Appendix E
Responding to Rillera on Old Testament Sacrifice:
Is There No Substitution in the Levitical System?

Andrew Remington Rillera's Lamb of the Free: Recovering the Varied Sacrificial Understandings of Jesus's Death is a bold, clearly written, and genuinely thought-provoking book.¹ Over the course of four dense chapters on Old Testament sacrifice (his Chapters 1–4), Rillera builds a cumulative case for a striking conclusion: "There is no such thing as a substitutionary death sacrifice in the Torah."² He argues that popular-level understandings of OT sacrifice—the picture of an animal "dying in your place" as a stand-in for the sinner—are built on a string of misunderstandings about how the Levitical system actually works. The animal is not a substitute for the sinner. Its death is not the theologically important moment. The blood ritual is not about transferring punishment. And the Hebrew word kipper (כִּפֶּר), typically translated "to atone," does not mean what most Christians think it means.

These are serious claims, and they deserve a serious response. In this appendix, I want to do three things. First, I want to honestly acknowledge what Rillera gets right. He corrects some genuine mistakes that show up again and again in popular Christian teaching about sacrifice. Second, I want to show where I believe he overstates his case—where legitimate corrections tip over into overcorrections that deny what the texts themselves affirm. Third, I want to argue that substitutionary logic is genuinely present in the OT sacrificial system, even if it does not look exactly like the caricature Rillera is targeting.

My thesis is straightforward: Rillera is a helpful corrective to popular caricatures, but his central claim—that there is no substitutionary dimension whatsoever in the Levitical system—goes too far. It relies on a narrowly defined concept of "substitution" that excludes legitimate substitutionary dimensions of the ritual, and it does not adequately account for the full range of scholarly opinion on the Levitical system.

Section 1: What Rillera Gets Right — Correcting Popular Caricatures

Before I explain where I disagree with Rillera, I want to be clear about where I think he is right. Fair engagement demands that we acknowledge valid points before pressing objections. Rillera makes several observations about OT sacrifice that are genuinely helpful—and that many Christians (including many pastors and Bible teachers) would benefit from hearing.

First, Rillera is correct that popular-level presentations of OT sacrifice often oversimplify the system by collapsing all sacrifices into a single category. In many Sunday school lessons and sermon illustrations, "OT sacrifice" gets boiled down to one idea: an animal dies in the sinner's place. But the OT sacrificial system is far more complex than that. There are burnt offerings (ʿolah), grain offerings (minḥah), well-being or fellowship offerings (šelāmîm), sin or purification offerings (ḥaṭṭāʾt), and guilt or reparation offerings (ʾāšām). Each of these has distinct purposes, distinct procedures, and distinct theological significance.³ Treating them all as "basically the same thing" misses the richness and carefully structured design of the system God established.

Second, Rillera is correct that not all sacrifices are about sin. The well-being offerings, for instance, are joyful communal meals eaten in God's presence. They celebrate relationship and fellowship—not guilt. The regular burnt offerings function as what Rillera calls "divine attraction" or invitation—maintaining God's presence among his people.⁴ The thanksgiving offerings express gratitude. Christians who assume that every animal on the altar was "dying for somebody's sin" have missed a large portion of what the sacrificial system was designed to do.

Third, Rillera is correct that the Levitical system does not emphasize the suffering of the sacrificial animal as the mechanism of atonement. Sacrificial slaughter was meant to be swift and painless. As Rillera notes, rabbinic instructions for animal slaughter (shehitah) built on this principle: a swift cut to the throat, performed humanely.⁵ A blemished or mistreated animal would actually be disqualified from service as a sacrifice. The popular image of an animal writhing in agony as a picture of sin's penalty does not come from the Levitical texts themselves.

