"You shall make the altar of acacia wood, five cubits long and five cubits broad. The altar shall be square, and its height shall be three cubits. And you shall make horns for it on its four corners; its horns shall be of one piece with it, and you shall overlay it with bronze. You shall make pots for it to receive its ashes, and shovels and basins and forks and fire pans. You shall make all its utensils of bronze. You shall also make for it a grating, a network of bronze, and on the net you shall make four bronze rings at its four corners. And you shall set it under the ledge of the altar so that the net extends halfway down the altar. And you shall make poles for the altar, poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with bronze. And the poles shall be put through the rings, so that the poles are on the two sides of the altar when it is carried. You shall make it hollow, with boards. As it has been shown you on the mountain, so shall it be made.
Exodus 27:1-8
We come now to the description of the brazen altar. Brass, when used symbolically in Scripture, speaks of judgment, and the brazen altar here symbolises the Cross on which Jesus died when He bore away the sins of the world. The altar had horns at its four corners (2), and the sacrifice was bound with cords to the horns of the altar when it was offered to God. This altar stood as the first object an Israelite would see when he entered the outer court of the Tabernacle, as a constant reminder that approach to God is possible only through sacrifice. The instructions with regard to the offering of sacrifices on the altar may be seen in detail in Leviticus chapters 1-5, a cardinal and central point in which is the action of the offerer in placing his hand on the head of the animal offered in sacrifice, symbolising his identification with the sacrifice as well as the 'transfer' of his sin to the animal. There are thus two ideas involved. The animal becomes the substitute for the one who offers, and this bears witness, in symbol, to the truth that our acceptance with God depends on Another's life laid down in death. In the second place, the offerer identifies himself with the sacrifice, and in so doing proclaims, as it were, that it is his death that takes place, in his substitute and representative. He therefore dies to sin in the ritual that he fulfils, and this is its whole point. Paul describes this position exactly in the words, 'We thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that He died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him Who died for them and rose again' (2 Corinthians 5:14,15).