Rather than serving as a means by which a perfectly holy and righteous God was enabled to tolerate and overlook the sins of his people, in biblical thought the sacrificial offerings and rites for sin and purification prescribed in the Torah or law had the purpose of bringing the people to put away the kind of sinful and destructive behavior that did them harm and renew their commitment to living in the way God had commanded for their own good. A careful examination of the sacrificial language and imagery that appears elsewhere in the biblical texts and the biblical prescriptions regarding purity and holiness reveals that these things responded to the same logic as well.
