EE & R, 3_4: Between the Torah and the Prophets: On Animal Sacrifice

(For the previous installment of "Exodus, Exile and Redemption," click here. For ToC, click here.)

Animal sacrifice is disfavored by the prophets, with knowledge of Hashem preferred in its stead:

For I desired kindness and not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings (Hosea 6:6)

Hashem would rather be known than worshipped. In other words, knowing Hashem undermines the significance of sacrificing to Him. To understand why, we must delve into the signification of sacrificial worship.

The ceremonial killing of an animal is symbolic of killing a human being. This symbolism is evident in the special sacrifice that consecrated the site of the Holy Temple, the place designated forever for the regular practice of animal sacrifice – the ram offered by Avraham “in place of his son” (Genesis 22:13). Killing the ram symbolized Avraham’s readiness to kill a human being, and with this symbolic act, the daily practice of sacrifices was initiated:

On the day that Avraham bound his son Yitzchak on the altar, the Holy, blessed be He, established the offering of two lambs, one in the morning and one in the evening… When Israel brings the daily sacrifice on the altar… the Holy, blessed be He, remembers the binding of Yitzchak (Tanna D’vei Eliyahu, chapter 6)

The Akedah (the binding of Yitzchak) is at the root of the practice of offering daily animal sacrifices to Hashem; killing an animal simply indicates readiness to kill a human.¹ And what is the meaning of killing a human? It is the absolute denial of meaning, the negation of all knowledge.

The root of all values that people hold – of all meaning, of all knowledge of the good – is the value placed on human life itself. The living, conscious human being instinctively senses the value of its own life, and from this intrinsic value it extrapolates outward: I am a human life and am valuable; thus, human life in general is valuable. I exist and am valuable; thus, existence in general is valuable. All moral knowledge is predicated on this value, and therefore, the act of taking a human life is the ultimate act of denying knowledge.

This is the symbolism of the Akedah­­ – it is a declaration that man holds of nothing, that we ultimately stand before the Ultimate Mystery in naked ignorance, devoid of any certainty. Avraham would kill his son; he would not even assert that murder is wrong. (The fact that the Akedah involved filicide instead of suicide is a point of great significance, which will be discussed later in this work.)

It is from this perspective that animal sacrifice is the greatest form of worship to Hashem, involving the recognition and declaration that the knowledge possessed by any human being is fundamentally worthless, that ultimate value is beyond our comprehension and that we are naught before it. Life and death, the polar opposites of good and evil, are given equal weight by the worshipper willing to kill. This stance is the antithesis of the prophetic teaching that we can and must know Hashem, that He is not the ultimate mystery but rather the ultimate revelation, for one doesn’t self-negate before that which one knows, but rather engages with it and embraces it.

The question of whether God is knowable stands at the heart of all questions of value. God is the truest reality, the root of all reality. If He is knowable, all is knowable; if He isn’t, then we don’t truly know anything, because we lack knowledge of its deepest essence. We can’t be confident of any value, fundamental and basic as it might be, if at the heart of all being lies something of which we are ignorant. Thus, for the prophets who teach that man can know God, a notion rooted in His self-revelation at the Exodus, man can know everything. And if man can know everything, it is incumbent upon him simply to conduct his life in light of that knowledge, to live in truth. For the Torah, in contrast, which does not teach that man can know God,² the highest calling of man is to live in recognition of the limits of human knowledge and the mystery that lies at the core of existence. This is exemplified by animal sacrifice, which is symbolic of killing a human – the absolute and complete denial of value.

(I remind the reader that we are not yet resolving the contradiction between the various divine teachings, but are simply exploring each of them on its own terms, as discussed here; our careful and deliberate exploration, if approached with patience, will, in time, reward us with a full and satisfying resolution.)

The prophetic message of Knowledge of Hashem stands in starkest contradiction to the Torah teaching of the validity of sacrifice, which is simply the recognition of being ignorant of Him. Thus, Hosea says: “For I desired … knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings,” for those who know God see no reason at all to sacrifice to Him.

(For the next installment of "Exodus, Exile and Redemption," click here.)

1. See Ramban, Leviticus 1:9: “He should sprinkle the blood upon the altar, which is analogous to the blood in his body…  in order that… a person should think, while doing all this… that his own blood should really be spilled and his own body burned.”

2. The absence from the Torah of any exhortation to know Hashem, so common in the Prophets, has been noted here and here. An explicit source in the Torah that conveys the unknowability of God will be presented and explored in a later chapter.