2 PRIESTLY REPRESENTATION And when any will offer a meat [meal] offering unto the LORD, his offering shall be of fine flour; and he shall pour oil upon it, and put frankincense thereon: And he shall bring it to Aaron's sons the priests: and he shall take thereout his handful of the flour thereof, and of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof; and the priest shall burn the memorial of it upon the altar, to be an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD: And the remnant of the meat [meal] offering shall be Aaron's and his sons': it is a thing most holy of the offerings of the LORD made by fire (Lev. 2:1-3).
The theocentric principle governing the interpretation of this passage is that fallen man does not have direct access to God. He must have an ecclesiastical mediator: a priest. This priest represents God before man and man before God. In the New Covenant, the ultimate and final high priest is revealed: Jesus Christ, the messiah.(1)
This sacrifice was the second of the five Levitical sacrifices, and was associated with point two of the biblical covenant model: hierarchical authority. This sacrifice is called the allegiance gift by the rabbis.(2) As we shall see, it was uniquely associated with the doctrine of the covenant, for it was the hierarchical (hieros: Greek for priest) sacrifice.
Of the five Levitical sacrifices, this one had the least to do with economics. Yet in other contexts, the actual Hebrew word had much to do with economics. The Hebrew word translated as meat offering by the King James translators, minkhaw (Lev. 2:4-11), is the word for tribute offering. This is what Jacob gave to Esau when he passed through Esau's territory (Gen. 32:13, 18); it was the "present" that Ehud promised to deliver to the tyrant Eglon (Jud. 3:15); it was what the Moabites brought to David (II Sam. 8:2) and the Syrians brought to David (II Sam. 8:6). This tribute payment was used by those under another's authority to purchase the favor of those ruling over them.
The Priesthood Significantly, it was this minkhaw or tribute offering which was brought to a priest by a husband in cases where the husband accused his wife of adultery: the offering of jealousy (Num. 5:15). When the wife had falsely sworn that she was innocent, her eating of this offering would cause her thigh to rot and her belly to swell (v. 22). More than any other Mosaic priestly ritual, this one produced a predictable, immediate, judicially binding result: a physiologically revealed falsehood -- the closest thing to traditional magic in the Mosaic law. The priest could gain access to knowledge that was normally closed to judges. God responded immediately to this jealousy offering, intervening in history to identify a guilty wife, but only in cases of adultery: the supreme representative act of spiritual rebellion (Hosea 2). God's refusal to intervene visibly was legal evidence of the wife's innocence (Num. 5:28).
In Leviticus, the meal or tribute offering was closely associated with the priesthood, although common Israelites could bring this offering. This offering accompanied the inauguration of the Aaronic priesthood. The day Aaron was anointed, he and his sons had to offer a meal offering (Lev. 6:20). This had to be done with every anointing of a new priest, for it was a permanent statute (Lev. 6:22). At these Aaronic anointings, the meal offering could not be eaten; it had to be burned on the altar (Lev. 6:23). This fully consumed sacrifice represented the death of the priest for whom it was offered. As the administrator of the consuming fire of the altar, he had to be reminded that he, too, was under the threat of God's eternal fire.
The meal offering established the principle of priestly sacrifice at the time of each priest's anointing. When the authority of the priestly office was transferred to any male heir of Aaron, he and his sons had to offer this sacrifice. This sacrifice reminded them of their unique position of representation. They represented the nation before God. Those under them were at risk. The priests' moral conduct had to be exemplary because of their representative function. Also, their official conduct in offering the various sacrifices had to conform to the requirements of the covenant. Both moral purity and ritual precision were required of them, but the greater requirement was moral purity. One sign of this greater priestly responsibility was the law's requirement a priest's daughter who became a prostitute had to be burned alive (Lev. 21:9). This sanction did not apply to any other prostitute. The daughter of a priest represented her father's household; she was therefore under greater condemnation. Whoredom was representative (symbolic) of false worship: whoring after other gods.
