The Offering Language of Daniel 9:27: Why Sacrifice and Offering

16 min read

Chapter 5 rests on a single choice of words. In 9:27 the prince stops "sacrifice and offering", not the burnt offering, the sin offering, or "the continual". This appendix lays that foundation bare. The whole Hebrew Bible has been counted: the Westminster Leningrad Codex, 23,213 verses, searched by lemma. Three questions are addressed: how Scripture names the sacrificial service as a whole, where the pair zevach u-minchah occurs elsewhere, and why the book of Samuel in particular chooses it. The counts are mechanical and can be checked. Where the text stops and interpretation begins, that is said.

1. How Scripture names the whole sacrificial service

To name the whole cult in one breath, Hebrew has a fixed formula: olah u-zevach, "burnt offering and sacrifice". The burnt offering goes wholly to God; the sacrifice is shared in a meal; together they make the whole. The formula occurs in 43 verses, from Exodus 10:25 and 18:12, through Deuteronomy 12 and Joshua 22, to Isaiah 1:11 and 56:7, Jeremiah 7:21-22, Hosea 6:6 and Psalm 51:16-19. Samuel uses it himself, at the decisive moment: "Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD?" (1 Samuel 15:22; so too 6:15; 10:8).

The other pairs each have their own task:

Pair	Verses together	Directly adjacent	Function
zevach + shelamim	51	51	the fixed compound "peace sacrifice"
chatat + olah	47	22	ritual law: sin offering and burnt offering together
olah + zevach	43	31	the whole cult
olah + minchah	43	39	the regular daily and festal service
minchah + nesekh	36	32	the accompanying gifts; the daily rhythm
olah + tamid	26	25	"the continual burnt offering"
zevach + minchah	15	10	see §3

There are four further ways in which the whole service is named:

Legal summaries, complete: Leviticus 7:37-38 (burnt offering, grain offering, sin offering, guilt offering, ordination offering, peace sacrifice); Numbers 29:39 for the feasts; Deuteronomy 12:6, 11 and 17 for the central place.
Formulas for the daily service: "the morning burnt offering and the evening grain offering" (2 Kings 16:15); "grain offering and drink offering" (Joel 1:9, 13; 2:14); and the minchah as a clock: the hour when the grain offering was presented (1 Kings 18:29, 36; 2 Kings 3:20), the evening offering of Ezra (9:4-5), of the psalmist (Psalm 141:2) and of Daniel (9:21).
Formulas of cessation: "grain offering and drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD" (Joel 1:9); "I will make all her feasts, new moons and sabbaths cease" (Hosea 2:11); "many days without king, without prince, without sacrifice" (Hosea 3:4); and in Daniel himself three times ha-tamid, "the continual" (8:11-13; 11:31; 12:11).
Prophetic critique and end-time lists: Isaiah 1:11-13; Amos 5:21-25; Micah 6:6-7; Psalm 50; and Isaiah 56:7; 60:7; Jeremiah 17:26; 33:18; Ezekiel 45:17; Malachi 3:3-4.

Conclusion. For the whole, Scripture says olah u-zevach. For the stopping of the daily service it says tamid or minchah va-nesekh. Daniel 9:27 says neither.

2. The words and their fields

Term	Verses	With kipper in the same verse	Primary field
chatat (sin offering)*	270	38	the atoning offering par excellence
asham (guilt offering)	41	7	reparation, atonement
olah (burnt offering)	262	17	complete surrender, also atoning (Leviticus 1:4)
minchah (gift, grain offering)	194	9	tribute; in the cult the grain offering
zevach (sacrifice)	153	4	the offering that is eaten

*Chatat also means "sin"; the figure for the offering is therefore too high.

