September 3 2021 - 27 Elul 5781
All you need is blood... blood is all you need.
Does the Torah say that the only way to be forgiven for aveiros (sins) is to bring animal sacrifices? This is an important question for Jews because many Christians make this argument as a case for Jesus.
What may surprise some is that the Torah lays out several ways to achieve genuine atonement, and the majority of them do not require animal sacrifices. The following are a few sources in the Tanakh describing how people achieve atonement without bringing animal sacrifices.
Genesis 18:26 - 'And the Lord said, 'If I find in Sodom fifty righteous men within the city, I will forgive the entire place for their sake.'"
Jonah 3:8-10 - And they shall cover themselves with sackcloth, both man and beast, and they shall call mightily to God, and everyone shall repent of his evil way and of the dishonest gain which is in their hands. Whoever knows shall repent, and God will relent, and He will return from His burning wrath, and we will not perish. And God saw their deeds, that they had repented of their evil way, and the Lord relented concerning the evil that He had spoken to do to them, and He did not do it.
Samuel 2 12:13 - "And David said to Nathan: 'I have sinned against the Lord.' And Nathan said to David, 'Also the Lord has removed your sin; you shall not die.'"
Hosea 14:2-3 - Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled in your iniquity. Take words with yourselves and return to the Lord. Say, "You shall forgive all iniquity and teach us [the] good [way], and let us render [for] bulls [the offering of] our lips.
Note that Mishlei (Proverbs) 15:8 supports the above with the following, "The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination of the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is His will." The contrast between "the sacrifice (of the wicked)" and "prayer" indicates that tefilla can substitute for korbanos.
Hebrews 9:22 - In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
One of these things is not like the other. In the ninth chapter in the book of Hebrews in the Christian Bible, Paul clearly states through two metaphors that God will only forgive you through the shedding of the blood of Jesus.
The verse in Genesis shows that God was ready to forgive without a sin offering.
The verse in Leviticus indicates that atonement could occur through means other than blood.
Like Genesis, Jonah and Samuel demonstrate that sin offerings are not required for forgiveness. Interestingly enough, Jonah can be taken as a proof that only Jews must bring sacrifices for atonement because Nineveh was a city of Gentiles.
Hosea indicates means that God accepts prayer as a means for forgiveness in the absence of a Temple. The phrase "let us render [for] bulls [the offering of] our lips" refers to the bulls that were sacrificed in the Temple to atone for sins. This verse associates "bulls" with "lips" (prayer), indicating that prayer was to replace sacrifices in the absence of the Temple. This is how we atone for our sins today.
It is noteworthy that God spoke to the prophet Hosea while the First Temple was still standing, which means that the Jews were technically still able to bring sacrifices at that time. It is in this context that Hosea 14:5 utters the beautiful words, "I will remedy their backsliding; I will love them freely, for My wrath has turned away from them." What did the Jews do for this wrath to be neutralized on a grand scale for the entire nation?
Then we have the odd man out, Hebrews 9:22, which insists that "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." How did Paul, the Pharisee, (Acts 23:6) understand the verses that I quoted above?
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