Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/872

By the minchah in Lev 10:12 we are to understand the meal and oil, which were offered with the burnt-offering of the nation (Lev 9:4 and Lev 9:7); and by the אשּׁים in Lev 10:12 and Lev 10:15, those portions of the burnt-offering, meat-offering, and peace-offering of the nation which were burned upon the altar (Lev 9:13, Lev 9:17, and Lev 9:20). He then looked for “the he-goat of the sin-offering,” - i.e., the flesh of the goat which had been brought for a sin-offering (Lev 9:15), and which was to have been eaten by the priests in the holy place along with the sin-offerings, whose blood was not taken into the sanctuary (Lev 6:19, Lev 6:22); - “and, behold, it was burned” (שׂרף, 3 perf. Pual). Moses was angry at this, and reproved Eleazar and Ithamar, who had attended to the burning: “Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin-offering in a holy place?” he said; “for it is most holy, and He (Jehovah)hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for it before Jehovah,” as its blood had not been brought into the holy place (הוּבא construed as a passive with an accusative, as in Gen 4:18, etc.). “To bear the iniquity” does not signify here, as in Lev 5:1, to bear and atone for the sin in its consequences, but, as in Exo 28:38, to take the sin of another upon one's self, for the purpose of cancelling it, to make expiation for it. As, according to Exo 28:38, the high priest was to appear before the Lord with the diadem upon his forehead, as the symbol of the holiness of his office, to cancel, as the mediator of the nation and by virtue of his official holiness, the sin which adhered to the holy gifts of the nation (see the note on this passage), so here it is stated with regard to the official eating of the most holy flesh of the sin-offering, which had been enjoined upon the priests, that they were thereby to bear the sin of the congregation, to make atonement for it. This effect or signification could only be ascribed to the eating, by its being regarded as an incorporation of the victim laden with sin, whereby the priests actually took away the sin by virtue of the holiness and sanctifying power belonging to their office, and not merely declared it removed, as Oehler explains the words (Herzog's Cycl. x. p. 649). Exo 28:38 is decisive in opposition to the declaratory view, which does not embrace the meaning of the words, and is not applicable to the passage at all. “Incorporabant quasi peccatum populique reatum