Leviticus 1 to 4: Sexing the Pigeon

Leviticus1

And the LORD gives Moses some fairly exact(ing) instructions for how (burnt) offerings are to be made to him. Bullocks and sheep must be blemishless males.

The gender-restriction more relaxed for turtledoves and pigeons, possibly cos it's not quite so easy to tell...

Verse 17 “And he shall cleave it with the wings thereof, but shall not divide it asunder: and the priest shall burn it upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire: it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD.”

Leviticus 2: Priests snaffle God's leftovers, taxing protein...

And goes on to explain how to get their meat out, and that Aaron and his sons get the left-overs.

(Crafty protein source, as Marvin Harris would point out. Protein. Important stuff, amino disrespect to the notion of offering meat to Bearded Skymen, nosiree...)

Leviticus 3

Verse 2 “And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his offering, and kill it at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and Aaron's sons the priests shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar round about.”

Won't someone think of the health and safety implications??

Oh, and how to sacrifice this and that. It really gets my goat.

And here's the kosher kicker:

Verse 17 “It shall be a perpetual statue for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood.”

Leviticus 4

Repetitive instructions on how to kill bullocks to attone for individual and collective sins from positions of ignorance.

And there seems to be a sliding scale for rulers who sin and common folk.

Not much fun being a lamb, I'd say.

Verse 35 “And he shall take away all the fat thereof, as the fat of the lamb is taken away from the sacrifice of the peace offerings: and the priest shall burn there upon the altar, according to the offerings made by fire unto the LORD: and the priest shall make an atonement for his sin that he hath committed, and it shall be forgiven him.”

As befits an oral tradition, there's a lot of repetition in these four books. We skim it so YOU don't have to...