Biblical sacrifice

Q. What is the biblical concept of "sacrifice"?
A.This can be very complex in that there is a lot of scripture one has to put together to properly understand it, but here is a short version. There is a difference between the Torah concept of scarifice and the christian concept. Both Jew and Gentile have this concept: if you sin you have to bring a sacrifice to pay for it. But, the word for sacrifice in scripture is "korban" which means to draw near. It is related to the word for sexual intercourse. Was Yeshua ever impure? Yes, whenever He touched a dead body, or the woman unclean with a discharge , or anyone of the lepers He touched caused Him to be unclean. But being unclean is not sin. Did Yeshua ever offer a sin offering? Yes, but it doesn't mean He sinned-it acknowledges that there is sin in the world. "Sacrifice" in English means to "give something up", as in sacrificing for your children, etc. People believe you get atonement by bringing a "korban", but it comes from faith and repentance. There is a problem: we base what we believe on a messed up view of sacrifice, especially concerning Yeshua. Lev. 20.15 says that one is forbidden to offer their children as a sacrifice.. G-d forbids Abraham to offer Isaac in Gen. 22.

This brings up a problem w/in christianity. How could G-d break His own word? Isa 42-55 gives us the "servant" passages. These passages are identified as referring to Messiah, Israel or both. Christians say they refer to Messiah, Judaism says they refer to Israel. But in reality, they could refer to all three at times. In Jn. 1.29,36 there is a staement that is translated "the Lamb of G-d who takes away the sins of the world", but there's a problem. A lamb is not used to take away sin, it is a shelem, or peace offering at Passover. At Yom Kippur, a lamb is not used, but goats and a bull are. About 50 years ago the academic world thought that the people in new testament times spoke Aramaic, alanguage from Babylon that is similar to Hebrew. Later research has founf that this was untrue, they spoke Hebrew.

Around 200 C.E. they used Aramaic, but in the 1st century it was Hebrew. Aramaic was there but not the primary language. There are "loan words" from Aramaic that are used and scholars have reconstructed the Greek N.T. text and found problems. There are terms that don't make sense. There is an eastern structure and a western structure. From Hebrew to Greek, our verse does not make sense. But, in Aramaic it does make sense, using the loan word that says "the Servant of G-d who takes away the sins of the world". Now, it makes sense and there are hundreds of verses about the "Servant" of the L-rd. There is a concept in scripture called the "Suffering of the Tzadik".

A Tzadik is a righteous one, but not just any righteous one. The Tzadik is one who stands out in his generation ,far above his peers. There is much said on this subject and in the Mesorah Publications "Ezekiel" in appendix III on Ezekiel 4.4. It says that "Ezekiel's suffering might serve to atone for the sins of his people. The thesis was advanced that the sight of the Tzadik's agony, for which the people had been the cause, might inspire them to true repentance." This may be true to some extent, but there is a deeper picture to all this . We will pick up there with this concept in the Artscroll article on the suffering tzadik and how this relates to the concept of "sacrifice" and the death of Yeshua next week.