And thou shalt say unto them, This is the offering made by fire which ye shall offer unto the LORD; two lambs of the first year without spot day by day, for a continual burnt offering.
This is the offering ... two lambs without spot, day by day. Dr. Colenso cites this chapter as a proof of the continuous observance of the Mosaic ritual during the protracted sojourn in the wilderness, and then founds upon this alleged fact one of his strongest arguments for the unhistorical character of the Pentateuch, from the impossibility both of obtaining an adequate supply of victims and of three priests discharging all the requirements of so elaborate a service.
All unprejudiced readers will deduce, from the renewal of instructions which had been given forty years before, a different conclusion-namely, that the need of such minute details, and such injunctions as to care and regularity in observing the appointed institutions of religion, affords irresistible evidence that the whole sacrificial ritual had been suspended. In particular, offerings on the altar, and the observance of the stated solemnities, had been allowed so long to fall into desuetude that fresh directions had to be issued respecting both their nature and their obligation; and since these directions embraced such matters of prominence as the morning and the evening sacrifice, the continual burnt offering, and the Passover, the conviction is painfully forced upon us, that at the end of the thirty-eight years' wanderings the religious education of the Israelites had to be begun anew.