HEBREW WORD STUDY – AN ALTAR – ZABACH – מזבח  Mem Zayin Beth Cheth

Leviticus 6:2,5-6: “Command Aaron and his sons, saying, This [is] the law of the burnt offering: It [is] the burnt offering, because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning, and the fire of the altar shall be burning in it. (5) And the fire upon the altar shall be burning in it; it shall not be put out: and the priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and lay the burnt offering in order upon it; and he shall burn thereon the fat of the peace offering. (6) The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out.

When we think of an altar we think the of the stairs leading up to the throne, ah, I mean the place where the preacher and his chosen sit on the platform.  Some think of it as the pulpit.  Some churches have a little table just below the pulpit where they put the communion trays and/or an open Bible and this is considered an altar but that is wrong as it is really just a communion table.  

Webster defines an altar as an elevated place or structure, as a platform where religious rites are performed.  So in your church, it may just be those stairs leading to the platform. Actually, our English word altar comes from the Latin word altare which reflects the Hebrew for burnt offerings.  The word in Hebrew for altar is mizabach from the root word zabach which comes from an old Akkadian word meaning a place of slaughter. You know, that is not a bad idea for the preacher to explain the Hebrew understanding of an altar, it is the place of slaughter which your old life is put to death in exchange for a new life in Jesus.

Nonetheless, the mizabach was nothing more than a big furnace, it is was the largest piece of furnishings in the tabernacle where the blood sacrifices were made.   It was a big square box made of bronze from which God sent a flame from heaven and lit the box with a fire. From that day forward until the temple was destroyed in 607 BC by the Babylonians the priest were commanded to put wood in the fire every morning to keep the fire going and make sure it never went out.  That was quite a chore in the desert to find wood to keep that fire going.  A fulltime job for certain priests. 

I read something very interesting in the Talmud in Eruvin 63a; “Although a fire descended from heaven upon the altar, it is a mitzvah (good praiseworthy deed) to add it to keep the humanly fire producing.”  I believe what the Aramaic is trying to say here is that this fire sent from God is meant to be a picture of the fire of the love of God that burns within every soul and that it is the task of the priest to feed and preserve that fire in the lives of the people.  We learn in 1Peter 2:9: “But ye [are] a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people…”  The foundation of the Protestant Reformation rests on the priesthood of the believer.  Hence, according to the Talmud, Leviticus 6:5-6 is telling us that it is our responsibility to keep that fire of the love of God burning in each other.  We are to feed that fire of God’s love in each other. If that fire goes out in any believer it is our fault, we have failed in our role as the priesthood of the believer. 

But say, look what else we learn. When the temple was built the location of this altar where the sacrifices were to be made was very exactly defined and was never to be changed.  This location was the exact location of the threshing floor of Arvanah which was on the land purchased by David to establish Jerusalem. It was the place where Abraham built his mizabach furnance or altar where he bound Isaac just before he almost made him a burnt offering. It is the place where Noah built his mizabach after the flood and where Cain and Able offered their sacrifices and Jewish tradition teaches that it is that same location where God took the dirt or soil to create man.  The very location of the ground and dust from which God created man, from the man that our Redeemer, Jesus, descended is the same location that the Jews offered their sacrifices for the atonement of the sins of the people. 

One last thing, the word burnt offering is ha’olah which also means a stairway or ladder.  It is the sacrificial offering that was a stairway to heaven.  Jesus is our sacrificial lamb who is our stairway to heaven. Think of that next your preacher invites you to forward to the altar and you kneel at the stairs leading to the platform or mizabach – altar.