Zevach is never a means of atonement anywhere in the Torah. Of the four verses where it stands beside kipper, three are comparisons ("as the fat of the peace sacrifice", Leviticus 4:26, 31, 35). The fourth is 1 Samuel 3:14, and there atonement is precisely denied (§4). Zevach is the Passover (Exodus 12:27), the peace offering, the thanksgiving offering (Psalm 50:14, 23) and the covenant meal. Jacob and Laban eat a zevach on the mountain after their treaty (Genesis 31:54). At Sinai peace sacrifices are offered (Exodus 24:5). And God summons "those who made My covenant by sacrifice" (Psalm 50:5). It is also the meal of family, town and clan (1 Samuel 1:21; 9:12-13; 20:6, 29), and the meal of idols (Exodus 34:15; Numbers 25:2; Deuteronomy 32:17).

Minchah has three layers:

Tribute to a superior.
- Jacob to Esau (Genesis 32:13-21; 33:10), and the brothers to Joseph (43:11-26).
- Israel to Eglon (Judges 3:15-18).
- Under the kings: for Saul, who does not receive it (1 Samuel 10:27), and for David, from Moab and Aram, his "tribute-bearers" (2 Samuel 8:2, 6). Further, Solomon (1 Kings 4:21; 10:25), Hoshea to Assyria (2 Kings 17:3-4; Hosea 10:6), Psalm 45:12 and 72:10.
- The Septuagint renders tribute to kings with δῶρα (1 Samuel 10:27) and ξένια (2 Samuel 8:2).
A gift to God in general: Cain and Abel both bring a minchah, fruit and flock (Genesis 4:3-5); "the minchah of the LORD" (1 Samuel 2:17).
The technical grain offering of Leviticus 2 and 6.

The field of honour. Where zevach or minchah stand with kaved/kavod (to honour, glory), the subject is homage:

"you honour your sons above Me" (1 Samuel 2:29);
"you have not honoured Me with your sacrifices" (Isaiah 43:23);
"whoever offers thanksgiving honours Me" (Psalm 50:23);
"ascribe to the LORD the glory of His name, bring a minchah" (Psalm 96:8; 1 Chronicles 16:29);
the tribute to Jehoshaphat, "riches and honour" (2 Chronicles 17:5).

Covenant and sacrifice in one verse occur five times: Exodus 34:15, 2 Kings 17:35, 1 Chronicles 15:26, Psalm 50:5 and Daniel 9:27. In three of the four places outside Daniel the sacrifice is the sign of to whom one is bound:

a covenant with the inhabitants of the land leads to eating of their sacrifice (Exodus 34:15);
the LORD's covenant forbids sacrificing to other gods (2 Kings 17:35);
the covenant is made by sacrifice (Psalm 50:5).

3. The pair zevach u-minchah, passage by passage

As a fixed pair, side by side and without other offering terms, it occurs six times in the Hebrew Bible. In nine other verses both words stand in a longer list (Leviticus 7:37; 23:37; Numbers 6:17; Joshua 22:23, 29; 2 Kings 16:15; Isaiah 43:23; Jeremiah 17:26; 33:18).

1 Samuel 2:29. "Why do you kick at My sacrifice and My offering, which I commanded [...] and honour your sons above Me, fattening yourselves on the choicest of every offering of Israel, My people?" A priestly house that dishonours God.

1 Samuel 3:14. "Therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever." The verdict, in the same two words.

Isaiah 19:21. "The LORD will make Himself known to Egypt [...] and they will serve with sacrifice and offering, and make vows and pay them." The context is a change of lordship. Egypt cries to the LORD, He sends a saviour (19:20), and at the end it is called "Egypt My people" (19:25). The verb avad, "to serve", is also the verb of the vassal.

Amos 5:25. "Did you bring Me sacrifices and offering in the wilderness, forty years, O house of Israel?" The next verse gives the answer: "you carried Sikkuth your king, and Kiyyun your images" (5:26). The question is to whom the gifts really went. Stephen quotes it in his speech about the temple (Acts 7:42-43).