Fourth, Rillera is correct that the blood manipulation—the sprinkling, daubing, and pouring of blood on the altar and sanctuary furniture—rather than the slaughter itself is the climactic moment of the atoning rite. The priest, not the offerer, performs the blood ritual. The slaughter is mentioned almost in passing in the sacrificial instructions, while the blood application receives detailed and careful attention.⁶ Scott Shauf's observation, which Rillera cites, is apt: the killing of the animal receives remarkably little ritual or theological attention in the priestly texts compared to what happens with the blood afterward.⁷

Fifth, Rillera raises important questions about the hand-laying ritual (semikah), drawing on a legitimate scholarly debate about its meaning. The assumption that laying a hand on the sacrificial animal automatically means "this animal is my substitute" is not as straightforward as many popular presentations suggest.

Sixth, one of Rillera's most creative and genuinely illuminating arguments concerns the way the Torah "reconceptualizes" the death of the sacrificial animal. Drawing on the anthropological work of Jonathan Z. Smith and the logic of Leviticus 17:3–4, Rillera argues that the Torah treats the killing of a domesticated animal as morally equivalent to murder—unless it is performed as a legitimate sacrifice with proper blood handling.⁴⁰ The sacrificial ritual, in other words, transforms what would otherwise be a killing into something else entirely. The blood is returned to God on the altar, and the "death" is ritually reconceptualized as a "non-killing." On this reading, the whole point of the ritual is to negate the idea that the animal is simply being killed. Sacrifice is not about death—it is about what happens after the death, through the ritual handling of the blood.

This is a fascinating argument, and I think it captures something genuine about how the priestly writers understood the ritual. The Torah is indeed deeply concerned with bloodguilt, and the careful handling of blood in the sacrificial system is at least partly aimed at ensuring that the taking of animal life is done rightly before God. Rillera has done us a service by highlighting this often-overlooked dimension of the system.

Seventh, Rillera makes the important observation that the God of Israel abhors human sacrifice (Lev 18:21; 20:2–5; Deut 12:31; 2 Kgs 21:6; Jer 7:31). This means—as Rillera rightly argues—that we cannot construct a model where God desired human blood on the altar but "settled for" animal blood as a substitute. The sacrificial system is not premised on the idea that God really wanted human death and accepted animal death as a stand-in.⁴¹ Any responsible account of substitution in the OT must reckon with this biblical abhorrence of human sacrifice.

I want to be candid: I agree with all of these corrections. They are valid, they are important, and they deserve wider hearing in the church. Taken together, they paint a picture of the Levitical system that is more nuanced, more theologically sophisticated, and more carefully designed than the popular caricature allows. The question is whether these legitimate corrections lead to Rillera's far more radical conclusion—that there is no substitutionary dimension at all in the OT sacrificial system. I believe they do not. As we will see, the corrected picture still contains genuine substitutionary logic—it is simply more nuanced substitutionary logic than the caricature.

Section 2: Where Rillera Overstates His Case — The Substitutionary Dimension of the Sin Offering

Now we come to the heart of the matter. I believe Rillera's denial of any substitutionary logic in the Levitical system is too sweeping. He is right to reject a crude version of substitution—the version that says every sacrifice is simply "the animal dies instead of the sinner." But in rejecting the caricature, he ends up denying the reality. Let me explain why.

The Capital-Offense Argument Proves Too Much

One of Rillera's strongest arguments against substitution is the observation that capital offenses cannot be expiated by sacrifice. Numbers 15:30–31 is clear: the person who sins "with a high hand" (defiantly, deliberately) is to be "cut off" from the people. No sacrifice can remedy this.⁸ Rillera reasons as follows: if the sacrificial animal were truly a substitute dying in the sinner's place, then we would expect sacrifice to be available for all offenses, including capital ones. After all, if an animal can die so the sinner does not have to, why would there be any sin too great for this exchange?⁹

This sounds compelling at first. But I think it proves too much. What the restriction in Numbers 15 demonstrates is that sacrifice is not a universal substitute for all death. It does not prove that sacrifice has no substitutionary dimension for the sins it does address. Substitution can be real and genuine without being unlimited in scope. An analogy might help: if a wealthy benefactor pays the debts of everyone in a town who owes less than $10,000, but refuses to cover debts larger than that, we would still say the benefactor is paying debts in place of the debtors—even though the coverage has limits. The existence of a ceiling does not eliminate the substitutionary nature of what happens below the ceiling.

