Last week we looked at early Israelite worship. It appeared to be rather basic: create an altar and then give gifts and allegiance to God. This type of worship and the rituals that accompanied it connected the Israelites with most of the people around them. The story of the golden calf makes this clear. In Exodus 32 the people have been waiting for Moses to come down from Mt. Sinai and his meeting with the god who had led them out of Egypt. When Moses does not return as expected the people decide that they need a new god. The people melt down their gold, make a calf-god and create and altar before which to worship it. This was the process; adopt/create a god, build an altar then worship.
What happens next however would change (or at least try to change) Israelite worship forever. As the story goes, God saw what was happening in the Israelite camp and sent Moses back with the Law, meaning the Ten Commandments plus lots of other rules and regulations. After a rather unpleasant confrontation Moses gets down to the business of organizing the religious life of the people of Israel. This reorganization begins with a renewal of the covenant between God and the people of Israel; a covenant in which each side makes vows of singular allegiance. The God of the Exodus would be the only God for the Israelite people to worship and the Israelite people would be God's chosen community. This covenant is unique among all ancient people; that a people would worship one god and one god only.
The worship of the people of Israel then unfolds in two main ways. The first is the institution of a series of festivals which focus on the work and gifts of God. First and foremost is the Sabbath. The Sabbath (the seventh day) is to be a day consecrated to rest in order to remember God as creator (Genesis 2:3) and as redeemer (Deut. 5:12-15). While there were no specific rituals associated with the Sabbath (such as singing or praying) the intent was to acknowledge the covenant relationship between God and God's people. Resting then was worship. Three other annual feasts were also part of the worship cycle. These were Passover (remembering God's liberating actions which freed the people from bondage), the Feast of Weeks (to celebrate God's gift of a good harvest) and the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths (which celebrated the end of the agricultural year as well as offered a reminder of God's provision in the wilderness). Each of these celebrations had particular rituals associated with them.
The second way in which the worship of the people of God unfolds is in the sacrificial system which is laid out in the Law. The Israelite sacrificial system included daily and monthly offerings. The sacrifices were divided between blood sacrifices (the sacrifices of animals) and bloodless offerings (which consist of grain or oil). The blood sacrifices can be further divided between burnt offerings (the animal is completely burned up), guilt offerings (in which the animal was cooked with some left for the priests) and peace offerings (in which some of the animal is burned up and the rest shared under ritually clean conditions). The grain offerings were partially burned on the altar as well, with the remainder going to the priests. Any animal brought to be slaughtered and burned was supposed to be perfect. The grain and the oil brought were to be from the First Fruits of production. This perfection was intended to insure that the Israelite people were giving to God the best of what they had because God had given God's best (freedom and food) to them.
What I want to clarify at this point is that the Israelite sacrificial system, unlike virtually all other ancient sacrificial systems, was neither intended to be magical (trying to make God bring the rain, etc.) nor intended to appease God's anger. Israelite worship was a grateful response to what God had already done and would continue to do because of God's covenant promises. The system was, along with the festivals, a way of orienting God's people to God's life-giving covenant.
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