Let us now look at some details of the scheme in which this important idea is embodied. The foundation of the whole system is the daily burnt‐ offering—the _tāmîd_. Under the first Temple the daily offering seems to have been a burnt‐offering in the morning and a meal‐offering (_minhah_) in the evening,(281) and this practice seems to have continued down to the time of Ezra.(282) According to the Levitical law it consists of a lamb morning and evening, accompanied on each occasion by a minhah and a libation of wine.(283) Ezekiel’s ordinance occupies a middle position between these two. Here the tamîd is a lamb for a burnt‐offering in the morning, along with a minhah of flour mingled with oil; and there is no provision for an evening sacrifice.(284) The presentation of this sacrifice on the altar in the morning, as the basis on which all other offerings through the day were laid, may be taken to symbolise the truth that the acceptance of all ordinary acts of worship depended on the representation of the community before God in the regular service. To the spiritual perception of a Psalmist it may have suggested the duty of commencing each day’s work with an act of devotion:—
Jehovah, in the morning shalt Thou hear my voice; In the morning will I set [my prayer] in order before Thee, and will look out.(285)
The offerings for the Sabbaths and new moons may be considered as amplifications of the daily sacrifice. They consist exclusively of burnt‐ offerings. On the Sabbath six lambs are presented, perhaps one for each working day of the week, together with a ram for the Sabbath itself (Smend). At the new moon feast this offering is repeated with the addition of a bullock. It may be noted here once for all that each burnt sacrifice is accompanied by a corresponding minhah, according to a fixed scale. For sin‐offerings, on the other hand, no minhah seems to be appointed.
At the annual (or rather half‐yearly) celebrations the sin‐offering appears for the first time among the stated sacrifices. The sacrifice for the cleansing of the sanctuary at the beginning of each half of the year consists of a young bullock for a sin‐offering, in addition of course to the burnt‐offerings which were prescribed for the first day of the month. For the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles the daily offering is a he‐ goat for a sin‐offering, and seven bullocks and seven rams for a burnt‐ offering during the week covered by these festivals. Besides this, at Passover, and probably also at Tabernacles, the prince presents a bullock as a sin‐offering for himself and the people. We have now to consider more particularly the place which this class of sacrifices occupies in the ritual.
III. ATONING SACRIFICES.—It is evident, even from this short survey, that the idea of atonement holds a conspicuous place in the symbolism of Ezekiel’s Temple. He is, indeed, the earliest writer (setting aside the Levitical Code) who mentions the special class of sacrifices known as sin‐ and guilt‐offerings. Under the first Temple ceremonial offences were regularly atoned for at one time by money payments to the priests, and these fines are called by the names afterwards applied to the expiatory sacrifices.(286) It does not follow, of course, that such sacrifices were unknown before the time of Ezekiel, nor is such a conclusion probable in itself. The manner in which the prophet alludes to them rather shows that the idea was perfectly familiar to his contemporaries. But the prominence of the sin‐offering in the public ritual may be safely set down as a new departure in the Temple service, as it is one of the most striking symptoms of the change that passed over the spirit of Israel’s religion at the time of the Exile.