Korban is the standard Hebrew word for an offering, and its root, karav, means to draw near, to come close. An offering is not first a payment; it is the thing you bring in order to come near. The English word sacrifice carries centuries of penal and transactional weight the Hebrew never asked for. The korban is about nearness to HaShem, about the worshiper approaching, not about an angry deity being bought off.

This matters at the table. When a first-century Jew reclining at the Pesach meal heard Yeshua say this, my flesh, he did not reach for metaphysics or ask how a substance changes. He looked at the lamb already roasted in front of him and he heard korban. The whole grammar of his world handed him the language of the altar and of drawing near, not the language of the philosophers.