In fact, the very restriction actually implies something substitutionary. Think about it this way: for certain sins, the offerer brings an animal, the animal dies, and the offerer walks away forgiven—alive, restored to the community, with the consequences of sin dealt with. For other sins (capital offenses), no such provision exists, and the sinner must bear the consequences themselves. The contrast between these two categories only makes sense if, in the first category, something is happening on behalf of the offerer that spares the offerer from consequences that would otherwise fall on them. That "something" is what we mean by substitution.¹⁰

Jay Sklar makes this point well. The sin offering addresses sins committed inadvertently or in ignorance. In the ancient Near Eastern context, such sins were still understood to carry real liability before God. The offerer was genuinely at risk. The sacrifice intervened, and the offerer was spared. Whether we call this "substitution" or not, the functional logic is substitutionary: the animal's life is given, and the offerer's life is preserved.¹¹

The Hand-Laying Debate (Semikah)

Rillera argues, following David P. Wright and Jonathan Klawans, that the single-hand-laying gesture in the sacrificial ritual is a gesture of ownership—"this is mine; I am giving it to God"—rather than a gesture of identification or substitution ("this animal represents me").¹² He points out that well-being offerings (šelāmîm), which have no atoning function, also require hand-laying (Lev 3:2, 8, 13). If hand-laying meant "this is my substitute," it would make no sense in the context of a non-atoning meal offering. This is a fair point.

But the scholarly landscape is more divided than Rillera's presentation suggests. On one side, we have the ownership/designation view (Wright, Klawans, Milgrom, and Rillera). On the other side, we have scholars who see the hand-laying as establishing a representative connection between the offerer and the animal—a connection that, in the context of atoning sacrifices, carries substitutionary overtones. Gordon Wenham, John Hartley, and Richard Averbeck have all argued for some version of this identification view.¹³ John Stott summarizes the mainstream evangelical position: "By laying their hand(s) on the animal, the offerers were certainly identifying themselves with it and solemnly designating the victim as standing for them."¹⁴

Here is what I find telling: even if we accept the "ownership" interpretation, it does not necessarily eliminate substitutionary logic. When the offerer lays a hand on the animal and says, in effect, "this is mine; I am giving it to God," the offerer is designating this particular animal as the one that will stand before God on the offerer's behalf. The offerer is giving something of their own—something costly—so that atonement can be made. The ownership gesture and the substitutionary function are not mutually exclusive. The offerer identifies the animal as their own precisely so that it can function as their representative before God.

But the strongest evidence comes from the scapegoat ritual on the Day of Atonement, which I will address in detail below. In Leviticus 16:21, the high priest lays both hands on the live goat and confesses Israel's sins onto the goat. Rillera acknowledges that the two-handed gesture is distinct from the one-handed gesture.¹⁵ But the two-handed gesture in Leviticus 16:21 is explicitly accompanied by confession and transfer of sin—which is extremely difficult to reconcile with a pure "ownership" reading. At minimum, it demonstrates that the hand-laying gesture in the Levitical system could carry the meaning of identification and transfer, not merely ownership.

Leviticus 17:11 and the Blood-Life Connection

Leviticus 17:11 is one of the most debated verses in the entire OT sacrificial system, and for good reason. It reads:

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life." (Lev 17:11, ESV)

Rillera, following Jacob Milgrom, emphasizes that the blood ritual—the application of blood to the altar and sanctuary furniture—is what matters, not the death of the animal as such. He argues that the death is merely necessary to "release" the blood, which then functions as a purifying agent (a kind of ritual detergent) that decontaminates sacred objects.¹⁶ The animal's death, on this reading, has no independent theological significance. It is a necessary step to obtain the blood, nothing more.

Now, I agree with Rillera that blood manipulation is the focal point of the atoning rite. The priest's careful application of blood—sprinkling it on the mercy seat, daubing it on the horns of the altar, pouring it at the altar's base—receives detailed ritual attention that the slaughter does not. This is an important observation. But here is where I think Rillera makes a crucial misstep: acknowledging that the blood application is central does not mean the death of the animal is incidental or theologically meaningless. The death is necessary to release the blood—and Leviticus 17:11 tells us why the blood has atoning power: because "the life of the flesh is in the blood."

