Leviticus 4:12

without the camp

Compare (Exodus 29:14); (Leviticus 16:27); (Numbers 19:3); (Hebrews 13:10).

The last passage is the interpretative one. The "camp" was Judaism - a religion of forms and ceremonies. "Jesus, also, that He might sanctify separate, or set apart for God] the people with or 'through' His own blood, suffered without the gate" temple gate, city gate, that is, Judaism civil and religious]; (Hebrews 13:12) but how does this sanctify, or set apart, a people? "Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp Judaism then, Judaized Christianity now-anything religious which denies Him as our sin-offering] bearing His reproach" (Hebrews 13:13). The sin-offering, "burned without the camp," typifies this aspect of the death of Christ. The cross becomes a new altar, in a new place, where, without the smallest merit in themselves, the redeemed gather to offer, as believer-priests, spiritual sacrifices. (Hebrews 13:15); (1 Peter 2:5). The bodies of the sin-offering beasts were not burned without the camp, as some have fancied, because "saturated with sin," and unfit for a holy camp. Rather, an unholy camp was an unfit place for a holy sin-offering. The dead body of our Lord was not "saturated with sin," though in it our sins had been borne (1 Peter 2:24).