Psalm 40:6-8. "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire [...] burnt offering and sin offering You did not require. Then I said: Behold, I come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart." Note the structure. The psalm uses two pairs: zevach and minchah, the gifts, and olah and chata'ah, the surrender and the atonement. Together they cover the whole, but they are deliberately kept apart. What takes the place of the first pair is the obedient ear: loyalty instead of gifts. Leviticus confirms this division: "to atone" (kipper) stands in chapters 1-4 with the burnt offering (1:4) and the sin offering (4:20, 26, 31, 35), not with the grain offering (chapter 2) or the peace offering (chapter 3). Two qualifications. The burnt offering too can be a freewill gift (Leviticus 22:18; Numbers 15:3), and "a pleasing aroma to the Lord" applies to all four (1:9; 2:2; 3:5; 4:31): the line runs between gift and atonement, not between voluntary and obligatory. And outside Leviticus the domains overlap: 1 Samuel 3:14 sets the pair beside "to atone," and Ezekiel 45:15, 17 counts grain offering and peace offering among what "makes atonement."

Daniel 9:27. "And in the half of the week he shall cause sacrifice and offering to cease."

The picture across five passages. A faithless priestly house. A land that changes lords. A people that divides its loyalty. A Servant who brings obedience instead of gifts. Each time the pair stands where loyalty is at stake, and nowhere is it the means of atonement. (Interpretation, built on the five texts.)

4. Why Samuel in particular?

Samuel chooses deliberately here. When this book means the whole service, it writes "burnt offerings and sacrifices" (15:22). In 2:29 and 3:14 it chooses something else. Five threads come together.

4.1 The story calls for these two words. 1 Samuel 2:12-17 describes the sin precisely:

"Whenever anyone offered a sacrifice": the priest's servant thrust the fork into the pot (2:13-14).
"Even before the fat was burned": he demanded raw meat (2:15-16). God's portion was seized before it reached God.
"The sin of the young men was very great before the LORD, for they despised the offering of the LORD" (2:17).

Zevach here is the people's meal, minchah the general word for what is due to God. The accusation (2:29) names exactly these two, and the verdict (3:14) repeats them. It is measure for measure: that with which they sinned is that by which they cannot be atoned.

4.2 "Kicking" is apostasy language from the Song of Moses. The verb ba'at occurs only twice in the entire Hebrew Bible: in 1 Samuel 2:29 and in Deuteronomy 32:15.

Deuteronomy 32:15: "Jeshurun grew fat and kicked [...] he forsook God who made him." Two verses later: "they sacrificed to demons, not to God" (32:17).
1 Samuel 2:29: "why do you kick at My sacrifice [...] fattening yourselves."

Growing fat, kicking, and sacrifices gone astray: the three marks appear in both places. The Song of Moses is the witness song against covenant breach (Deuteronomy 31:19-21). Samuel thus portrays the sin of Eli's house as covenant faithlessness, not as a ritual slip. (The word facts are hard; that Samuel deliberately alludes to the Song is interpretation.)

4.3 In Samuel this pair is the language of loyalty.

Zevach in Samuel is almost always the meal that seals a bond: of the family (1:21; 2:19), of the town (9:12-13), of the kingship (10:8; 11:15: "there they made Saul king [...] and offered peace sacrifices"), of David's anointing (16:2-5) and of the clan (20:6, 29).
The usurper holds a zevach. Absalom "offered the sacrifices" while the conspiracy grew strong (2 Samuel 15:12), and Adonijah did the same when he reached for the crown (1 Kings 1:9, 19, 25). Whoever wants to bind loyalty holds a zevach.
Minchah in Samuel is the tribute that proves loyalty. It was withheld from Saul: "they despised him and brought him no minchah" (10:27). It was paid to David, by Moab and Aram as "tribute-bearers" (2 Samuel 8:2, 6).
The whole book turns on the question which house will stand: the house of Eli or "a faithful priest [...] a sure house" (2:35), Saul or David, David or Absalom.