Think about what this verse is actually saying. It connects three things in a chain: (1) life is in the blood; (2) God has given the blood on the altar to make atonement; (3) the blood makes atonement "by the life" (bannepheš). The atoning power of the blood is not separate from the life of the creature. The blood works because it carries the life of the animal—a life that has been given up in death. As Stott puts it, "One life is forfeit; another life is sacrificed instead. What makes atonement 'on the altar' is the shedding of substitutionary lifeblood."¹⁷

Leon Morris made this argument decades ago, and it has not been effectively overturned. Blood in the OT consistently signifies life laid down, life given in death. When blood is shed and applied to the altar, what is being presented to God is not merely a purifying liquid but a life sacrificed.¹⁸ Even on Milgrom's reading—where kipper means "ransom" in this verse—Milgrom himself concludes that the blood ransoms the offerer's life.¹⁹ A ransom is, by definition, something given in place of something else. If the animal's blood-life ransoms the offerer's life, then the animal's life is being given in place of the offerer's life. That is substitution.

Rillera is aware of this problem. He notes Milgrom's reading and attempts to defuse it by arguing that, on a careful analysis of Leviticus 17, the offerer's life is only at risk at the moment of slaughter (because killing a domesticated animal is morally equivalent to murder unless it is ritually handled), not prior to it.²⁰ In other words, the "ransom" is not paying for a pre-existing debt of death but rather resolving the bloodguilt incurred by the very act of killing the animal. This is a creative reading, and I acknowledge it has some logic within Rillera's framework. But it strains the text. The phrase "to make atonement for your souls" (lekappēr ʿal-napšōtêkem) naturally suggests that the atonement is for the offerers, addressing their standing before God—not merely resolving a technicality about the animal's death.

Furthermore, Gordon Wenham and Jay Sklar have both argued that even if "purification" or "decontamination" is the immediate ritual action, the underlying logic is still one in which the animal's life is given so that the offerer's life is preserved. Sklar argues that kipper in its broadest sense means "to effect a ransoming," which includes both purification and the preservation of life—and the two are not easily separated.²¹

The Scapegoat Ritual on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16)

If there is one OT ritual that most clearly demonstrates substitutionary logic, it is the scapegoat (azazel) ritual on the Day of Atonement, described in Leviticus 16:20–22. The main treatment of this passage appears in Chapter 5 of this book, so I will not reproduce the full exegesis here. But I do want to add some specific engagement with Rillera's handling of this ritual, because I believe it is the Achilles' heel of his argument.

Here is what happens. After the sanctuary has been purified with the blood of the sacrificial goat (the ḥaṭṭāʾt), the high priest brings forward the live goat. He lays both hands on it and confesses "all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins" over the goat's head. The text then says:

"The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness." (Lev 16:22, ESV)

The language here is explicit: the goat bears (nāśāʾ) Israel's iniquities. The sins are confessed onto the goat, and the goat carries them away. As David Allen summarizes, "The scapegoat bears not only the guilt of the people but also the sin of the people; and it does so via substitution, bearing the guilt and sin in place of the people."²²

How does Rillera handle this? He treats the scapegoat as a "tote-goat"—a "walking dustpan" that carries off the contaminations already removed from the sanctuary by the blood ritual.²³ On his reading, the scapegoat is not bearing the sins of the people in a substitutionary sense. Instead, it is carrying away the contaminations that were purged from the sanctuary furniture—functioning as a kind of ritual garbage truck rather than a substitute for the sinners. He also insists that the scapegoat ritual is "apotropaic" (a preventive measure to ward off danger) and that it does not involve "curse transmission."²⁴

I think Rillera's reading is strained at precisely this point. Leviticus 16:21 says the high priest confesses "all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins" over the goat. The text says the high priest puts these sins "on the head of the goat" and that the goat bears "all their iniquities." The language is personal—"their iniquities," "their transgressions," "their sins." This is not the language of sanctuary contamination being removed from furniture. This is the language of the people's sins being transferred to another bearer.²⁵

The verb nāśāʾ ("to bear") in the context of sin is deeply significant throughout the OT. When someone "bears" sin (nāśāʾ ʿāwōn), they are carrying the weight of guilt and its consequences. This same language reappears in Isaiah 53:4, 11–12, where the Suffering Servant "bears" the iniquities of others—a passage the NT authors apply directly to Jesus (as we discuss in Chapter 6). The scapegoat bears what the people would otherwise bear. That is substitutionary logic, plain and simple.

