the sacrificial system functioned as a way of enacting and institutionalizing one aspect of the worldview which we have already studied: the belief that Israel’s covenant god would restore the fortunes of his people, creating them as his true redeemed humanity; and that what he would thus do for the nation as a whole he would also do for individuals within the nation. Of course, as so many writers have pointed out recently, this was not effected automatically.127 It was held to depend, at least in part, on the attitude of the individual: one had to repent.