4.4 Kipper in Samuel: satisfaction to an offended party.

The verb occurs twice in Samuel. Besides 3:14 it stands in 2 Samuel 21:3, where David asks the Gibeonites: "with what shall I make atonement?" That is satisfaction to an injured party, not a rite. The Septuagint uses the same verb in both places, ἐξιλάσκομαι.
The register matches Genesis 32:20, where Jacob seeks to "appease" Esau (achapperah panav) with a minchah: winning over an offended superior with a gift. In Samuel itself David says to Saul: "if it is the LORD who has stirred you up against me, may He accept an offering" (1 Samuel 26:19).
1 Samuel 3:14 then says: an offended Lord will no longer be won over by this house with the gifts it has itself dishonoured. The preceding verses say the same in legal terms: "if someone sins against the LORD, who will intercede for him?" (2:25); "those who honour Me I will honour, and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed" (2:30).

4.5 The verse denies atonement. However 4.4 is weighed, 3:14 says that zevach and minchah do not atone here. The customary reading is: by no offering at all, as with sin "with a high hand", for which the law knows no offering. Numbers 15:30-31 says: "he has despised the word of the LORD"; compare 1 Samuel 2:30, "those who despise Me". On that reading the pair names the whole, but precisely in order to deny its atoning power. On the loyalty reading it names the gifts of honour. On neither reading is the pair a term of atonement.

5. The Greek witnesses, and what tells against this reading

LXX 1 Samuel 2:29 and 3:14 do not have "sacrifice and offering" but θυμίαμα καὶ θυσία, "incense and sacrifice". That points to a different Hebrew source text, or to harmonisation with the incense of 2:28. For the Greek translator, then, the pair was a general designation of the cult. (Still to be checked against the Samuel scrolls from Qumran.)
Theodotion, Daniel 9:27: ἀρθήσεταί μου θυσία καὶ σπονδή, "My sacrifice and drink offering shall be taken away". That is literally the pair with which the Septuagint renders minchah va-nesekh in Joel 1:9, 13 and 2:14, the daily offering "cut off from the house of the LORD". Theodotion therefore read 9:27 as the stopping of the daily service, the same thing as the tamid of 8:11, 11:31 and 12:11.
LXX Psalm 39:7 (Eng. Psalm 40:6): θυσίαν καὶ προσφορὰν οὐκ ἠθέλησας, σῶμα δὲ κατηρτίσω μοι. Hebrews 10:5-10 quotes this text, names all four kinds of offering (10:8) and concludes: "He takes away the first in order to establish the second" (10:9).
Hebrews 10 and the gift of the body. Hebrews sets the body over against the first pair (10:5) and calls it "the prosphora of the body" (10:10; cf. 10:14, 18), with the word that renders the grain offering in Psalm 39:7 (Greek; Eng. 40:6). In 10:11-12 the word is θυσία: the priests offer "the same thysiai again and again," Christ offered "one thysia for sins." Θυσία renders zevach in Psalm 39:7, and in Leviticus mostly both zevach and minchah; the peace offering is θυσία σωτηρίου there, and προσφορά does not occur in Leviticus. In 10:12 the gift word and "for sins" meet: for Hebrews the voluntary gift of Christ is itself the atonement. The words of atonement (ὁλοκαυτώματα, περὶ ἁμαρτίας) appear in Hebrews 10 only in the quotation, never as a name for what Christ did. Romans 12:1 uses θυσία for the body of believers ("a living sacrifice"); Ephesians 5:2 calls Christ's self-giving "prosphora and thysia to God, a fragrant aroma": the pair of the psalm, with the aroma formula of Leviticus.
Daniel and Hebrews in Greek. Daniel 9:27 has θυσία καὶ σπονδή in both Greek translations; Hebrews has θυσία καὶ προσφορά. Only the first word is shared, and Hebrews nowhere quotes Daniel 9. The link between Psalm 40 and Daniel 9:27 exists in Hebrew, not in the Greek that Hebrews reads.

