“Tell them, ‘This is the offering made by fire that you are to bring to Adonai: male lambs in their first year and without defect, two daily as a regular burnt offering. Offer the one lamb in the morning and the other lamb at dusk, along with two quarts of fine flour as a grain offering, mixed with one quart of oil from pressed olives. It is the regular burnt offering, the same as was offered on Mount Sinai to give a fragrant aroma, an offering made by fire for Adonai.'”-Numbers 28:3-6
I want to introduce a new Hebrew word today.
That word is TAMID.
TAMID refers to the daily burnt offering.
The TAMID consisted of a lamb (provided by the priesthood), a grain offering (MINCHAH), and a libation offering of wine and was offered up every morning and every evening without fail.
It is hard to overemphasize how important the TAMID was to the ancient Israelites.
They believed that as long as the TAMID was properly observed every day without fail, the walls of Jerusalem would NEVER fall and HASHEM would always protect them.
There is one point I need to remind you of.
Although the common term used to refer to the sacrifices is “burnt offering“, that is really sloppy scholarship.
The reason is because the “burnt offering” (OLAH in Hebrew) was just one of the four other categories of animal sacrifices burned up on the altar.
While it is true that all the sacrifices got burned up on the altar, each sacrifice had its own divine purpose, thus it is a super oversimplification to call all the offerings “burnt offerings“.
Just know that the TAMID consisted of the OLAH (Burnt Offering) and the MINCHAH (the grain offering).
The OLAH and MINCHAH were practically always offered up together as a pair.
Now pretty much every ancient culture during the Bible era performed animal sacrifices to their gods.
In fact your average heathen nation offered up animal sacrifices three times a day.
Why?
Because their primary objective was to feed food to the gods.
In their minds they were literally offering up breakfast, lunch and dinner to their gods.
Right here at this point, we run headfirst into a major difference between how the Israelites and the GOYIM (gentile nations) thought with regards to the purpose of the sacrifices.
While the reason the GOYIM offered up sacrifices was to feed their gods, the reason Israel offered up sacrifices was as a humble acknowledgement that it is only HASHEM who provides them with food.
Same actions, totally different mindset.
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