Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 1-4.

There are three types of animal offerings described in this passage: burnt offering, fellowship offering, and sin offering.  In addition, Moses describes the process for making grain offerings.  The animal offerings were to be a representative of their type (cattle, sheep, or goat) which was without defect.  I want to note the significance of which offerings were explicitly to be male and which were to be female.  Since the animals eligible for offering were all herd animals, those who owned the animals could more readily spare a male animal to a female animal (with herd animals a single male breads with multiple females).  Which leads me to a thought that does not come directly out of this passage: a polygamous society values most men as less than fully human.  A polygamous society considers most men to be superfluous.  In such a society, men who have failed to obtain wives are considered disposable, and of less value than those who have wives.  This breaks down the order which the Bible teaches us is God’s intent, that all people were created by God to have value.  Not really when this passage is about, but the thought which the passage inspired in me.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.