“The firstborn male from every womb belongs to me, including all your male livestock, the firstborn of cattle or sheep. You may redeem the firstborn of a donkey with a sheep, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. You must redeem all the firstborn of your sons. No one is to appear before me empty-handed.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
When you use something that belongs to someone else, the owner typically expects to either receive it back or else receive some sort of compensation for your using it. Credit companies charge interest. Stores expect you not to take the shopping cart home with you. Your neighbor would like you to give his blower back sometime (and preferably still in good working condition). How should we respond to the fact that God created and owns everything in the world? Let’s take a look at some expectations He expressed to Israel, and talk about what they might have to do with us.
I’ll get to that point in just a second, but let me start here today. There exists a God who created the world and everything in it. And because He created it, He owns it. All of it. He is sovereign over it. All of it. There is not a part of creation – including you and me – that falls outside of the purview of His ownership and sovereignty. This in turn means that He has the prerogative to tell us what we can and can’t do with it. He is the one who determines the purpose of creation and every single part within it. He sets the standard for how to use something properly. The parameters of right and wrong, wise and foolish, good and bad are all set by His character (a great deal of which is revealed in the Genesis creation account whose purpose is to teach us that God created and not necessarily how). And none of this should be shocking or even particularly difficult to accept once you get past the first premise. This and more all falls under the parameters of His being God.
I say all of that because that initial premise and the ones that follow logically from it all lie behind commands like what we see here. If someone doesn’t accept those initial premises, then debating a passage like this one (or much of anything else in the Scriptures for that matter) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If you don’t begin from the right starting point, then ideas subsequent to it like this one don’t stand a chance of making any kind of positive sense.
In Israel, God was creating a nation where there had not been one before. Before it was only a loose conglomeration of tribes who shared a common genetic heritage. God intervened to free them from their present circumstances (which were not very good) and form them into a single, cohesive unit, united in spite of their differences. In doing this, in building a nation essentially from scratch, He had to bake into the cake, so to speak, all kinds of ideas that were going to be essential for their becoming what He intended for them to become, namely, a vehicle for revealing Himself to the rest of the world with the goal in mind of inviting everyone else into the blessing of a relationship with Him.
One of these foundational ideas is that all creation is His first. We are stewards of it. As long as we live like we own it and can do with it what we please, we are going to be out of sync with His character and plans. Too often we have treated creation like it is of little consequence. In many ways we have suffered the consequences of such neglect and abuse. A proper understanding of creation as belonging to a Creator who is not us would set us on a very different course for interacting with and utilizing its resources than we have tended to take. And, wouldn’t you know it, the cultural West with its still lingering foundation of the Christian worldview tends to be better (not good, but better) on that score than many if not most of the areas of the world that do not share in such an intellectual and theological heritage.
But where God was with Israel here, those kinds of long-term implications were still not even a light on the horizon. He was doing foundation building. He needed them to understand that everything was His first. The rest of the implications of that starting premise would be able to grow to fruition once it had time to sufficiently soak the ground. And one of the ways God did this with Israel was through ideas and commands like we see here.
Everything may have belonged to Him, but He only exercised that claim on the firstborn male of every creature under their care and control. Specifically, in the flocks and herds they cared for, the firstborn male of each animal was to be offered as a sacrifice to Him. This would have been a sacrifice of gratitude for His provision and an acknowledgment of His sovereignty. For other animals that didn’t reproduce at quite the pace of sheep and cattle like donkeys, they could redeem the firstborn by offering a sheep in its place. The same was true of their own firstborn sons. Ultimately, the tribe of Levi as a whole would go into special service before God as priests as a representative for the firstborn sons of the nation.
We can comfortably acknowledge that this sounds weird to us. And it should, because we don’t do anything like this today. And while of course this is the case for those who don’t believe in God at all (and again, if you don’t accept that as a starting premise, none of the rest of the implications of it are going to make any sense), even among Jesus’ modern followers we still don’t do anything like this. The reason for that, though, is not that God doesn’t still claim our first and best as His own, but because the Law has been fulfilled. This expectation has been satisfied. How? In Christ.
In Christ, God made a sacrifice of His own Son as a redemption for not merely our firstborn sons, but all of humanity. Because of that, we don’t owe Him anything else. Now, in Christ, we can merely enjoy the relationship that He was always seeking with us. In Christ, we can live properly in light of His ownership of all creation. When we are submitted to Christ, pursuing His example with our lives and lifestyle, we are going to be rightly honoring God’s sovereignty and authority. In Christ, none of us appears before Him empty-handed. Christ is the one who fills our hands. We simply have to put our trust in Him as Lord, and He takes care of the rest. And in Him, commands like this one and all of the others of the Law as well don’t apply to us. Again, He fulfilled them. All of them. We just follow Him, and everything else falls into place.
