#61 Understanding the Bible's Obsession with Blood + Dr. Robert Holmstedt

The Blood of Sacrifice in the Old Testament

Why are there so many offerings? We think of this tavern as being a pristine, white, clean place. Was it just soaked in blood?

Frankly, it would have been, and it would have smelled horrendously to us.

That was necessary to enter into the presence of God.

There's a whole system here that we are so far from.

How does that not connect to today? Because if the blood of goats and bulls are really cleansing people back then, what was missing? What are we doing now that that doesn't apply?

The blood represents life. It cleanses it in a ritual sense. It purifies it.

What role does Jesus play? Because he paid the ultimate price. Hello, hello.

Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding God easier.

These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion. Now I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the Bible make sense so we can get to know God, our creator, better.

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I am your host, Cassie Mbellino. Today, we're talking about something bloody, and it's blood in the Old Testament. Because when I read the Old Testament, why are there so many offerings? It seems like a bloodbath.

Seems quite gruesome. I want to know why. And why don't we do that today? So if you're asking questions in church like, why can't they touch dead bodies? Or why couldn't they drink blood? I've asked that many times on this show.

Why were animals being killed for sins? And why does that, how does that relate to Jesus? How does that not connect to today? Because if the blood of goats and bulls are really cleansing people back then, what was missing?

What are we doing now that that doesn't apply? And what role does Jesus play? Because he paid the ultimate price. And how does that change the way that we view Jesus? And what are we struggling to understand here?

We're going to be talking about blood today. Very misunderstood. I have many questions. And it's essentially the Old Testament sacrificial system. Animal sacrifices. And from a 2025 perspective, we don't do those anymore.

Why not? If it was sufficient back then, shouldn't it be sufficient now? Why was an animal equivalent to my little white lie? I don't understand it. But today we will. Because today my guest is Dr. Robert Holmstead.

You are highly qualified to talk about this. You're a professor of Hebrew, Bible, and Semitic languages at the University of Toronto. You hold a PhD in Hebrew and Semitic studies from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

And before that, you earned your BA in Biblical studies from Wheaton College. We love Wheaton College. That's where we were speaking with Dr. John Walton from. But you've taught everything. Right before we jumped on, you were saying, I'm a linguistics guy.

I know language. I know Old Testament. And overall, your passion is theoretical and linguistic clarity on how we read the Hebrew Bible. So this is so clutch for today's discussion. From a Hebrew perspective in the Old Testament, the Torah, what are these blood sacrifices in a 2025 English interpretation?

Welcome to the show.

Well, thank you very much for having me on. It's a pleasure to talk with you today about this topic.

The Sacrificial System, Leviticus, and the Priestly People

Yeah.

I think it's so misunderstood. And yet, as you've implied in the introduction, it's central to understanding the way that the New Testament describes Jesus and his work.

Central?

Central.

Okay.

All right.

Oh, I think it's, you know, I just ran across this last week. I was sitting with my family in Nebraska visiting, and we went to my sister's church with them. And the minister, the preacher, as he was giving a sermon mentioned that as people read through the Bible, they often in Leviticus and they stop.

It wrecks them. It throws them off course for the entire year. And I've heard this over and over for decades. And I think it's tragic because it's in Leviticus that I think we really get a key to understanding what's going on with Jesus Christ.

And we're missing something big.

To me, like as a church going Christian, Sunday school Christian, we don't talk about this. So it just kind of resonates in like, look at those kooky, archaic barbarians back then, who were like this altar.

We think of this tabernacle being a pristine white, clean place. And when you read Leviticus, it's like, was this just like covered in blood? Like, was it just soaked in blood? And that's all we see is the carnality of it.

And for you to say it's central, well, what an overlooked, underestimated element of the Old Testament that I've honestly never heard a sermon about.

Well, when you mentioned, you know, the blood, if everything's covered, frankly, it would have been, and it would have smelled horrendously to us. I mean, absolutely horrendously. But, you know, I'm not comparing it to this.

But while there is an element that where this works, I mean, who among the audience likes gefilte fish? I mean, there are things that other cultures liked and dealt with the smells of that would make us, most of us sick.

You know, and I think that's the issue is it's just different. It's what they were used to. And there's a whole system here that we are so far from. But I think we have to do some heavy lifting to actually make some bridges and understand, because frankly, it is the culture that the Messiah came out of and stopped.