When an Israelite brought a meal offering to the priest, the major part of this offering belonged to the priests: "And the remnant of the meat [meal] offering shall be Aaron's and his sons': it is a thing most holy of the offerings of the LORD made by fire" (Lev. 2:3). The priests burned a handful of the meal on the altar as their portion of the offering and then ate the remainder (Lev. 6:15-16). This had to be eaten in the court of the tabernacle of the congregation (v. 16). No females could participate in this common meal (v. 18). This is because priestly activities are uniquely representative of God, and God is exclusively male.
Leaven and Fire This offering could not include leaven (Lev. 2:4-5). The reason for this is that part of it had to go on the altar. Leaven was not allowed on the altar (Lev. 2:11). Unleavened bread was required during Passover (Ex. 12:15). Unleavened bread symbolized Israel's radical break with Egypt, the symbol of pagan religion and tyranny. It was not that unleavened meal represented righteousness as such; rather, it represented Israel's discontinuous break in history from evil. Unleaven represented historical discontinuity -- the transition from wrath to grace -- prior to the oath-bound establishment of a covenantal nation.
The meal offering served as the priests' acknowledgment of their subordination to God and their break with the religion of Egypt. Thus, "It shall not be baken with leaven. I have given it unto them for their portion of my offerings made by fire; it is most holy, as is the sin offering, and as the trespass offering" (Lev. 6:17). Leaven was not allowed on the altar, but not because it somehow represented evil as such. It represented a fully risen or completed product, as did honey, so it could not be burned on the altar. Leaven symbolized historical continuity. But men are still in history; their work is not yet completed. Thus, leaven was not symbolically proper on the fiery altar. Nevertheless, part of this offering had to be burned on the altar:
And thou shalt bring the meat [meal] offering that is made of these things unto the LORD: and when it is presented unto the priest, he shall bring it unto the altar. And the priest shall take from the meat offering a memorial thereof, and shall burn it upon the altar: it is an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD. And that which is left of the meat offering shall be Aaron's and his sons': it is a thing most holy of the offerings of the LORD made by fire (Lev. 2:8-10).
The fire on the altar was God's permanent, day-and-night testimony of His wrath. The animal and agricultural sacrifices placed on this fire produced a sweet savor for God (Lev. 1:9; 2:2; 3:5; 4:31). God delighted in the ritual burning of representative animals and meal. This symbolized (represented) God's delight in the eternal burning of His enemies, angelic and human (Rev. 20:14-15). This particular delight of God ought to be the terror of man. The smoke ascending day and night from God's altar was to serve as a reminder to man of what awaits covenant-breakers in eternity. This was God's testimony in history to the wrath that awaits covenant-breakers beyond history.
The Salt of the Covenant The meal offering, more than the other sacrifices, was the sacrifice of the covenant. It was the one sacrifice in which salt was specifically mentioned: "And every oblation of thy meat [meal] offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt" (Lev. 2:13). This phrase, the salt of the covenant, ties this sacrifice to the Bible's system of covenantal subordination.
Why salt? First, it is an agency of incorruption, keeping things from spoiling.(3) Second, salt imparts flavor. Third, and most important with respect to sacrifices, it is an agent of permanent destruction. It was used by armies to destroy permanently the fertility of their defeated enemies' land (Jud. 9:45). Salt is therefore associated with God's wrath in eternity: "And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt" (Mark 9:47-49).(4) It is also associated with God's covenantal wrath in history. God warned Israel at the time of the nation's act of covenant renewal, just before they entered the promised land, regarding Sodom's burning and Sodom's salt. Sodom had so thoroughly broken the terms of God's covenant that it was doomed to be salted over: final judgment.
So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it; And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath: Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt: For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them: And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book (Deut. 29:22-27; emphasis added).
The conclusion: "Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all that ye do" (Deut. 29:9).
