Ram Lambs
Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats… Exodus 12.5
Dave Day, Jr. and his wife Kim have been members of our church for years. They raise sheep. Last Sunday I preached about the Passover lamb, and Dave caught up with me to share some insights with me about year-old male lambs.
He noted that shepherds don’t have much use for “ram lambs”. (From this day forward, that is how I am translating the Hebrew phrase!) Shepherds want ewes, not rams. Ewes reproduce. One ram can successfully mate with up to fifty ewes, so you don’t need many rams.
And contrary to my depiction of them as cute and cuddly, Dave noted that a male yearling is almost fully mature and sizable. One ram lamb will provide far more meat than a family could consume in one sitting.
Also, “cute and cuddly” is not the best description of a yearling ram. He’s more likely to be feisty at best and at the worst, aggressive. Too many rams competing for mating privileges in a flock can stress the ewes and disrupt breeding.
Most ram lambs, Dave offered, go to the butcher at six months old. Why keep them around? They’re only good for one thing and you only need one for that. They’re a needless drain on the food supply, better invested in the ewes, and the meat is better when the ram is young and tender.
In short, one might be more than happy to sacrifice a ram lamb.
In Hebrew, “one year old” is literally “son of a year”. I looked up every occurrence of that phrase. There were only two occasions requiring the personal sacrifice of a year-old lamb: Passover and every time your wife gave birth. The Passover lamb had to be a male. The post-partum sacrifice could be either male or female, but I’d be willing to bet people sooner chose to part with a ram lamb than a valuable ewe.
If you weren’t a shepherding family, every time you needed a ram lamb to sacrifice, you’d have to buy one from a family with flocks. In Jesus’ day, when Jews from across the Roman Empire traveled to Jerusalem for Passover, many pilgrim families had to buy a Passover lamb in the Temple. This was part of the market inside the Temple that enraged Jesus.
Those are the only personal sacrifices. Institutional sacrifices in the Temple required even more year-old ram lambs. Passover took place on Nisan 14th with every family sacrificing its own year-old lamb. Two days later on the Feast of First Fruits another year-old ram lamb was sacrificed on the altar in the Temple—just one for the nation. Fifty days later at Pentecost another seven ram lambs were sacrificed by the priests on behalf of the nation.
Those were the ram lambs offered at the special feasts. The daily sacrifice required two one-year-old ram lambs without blemish, one offered in the morning, the other in the evening (Exodus 29.38 cf. Numbers 28)—730 ram lambs per year. Two additional ram lambs were sacrificed in the same fashion each Sabbath – so 104 more per year (Numbers 28.9ff). Finally, seven ram lambs were offered in the Temple to begin every month –84 more ram lambs a year (Numbers 28.11).
That’s a grand total of 926 required year-old ram lambs sacrificed on the altar in the Temple every year!
Ram lambs were a shepherd’s dilemma. Too many were a nuisance to the flock. You could sell them young for slaughter or keep them for a year and sell them into the sacrificial system (or use them for yourself). But that meant feeding otherwise useless rams for a year and having to go to the trouble of keeping them separated lest their fighting and butting create unwanted blemishes that would render them useless as sacrifices.
Reviewing this material reminded me again how much blood was constantly shed in this ancient culture. I only reviewed ram lambs that were “sons of a year”. There were younger ones sacrificed. There were also older rams, both goats and sheep, as well as calves and oxen and turtledoves and pigeons.
These sacrifices were constant and continual reminders of how difficult it is for us to come into His presence. We don’t have to bring lambs to church anymore so it is easy to forget the enormity of the price paid by one precious, flawless, “firstborn” son whose sacrifice was sufficient beyond all the animal sacrifices ever offered together to open the way for us to the Father.
Dave Day, Jr. and his wife Kim have been members of our church for years. They raise sheep. Last Sunday I preached about the Passover lamb, and Dave caught up with me to share some insights with me about year-old male lambs.
He noted that shepherds don’t have much use for “ram lambs”. (From this day forward, that is how I am translating the Hebrew phrase!) Shepherds want ewes, not rams. Ewes reproduce. One ram can successfully mate with up to fifty ewes, so you don’t need many rams.
And contrary to my depiction of them as cute and cuddly, Dave noted that a male yearling is almost fully mature and sizable. One ram lamb will provide far more meat than a family could consume in one sitting.
Also, “cute and cuddly” is not the best description of a yearling ram. He’s more likely to be feisty at best and at the worst, aggressive. Too many rams competing for mating privileges in a flock can stress the ewes and disrupt breeding.
Most ram lambs, Dave offered, go to the butcher at six months old. Why keep them around? They’re only good for one thing and you only need one for that. They’re a needless drain on the food supply, better invested in the ewes, and the meat is better when the ram is young and tender.
In short, one might be more than happy to sacrifice a ram lamb.
In Hebrew, “one year old” is literally “son of a year”. I looked up every occurrence of that phrase. There were only two occasions requiring the personal sacrifice of a year-old lamb: Passover and every time your wife gave birth. The Passover lamb had to be a male. The post-partum sacrifice could be either male or female, but I’d be willing to bet people sooner chose to part with a ram lamb than a valuable ewe.
If you weren’t a shepherding family, every time you needed a ram lamb to sacrifice, you’d have to buy one from a family with flocks. In Jesus’ day, when Jews from across the Roman Empire traveled to Jerusalem for Passover, many pilgrim families had to buy a Passover lamb in the Temple. This was part of the market inside the Temple that enraged Jesus.
Those are the only personal sacrifices. Institutional sacrifices in the Temple required even more year-old ram lambs. Passover took place on Nisan 14th with every family sacrificing its own year-old lamb. Two days later on the Feast of First Fruits another year-old ram lamb was sacrificed on the altar in the Temple—just one for the nation. Fifty days later at Pentecost another seven ram lambs were sacrificed by the priests on behalf of the nation.
Those were the ram lambs offered at the special feasts. The daily sacrifice required two one-year-old ram lambs without blemish, one offered in the morning, the other in the evening (Exodus 29.38 cf. Numbers 28)—730 ram lambs per year. Two additional ram lambs were sacrificed in the same fashion each Sabbath – so 104 more per year (Numbers 28.9ff). Finally, seven ram lambs were offered in the Temple to begin every month –84 more ram lambs a year (Numbers 28.11).
That’s a grand total of 926 required year-old ram lambs sacrificed on the altar in the Temple every year!
Ram lambs were a shepherd’s dilemma. Too many were a nuisance to the flock. You could sell them young for slaughter or keep them for a year and sell them into the sacrificial system (or use them for yourself). But that meant feeding otherwise useless rams for a year and having to go to the trouble of keeping them separated lest their fighting and butting create unwanted blemishes that would render them useless as sacrifices.
Reviewing this material reminded me again how much blood was constantly shed in this ancient culture. I only reviewed ram lambs that were “sons of a year”. There were younger ones sacrificed. There were also older rams, both goats and sheep, as well as calves and oxen and turtledoves and pigeons.
These sacrifices were constant and continual reminders of how difficult it is for us to come into His presence. We don’t have to bring lambs to church anymore so it is easy to forget the enormity of the price paid by one precious, flawless, “firstborn” son whose sacrifice was sufficient beyond all the animal sacrifices ever offered together to open the way for us to the Father.