What Does Leviticus 22:25 Mean?

(25) **Neither from a stranger’s hand shall ye offer.**—That is, the prohibition to sacrifice these animals is not restricted to beasts castrated in the land, but extends to all such as have been so treated out of the land, and are imported and sold to the Israelites by the hands of foreigners. **Because their corruption is in them.**—That is, their mutilation is in them, though not effected by an Israelite nor in the land. The circumstance that such an animal is purchased from the hand of a foreigner does not alter the case. **They shall not be accepted for you.**—That is, if the Israelites bring such mutilated sacrifices, thinking that, because they have been procured from a stranger’s hand, they do not transgress the law laid down in the preceding verse, they will not be accepted by God, who regards them as blemished and illegal. Jewish canonists, however, regard this verse as regulating the sacrifices offered by Gentiles, and maintain that the same law about defective animals is here laid down in their case. But the manifest contrast between the expression, when the deed is done “in your land,” at the end of the preceding verse, and the words “from the hand of a foreigner,” at the beginning of this verse; and more especially the declaration in the clause before us, “they shall not be acceptable for you,” *i.e., *the Israelites, show beyond doubt that the Israelites themselves are here spoken of as the offerers.