The classes of animal offering differ far less in how the beast dies than in what is done with the blood afterwards, and the purification offering has the most elaborate blood rite of the ordinary classes. For a private individual or a chieftain, the priest puts blood on the horns of the outer altar with his finger and pours the remainder at its base. For the anointed priest, or for the whole community, the rite moves inside: blood is sprinkled seven times before the veil of the sanctuary and placed on the horns of the incense altar, and only then is the remainder poured out at the base of the outer altar.
The disposal of the flesh follows the blood. Where the blood has entered the sanctuary the carcass is not eaten at all but carried outside the camp, to a clean place, and burned on a wood fire. Where it has not, the priests eat the flesh in a holy place, and Leviticus attaches a set of handling rules to it: whatever touches it becomes holy, a garment splashed with its blood is washed inside the sanctuary, an earthenware vessel it was boiled in is broken and a bronze one scoured and rinsed.
The graded scale of victims is the other structural feature. Leviticus 4 assigns a bull to the anointed priest and to the assembly, a male goat to a chieftain and a female goat or lamb to an ordinary person, and Leviticus 5 continues the descent to two turtledoves or young pigeons and then to a tenth of an ephah of fine flour. The flour offering is stripped of the oil and frankincense that a grain offering would ordinarily carry, so that even at the bottom of the scale the class keeps its own character.