Friday, June 05, 2009

Guilt Offerings

Random obscure OT details I found encouraging... And here it's some of the laws for cleansing from infectious skin diseases!

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "This shall be the law of the leprous person for the day of his cleansing...

And the priest shall take one of the male lambs and offer it for a guilt offering, along with the log of oil, and wave them for a wave offering before the LORD. And he shall kill the lamb in the place where they kill the sin offering and the burnt offering, in the place of the sanctuary. For the guilt offering, like the sin offering, belongs to the priest; it is most holy. The priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt offering, and the priest shall put it on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot.

Lev 14:1-2, 12-14, ESV

Now what is really striking here is that leprosy seems to require a guilt offering for cleansing - it isn't just that people thought lepers were guilty, it was that God's law said that they needed a guilt offering to cleanse them. Now lets link that in with Jesus' attitude to lepers, and his ability to heal them...

1 comment:

little2u said...

I have a thought on this. I do not know if you are aware of Eastern tradition but the peoples of India and China teach about the body's aura and chakras. As I studied this, I was startled to see that the ancients considered our aura to be our spirit. So to me, because Christ is the one who forgives our sin, when He heals, He directly touches the spirit (aura) and forgives. That theory would fit in with the need for a guilt offering in the absense of Christs forgiveness which is His healing power.