Commentaria in Leviticum
Verse 3. If the priest that is anointed shall sin.—“Priest,” that is, the high priest: for the Septuagint have archiereus, and the Chaldee, the great priest; for his sin on account of the dignity of his person was the greatest. Hence he is put in the first place here, and is commanded to be expiated by the greatest victim, a calf.
That is anointed—after he has been consecrated. So the Septuagint, who render it “the anointed”; for if a pontiff designate had sinned before he was consecrated, then the victim of a common man or of a prince expiated him. So Ribera.
Making the people to offend.—The Hebrew: “If he sin to the sin of the people,” namely that by his sin he may scandalize and make the people sin. It may also be rendered, “if he sin according to the sin of the people,” or as the people are wont to sin; whereby the law tacitly signifies that it is not for the pontiff to sin, but for the people: for it is the pontiff’s part to intercede for the sins of the people.
Verse 4. And shall immolate it to the Lord.—Namely the pontiff himself who has sinned, as has gone before; for no other inferior priest is here named to do it, as was named in chapter 1, verse 5, in the sacrifice of a layman, of whom, however, there was less doubt that it must be done by Aaron and his sons. Again, the pontiff who had sinned had to lay his hands on his victim, as follows, and to immolate it; for all these things tend to the same end, and regard the same pontiff who sinned. So from Philo Ribera against Abulensis.
Morally Origen: The pontiff is here admonished, he says, of his infirmity, that he may humbly acknowledge and understand his sin: for he never amends himself who does not think he has sinned. At the same time he is taught to be easily indulgent to sinners; for, as Dido said:
Not ignorant of evil, I learn to succour the wretched.
Verse 6. And he shall sprinkle it (immolated) seven times before the Lord, before the veil of the sanctuary,—namely before the veil of the Holy of Holies, where God shows His presence on the mercy-seat. By sprinkling the blood, then, before the veil of the Holy of Holies, he was said to sprinkle it before the Lord.
Note: “He shall sprinkle seven times,” that the expiation may be made perfect. For by the number seven perfection is signified: so the seven capital sins comprehend all sins.
Note that there were many peculiarities in this sacrifice, as also in the sacrifice for the sin of the whole people, as is plain to one who reads and compares the text; and this that thereby might be signified the gravity of the sin both of the priest, or pontiff, and of the whole people.
Verse 7. At the foot (near the foot, as is plain from verse 18) of the altar (which is) in the entry (near the entry) of the tabernacle.
Verse 8. And he shall take off the fat of the calf.—Correct, “take away,” verse 8, namely from the calf, that he may offer and burn it to God. So the Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek and Roman texts.
As well that which covereth the entrails, as all that is within,—as if to say: He shall take away and offer all the fat, as well that which covers the vitals, namely the heart and precordia, as that which is within the vitals and viscera themselves. So the Hebrew.
Verse 10. As it is taken off.—Correct “taken off,” according to verse 10.
what I said on verse 8.
Verses 11 and 12. But the skin and all the flesh, with the head, and the feet, and the entrails, and the dung, and the rest of the body, he shall carry forth without the camp into a clean place, where the ashes are poured out: and he shall burn them.—Note: This was the rite of the victim for the pontiff’s sin. First, the pontiff himself brought his victim, namely a calf, to the altar, and laid his hands upon it, as if imprecating and laying on it his sin. Second, in the same place he slew and immolated it. Third, he received its blood in a bowl, which he carried into the tabernacle, sprinkling with it seven times the veil opposite the Holy of Holies, and with the same dipping the horns of the altar of incense; the rest of the blood he carried back into the court, and poured out beside the foot of the altar of holocausts. Fourth, on the altar of holocausts he burnt the fat and the kidneys of this victim, namely the calf. Fifth, the remainder of the victim, namely the whole calf, with the skin, entrails and dung, he carried outside the camp, and burnt all these in a clean place, where the ashes of the victims were wont to be poured out.
You will ask why God commanded this calf, offered for the pontiff’s sin, as also the calf offered for the greater sin of the whole people, to be wholly burnt with its skin, not on the altar, but outside the camp?
I answer: The literal reason of this ceremony was, first, that it might excite in the Jews a great hatred and horror of sin: for it tacitly signified that, as the victim for sin was burnt outside the camp, so much more should sin itself and sinners be burnt outside the world in hell. Second, no one, says Philo, in his book On Victims, is more eminent than the pontiff or than the whole people, who could be brought forward as an intercessor before God for them when sinning, so that on this ground, according to the law which is prescribed here, chapter 6, verse 26, he might eat their victims for sin: it remains, then, that they be burnt outside the camp. Theodoret adds, Question 3, that the whole victim is burnt with its skin to show that the priest, or pontiff, has dedicated not in some part but wholly himself and all his things to the God of all, and since by sin he withdrew something of himself from God, he therefore consecrates and immolates to God a whole calf for himself. Third, and properly, this ceremony was a silent prayer, by which the pontiff asked God that these sins of the pontiff, or of the whole people, that is, the punishment due to their sins, should not touch nor hurt the people itself, but that with the victim of the he-goat and the calf they should as it were be offered outside the camp of the people, burnt and abolished.
Note here that the sins of the pontiff, as a common person, and of the prince of the whole people, are made equal to the sins of the whole people: for both the victim for the pontiff’s sin and the victim for the sin of the people had to be burnt outside the camp, that it might be signified that the sin of the pontiff, as a prince, contaminates the whole camp of the people; whereas the other sins of private men were expiated by a victim immolated in the camp itself, and in the very court of the tabernacle, and were not reckoned to contaminate, stain or pollute the whole camp.
The allegorical reason of this ceremony is given by the Apostle, Hebrews 13:12, namely that by this ceremony it was signified that “Christ outside the camp,” that is, outside the gate of the city of Jerusalem (for the camps had their gates, and were as it were a city with its tabernacle and temple moving and portable through the desert), was to be tortured on the cross, and, the tabernacle and temple of the Jewish camps being abolished, was by His death to found the Church of the Gentiles to be spread through the whole world: this is what St. Leo says, sermon 9 On the Passion: “Not within the walls of the city, which for the desert of its crime was to be destroyed, but without and outside the camp was Christ crucified, that, the mystery of the old victims ceasing, a new victim might be laid on a new altar, and the cross of Christ might be the altar not of the temple but of the world.” Hence also St. John, chapter 11, verse 52, says that Christ was destined to die “for the nation” of the Jews, “and not only for the nation, but to gather into one the children of God who were” scattered throughout the whole world among the Gentiles. Lastly, the blood of the victims expiating the Holy and the Holy of Holies, as is plain from chapter 16, verse 15, signified that Christ by His blood would expiate the Church, and heaven itself; not as though heaven were unclean in itself, but because it was legally and symbolically reckoned unclean, and as it were stained by a sort of sprinkling of sin (for sin is by a certain moral estimation reckoned, and in Scripture is said, to contaminate the very earth, heaven and the whole world), and therefore closed, just as a polluted temple is closed; Christ, therefore, expiating our sins by His blood, is reckoned in a way to have expiated and reconciled even heaven itself, as it were contaminated by our sins, in that He opened and unlocked it to us. So Radulphus here on chapter 16.