Leviticus refers to a practice that pertains to the flaying of the bullock for the burnt offerings: “He shall kill the bullock before the Lord. . . . And he shall flay the burnt offering” (Lev. 1:5–6). This task of flaying required much work, and the Levites sometimes assisted the priests: “The priests were too few, so that they could not flay all the burnt offerings: wherefore their brethren the Levites did help them, till the work was ended” (2 Chr. 29:34; see also 35:11). To flay here apparently means to skin the animal. After killing the sacrificial victim, the offerer or member of the priesthood would skin the animal. The Hebrew word psht, which the King James translators translated as “to flay,” usually means “to strip off clothing” or “to strip naked” (see Gen. 37:23; 1 Sam. 19:24; Job 22:6; Ezek. 16:39; 26:16; 44:19; Hosea 2:3).
Perhaps flayed sacrificial victims were symbols of Jesus Christ. Jesus was unceremoniously stripped of clothing—His garments and “coat”—before His Crucifixion (John 19:23–24). President Spencer W. Kimball wrote, “How he must have suffered when [the soldiers] violated his privacy by stripping off his clothes and then putting on him the scarlet robe!”111
The flaying of the sacrificial victims may have also looked forward to the scourging of Jesus, when He was stripped of parts of His skin. During His trial, when He appeared before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, He was scourged before His Crucifixion (see Matt. 27:26). Perhaps Peter referred to this scourging when he wrote that Jesus “[bore] our sins in his own body” (1 Pet. 2:24). The Lord through Isaiah had prophesied of the scourging more than seven centuries earlier with these words, “I gave my back to the smiters” (Isa. 50:6).