And that's why you're here is because what are we missing today when we need to put ourselves in the shoes of those people that normalize that, that we're okay with those smells? I mean, all we see today is like, that probably smelled like a battlefield, like that probably was guts and goo and blood, like that probably was disgusting.

But to them, that was what was needed. That was necessary to enter into the presence of God. And just like from my studies, like I have had some awestricken moments of like, imagine if we still had to like, I want to say murder, sacrifice a goat every time we told a white lie or felt guilty or did anything.

It would just be such a mess. So thank God for Jesus, just from like a hygienic perspective, but like obviously for the greater salvation.

And I think the other part is from a financial perspective, because this was a serious, I wouldn't say burden, although we could consider it a financial burden. If you had to bring a sacrifice in that was an animal like that, you were taking in a significant part of your wealth.

So it's all sorts of things. He kind of removed from the picture when he fulfilled the system. And that's the way I see it.

So it's like, honey, no more lying about my weight. It's not in the budget this year.

Yeah, exactly. You got to give a car away each time, right?

Oh my gosh.

Just again, like that.

Depends on your wealth. For some people, it'd be a bicycle. Other people, it's a car.

Because you read the Old Testament. It's like, oh yeah, they plundered the city. They walked away with thousands of camels and goats and oxen. And it's like, okay. So they were like a dime a dozen, but no.

No.

And that's why there are differences in the types of sacrifices they can bring in. There's a recognition of the different wealth in society. But still, except for the elite of the elite, like the monarchs or some of the high nobles, any one of these major animals would have been a serious blow to their portfolio.

So it's almost like perfection had to be upheld because you couldn't really afford it, both salvitically but also financially, to sin.

Well, I think there's an element that if you transgress and you cause a problem for the sanctuary, and as we'll talk about, that's what this is really about. It's about the sanctuary because it's God's house.

If you cause a problem, it's going to hurt. And so you need to think twice. And you need to think about the way you live your life to try to avoid those things that you know are going to be problematic.

It's going to hurt the church or it's going to hurt you?

It's going to hurt you. It's going to hurt financially. It's going to, you know, there's a different kind of hurt because there are some transgressions, as we can get into later, transgressions that there was not a sacrifice you could bring for, because you were now at God's mercy and His anger, you know, is deadly.

And so it could hurt your life. And in a sense, the most serious infractions are the forfeiture of your life.

Okay.

Just like the context, is everything that we're about to speak on, this pertains to everything up until Jesus?

Yes, in a sense, because what we're talking about is the entire ritual system that defined Israel's life on a daily basis from Sinai forward. It's what allowed them to be the nation of priests, the priestly people.

From Sinai forward. So before that, did it really apply?

It was ad hoc. I mean, you do have offerings. Noah makes an offering. Cain and Abel, of course, bring their offerings. Jacob actually sacrifices. But it's outside this ritual system that centers around the sanctuary that God provides in the tabernacle and in the temple.

It's all about that. All of these things relate to what happens to God's house when the priestly people, because they're all priests, it's a big part of this. In Exodus 19, they're actually given their identity.

They're going to be a priestly people, a holy nation. And all of this then centers around that temple. That is what allows them to be priests. Because to set this up, you have after Genesis 3, this fracture of the relationship between God and humanity, and there's no direct access to God.

The garden is blocked. And whether or not you take John Walton's views, I'm actually quite partial to his views on Adam and Eve as a priest and priestess in a garden sanctuary. It doesn't really matter.

What comes out of Genesis 3 is a fracture. And God's interaction with humanity is ad hoc. It seems a little bit here, a little bit there. He sends an angel. He walks with them. It's the angel of the Lord, whatever it is, until you actually get to not only Abraham, and picking a descendant of Adam and Eve to resume this priestly relationship, but then finally telling Abraham's people at Sinai, this is why I chose you to be a priestly people, to mediate.

Here's the deal. You have to mediate between me, and I'm going to actually put myself in your midst, and the rest of humanity. It's a retrying to return to the situation that was set up in creation. In order to be that priestly people, they have to represent God, and they have to actually behave in certain ways.

And that includes purity and holiness. And those are the concepts I think that really start confusing us, and then why the blood is involved in all of that.

Okay.

So just to summarize that, it would be, because I guess my prior interpretation would have been like God creates everybody, and then he pulls everybody out with Abraham, and creates the separation, and sets out these new rules.

