Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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and owned. This law obliged not only the Israelites themselves, but the proselytes or strangers that were circumcised and sojourned among them, who were in danger of retaining an affection to their old ways of worship. If any should transgress this law, and offer sacrifice any where but at the tabernacle,
(1.) The guilt was great: Blood shall be imputed to that man; he hath shed blood, Le 17:4. Though it was but a beast he had killed, yet, killing it otherwise than God had appointed, he was looked upon as a murderer. It is by the divine grant that we have the liberty to kill the inferior creatures, to the benefit of which we are not entitled, unless we submit to the limitations of it, which are that it be not done either with cruelty or with superstition, Ge 9:3, 4. Nor was there ever any greater abuse done to the inferior creatures than when they were made either false gods or sacrifices to false gods, to which the apostle perhaps has special reference when he speaks of the vanity and bondage of corruption to which the creature was made subject, Ro 8:20,21, and compare Le 1:23,25. Idolatrous sacrifices were looked upon, not only as adultery, but as murder: he that offereth them is as if he slew a man, Isa 66:3.
(2.) The punishment should be severe: That man shall be cut off from among his people. Either the magistrate must do it if it were manifest and notorious, or, if not, God would take the work into his own hands, and the offender should be cut off by some immediate stroke of divine justice. The reasons why God thus strictly ordered all their sacrifices to be offered at one place were,
[1.] For the preventing of idolatry and superstition. That sacrifices might be offered to God, and according to the rule,