The Nexus 
Even for those that do not accept your first premise, how does it make sense that your god, Yahweh would demand the sacrifice of the first born males of livestock?
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Did you mean those who DO accept the first premise?
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Ah, yes, sorry, your are correct. DO accept. My mistake.
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I know you are busy, but still waiting for an answer on this one…
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I haven’t forgotten you. Trying to churn out about 4000 words today on various project. Hopefully a thoughtful response to your good question will be able to be some of those.
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Excellent! I look forward to it.
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Well, I ran out of time to get to it yesterday, but I’ll start with it today.
This is something we have touched on before to a limited degree, although (and I know this may come as a shock to you, but I’ll forge ahead all the same) we didn’t agree on the matter. The pattern we see across the Old Testament narrative is that God met the people where they were and moved them slowly but steadily in the direction He wanted them to go.
In other words, God took this thing they were going to do anyway because that was the nature of the world they lived in at the time, and used it to get them thinking right thoughts about Him. It got them thinking things like He is sovereign and all our lives belong to Him; He is glorious and deserving of our best; He redeemed us from slavery and our lives are His; He is holy and so what we offer Him matters; He is just and gracious and will forgive our sins when we repent of them; and so on and so forth.
What this means practically is that this people who lived in a time and place in which animal sacrifice was exceedingly common as a way of worshiping, God took this practice that they were going to engage in anyway and gave them a framework for thinking about it in ways that pointed them in His direction. This framework was designed and intended to get them thinking about who He was, what He was like, and how being in a relationship with Him worked.
Now, to the question of how it should make sense to us today, it doesn’t. We don’t think like they did anymore. God finally got us to the point of understanding that offering animal sacrifices isn’t necessary for worshiping Him. Jesus took care of that, and no more sacrifices have to be offered.
I should also add that the sacrifices themselves were never the point in the first place. It was what they symbolized and how they instructed the people to think about God that always mattered more.
One more observation in anticipation of some pushback you’ve given before, getting people to think differently than they do takes time. It always has. You can make them do something by force, but if their hearts aren’t in it and they haven’t bought into, then as soon as the external pressure is removed, they’ll go back to what they were doing before. God was working to create a people who sought Him in righteousness and truth all on their own. In order to get them there, He had to take the long approach of meeting them where they were and moving them to where He wanted them to be slowly and gently.
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This is quite the word salad. I can see you and Prof T becoming bosom buddies.
If your god, Yahweh can write on tablets of stone he can surely pass on an edict outlawing the need to slaughter innocent animals…just because…
Try to keep. your next reply to simple English of no more that two paragraphs without the apologetics.
If we don’t need to make a blood sacrifice today – why did your god Yahweh require it then?
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I will make no such promises. You asked for an explanation, I gave it.
There’s no need for a sacrifice today like there was then because Jesus did that once for all time. The author of Hebrews is very clear on this point. You should give his letter a read. He (or perhaps she…we don’t know for sure) explains quite a lot about this particular subject.
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Yes, Hebrews. I like Hebrews because it explains faith very nicely!
If your god, Yahweh rlwas smart enough to write the Ten Commandments on two stone tablets why did he… sorry… He require the blood sacrifice of innocent animals?
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Well, Moses was more likely the one who did the writing on the tablets. And I explained the why here in my initial response. Go back and read that again.
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Again, the assumption is : Oh, they were already slaughtering animals to worship gods so your god, Yahweh used this for his benefit to bring the Israelites round to him.
Again, as he was smart enough to write Ten Commandments on stone, or get Moses to do it, why did he need, abd I emohadus the word need, innocent animals to be slaughtered as part of this worship ceremony?
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Go and read my explanation again. It doesn’t seem to be sinking in. God doesn’t need the sacrifices at all. What a silly idea.
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If he doesn’t need them why did he insist on them?
Here is the seemingly idiotic answer from Got Questions.
“God required animal sacrifices to provide a temporary covering of sins and to foreshadow the perfect and complete sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Leviticus 4:35, 5:10)”
Are, you perhaps splitting hairs over ‘need’ and ‘demand’ ?
So your god Yahweh, DID demand the barbaric slaughter of innocent animals, apparently it was needsd/ required to appease sin.
As the Bible seems to have demonstrated you are in error would you explain the answer provided by Got Questions.
Thanks
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Once again, God didn’t need it. God doesn’t need anything by definition. In putting parameters around a worship practice the people were already going to engage in, God was meeting the people where they were in order to help them better understand who He was. He was helping them understand that sin is serious business. He was helping them understand that He loved them enough that He was willing to make a way for sin to be dealt with justly such that they could still be in a relationship with Him. He was helping them learn to trust in Him. There were several lessons involved. But to think in terms of need is incorrect and inaccurate.
