פרשת פנחס - שגרה, פרנסה וחיבור

(1) The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: (2) Command the children of Israel, and say to them: My offering, which is My food, for My fires, My pleasing aroma, you shall take care to present to Me at its appointed time. One should not delay bringing any offering, but one must be particularly careful about the offerings that have a set time, which may be brought only at that appointed time.

(5) תשמרו YE (the children of Israel) SHALL WATCH [TO OFFER TO ME] — This implies that priests, Levites and ordinary Israelites shall stand by watching when the sacrifices are offered (Sifrei Bamidbar 142:2). From this command they (the Rabbis) derived the law of, and instituted the Maamadot (representatives of the people who were present when the sacrificial service was performed) (Taanit 27a). (6) במועדו [YE SHALL OFFER TO ME] IN ITS APPOINTED SEASON — Every day is the “appointed season” for the continual offerings.

According to the plain meaning of the text: the word קרבני refers to the blood; the word את includes the salt which had to be added to each offering as we know from Leviticus 2,13. The reason we dip bread nowadays in salt before eating it at the beginning of our meal is that the Torah called a sacrificial offering לחם, bread. The word לחמי refers to the fat parts of the sacrificial animal, (or all its flesh as the case might be) which was burned up on the altar. The word לאשי refers to all that is given over to the fire on the altar. The word תשמרו refers to the Israelites standing in attendance during this procedure. The word במועדו, which means “at its appointed time” and seems superfluous seeing that the offering under discussion is presented daily, means that no other sacrifice is to be offered earlier in the day than these daily total-offerings. By the same token, no offering was to be presented after the evening daily burnt-offering. Another meaning of the word במועדו is that the legislation overrides the Sabbath legislation and that even on the Sabbath (Sifri 142) these daily burnt-offerings were offered as usual even if the laws of ritual impurity had to be set aside in order for this offering to be presented (compare Pessachim 76).

להקריב לי במועדו, “to present to Me at its appointed time.” This applies even if the appointed time occurs on the Sabbath, or if the person offering it is temporarily ritually unclean. (Compare Sifri) [I did not find the reference to ritual impurity in my edition of the Sifri. Ed.] According to the author, it must mean that if no priest can be found on that day that is ritually pure. This offering must not be skipped even during time of war. [There are stories in the Talmud describing that the priests paid fortunes to the besieging Babylonians or Romans to supply such animals for them. Ed. We find that the angel remonstrated with Joshua for not having seen to it that this offering was offered while the army laid siege to Jericho (Talmud, tractate Megillah folio 3) An alternate interpretation: the emphasis here is on the word במועדו, “at its appointed time,” it must neither be offered too early in the morning nor too late in the afternoon.

את קרבני לחמי לאשי, "My food which is presented to Me as a burnt offering, etc." The convoluted language is due to the daily communal offerings consisting of three parts. 1) The offering of the sheep as the sacrifice. 2) The tenth of an epha of flour which accompanied it as a gift-offering. 3) The drink-offerings consisting of a quarter Hin of newly pressed wine. With respect to the animal, the Torah speaks of קרבני, "My sacrifice;" with respect to the meal-offering (gift) the Torah speaks of לחמי, "My bread." Finally, with respect to the drink-offerings, the Torah speaks of ריח ניחחי, "sweet savour unto Me." The reason is that the drink-offering is poured onto the foundation of the altar descending into the hole called שיתין, and only its smell is noticeable on the altar. In each of these instances G'd uses the suffix "MY" to indicate that all of them are His and remain within His domain as proclaimed by David in Psalms 24,1: "The earth and all that is thereon belongs to G'd." The reason that G'd appended this possessive suffix even to the word אשי, "My fire," is that even the fire belongs to G'd. Israel should remember that whatever they offer to G'd as a sacrifice is really G'd's in the first place.

This was the reason which made G'd write the word תשמרו, "observe, i.e. take care to perform this commandment;" failure to offer these sacrifices means that when we use any part of the universe for our own purposes we are actually stealing G'd's property; we are violating a negative commandment. G'd adds the words להקריב לי, "to present for Me as an offering." This means that even when doing this we are only offering to G'd's presence a small part of His possessions by presenting them to Him. The vast majority of His possessions remain His, however.

The Torah also alludes to a mystical dimension of sacrifice per se. Its purpose is to bring closer to G'd's Essence things which are "branches" of sanctity extant in the universe and as such are part of G'd Himself. This is the meaning of the word קרבני with the suffix י, i.e. "the sacrifice is something which brings sanctity close to Me." The means by which this occurs is that My bread is offered to Me as fire. When it rises in the form of smoke it turns into a sweet odour for Me.