Rillera's attempt to reduce the scapegoat to a contamination-removal device does not adequately account for the confession of sins onto the goat—an element that has no parallel in the purification of sanctuary furniture. You do not confess sins onto furniture. You confess sins onto a bearer who will carry them away. The personal, vicarious nature of this ritual is difficult to deny.

It is also worth noting that in Rillera's own framework, the scapegoat carries away not only the inadvertent sins and ritual impurities purged from the sanctuary by the blood of the slaughtered goat but also—per his reading of the double-hand-laying gesture—a category of contamination that the blood ritual itself does not address. Rillera, following Feldman, acknowledges that the two-handed gesture accompanied by confession "serves to transfer the contamination caused by these sins and transgressions from the sanctuary to the goat."⁴² The word "transfer" here is doing heavy lifting. Even on Rillera's own terms, something that belongs to the people (their sins and transgressions) is being placed onto an animal that then carries those sins away. What is this if not a form of vicarious bearing? The goat receives what it did not generate and carries it away so the people do not have to. Whether we use the word "substitution" or not, the functional logic is the same: the goat bears what the people would otherwise bear.

Finally, I want to note how the scapegoat ritual connects to the broader biblical theme of sin-bearing. The Hebrew phrase nāśāʾ ʿāwōn ("to bear iniquity") appears throughout the OT in contexts where one party carries the guilt or consequences of sin—either their own or someone else's. When God "bears iniquity" (nōśēʾ ʿāwōn, Exod 34:7; Num 14:18), it means he forgives. When a person "bears their own iniquity" (Lev 5:1, 17; 7:18; 19:8; 20:17), it means they suffer the consequences. When the scapegoat "bears all their iniquities" (Lev 16:22), the most natural reading is that the goat carries what the people would otherwise carry—freeing them from the weight of those sins. This is the language the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 will later inherit, and it is the language the NT will apply to Jesus. If we remove substitutionary logic from the scapegoat, we sever a crucial link in the biblical chain that runs from Leviticus 16 through Isaiah 53 to the cross.

Section 3: Rillera's Restrictive Definition of Kipper

Rillera argues, following Milgrom and Liane Feldman, that kipper is exclusively about decontaminating sacred objects (sancta) in the sanctuary. On this view, the blood of the sin offering purifies the altar, the tent of meeting, and the holy of holies from the contaminations caused by Israel's sins and impurities. The people benefit indirectly—a clean sanctuary means God can continue dwelling among them—but kipper itself is directed at the objects, not at the people.²⁶

Rillera supports this with a grammatical argument. He notes that in Leviticus 16:33, the sanctuary, the tent of meeting, and the altar are the direct objects of the verb kipper (marked with the accusative particle ʾet), while the priests and the people are indirect objects (marked with the preposition ʿal, "for" or "on behalf of"). Since a direct object receives the action of the verb, it is the sanctuary that is being "decontaminated," not the people. The people are merely the beneficiaries of the sanctuary's purification.²⁷ Rillera illustrates this with a memorable analogy: "He cleansed the floor for the children" does not mean "he cleansed the children."

This is a clever and important observation, and I want to give it its due. Rillera (via Milgrom and Feldman) has correctly identified that the immediate ritual action of the blood application is directed at the sanctuary furniture, not at the offerer's body. The priest does not sprinkle blood on the worshiper. He sprinkles it on the altar and the mercy seat. This is a genuine feature of the ritual that popular presentations often overlook.