And it's almost like the rules and the separation is God reconnecting with his people. But to say, God saying, I want you to be a priestly people. And in order for us to accomplish that, it can't be an ad hoc type of sacrificial offering system.

It needs to be central to who you are in paying the price, in becoming priestly.

Yes, I think there's much there that you're on the right. You're on the right track.

Absolutely.

You have to see it in terms of nested priesthoods, because Israel has its own priesthood, who mediates for Israel. Israel is a priesthood to the rest of humanity. So it's this nesting. And each layer is a little bit further from God, who's at the center of it.

But in the right working of it, it's smooth. And the communication lines are open between everyone and God at the center. I mean, in a sense, you got to see the priesthood, and what they're doing is mediating, is removing obstacles.

Because humans, removing, removing obstacles in their mediation. Because humans, in our behavior, we're always throwing up obstacles between us and God. It seems to be our nature, whether you attribute that to Genesis 3 and following, or you think that's how God created us, a little more of a Jewish theology.

What would be an example of an obstacle that this removed?

Well, so some of the sacrifices, at least outside of the Leviticus system, are to appease God's anger. So you do something like you disobey, and then once you recognize it, knowing if you did it intentionally, you're going to know you're doing it, you have to make amends.

And those are the propitiatory, that's what that sacrifice is. Some sacrifices are devotional, and it's basically reminding God you're there, and reminding Him that you know He's there, and that you acknowledge Him as creator and the giver of all the produce of the land.

And it's the others, what's called the expiatory, or cleansing, or de-sin, or purifying, I mean, purifying sacrifices, or purging sacrifices. Those are the ones at the center of much of the Leviticus system.

But we as humans, because God is holy, and in fact, that's a bit of a difficult issue to get our heads around, because frankly, there's no definition of holy apart from God. It's God's character. We're missing that quite often in our behavior.

So it could be as something as simple as being unkind. It could be as egregious as physically harming someone or worse. And all of those things, they put up obstacles between us and the creator, who has created us to image Him in creation.

So we have to fix it. We've got to do things to address it, to remove those obstacles. Priests are supposed to help in that. They're supposed to facilitate that removal of obstacles.

It's so interesting the way you're framing this, because I think first read of Leviticus, it's like all of these new rules, all of this new obedience, rather than the removal of obstacles. It's a very different headspace to approach it.

But okay, since we're focusing on offerings, removing the obstacles that separate us from God for our chosen priestly people, why was purity so serious in the ancient world versus like obedience?

Versus obedience?

Yeah, like why was purity, I'm just saying like above all other things, why was purity the most important?

Well, I'm not sure I'd set purity over against obedience. I'm not, I think they're operating on kind of different levels and they're both important. You know, obedience is part of your action. Impurity is about, or purity and impurity is about a state.

So, you know, obedience is something you must do. And of course, Adam and Eve were disobedient in the garden, and that's very clear in their behavior. And it doesn't really talk about their purity or impurity.

So I'm not sure if I were forced to rank those, I would say that obedience is actually more important.

Okay, maybe importance was the wrong term.

No, it's okay.

How serious it was is clearly a very serious topic.

And they're both super serious. So there's operating on slightly different ways of viewing how we relate to God. Purity is, it's about our state of being in such a way that allows us to come near to God.

To be in a state of purity is a requirement for us to approach. So you have, you know, there's pure and impure, there's holy and there's profane. And they're all things that operate together. Holiness is defined as a characteristic of God.

So being kind of God-like, not in the having superpowers, but in terms of his priorities. And profane is kind of, you know, being not God-like. So, you know, humans are in a regular state of profanity.

No, I mean, I'm kind of making a stupid scholarly joke. But anyway, maybe it's not even, it's just, it's being punny. So the humans, you know, when we eat and we do things like this, we're kind of regularly getting ourselves, you know, more human.

We're just, we're doing things on a regular basis that are not God-like. And so if we want to both approach God and be more like God, you have to both purify yourself and also holify or consecrate yourself.

So there are terms, the purity terms work in terms of especially the ritual system. Holiness is related to it, but it's just a slightly different thing. But I think part of these are to remind us always that, you know, there are requirements, not just for state of being pure, impure, but also character, holy, non-holy.

And you can't just be pure and unholy to approach God. You have to be pure and sanctified or holy or made holy.

I guess I have a question.

Considered separate, considered special.