The threat of God's covenant sanctions was not limited to the nation; it also included the individual. God warned what would happen to the covenant-breaking individual. Notice the language of smoke, which accompanies burning. "And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst: The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven. And the LORD shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law" (Deut. 29:19-21).
Firstfruits (Pentecost) The meal offering is associated in the text with the firstfruits offering, another meal offering (Lev. 2:12, 14). Firstfruits was a mandatory annual offering (Ex. 23:16, 19). This offering was a man's public acknowledgment that God must be paid "off the top." That is, the farmer owed God the best of his field and the first portion of his crop. He was not to pay God last; he was required to pay God first. Firstfruits was one rare case in the Bible where God taxed capital rather than the net increase. The farmer did not deduct the replacement seed before offering the firstfruits; whatever came up was God's. But it was a small offering -- a token offering.
The firstfruits payment was mandatory. This was his public acknowledgment of his subordination to God through the Aaronic priesthood. When the blessings of God's bounty appeared in his field, the owner was required to acknowledge the source of this bounty by bringing a meal offering to God.
According to rabbinic tradition, the tithe was paid on what remained after the firstfruits offerings and after gleaning had taken place.(5) This interpretation of the tithe is consistent with the idea that the tithe is paid only on that which is at the lawful disposal of the owner. We do not owe the church a tithe on that which has been lawfully appropriated by others. Counting all the required tithes (including the tithe of celebration: Deuteronomy 14:23), the sacrifices, and the gleaning laws, the rabbis estimated that about one-quarter of the agricultural productivity of the land would have been transferred to others, not including civil taxes.(6) Many of these offerings beyond the tithe did not burden non-agricultural occupations.(7) This is additional evidence that biblical law indirectly subsidized urban employment by penalizing farming. Contrary to Edersheim, who wrote that "the Law seems to regard Israel as intended to be only an agricultural people,"(8) the Mosaic law did a great deal to move Israelite families off the farm and into the city, as I explained in this book's Introduction.
Exodus 23:17 indicates that the public offering of the firstfruits, like the feast of ingathering (Tabernacles), was mandatory for all the men of Israel: "Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord GOD." Because the firstfruits offerings were explicitly agricultural, the products of other occupations were exempt. Still, in a predominantly agricultural society, the crowds entering Jerusalem would have been immense. Edersheim says that the later rabbinical estimate of the size of the original temple indicated that 210,000 people could worship there.(9) We ask ourselves: How did the priests handle the immense flow of individual sacrifices? Where did the people stay? How long did these round-trip journeys take? What expenses along the road did the travelers incur? This traveling expense would have been considerable, in contrast to the value of the firstfruits' representative grain offering.
These festivals were acts of covenant renewal. They were expensive and time-consuming. They would have required a great deal of patience, such as standing in long lines for many hours. God required the men of the nation to go through these ceremonies, despite the costs involved. Why? Because they were a nation of priests (Ex. 19:6).
Of all the festivals, firstfruits was the one least likely to have been attended by women. It was held fifty days after Passover (Lev. 23:15). Passover was a family celebration (Ex. 12). Women who had just walked home from the central location would have been tired of travelling with children. The men were required to attend; the women were not. Firstfruits would have tended to be a more male-oriented festival, analogous to the meal offering, which was exclusively masculine (Lev. 2:18).
Conclusion This sacrifice was an aspect of point two of the biblical covenant model. Bear in mind that Exodus is the second book in the Pentateuch. First, the phrase "salt of the covenant" (Lev. 2:13) parallels the Book of Exodus' identification as the book of the covenant (Ex. 24:7). Second, the prohibition of leaven points back to the exodus: the definitive break in Israelite history from bondage to false gods. All of Egypt's leaven had to be left behind. None could be brought into the Promised Land. This sharp break with the evil of Egypt was celebrated at the Passover meal, which also excluded leaven (Ex. 12:15). Third, the meal sacrifice was the second of the five sacrifices of Leviticus. Fourth, this sacrifice had to do with the priesthood: hierarchy.
