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[Greeny]

According to several OT passages, God never desired literal blood sacrifices. Instead of blood and meat, God wanted people to be merciful, repentant and humble.

Hosea 6:6 For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
The above was repeated by Jesus twice in the gospels. And God/Jesus got anything but mercy on the cross.

Mark 12:33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.

1 Samuel 15:22 But Samuel replied: "Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

Psalm 40:6 Sacrifice and offering you did not desire-- but my ears you have opened -- burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.

Psalm 51:16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.

Proverbs 21:3 To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.

Isaiah 1:11 "The multitude of your sacrifices-- what are they to me?" says the LORD. "I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
Unless God was saying, "I want a human sacrifice, not an animal sacrifice", the above passages tell us that God never desired the literal blood and meat of Jesus.

And if God never desired the literal blood and meat of Jesus, then the literal blood and meat of Jesus did not do anything for anyone's sins.

It appears that:

1) the God of the Old Testament does not accept a sacrifice (human or otherwise) that covers the sins of all mankind.

2) the God of the Old Testament, instead, wants each individual to live a righteous life by being merciful, repentant and humble.

And God says that this is not an impossible task:

Deuteronomy 30:11 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.

[jimwalton]

Your question and evidence betrays a misunderstanding of the literal truth of God's commands and his rhetorical treatment of their abuses. God commands the cult practices of blood sacrifice. Leviticus is filled with them, to be literally fulfilled habitually. What the prophets oppose is not the existence of the cult practice of blood sacrifice, but rather the attempt to use cult in magical, manipulative ways without reference to the character and attitude of the worshiper. The rituals were not just rituals, but physical icons of other things: repentance, mercy, acknowledgement of God, and humility. To practice one without the heart and attitudinal accompaniment is what God was rebuking and deploring. In Isaiah 1.13, he uses the terms "meaningless" and "worthless". The rationale for Isaiah's attack becomes clear here. He opposes the offerings not because they are cultic activity, but because they are vain. What God cannot bear is "religious sin." The fundamental contradiction between the two terms (oxymoron) is obvious, the more so because of the way Isaiah has juxtaposed them. It is religion that leaves iniquity unchallenged and unchanged that the prophet and, more importantly, God detest. By your logic God is not only repudiating blood sacrifice, feasts and festivals, assemblies, and also prayer (Isa. 1.15).

So also in 1 Sam. 15. What Samuel censures Saul for is trying to separate obedience from sacrifice. Obedience and sacrifice were unfailingly tied to each other.

Leviticus 17.11 explicitly says the blood makes atonement in the sacrifices because of the life that is in the blood.

The passages that you quoted do not tell us that God never desired the literal flesh and blood of Jesus. As a matter of fact, Jesus says explicitly that's why he came: Mark 10.45, which goes along with Isa. 53.10, and is affirmed by Heb. 9.12-14.

> It appears that the God of the Old Testament does not accept a sacrifice (human or otherwise) that covers the sins of all mankind.

John 3.16, along with Isa. 53.10 (again), shows your point to be wrong. Heb. 10.1-18 comments on the question as well.

> the God of the Old Testament, instead, wants each individual to live a righteous life by being merciful, repentant and humble.

Not instead of, but along with. You're looking so closely at the trees you're missing the forest.

[Greeny]

> By your logic God is not only repudiating blood sacrifice, feasts and festivals, assemblies, and also prayer (Isa. 1.15).

No. By my logic sacrifices (like that of Jesus) do not save us anymore than feasts, festivals, assemblies or prayer save us.

> Leviticus 17.11 explicitly says the blood makes atonement in the sacrifices because of the life that is in the blood.

"...If a person believes that a blood sacrifice were necessary in order for Gd to forgive human sin, then that person forgot to study the Five Books of Moses. Even a single example where Gd forgave without a blood sacrifice would prove that this idea is unbiblical. There are many such examples, but the most interesting is found in the Book of Leviticus. The reason this is so interesting is that it appears right in the middle of the discussion of sin sacrifices. In Leviticus 5:11-13, it states,'If, however, he cannot afford two doves or two young pigeons, he is to bring as an offering for his sin a tenth of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering.' In Jonah 3:10, we also see that one does not need a blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. There, the Bible simply states that Gd saw the works of the people of Niniveh. Specifically it says that these works consisted of abandoning their evil ways, and because they did, Gd forgave them. There are many other examples. Therefore, as was stated earlier, the idea that one needs a blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins is unbiblical." (http://whatjewsbelieve.org/explanation2.html)

> The passages that you quoted do not tell us that God never desired the literal flesh and blood of Jesus.

