In his contribution to Sacrifice in Religious Experience, Tsvi Abusch observes that the center of Mesopotamian cult was not the killing or burning of an animal, nor the festive meal that often followed sacrifice.

The central event was feeding the god: “Food was placed before the god and consumed by him through that mysterious act that characterizes Babylonian religiosity. As A. Leo Oppenheim noted, ‘Looking at the sacrifice from the religious point of view, we find coming into focus another critical point in that circulatory system, the consumption of the sacrificial repast by the deity, the transubstantiation of the physical offerings into that source of strength and power the deity was thought to need for effective functioning. Exactly as, in the existence of the image, the critical point was its physical manufacture, so was the act of food in the sacrificial repast. It represents the central mysterium that provided the effective ratio essendi for the cult practice of the daily meals and all that it entailed in economic, social, and political respects.’ The act of killing the animal is almost hidden behind the construct of feeding the god, a construct which emerges out of a combination of the earlier offering and storage and the later image of feeding a divine king in his palace” (43).

Though Yahweh doesn’t depend on Israel’s sacrifices (Psalm 50), the same logic is evident in the terminology of Levitical sacrifice. The altar portions are Yahweh’s bread, the first that Yahweh lit on the altar is said to “eat” the sacrifice, Yahweh is given meat, grain products, and libations - a full-course luxury meal - every morning and evening.