Reading: “Any man also of the people of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, who takes in hunting any beast or bird that may be eaten shall pour out its blood and cover it with dust.”—Leviticus 17:13

The moral and spiritual lesson of this law, given to the hunter in Israel (Leviticus 17:13) concerning the use of blood is apparent. It was intended everywhere and always to keep before the mind of the Israelite the sacredness of the blood as the appointed means for the expiation of sin, given by God upon the altar to make atonement for the soul of the sinner.

Not only was the Israelite to abstain from the blood of such animals as could be offered on the altar, but even from that of those which could not be offered. Thus the blood was to remind them, every time that they ate flesh, of the very solemn truth that without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.

The Israelite must never forget this. Even in the heat and excitement of the chase, he must pause and carefully drain the blood from the creature he had slain and reverently cover it with dust, a symbolic act which should ever put him in mind of the divine ordinance that the blood, the life, of a guiltless victim must be given in order to the forgiveness of sin.

(Adapted from S. H. Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus, 377)

Near the cross! O Lamb of God,
Bring its scenes before me;
Help me walk from day to day
With its shadow o’er me.

—Fanny Crosby