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THE FIRSTFRUITS OFFERING: A TOKEN PAYMENT And it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possessest it, and dwellest therein; That thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, which thou shalt bring of thy land that the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shalt put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to place his name there. And thou shalt go unto the priest that shall be in those days, and say unto him, I profess this day unto the LORD thy God, that I am come unto the country which the LORD sware unto our fathers for to give us (Deut. 26:1-3).
The theocentric focus of this law is God's deliverance of Israel. First, He had delivered them out of Egypt (v. 8). Second, He had delivered the land of Canaan into their hand (v. 9). So, the Israelite was to say, "And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land, which thou, O LORD, hast given me. And thou shalt set it before the LORD thy God, and worship before the LORD thy God" (v. 10). This was cause of celebration: "And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the LORD thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you" (v. 11). God had sworn that He would deliver Canaan into their hand (v. 3). Because He had fulfilled this promise of inheritance, each Israelite owed Him a firstfruits offering.
This offering had to be brought to Jerusalem once each year (Ex. 23:16). This was the feast of Weeks or Pentecost (Deut. 16:9-10). The men of Israel owed God a trip to the central city and a token payment of the forthcoming harvest. The cost of the trip was far more than the market value of the token payment. Clearly, this law was a land law. It had to do with the conquest of Canaan.
A Liturgy of Thanksgiving The Israelites had to suffer economic losses in order to demonstrate their thankfulness toward God. This passage makes it clear that this thankfulness looked back to the exodus and the conquest. In some sense, a token payment looked forward to the full harvest, but the text indicates that this was thankfulness for God's positive corporate sanctions in the past. The Passover had to do with God's deliverance. So did Firstfruits (Weeks/Pentecost), but this deliverance was the deliverance of Canaan into their hands. At Passover, the children were to ask what the ritual meal meant, and the father was to tell them about God's overnight deliverance of the nation (Ex. 12:26-27). At Firstfruits, the male head of household was to declare before the priest what the meaning of this ritual was. The man bringing the offering was required to make this historical confession:
And thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God, A Syrian [Aramean -- NASB] ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous: And the Egyptians evil entreated us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage: And when we cried unto the LORD God of our fathers, the LORD heard our voice, and looked on our affliction, and our labour, and our oppression: And the LORD brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders: And he hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey. And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land, which thou, O LORD, hast given me. And thou shalt set it before the LORD thy God, and worship before the LORD thy God (Deut. 26:5-10).
This offering was used to support the priests, but its economic value was minimal compared with the cost of making the journey to Jerusalem. Had this offering been strictly economic, the priests would have done far better financially had men been allowed to pay them the money equivalent of the journey. This indicates that what was important was the public confession, not the offering itself. It was the cost associated with the journey that demonstrated each man's commitment to God. This cost was the main burden.
At the same time, there was a benefit: corporate worship. "And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the LORD thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you" (v. 11). Here the thanksgiving is said to be personal. This celebration was more important than the money value of the offering. By requiring the men of Israel to come to Jerusalem to confess their thanksgiving for God's prior deliverance of Israel, both corporately and individually, God created in His people a sense of corporate membership. The feast of Firstfruits/Weeks/Pentecost became a celebration of God's intervention in history to overcome impossible odds on behalf of His people. Included in this corporate celebration was the stranger (geyr).
Israel's inheritance was corporate. It was also familistic. The feast of Firstfruits celebrated both forms of inheritance. The required feast was God's reminder to them that He, not the power of their own hands (Deut. 8:17), had gained this inheritance for them. The message was clear: to continue to maintain this inheritance, the men of Israel had to honor their dependence on God. This honoring involved corporate worship and the expenses thereof.
Token Payments for Blessings Received The main sacrifice at Pentecost was not the handful of grain which the participant brought; it was the time and expense of travelling. This sacrifice testified to the covenantal faithfulness of the participant. There were costs associated with this benefit: forfeited time, energy, and a handful of grain. God was extracting a great deal of productivity from his people. This was another reminder to them that their wealth did not depend on a conventional allocation of time, seed, and labor. It depended on their covenantal faithfulness.
God does not need our gifts in order to extend His kingdom. He grants to His people the honor of bringing offerings to Him so that they can demonstrate the seriousness of their commitment to Him and their dependence on Him. Their public commitment was one means of securing the continuing blessings of God. It was also a way to secure each man's commitment to the stipulations of the covenant. If a man verbally confessed that God had delivered the nation and had secured their inheritance, and then took days to walk to and from the place of confession, he had put his money where his mouth was.
