[2] As the meal resulting from a slaughter offering was seen as holy, the guests were required to change their garments if possible; impurity would have excluded them from participation.
[2] Sometimes festive garments, which were seen as having sanctity, were borrowed for this purpose from the priests, and rings, having the significance of amulets, were worn in honour of the deity.
The offerer was permitted to invite guests to consume the meal with him, along with strangers, paupers, servants, and Levites, as long as they were all ritually clean.
Others claim that it is an attempt to balance the books when positive events occur, attributed to God, by favouring God with a meal, or by fulfilling a vow previously made, as appropriate to the situation; that rehabilitation is achieved and the people restored to perfection (make perfect being a possible meaning of shelamim).
[2] How exactly a portion of the resulting meat was given to God appears to have varied; though the regulations of the Priestly Code point to God's portion being burnt on the altar, Gideon is described in the Book of Judges, a text which textual scholars believe has a much earlier date than Leviticus,[4] as pouring out broth, made from the meat of the sacrifice, as a libation.