Sacrificial Offerings in the Bible

Animal sacrifices play a rather prominent role throughout the Bible with the terms “offer/offering” and “sacrifice” appearing around 1000 times in our English Bibles.

In the Old Testament, we read of animal sacrifices being offered to God by Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, David, Solomon, and many others. However, sacrificial offering was not just an Old Testament phenomenon. It was also a practice of New Testament times as well, with some prominent offerers including Joseph and Mary, the Twelve, Christ’s disciples, and the Apostle Paul, to name but a few.

Yet, this is not the case now. Christians today do not carry out animal sacrifices, nor are they required to do so. This may explain why many sermons and Scripture expositions gloss over (or do not even refer to) the mention of sacrifices in the Bible text, especially in any New Testament verse. They are often treated as being irrelevant to the passage and just “something that ancient peoples used to do”.

Perhaps it is because of this that most believers in the 21st century have little idea about either the prevalence or meaning of these extremely common practices of Old and New Testament times. This book gives an excellent introduction to the subject and explains why God instituted such sacrifices and offerings.