Okay. Is the separation, the set-apartness, I guess like I'm coming from a place of like, if he's God, I'm sure he can handle a few germs after I touched a dead body, you know? And is it more so you need to be set apart and made pure and holy for yourself to be personally able to approach God?

It's not a matter of like, for God's sake, it's for your sake.

Well, I think those things are hard to separate, but I think that again, I would agree with you that it's really more for our sake, but it's because of who he is. It's, you know, I mean, there's two things I want to address there.

One is this, kind of, you mentioned this last part of it, that we have to be, it's like what the prophets say. You've got to be in a right state or God's not going to accept your sacrifices. You have to be in a right state and with right intention, if you're going to communicate with the Creator because of who he is.

And so there's this, there should be this kind of fire, you know, underneath us all the time, not in terms of kind of an obsessiveness, but a reminder. And I think that's part of what the system is. It's a reminder in their daily lives that they have to, and all humans should, behave in ways that they know reflect the Creator and their task to be as representatives.

You mentioned germs with the dead body and it's, and you know, that's a great one because I think people are wondering, well, why is that? Why is a dead body? It's the holiness of life. It has nothing to do with germs, you know, or anything else.

It's the fact that I used to tell my students that life, the sacredness of life, the sanctity of life, is the greatest principle running through the Bible, except for God's reputation or God's holiness.

So he can take life because he created it and he's God. But no one else can take life without recognizing God as the Creator. And that includes animal life. And that's why they have to drain the blood.

The blood represents the life. It's like, yeah, I'm going to give you animals to eat. I'm going to give you the same kind of animals to sacrifice, but you got to drain the blood because the blood represents the life.

Life is holy. You have to recognize me in this process. You can't do it without recognizing God.

So how does that relate to an already dead body or an already dead?

An already dead body was a living body and it's now holy.

Oh, okay.

So that's more of like we can't cross over into that realm that is now passed on. It wasn't like hygienic. That wasn't the cause for the separation.

Nothing to do with hygiene. And they had to bury bodies. People died. Animals died. They buried them. But then they had to go through a ritual cleansing or ritual purification. I really prefer the word purification because water cleansing, the way we view the word cleansing is not always involved.

It's purification. You have to go through a ritual purification and then you're okay.

Purity, Impurity, and the Holiness of Life

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Now back to the show.

Okay.

So in summary, it's more like it's not dangerous or unhygienic. Like these laws for don't drink blood or don't go near dead bodies. These things that it's not because it was unsafe or dangerous for humans to be in contact with these things.

It was more so so they could be compatible with a state that was required to enter God's presence.

Yes. I don't know if you've ever seen the videos. I'm fascinated by these things of the men who work on the high wires, the electrified wires, the massive wires, the transformers. They actually have to ground themselves to it first by putting a rod out.

And then once they ground themselves to it, then they can actually touch it and work on them. They have to prepare themselves and get in sync with the electricity running through those wires before they can actually participate or work with those wires.

It's the same thing. God set up the standard because he created the world. And he said, if you're going to approach me, if you're going to work with me, if you're going to do the task that I set for you, you actually have to be in harmony with me in a couple of different ways, in state of being, in intention, you know, et cetera.

I'm sure we'll get to this later, especially with Jesus. But like, what is the danger or the detriment that someone faces if they're not of right mind, they've been wilding out, they've been touching all the unholy things, and then they try to enter into that presence with God because they're out of alignment.

They haven't grounded themselves. Is it just God won't respond to them? Is that what's going to happen? Or is it like, what's the risk here that we're avoiding?

I think the least, I mean, yes, God not responding to them is the least that can happen. The most that can happen is he takes their life. They forfeit their life. There are these cases of God's holiness.

When the fellows were bringing, when the Ark was coming back, it was being transported on a cart, which it shouldn't have been. It should have been carried by on poles the way it was made to be, but it was coming back.

And this was in the early monarchy, coming back to Israel because the Philistines had taken it earlier. Yeah, and the fellow, one of the fellows, the Ark starts tipping and one of the fellows reaches out and touches it and God strikes him dead.

His intentions are great, but ignorance is no excuse. He was not in the state of holiness to touch that holy object, dead.

This is where that fear of God comes into play.

The fear of, yeah, fear of God. You know, whenever we get to that word in Hebrew class, the students say, well, is it fear or is it reverence? And I say, it's both. Sometimes it's reverence as if we're in awe of him and sometimes you're quaking in your boots.