The passages that I quoted do tell us that God never desired sacrifices.

> Isa. 53.10

...is not about a human sacrifice.

> You're looking so closely at the trees you're missing the forest.

I'm looking so closely at the forest I can tell it contains different kinds of trees.

[jimwalton]

Thank you. It's exactly the point of the NT that the blood sacrifices of the OT, any more than the feast, festivals, assemblies, or prayers, do not save anyone. Heb. 10:4: It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. It's exactly the point of the NT that the blood of Jesus does.

1 Jn. 1.7: The blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin
Rom. 5.9: We are justified by his blood
Eph. 1.7: we have redemption through his blood
Rev. 1.5: His blood has freed us from our sins

...and about a hundred more. The good news of the new covenant is that sins can be atoned for by the blood of Christ.

And, by the way, Isaiah 53.10 does speak of blood sacrifice. The word for guilt offering is אָשָׁם (asham). It was a ram or a male sheep. Except in Isaiah 53 it is the suffering servant—a human—who is the sacrifice. And it was God who desired the sacrifice. And it was God's will that he should be offered to intercede for sins (53.12).

[bronnie]

Ten years after the initial post I want to say kol hakavod to green.
whatjewsbelieve.org is such a good site, I cannot read enough of Rabbi Stuart Federow.
If nobody is ever blamed for someone else's actions, the world will truly be a better place.
Nobody can ever die to atone for someone else's sins!
Nobody is born with sins!

[jimwalton]

Thank for entering the conversation, Bronnie, but I have a few comments to make that hopefully will engender some conversation and discussion.

> If nobody is ever blamed for someone else's actions, the world will truly be a better place.

I agree with this statement, and it's certainly not what the New Testament teaches. The Bible never teaches that Jesus is blamed for the sins of humanity, but more accurately He chooses to pay the debt that was accrued by them. The blame stands totally and consistently with humanity, where it rightly belongs, but it's made right by Jesus, who was never complicit in them on guilty of them.

> Nobody can ever die to atone for someone else's sins!

This is a theological statement that is not subject to the normal regimens of proof. How it must be weighed is whether it is consistent with reason and the flow of the argument of the theological premises of whatever faith system to which it belongs. Weighing it in such a way, it is consistent with the idea that humanity is sinful in nature, and all humans sin, and therefore they stand in a position of separation from God, who has never sinned and cannot. But if someone who is not guilty of sin (e.g., Jesus) decides to bear the punishment for that sin, one's sin can be atoned for by the death of another. It's in the same sense that if you happened to owe me $10,000,000 and were completely unable to pay it, someone else of means would have the right, should he or she so choose, to pay off that debt for you. It's consistent and reasonable within the theological constructs of biblical teaching.

> Nobody is born with sins!

We must define this the way the Bible defines it. It is not saying that children are evil, that they are born demented, or are born guilty. We know that babies are quite innocent when they are born. What it is saying is that humans are born in a position of separation from God and will continue in that separation until a change/transformation is made. What is true is that humans are born with a propensity of non-perfection. It's not long before every growing child exhibits anger, jealousy, pride, dishonesty, etc. We do have a nature of characteristics the Bible identifies as sin.

Suppose there was a good man who lived in a cabin in the woods, and he had a dog. Let's suppose one day the dog got a rebellious streak and decided to run away from her master, and got lost. The man goes out every day to search for his beloved dog, but, alas, the dog is deeply lost, far from home. Let's now suppose the dog gives birth to a litter of puppies. Those puppies, through no fault of their own or any guilt of their own, are born wild. They are also "lost," but they are wild. They do not know anything about domestic life. The puppies are not "evil," but they are separated from the master, lost, and wild. That's what the Bible means when it says people are born in sin. The Bible uses these same words (lost, separated).

To complete the word picture, the master goes into the woods every day looking for lost ones. Any that he finds, he invites back into the home, where there is warmth, food, and love. It is up to each puppy to decide for himself whether or not to return to the master. All are invited; those who respond are welcome. It is not the master's fault that some choose to stay separated from him, but that is the reality, and they die in the woods separated from the master.