What tells against this, and what does not.

The Greek translators read the pair as a general term for the cult. That is interpretation from later centuries, not Hebrew usage. It does, however, make clear that "the whole cult" and "the cult as an act of loyalty" do not exclude each other. The pair can name the whole daily service, seen as homage. That is why this book says that 9:27 and the tamid texts describe the same act: 9:27 names it by its meaning (chapters 8 and 9).
The only biblical bridge to a Messianic reading of the cessation is Psalm 40 in Hebrews 10. That bridge is real, and it must be weighed. But in the psalm the pair is precisely what God did not want, and the Letter speaks of a legal act ("He takes away the first"), not of a hand that stops a service. The verb in Daniel is not changed by it (§6). For M2030, Hebrews 10:12 remains the strongest word: there the zevach word is called "for sins." That touches the meaning of the cross, which this book places at 9:26, not the verb or the timing of 9:27.
Offerings after the cross. Ezekiel 40-48 sees burnt offering, grain offering and peace offering again (43:27; 45:17), and calls them offerings "to make atonement" (43:20, 26; 45:15, 17, 20). That does not clash with Hebrews 10:18 ("there is no longer any offering for sin"), as long as kipper is read ritually here: animal blood sanctified, even before the cross, only "for the purification of the flesh" (Hebrews 9:13). The restored offering M2030 expects for 2027 (Jeremiah 33:18) carries the same burden.

6. The verb: yashbit

The form in 9:27 is the hiphil of shavat. That hiphil occurs 40 times in the Hebrew Bible, and everywhere it means: to make cease, to put a stop to, to remove. The leaven from the houses (Exodus 12:15), the wild beasts from the land (Leviticus 26:6; Ezekiel 34:25), wars to the end of the earth (Psalm 46:9), the feasts and sabbaths of a faithless people (Hosea 2:11), the idolatrous priests (2 Kings 23:5), the proverb (Ezekiel 12:23), the enemy (Psalm 8:2). The rest of the seventh day is the simple stem (Genesis 2:2), not the hiphil. The closest to "rest" is Exodus 5:5, where Pharaoh complains: "you make them rest from their burdens". There too the work simply stops.

The reading "to bring to completion" therefore has no support in the lexicon. By this book's own test (Appendix E, test 1) the Janus of 27d falls away. The blueprint-and-execution model loses nothing by this. It gains a cleaner foundation:

The legal week of the Lamb rests on 9:26. There stands yikareth: the Anointed One is cut off, with the word by which a covenant is cut. Hebrews 9:16-17 says: a testament takes effect at death. And Hebrews 10:9: "He takes away the first."
The week of the adversary rests on 9:27: the covenant with the many, the actual stopping, the abomination.

Two levels, two verses.

An echo, not a proof: the only hiphil of shavat with a person as object in a redemptive setting is Ruth 4:14. There the women say: "Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without a redeemer" (lo hishbit lach go'el). With the Goel, the LORD does not make cease.

7. What this means for Daniel 9:27

Firm (text and count carry it):

Zevach u-minchah is not a term of atonement. Zevach never atones in the Torah. The specific atoning offerings, chatat and asham, and the burnt offering, olah, are not named in 9:27.
The formula for the whole cult is olah u-zevach. The formula for the stopping of the daily service is tamid or minchah va-nesekh. Daniel 9:27 chooses neither.
In all five other passages the fixed pair stands where loyalty, honour or the question of belonging is at stake.
Yashbit means an actual stopping in all 40 hiphil forms.

