as a book that's kind of independent uh it's a different kind of material pretty much the whole book of deuteronomy is moses final sermon to the people right like the whole thing is right so it's not like narrative and command right it's not the same kind of material as the other books. Where we are in time at the end of Book of Numbers and the end of the Book of Deuteronomy is a matter of hours apart. In terms of the amount of time

that has passed, basically the time it takes Moses to give that sermon, right? Because we've just been told, right, Moses is going to go up on the mountain and die, right? The end of Deuteronomy, Moses goes up on the mountain and dies so the rest of numbers that's reiterating this and then Deuteronomy is all like in the next hours from here that's what causes a lot of modern scholars to say that Deuteronomy as a whole is entirely separate and has nothing to do with the other books I think that's you know we'll talk about that more in the introduction to Deuteronomy but That's an unnecessarily extreme position, but it is different. It has its own, in the same way that Genesis was a little different than Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, right? Deuteronomy is a little different. But in terms of like our story, we have, we've had this story that unfolds from the beginning of Exodus to the end of Deuteronomy. And really all you get at the end of Deuteronomy is sort of the epilogue to that story. the story of the people leaving Egypt and coming to the promised land is really told in in exodus through numbers and then kind of finished up in joshua that's not even part of the torah right but deuteronomy has has its own character so because of that part or part of that part of how that's reflected is the fact that here at the end of numbers we get a lot of summary material. We get a lot of stuff that's like the listing of offerings we're about to get is not like new. This is all stuff we've read before in Leviticus and Numbers. But it's all the different stuff about different offerings that we've heard in those two books, and even the end of Exodus a little bit, is all getting sort of pulled together here. So sort of here's all the offerings listed together. Here's all the feasts listed together. We talked about them all separately, but now here, let's summarize all of this. So that's what a lot of this material is going to be, and that's what we're doing now.

so assuming that all this is like written on a scroll somewhere would this kind of summary be kind of a way of like consolidating it so they wouldn't have to search so much yeah yeah and

pull yeah pulling it all together yeah because i can see like somebody going oh i gotta unravel whatever and then right yeah what we do for passover is over here the daily offerings are over there you know this part tells us when to do it then this gives the details on how you butcher the animal here in this chapter of leviticus and that right this is sort of pulling everything together not quite referencing the way we think topically yeah yeah it's it's topically arranged rather than than uh narratively and temporally arranged so you shall say to them these are my burnt offerings you shall offer daily to the Lord two unblemished male lambs in their first year as a whole burnt offering perpetually. The one male lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other male lamb you shall offer in the evening. And you shall offer one-tenth of an ephah of fine flour as a grain offering mixed with one-fourth of a hint of oil. This shall be a perpetual whole burnt offering, which came into being at Mount Sinai as a sweet aroma to the Lord. Its drink offering shall be one fourth of a hymn for each male lamb. In the holy place, you shall pour out the intoxicant as a drink offering to the Lord. The intoxicant would be fancy. The second male lamb you shall offer toward evening, and you shall offer it according to its grain offering and drink offering as a sweet aroma to the Lord. So that's the daily offerings, right? Next, we're going to get the weekly offerings, then the monthly offerings, right? And then the annual feast cycle, right? So these are sort of all of the cycles, starting with the smallest and then going to the largest. Then on the Sabbath day, you shall offer two unblemished male lambs in their first year and two tenths of an ephah of the flower mixed with oil for a grain offering with its drink offering. This is the Holborn offering for each and every Sabbath, in addition to the regular Holborn offering with its drink offering. So this is an addition. You still do the morning and evening on the Sabbath, but then you also do this extra one on the Sabbath. On the first of every month, you shall offer a Holborn offering to the Lord, two young bulls from the oxen, one ram, and seven unblemished male lambs in their first year, and a grain offering of three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil for each young bull, and a grain offering of two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil for the one ram and a grain offering of one-tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil for each male lamb as a burnt offering of sweet aroma to the Lord. Their drink offering shall be half a hint of wine for each young bull, one-third of a hint for the one ram and one-fourth of a hint for each male lamb. This is the whole burnt offering for the first of every month throughout the months of each year.

Also, one young male of the goats as a sin offering to the Lord shall be offered in addition to the regular Holborn offering with its drink offering. So the first of the month, you do all these further things in addition to the daily offerings, in addition to the Sabbath offering, if the first day of the month is a Sabbath. So all of these are cumulative. None of these replace the others. Then on the 14th day of the first month is the Lord's Pascha, Passover. Then on the 15th day of this month is a feast. Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days. And the first day there shall be a holy convocation. You shall do no service work, meaning you treat it like the Sabbath, even if it doesn't fall on the Sabbath day. So you shall offer whole burnt offerings, two young bulls from the oxen, one ram and seven male lambs. Be sure they are unblemished as burnt offerings to the Lord. Now you shall offer their grain offering, a fine flour mixed with oil, three tenths of an ephah for each bull two tenths for the one ram and one tenth for each of the seven male lambs you shall also offer one young male goat as a sin offering to make atonement for you you shall offer these in addition to the regular whole burnt offering of the morning which is the perpetual whole burnt offering you shall make these offerings according to these directions each day for seven days as a gift and as a burnt offering for a sweet aroma to the Lord. And in addition to the regular Holborn offering, one shall offer its drink offering. Then on the seventh day, you shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no service work on it. So guess what? Holy week before Pascha, also a thing before Christianity. Feast of week's offerings, subheading. Then on the day of new grain, when you bring a new grain offering to the Lord at your feast of weeks. You shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no service work. You shall offer Holborn offerings as a sweet aroma to the Lord. Two young bulls from the oxen, one ram and seven unblemished male lambs in their first year with their grain offerings of fine flour mixed with oil, three tenths of an ephah for each bull, two tenths for the one ram and one tenth for each of the male lambs. Also one young male of the goats to make atonement for you. in addition to the regular Holborn offering, be sure they are unblemished. You shall offer to me their grain offerings with their drink offerings. And notice that the size of the grain offerings in all of these cases is proportional to the size of the animal, right, is the idea.

Listen next time as Father Stephen DeYoung continues his study of the scriptures on the whole counsel of God. Fr. Stephen's email address is wholecouncil at ancientfaith.com. That's wholecouncil at ancientfaith.com.