However, I believe Rillera conflates the immediate ritual mechanism with the ultimate purpose. The entire reason the sanctuary needs to be decontaminated is so that God can continue to dwell among his people. Sanctuary purification is relational and personal in its ultimate goal, even if the immediate ritual action targets the sacred furniture. When the sanctuary is polluted beyond repair, God withdraws his presence—and the result is catastrophe for the people (exile, destruction, death). The purification of the sanctuary is for the sake of the people in the deepest possible sense. It preserves the divine-human relationship. It keeps the people alive.

But the strongest objection to Rillera's restrictive reading comes from the texts themselves. Consider the formula that appears repeatedly in Leviticus 4:

"The priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven." (Lev 4:20, 26, 31, 35, ESV)

This formula applies kipper language directly to the person. "The priest shall make atonement for him" (wekipper ʿālāyw)—and the result is that he (the offerer) shall be forgiven (wenislach lō). If kipper were exclusively about decontaminating furniture, it would be odd to say that the person is forgiven as a direct result. The text itself extends kipper language beyond mere sanctuary purification to encompass the offerer's standing before God.²⁸

How does Rillera handle these verses? His answer is that the offerer benefits indirectly: by fulfilling their responsibility to decontaminate the sanctuary (bringing the appropriate offering to the priest), the offerer's obligation is discharged, and forgiveness follows.²⁹ This is not unreasonable, but it requires reading the Leviticus 4 formula in a roundabout way. The most natural reading of "the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven" is that the atonement addresses the person's guilt, not merely a piece of furniture.

The scholarly landscape here is more divided than Rillera acknowledges. Nobuyoshi Kiuchi has argued that kipper in the sin offering has both a sanctuary-purification dimension and a dimension that addresses the offerer's guilt and liability before God.³⁰ Roy Gane has proposed a more complex model in which kipper "purges" the sin from the offerer onto the sanctuary, where it is stored until the Day of Atonement, when the sanctuary itself is purged and the sins are carried away by the scapegoat.³¹ Jay Sklar argues that kipper encompasses both purification and ransom, with the specific nuance determined by context.³² The consensus is not nearly as settled in Milgrom's favor as Rillera's presentation implies.

Furthermore, Leviticus 16:30 presents a particular challenge for Rillera's framework. This verse reads:

"For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the LORD from all your sins." (Lev 16:30, ESV)

Notice: the atonement is made for you, and the result is that you shall be clean from your sins. This is personal language applied directly to the people. Rillera is aware of this problem. He notes that many scholars attribute this verse to a later editorial layer (the Holiness Code redactor) that extended the logic of sanctuary purification to include personal purification by analogy.³³ Even granting this point, the fact remains that within the final canonical form of the text—the text the NT authors received and interpreted—kipper on the Day of Atonement is explicitly said to cleanse people from their sins. This is the text that shaped Second Temple Judaism and the early Christian understanding of atonement. Whether a later redactor added it or not, it is part of Scripture, and it says what it says.

We should also note the evidence from Second Temple Jewish interpretation. Rillera himself observes that the author of Hebrews understood blood as purging the objects of the physical dwelling place (Heb 9:21–23). But the author of Hebrews also says that "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins" (Heb 9:22)—linking blood directly to personal forgiveness, not merely to the cleansing of furniture. The Mishnaic tractate Yoma, which gives the most detailed ancient Jewish commentary on the Day of Atonement, treats the ritual as addressing the people's sins and their need for forgiveness, not merely as a maintenance procedure for the sanctuary equipment.⁴³ Rabbi Aqiva's famous interpretation of Leviticus 16:30, which Rillera himself cites, says: "Blessed are ye, O Israel. Before whom are ye made clean and who makes you clean? Your Father in heaven."⁴⁴ The emphasis falls on the people being made clean—a personal, relational reality, not merely a matter of sanctuary maintenance.