Both.

Okay. Okay.

The Sanctuary, Ritual Purging, and the Role of Blood

So I think we're understanding what is the purpose for, like what was required within the sacrificial system and it's to be in alignment, to be on brand, to be grounding yourself in the Lord before you approach him just out of reverence for him and compatibility with his presence rather than the safety of our hygiene.

So the sacrificial system, what is that used for? The blood itself being spilled.

Yes, that's a great next point because I think we've established the principles and now you have this system set up, starting in Exodus, especially Exodus 19, where they're then said, you're going to be a priestly people and they all agree.

Okay.

And they're given then the tabernacle to be in their midst and they're organized in numbers as a holy people, as a holy army, et cetera. And then we get to Leviticus and you have all of these sacrifices and this discussion of how they're going to have to orient themselves on a regular basis.

And I think the fundamental principle is now is the priesthood to the rest of humans and they're going to have God in their midst. So on a regular basis, they have a higher bar of purity and holiness to attain.

Therefore, they have greater expectations. And they're faced with this, it's almost an impossible situation because God warns them, if my house becomes too defiled, I'll leave. Well, if their identity is being a priestly people, God leaving is the same result as him closing off the garden of Eden in Genesis three.

It removes God from speaking or being on a regular basis with humanity and creation. It is a huge, huge responsibility. And in fact, this is exactly what's depicted in Ezekiel eight through 11. Ezekiel's vision of the temple is that the divine presence gets up on his chariot and leaves the temple because of the defilement.

It's huge. It's one of those things every time I read through it or I teach through it, I just have to pause and reflect on the magnitude that what he warned is actually what happened. And it's because they allowed for his house to become too defiled.

Well, he provides a mechanism, right? He provides a mechanism to actually address that defilement on a regular basis. And the things that require ritual addressing fall into a number of categories. And they're very hard to understand how they all relate because some things like touching a dead body, you know, it's like, well, that's not a sin.

No, it's not a sin. It just causes an impurity. Some other things are greater and they're what we call sins. So there's these two categories of kind of ritual, people often call ritual impurities and then moral impurities or some, however the language they use, they end up with these two categories.

Some are moral and some are not moral. They're amoral. So the way to tie those together is it doesn't matter what they are to begin with. We have to come from the other end. We have to start from the sanctuary.

All of them defile the sanctuary. That's what ties them all together. That's why they're all listed in there. Whatever defiles the sanctuary has to be addressed. And most things can be addressed by a ritual or a sacrifice.

And the greater the thing, the sacrifice is required. And the blood in the sacrifice becomes that special cleansing element. Because as we mentioned before, whether you go to Noah, where Noah, Genesis 9, where God talks about the blood is holy, the life is in the blood, or you look at passage in Leviticus where the same principle is said in Leviticus 17, 11.

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The blood represents life. Impurity is associated with the opposite of life, death. So it's like this positive negative thing where the blood counteracts what the impurity actually does on the altar and the temple or the tabernacle earlier itself.

Those are associated with God. Those are the sanctuary, the holy place that he spends his time. The altar represents him receiving the sacrifices. That's why the blood is put on the horns of the altar.

It cleanses it in a ritual sense. It purifies it. And that allows them to stay in their midst. The most egregious transgressions, of course, have not only can the person who murders, intentional sin, murders, the person cannot bring a sacrifice to purify the sanctuary.

That person has also forfeit their life completely. Even in the case of unintentional homicide, they have to flee to a Levitical city and stay there until the high priest dies because that death represents a life for life.

So it's very strict. And the impurities accumulated on the sanctuary by all of those sins are wiped away once a year in the Yom Kippur ceremony, the day of atonement, Leviticus 16. Then you have that one, which is kind of a wiping everything clean for maybe all those things that we didn't recognize we did because unintentional sins sometimes, if they're unintentional, sometimes they're unrecognized, right?

But also the intentional sins that no sacrifice can actually address on a regular daily and weekly basis once a year. So you have these types of cleansing mechanisms that God provides to keep his sanctuary pure.

None of them actually purify the bringer. That's one of the major things that I find fascinating. The blood never purifies the person bringing it.

I thought that was the whole point.

Yeah, I know. You know, we have these hymns that I continue to come across, you know, washed in the blood of Jesus or washed in the blood of the lamb or, you know, washed in his blood and it goes on and on and on.