"to put," instead of "to give," has been [Pg 301] transferred into
Greek, as is proved by the synonymous [Greek: dounai ten psuchen
hautou] in Mark x. 45; Matt. xx. 28.--2. The fact that the same
uncommon expression occurs not fewer than five times in the same
discourse of Christ, and that so intentionally and emphatically, is
explicable only when it was thereby intended to point to an important
fundamental passage of the Old Testament.--3. In the discourses of our
Lord, the expression is, no less than in the passage before us, used of
His sacrificial death.--If, then, it be established that those passages
in which our Lord speaks of a _putting_ of His soul, refer to the
passage under consideration, this must be acknowledged of those also in
which He speaks of a _giving_ of His soul, as in Matt. xx. 28: [Greek:
dounai ten psuchen hautou lutron anti pollon], where the [Greek:
lutron] clearly points to the [Hebrew: awM] here. In all those
utterances, the Saviour simply has reduced the words to what they
signify, just as, in quoting the passage Zech. xiii. 7, in Matt. xxvi.
31, He likewise drops the rhetorical figure, the address to the sword.
He himself appears simply as He who offers up; the soul is that which
is offered up.--[Hebrew: awM] is, in Numb. v. 5, called that of
which some one has unjustly robbed another, and which he is bound
to _repay_ to him. An essential feature of sin is the _robbing of
God_ which is thereby committed, the debt thereby incurred, which
implies the necessity of _recompence_. All sin-offerings are, in
the Mosaic economy, at the same time debt-offerings; and this feature
is very intentionally and emphatically pointed out in them. If,
besides the sin-offerings, there is still established a kind of
trespass-offerings, the [Hebrew: awM], for sins in which the idea of
incurring a debt comes out with special prominence, this is done only
with the view, that this feature, thus brought forward by itself and
independently, may be so much the more deeply impressed, in order that,
in the other sin-offerings too, it may be the more clearly perceived.
Compare the investigation on the sin-offerings and trespass-offerings
in my work on the _Genuineness of the Pentateuch_, ii. p. 174 ff. But
the sin- and trespass-offerings of the Old Testament typically point to
a true spiritual sin- and trespass-offering; and their chief object was
to awaken in the people of God the consciousness of the necessity of
substi