Furthermore, the guilt offering (ʾāšām) deserves more attention than Rillera gives it. The guilt offering is required in cases where someone has committed a specific wrong that requires both atonement and restitution (Lev 5:14–6:7). The offerer must make restitution plus a 20 percent penalty to the wronged party, and bring a guilt offering to the priest. The priest then makes atonement, and the offerer is forgiven. The guilt offering thus operates in a context where there is a clear personal wrong, a clear personal liability, and a clear personal result (forgiveness). It is very difficult to reduce this to mere sanctuary decontamination. The offerer had a debt; the guilt offering addresses that debt; the offerer is forgiven. The logic is transactional and personal, and it naturally lends itself to substitutionary interpretation—something is given (the animal, its blood, its life) so that the offerer's liability before God is resolved.⁴⁵

Section 4: The Prophets and the Substitutionary Framework

In his Chapter 4, Rillera turns to the prophets and their so-called "critique" of sacrifice. He argues that the prophets consistently testify that the sins Israel is most guilty of—idolatry, murder, sexual immorality, economic oppression—fall under the category of "moral impurity," which the sacrificial kipper system was never designed to address.³⁴ The prophets are not rejecting sacrifice per se; they are recognizing its inherent limitations. The kipper system can handle ritual contamination and inadvertent sins, but it cannot touch the deep moral corruption that has polluted the people and the land. For that, only God's direct intervention—through exile, through the "clean water" of Ezekiel 36:25, through a new covenant—will suffice.

I actually agree with much of this. Rillera's reading of the prophetic critique, building on Jonathan Klawans's important work on the distinction between ritual and moral impurity, is helpful and largely persuasive.³⁵ He is right that the prophets are not simply saying "sacrifice is worthless." They are saying that sacrifice cannot fix what is fundamentally broken in Israel—a brokenness that goes far beyond what the kipper system was designed to address. He is also right, following Klawans, that the prophets' critique is closely connected to the question of "proper ownership"—you cannot offer a legitimate sacrifice to God with wealth gained through oppression.³⁶

But here is where I part ways with Rillera: the fact that the prophets recognize the limits of sacrificial atonement does not eliminate substitutionary logic from the sacrificial system for the sins it does address. The prophetic critique limits the scope of sacrificial atonement. It does not redefine its mechanism. Within the range of sins that sacrifice can address (inadvertent sins, ritual impurities), the mechanism still involves an animal whose life is given so that the offerer can be forgiven and restored. The prophets' recognition that this mechanism has boundaries is not the same as saying the mechanism itself is non-substitutionary.

And then there is Isaiah 53.

The Suffering Servant song in Isaiah 52:13–53:12 introduces a figure who "bears" (nāśāʾ) the sins and iniquities of others in language directly drawn from the sacrificial system. In Isaiah 53:10, the Servant's life is described as an ʾāšām—a guilt offering. This is not metaphorical. The prophet is using specific Levitical terminology to describe what the Servant does. He bears what others should bear. His suffering is "for" others (53:4–6). His life is given as a sacrificial offering on behalf of those who have gone astray.³⁷

Consider the critical verses: "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows" (53:4). "He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed" (53:5). "The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (53:6). "He shall bear their iniquities" (53:11). "He bore the sin of many" (53:12). The cumulative weight of this language is overwhelming. The Servant does something for others that they could not do for themselves. He bears what they would otherwise bear. Their healing comes through his wounding. The structure is explicitly substitutionary: one suffers so that others are healed; one bears iniquity so that others are freed.

The identification of the Servant's life as an ʾāšām (guilt offering) in 53:10 is especially significant in the context of this appendix. The guilt offering, as we noted above, is one of the most personally transactional of the Levitical sacrifices. It addresses specific wrongs and results in personal forgiveness. When Isaiah describes the Servant's life as an ʾāšām, he is drawing on the sacrificial system's own categories to describe an act of vicarious sin-bearing. The prophet does not appear to share Rillera's view that the sacrificial system contains no substitutionary logic. On the contrary, Isaiah 53 exploits the substitutionary potential that was always latent in the system—and brings it to its most radical expression in a personal figure who gives his life on behalf of others.

