The instructions are very detailed regarding the vestments for Aaron and his sons (Exodus 28:1-43). The details of how they are to be ordained are again quite specific (29:1-25). We often think that the finer points of worship are up to our individual preferences: but the suggestion here is that these details are set the way they are because the Lord likes it that way.

When we get to the book of Leviticus, we will see how God gave directions for particular offerings to be made to atone for particular sins; but a different kind of instruction is given here. There is to be a morning and evening sacrifice: “two lambs a year old regularly each day” (29:38), one at dawn and one at twilight. Each will be accompanied by a cereal offering and a drink offering: “one-tenth of a measure of choice flour mixed with one-fourth of a hin of beaten oil and one-fourth of a hin of wine for a drink offering” (29:40).

What is the purpose of this offering? Not, apparently, because of any human preference: these are simply “a pleasing odor, an offering by fire to the Lord” (29:42). It seems that God enjoys the aroma of these offerings. This may look odd or even unseemly to our way of thinking: we might suppose that surely the Lord of the universe has better things to do than to worry about the aroma of a sacrificial offering! Indeed later generations of philosophers and theologians would develop the doctrine of the impassibility of God, which proposes that God does not feel any feelings at all, and certainly not such anthropomorphic emotions as enjoying a certain aroma.

But here and elsewhere, the scripture speaks to us in terms of God’s pleasure: an indication of a particular emotional response. All of it obviously is expressed in human terminology – we only have human language available to describe things, after all – but it seems to me that it would be a mistake to look at anthropomorphic language and thereby dismiss this as an anthropomorphic idea. Instead, we need to let a text like this point us toward the reality that God really does feel love, disappointment, and indeed pleasure toward us, at various times.

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It is an astonishing thing, O Lord, to think that you would find our actions pleasing: especially when so much of what we do is self-centered, or petty, or inconsequential. Yet we pray that you would grant us hearts that are ready to do your will, just so that we can bring you joy.