Defensible (a convergence of texts, not compulsion):

In one verse with higbir berit, the pair forms a covenant picture: the prince makes a covenant strong and stops the offerings by which Israel professes loyalty to its Lord. The Torah already knew the danger (Exodus 34:15).
Daniel 11:36-39 works this out. The king "honours a god of fortresses [...] with gold and silver and precious stones" and "makes them rule over the many": honour and tribute, bent towards another, in the register of honour of 1 Samuel 2:29-30.
In Samuel and Kings the usurper holds a zevach to bind loyalty to himself: Absalom and Adonijah.
The only other minchah in Daniel's Hebrew is that of 9:21, the hour of the evening offering. The offering towards which Daniel directs his prayer is stopped in 9:27.

Not tenable:

That the Messiah as subject would fit the pair "at no level". Hebrews 10, through Psalm 40, does make a connection. What is tenable: there the pair is precisely what God did not want.
That the pair is the standard abbreviation for the whole cult. That is olah u-zevach.

8. Open questions

LXX Samuel: does θυμίαμα καὶ θυσία in 2:29 and 3:14 go back to a different Hebrew text? To be checked against 4QSam^a and the critical apparatus.
Qumran and the Mishnah: how do the Temple Scroll, the Damascus Document and the tractates Tamid and Zevachim name the complete service?
Hosea 3:4-5: "without king, without prince, without sacrifice", followed by the return "in the latter days". King, prince (sar) and zevach stand together here as signs of loyalty, in an end-time sequence. That deserves its own treatment alongside Daniel 9:26-27.

Mechanical lists

Olah + zevach in one verse (43): Exodus 10:25; 18:12; 24:5 · Leviticus 4:10; 7:37; 17:8; 23:37 · Numbers 10:10; 15:3, 5, 8 · Deuteronomy 12:6, 11, 27 · Joshua 22:23, 26-29 · 1 Samuel 6:15; 10:8; 15:22 · 2 Kings 5:17; 10:24; 16:15 · 1 Chronicles 29:21 · 2 Chronicles 7:1; 29:31 · Psalm 40:7 (Eng. 40:6); 50:8; 51:18, 21 (Eng. 51:16, 19) · Isaiah 1:11; 43:23; 56:7 · Jeremiah 6:20; 7:21, 22; 17:26; 33:18 · Ezekiel 40:42; 44:11 · Hosea 6:6.
Zevach + minchah in one verse (15): as a fixed pair 1 Samuel 2:29; 3:14; Isaiah 19:21; Amos 5:25; Psalm 40:7 (Eng. 40:6); Daniel 9:27; in a list Leviticus 7:37; 23:37; Numbers 6:17; Joshua 22:23, 29; 2 Kings 16:15; Isaiah 43:23; Jeremiah 17:26; 33:18.
Minchah + kipper (9): Genesis 32:21 (Eng. 32:20) · Leviticus 5:13; 14:20, 21, 31 · 1 Samuel 3:14 · Nehemiah 10:34 (Eng. 10:33) · Ezekiel 45:15, 17.
Kipper in Leviticus 1-4: 1:4 (burnt offering) · 4:20, 26, 31, 35 (sin offering); not in chapter 2 (grain offering) or 3 (peace offering).
Covenant + zevach (5): Exodus 34:15 · 2 Kings 17:35 · 1 Chronicles 15:26 · Psalm 50:5 · Daniel 9:27.
Kaved/kavod + zevach/minchah (6): 1 Samuel 2:29 · Isaiah 43:23 · Psalm 50:23; 96:8 · 1 Chronicles 16:29 · 2 Chronicles 17:5.
Ba'at (2): Deuteronomy 32:15 · 1 Samuel 2:29.
Hiphil of shavat (40): not a single form means "to bring to completion".

Sources and accountability. Hebrew text: Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible, morphologically tagged), searched in full by lemma; counts per verse, with "directly adjacent" meaning at most two words apart. Greek text: Septuagint and Theodotion (Swete, via First1KGreek); New Testament: SBLGNT. See chapter 5 (the offering language in the main text), chapters 8 and 9 (tamid and 9:27 as one act), Appendix A (27d), Appendix E (the withdrawn Janus of 27d) and Appendix F (glossary).