The meal offering pointed to Israel as a nation under a covenant. It was under hierarchical authority, both civil and ecclesiastical. The meal offering more than the other four pointed to this hierarchical system of representation. The priests were required to make a meal offering at the time of their anointing. The common Israelite, when he had committed an unnamed infraction, brought a meal offering to the priest for sacrifice.
What was the nature of this transgression? We are not told, but we can deduce the answer. The transgression had no victim, or else the fifth sacrifice would have been appropriate: the trespass or reparation offering. It was not an unintentional sin, since the fourth sacrifice was not involved: the sin offering or purification offering. It was not a peace offering, which was voluntary and was not part of the atoning sacrifices. The whole burnt offering was associated with man's total submission to God. Thus, I conclude that the meal offering had something to do with a known infraction of a priestly law -- what we call today ceremonial law.
The Israelite was a member of a nation of priests. As a household priest, he was under rigorous requirements regarding washing, bodily discharges, bodily contact, and so forth. To maintain his purity, he had to follow certain rules. A violation of these priestly rules brought him under the threat of sanctions. The meal offerings pointed to his position as a subordinate officer in a national priesthood.
For a man outside the temple's priesthood, the cost of bringing this sacrifice to Jerusalem was far greater than the value of the food sacrificed. This was true of all of the national festivals. These transportation and participation costs testified to God's sovereignty over Israel. They also imposed special economic burdens on agricultural production. This is evidence that God intended the Israelites to be urban people, with most farms in the land being managed in the name of original owners by specialists. The management of agriculture would have been representative, much as modern agriculture is.
The meal offering was priestly. It was associated with Israel's status as priest of the nations. The common Israelite was held responsible by God for honoring the priestly laws of separation from the nations. This sacrifice probably atoned for violations of the laws of separation.
Summary The second sacrifice, the meal offering, was hierarchical: having to do with priests (hieros: Greek for priest).
The meal offering was a tribute offering, implying hierarchy.
The meal offering had to accompany the anointing of priests.
Women could not participate in this meal: a mark of its uniquely priestly character.
Leaven could not be burned on the altar; hence, this offering contained no leaven.
The salt of the covenant had to accompany this offering: the symbol of God's destruction of His enemies.
Representation is hierarchical in church and State.
The meal offering was associated with firstfruits.
The firstfruits offering was a mandatory national rite held annually near the tabernacle-temple: Pentecost.
These mandatory festivals were acts of covenant renewal.
Paying firstfruits was a mark of covenantal subordination.
The meal offering was probably required of a man who had committed an infraction in his office as a household priest.
Footnotes:
1. The Epistle to the Hebrews is the central book for the development of the New Covenant priesthood.
2. See the comments of S. R. Hirsch, the mid-nineteenth-century founder of what is today called Orthodox Judaism. He refers to this sacrifice as "a gift by which the giver recognises the receiver as the arbiter of his fate, and by the gift acknowledges and expresses his dependence on, and bondage and subjection to, the receiver of the gift." Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Pentateuch, 5 vols. (Gateshead, London: Judaica Press, [1962] 1989), III:1, p. 51.
3. Alfred Edersheim, The Temple: Its Ministry and Services As They Were in the Time of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, [1874] 1983), p. 109.
4. For a discussion of this passage in the light of the New Testament's doctrine of eternal punishment, and the background of the Old Testament's sacrifices, see Gary North, "Publisher's Epilogue," in David Chilton, The Great Tribulation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987), pp. 171-95.
5. Edersheim, Temple, p. 379.
6. Idem. The rabbis assumed that the third-year and sixth-year festival tithes of Deuteronomy 14:26-29 were additional tithes.
7. Idem.
8. Idem.
9. Ibid., p. 138.
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