Leviticus 7:7,8 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

As is the sin-offering, so is the trespass-offering In the matter following, for in other things they differed. The priests shall have it That part of it which was by God allowed to the priest. The priest shall have to himself the skin The note of Bishop Patrick is worth transcribing here: “All the flesh of the burnt-offerings being wholly consumed, as well as the fat upon the altar, there was nothing that could fall to the share of the priest but the skin, which is here given him for his pains. It was observed upon Genesis 3:21, that it is probable Adam himself offered the first sacrifice, and had the skin given him by God, to make the garments for him and his wife. In conformity to which the priests ever after had the skin of the whole burnt-offerings for their portion; which was a custom among the Gentiles, (as well as the Jews,) who gave the skins of their sacrifices to their priests, when they were not burned with the sacrifices, as in some sin-offerings they were among the Jews, see Leviticus 4:11; and they employed them to a superstitious use, by lying upon them in their temples, in hopes to have future things revealed to them in their dreams. Of this we have a proof in Virgil's seventh Æneid, line 86. See Dryden's translation, 7:127.”