📖 Biblical Definition
The bull is an adult male bovine — and in Levitical sacrifice, the costliest clean animal. The bull was offered as a sin offering for the high priest (Leviticus 4:3-12), for the congregation when the whole assembly sinned (4:13-21), in the priestly dedication ceremony (Exodus 29:1, 10-14), and in major covenant rites (Exodus 24:5). David offered bulls when the ark came to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:13). Solomon offered twenty-two thousand bulls at the temple dedication (1 Kings 8:63). Yet Hebrews makes the limit plain: "it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins" (Hebrews 10:4). Christ’s sacrifice does what the blood of bulls could only foreshadow.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
BULL, n.
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1. The male of any bovine animal, especially of the genus Bos. 2. Christ is metaphorically called “the bull of Bashan” in Ps. 22, where the term refers to fierce enemies surrounding Him.
📖 Key Scripture
Leviticus 4:3 — "Then let him bring for his sin... a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord for a sin offering."
Hebrews 9:13 — "If the blood of bulls and of goats... sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh."
Hebrews 10:4 — "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins."
Psalm 22:12 — "Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Hebrews 10:4 — the bull's blood was always a placeholder for the Lamb's.
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The Levitical sacrifice system used bulls in volume. Sin offerings, peace offerings, dedications, ordinations, covenants — all required blood, and the bull was the largest offering. Yet the writer of Hebrews makes the foundational point bluntly: it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins (Heb 10:4). The whole system was placeholder — a divinely-instituted shadow pointing to the substance to come.
Christ's sacrifice fulfills the type and ends the system. Hebrews 10:12 sums it: this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God. The bulls are still in the Levitical pages because the Spirit wanted us to understand the cost of sin in unmistakable bovine pounds — and to grasp that something costlier than ten thousand bulls was offered at Calvary.
🔗 Greek & Hebrew Roots
Hebrew par (H6499); Greek tauros (G5022).
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H6499 — par — young bull, bullock
H7794 — shor — ox, bull
G5022 — tauros — bull, ox
Usage
"The bull's blood was always placeholder for the Lamb's."
"The Levitical pages quantify sin in bovine pounds; Calvary outweighed all of them."
"After He had offered one sacrifice forever, He sat down — no priest in the Old Testament ever sat."