The full exegesis of Isaiah 53 belongs in Chapter 6 of this book, where it receives detailed treatment. But the point here is this: Rillera's framework struggles to account for Isaiah 53. If the OT sacrificial system has no substitutionary dimension, where does Isaiah 53 get its substitutionary sacrificial language? The Servant "bears" iniquities (nāśāʾ ʿāwōn)—the same language used of the scapegoat in Leviticus 16:22. The Servant's life is given as a guilt offering (ʾāšām)—one of the specific Levitical sacrifice types. The Servant is described as being "wounded for our transgressions" and "crushed for our iniquities" (53:5)—language that implies vicarious suffering on behalf of others. If there is no substitutionary logic in the Levitical system, then Isaiah's use of Levitical terminology to describe a substitutionary act becomes incoherent.³⁸

Rillera does not give Isaiah 53 sustained attention in his chapters on OT sacrifice, which is a significant gap. The prophetic tradition does more than critique the limits of sacrifice—it also envisions a figure who fulfills what sacrifice pointed toward: one who bears the consequences of others' sins in their place. This is the trajectory that leads directly to the NT's interpretation of Jesus's death—and it makes sense only if the sacrificial system already contained the substitutionary seed that Isaiah 53 brings to flower.

Section 5: Conclusion — A Chastened Substitution, Not No Substitution

Let me pull the threads together. What have we seen?

Rillera is a helpful corrective to popular caricatures of OT sacrifice. He is right that the system is more complex than "the animal dies instead of the sinner." He is right that not all sacrifices are about sin. He is right that the blood manipulation is the focal point of the atoning rite, not the slaughter. He is right that the sacrificial system does not emphasize the suffering of the animal. He is right that the kipper system has limits—it cannot address capital offenses or moral impurity. These are genuine insights that should be taken seriously.

But his overcorrection leads him to deny what the texts affirm. The scapegoat ritual in Leviticus 16 explicitly depicts a transfer of the people's sins onto an animal that bears those sins away. Leviticus 17:11 connects the atoning power of blood to the life of the creature, given on the altar for the offerers' lives. The repeated formula in Leviticus 4 says that atonement is made for the person, and the person is forgiven. Isaiah 53 uses Levitical sacrificial language to describe a figure who bears the sins of others in their place. The scholarly consensus is not as settled in Milgrom's direction as Rillera suggests—serious scholars like Kiuchi, Sklar, Gane, Wenham, and Hartley see both purification and substitutionary elements in the system.

What I am arguing for is not the crude caricature Rillera targets. I am not claiming that every sacrifice is simply "the animal dies instead of me." I am arguing for what we might call a "chastened" substitutionary reading of the OT system—one that acknowledges the diversity of sacrificial types, recognizes the centrality of blood manipulation, understands the limits of sacrificial atonement, and still maintains that genuine substitutionary logic is present, especially in the sin offering, the guilt offering, and the scapegoat ritual.³⁹

The substitution is not unlimited—it does not cover all sins. The substitution is not crude—it does not reduce to "suffering in the sinner's place." The substitution is not the only thing happening in the sacrificial system—purification, dedication, communion, and celebration are all genuinely present. But the substitutionary dimension is real. The animal's life is given so that the offerer's life is preserved. The goat bears the people's sins so that they do not have to bear them. This is not a modern imposition on the text; it is what the text says.

As we will see in the appendices that follow, this matters enormously for how we read the NT. If there is no substitutionary logic in the OT sacrificial system, then the NT authors who interpret Jesus's death through sacrificial categories must be doing something entirely novel—inventing a substitutionary meaning for sacrifice that the OT never intended. But if substitutionary logic is genuinely present in the OT system—as I have argued—then the NT authors are drawing out what was already there. Jesus does not introduce a foreign concept to sacrifice; he fulfills what sacrifice always pointed toward.

Rillera deserves the last word of commendation before we move on. His work forces advocates of substitutionary atonement to be more precise, more careful, and more attentive to what the OT texts actually say. That is a gift. But precision and care, rightly applied, lead not to the abandonment of substitution but to a more nuanced and textually grounded understanding of it. The substitutionary dimension of OT sacrifice is real—and it finds its ultimate fulfillment in the one to whom all these sacrifices pointed: Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

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