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And yet, as outlined in the Got Questions reply, according g to the bible, your god, Yahweh clearly required a blood sacrifice.
So, once again, why did your god, Yahweh require the ritual slaughter of innocent animals?
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Once again, He took a practice the people were already going to use, and framed it out in a way that pointed the people to Him. I keep saying the same thing here that I did in the initial longer response that you didn’t like. I feel like you’re really not listening to me.
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In actual fact it is you that refuse to understand. I sm beginning to suspect wilfull inorance in this point.
As an all powerful deity who was able to transmit his word via the character Moses he could easily have found another method.
So, once AGAIN, why did your god, Yahweh demand the slaughter of innocent animals?
Is it perhaps to do with blood?
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Yes, because willful ignorance is your go-to whenever you can’t get me to agree with you on one point or another. I’m very accustomed to that by now.
Step into the Biblical worldview for a moment and assume on the existence of God, His absolute ownership of all of creation, and the fact that the just punishment of sin is death. Given that, what other method would you suggest to communicate to Israel about the seriousness of sin and the graciousness of His forgiveness that didn’t abrogate their ability as a people to make meaningful and consequential (i.e., free) choices?
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Such a scenario makes the slaughter of animals even more revolting.
Why must innocent animals suffer because of this notion of sin?
You need to explain this.
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I won’t even consider taking time to do that until you make a sincere attempt to answer my question.
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Just to clarify, before I make that reply you are asking me what other thing /else your god, Yahweh could have done in place of demanding the slaughter of innocent animals?
Is this correct?
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Sure, we’ll make it that simple.
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Yahweh is your all powerful god. He could have made the Israelites do anything; even as mundane as sit on the equivalent of the naughty step for a couple of days.
Or spend a month doing chores for his/her neighbour.
Look after his herd for a few days.
Take in an orphaned child.
Feed / cook for his neighbours for a month.
Almost anything, in fact, and none of it required the unnecessary death of an animal, which could well have made a dent in the person’s livelihood.
So why demand the slaughter of innocent animals?
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Of course it would have. That was part of the point. Sin is costly. There is a cost to committing it, and so there was a cost to repenting of it. How would any of those other things properly conveyed the seriousness of sin? They would have perhaps taught the Israelites that sin was naughty, but not the deadly serious business that it is. The thing you are fundamentally missing is the seriousness of sin. As long as you come up short in your understanding of that, the rest here will seem like unnecessary barbarity to you. I should also add that you are coming at the matter from the standpoint that animal life and human life are equal in value to one another. From the standpoint of the Scriptures, they aren’t. There are several points before the issue of animal sacrifice itself that cut against your being able to make sense out of it.
In the bigger picture, though, whether or not the Israelites practiced animal sacrifice (like practically every ancient religion did) really doesn’t matter very much at all for the larger question of the truthfulness of the Christian worldview. In other words, this is a debate that doesn’t actually matter very much in the end.
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So you dismiss the worth of an animal because you cannot properly answer the question.
Furthermore, you did not address the issue of life is in the blood;the barbarity of such slaughter which was carried forward to the nonsense of the crucifiction.
Even more Furthermore your god, Yahweh was quite happy with other offerings, besides blood.
I’m pretty sure you know the verses, yes?
In truth, the reality is that as ancient humans likely considered gods lived in high places ( we know the make fictional hero Moses certainly did) hunters wishing to appease these gods gave a portion of their bounty back to whichever god they thought provided the animal. You know, as a token of thanks hoping the bounty would continue. And it was better than sacrificing an aunt that was not needed.
Anyway, animal sacrifice effectively ended after Titus sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple.
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The last part of that is true, but Christians had stopped the practice a generation before because of understanding that Jesus’ sacrifice negated the need for any others to be offered.
On the rest, like I said, without the necessary worldview beliefs in place, it’s not going to make any sense to you. I wouldn’t expect it to.
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It makes no sense period.
Barbarity is barbarity and the fact you cannot explain it demonstrates that your worldview taps into this barbarity.
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I should add that I didn’t dismiss the worth of an animal at all. You read that in on your own. I merely said that human value and animal value are not equal. I stand by that as I did when we talked about it months ago. Of course animals have worth. They’re God’s creations too, and we are to be faithful and good stewards of God’s creation. It is all available for us to use as we need, but only in ways that ultimately honor Him. I’ve given you fine answers otherwise. You simply don’t like them.
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They are not equal from your perspective. How does a whale or an Orang Utan see things, do you know?
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Emphasise the the word need.
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