When someone forfeits the ownership of capital for the sake of another person, we say that he is either buying something or being charitable. But what do we call such an expenditure when the recipient does not use the asset? There was no suggestion in Old Covenant religion that God ate the sacrifices brought to Him. This made biblical religion different from ancient religions generally.(1) But if the Israelite was sacrificing something of value, what did he expect in return? God's favor. Then was he buying God's favor? Was the arrangement a true quid pro quo? Could he expect to receive a stream of income if he provided a trickle of sacrifice?
Job's Dilemma
This, basically, was the assumption of three of Job's four questioners. They assumed that he had done something wrong to warrant God's wrath. They were wrong; it was his righteousness that had gained him such adversity, by way of Satan. But Job could not understand why the afflictions had come upon him. He had sacrificed on behalf of his children (Job 1:5), yet they had all been killed at a feast (Job 1:19). Where was the justice of God? That was Job's question. God's answer was a series of rhetorical questions that boiled down to this: "I'm God, and you're not."
The sacrifices were the Israelite's public acknowledgment that whatever he possessed had come from God. Job asked his rebellious wife: "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job. 2:10b). God is sovereign over all. But in chapter 3, he abandoned this testimony. The Book of Job is the account of how he regained his original confession.
The theological problem here is the predictability of God's historical sanctions. If God's curses come as unpredictably as His blessings in response to covenantal faithfulness, the world takes on the appearance of ethical randomness. This is the world of Meredith G. Kline: "And meanwhile it [the common grace order] must run its course within the uncertainties of the mutually conditioning principles of common grace and common curse, prosperity and adversity being experienced in a manner largely unpredictable because of the inscrutable sovereignty of the divine will that dispenses them in mysterious ways."(2)
The conclusion of the Book of Job indicates that the predictability of God's covenant sanctions is reliable. "So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses" (Job 42:12). This indicates that the sanctions are not always immediate, but they are predictable. They are not random.
A Token Payment
God required the beneficiaries of His blessings to acknowledge the source of these blessings. The means of acknowledgment was their assembling at a formal place of worship. Their sacrifice was their formal admission that God was the source of their blessings.
This implied that there would be further blessings. This was an aspect of the covenant's system of sanctions. "But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day" (Deut. 8:18). The positive sanction of wealth affirmed the covenant. That is, God demonstrated His commitment to the covenant by creating a predictable stream of blessings for them. By acknowledging retroactively that God had shown grace to Israel, the Israelites were securing future blessings. Grace is to be followed by a token payment. God's grace to Israel was greater than the payment required. The token payment nevertheless was adequate to secure another round of grace. Then were they buying God's grace? Not in the sense of full payment for services rendered. It was a token payment to God for services already rendered. This testified to their awareness that grace was the basis of their blessings. Grace is not paid for by its recipients.
Token payments are important in maintaining covenantal faithfulness. Paul wrote that man's token payment involves everything he owns: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service" (Rom. 12:1). Everything that man can bring before God in payment for services rendered is a token payment. "So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do" (Luke 17:10). So, in effect, the firstfruits offering was a token payment of a token payment.
Conclusion The firstfruits offering was a token payment for blessings already received: corporate blessings and personal blessings. Israelites sacrificed more wealth to get to Jerusalem than they did in surrendering ownership of a handful of grain. They acknowledged that God was the source of their blessings. They acknowledged also that their token payments were not sufficient to repay God.
Their covenantal faithfulness in participating in a liturgy of thanksgiving secured for themselves a continuing stream of blessings. The historical predictability of God's visible corporate sanctions for covenantal faithfulness was at the heart of this ritual feast. It reminded them that God could be trusted to deliver them in the future, just as He had delivered them in the past. Past sanctions testified to future sanctions. Two festivals of Israel, Passover and Firstfruits, looked back in history to God's deliverance of the nation, but they also looked forward to the maintenance of the kingdom inheritance. The past was prologue.
Footnotes:
1. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, vol. 3 of The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1991), p. 59.
2. Meredith G. Kline, "Comments on an Old-New Error," Westminster Theological Journal, XLI (Fall 1978), p. 184.
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