It too is a sweet savor, just like the burnt offering was, which means that there is no sin involved in the meal offering. Now again, it represents a man in perfect obedience, that is, Jesus Christ, giving God an offering which God accepts as being pleasing to Him. Secondly, note that the materials are different. Here we see a major difference. Fine flour (verse 1), oil, and frankincense. Now there is no animal there, so no life is given in the meal offering. This is its first major difference from the burnt offering. In the burnt offering, a man offers his life to God. In the meal offering, he is offering the fruits of the ground.
What this verse is showing is that portion of the earth that God allotted to man, showing that portion that God offered to man. In short it means its produce. Now if we combine this with our knowledge of the burnt offering with the meal offering, I think with the addition of one more verse we can see what this is all about between these two.
A clear distinction. The fruit of the earth - vegetation, herbs, whatever you might want to call it - is man's portion; but life is God's. Man's life is what God has claimed as His part of the creation, and this points out why He did not want us to eat blood. It is because the life of the flesh is in the blood. And so the blood represents life - and that was God's.
So within the context of the offerings, life symbolizes what we owe God: the burnt offering - a completely devoted life. Now by contrast, the grain, the oil, and the frankincense - the fruit of the earth - symbolizes what we owe to man. What is our duty to God? The burnt offering. What is our duty to man? The second. So the surrender of our life, as it is being lived in devotion to God, is God's portion. The other is the fulfillment of our duty to our neighbor. Now I am going to give you a verse that sums these up very clearly:
The burnt offering represents our duty to God, and the keeping the perfect fulfillment of the first four commandments. The meal offering represents our duty to man, and its perfect fulfillment represents the perfect keeping of the last six of the Ten Commandments. In doing each one perfectly, we have fulfilled the Ten Commandments perfectly. Of course we understand not a single one of us has ever done it.
In the burnt offering, the man who was giving the offering brought his animal forth - whether it was a bullock, lamb, goat, or turtledove - to the altar and laid hands on it, signifying transference from him to the animal. In other words, the animal represented himself; and then the animal was killed. That offering represents the giving of a life in devotion to God. In the meal offering the man does not do that. He offers the fruit of the ground. This is a major difference.
This verse shows what God has allotted to man as his portion of the creation. What He has given man is the fruit that the earth produces - its produce. Thus if we combine our knowledge of the burnt offering and the meal offering, and this verse together, we can reach a conclusion as to what they symbolized. Before we reach that conclusion, we are going to look at one more verse. After the Flood, God gave the following instructions to Noah.
Life is what God has claimed as His part of the creation. It is what we owe to God. You will surely recall how that God commands us not to eat the blood. The reason that is given is because the life is in the blood. The inference is that the life belongs to Him because He gave it, and we are to respect His ownership of life whether it is animal life or our life. He is the giver of life. In addition to that we are to respect the fact that the animal gave its life so that we can live. And even beyond that, it foreshadows the sacrifice of Jesus Christ during which His life's blood was shed so that we might live.
Within the context of the offerings then, life therefore symbolizes what we owe to the Source of life - the only life-giver - God. By contrast then, the grain, the oil, and the frankincense - which was a fruit of the earth - symbolize what we owe to man. Remember, this is only in context of the offerings here. Both are our duty. We owe our life to God. So in the one we surrender our life, as it is being lived, to God. In the other is the fulfillment of our duty to our neighbor. It is the standard of the ethic that we are to live in relation to man. It is fellowman's claim on us.
There is a little aside here that we should get to before we go past it, but it will not take long. When these verses are combined with Genesis 1:28-29 and Genesis 4:1-5, it shows that this is not mankind's introduction into eating animal flesh. You can read verse 3 in chapter 9. But in Genesis 1, what God is doing is showing that all life, animal and human, ultimately depends on vegetation: I have given you all the green herbs to eat. And that is true.
Remember Genesis 4:1-5. Abel brought to God an animal sacrifice. That shows us that God had already showed them that their dominion over animals extended to the place that they were able to take an animal's life. God was well pleased with Abel's animal sacrifice. He was so well pleased that it is recorded back in Hebrews 11 that it still witnesses. So God was not overly concerned about the killing of an animal, but what we need to understand is that they understood about sacrificing, and some of the sacrifices had to be eaten. That was a requirement of God. The sin offering was to be eaten, part of it anyway, and the peace offering was to be eaten.
I think that these verses clearly establish that animals' well-being is directly tied to man's exercise of his free moral agency. If a man chooses to obey, God will bless both animals and man. As the animals are blessed, so is man; as man is blessed, so are the animals. If a man's livestock is not eating, then it is pretty certain that the wild things are not eating either.
It is interesting to note the sequence here, especially in verse 15. Much of man's sense of physical well-being is usually illustrated in the Bible by a full stomach. It is an illustration that God uses that if your stomach is full, you feel that things are all right in the world. What He is saying is this: if you look at the sequence, that the animals must first be blessed before the blessing accrues to man.
The grain offering comes from the fruit of the ground, which God gave to mankind. The early chapters of Genesis show that God has given what comes from the ground to mankind (Genesis 1:29; 2:16). More specifically, the grain offering represents the fruit of one's labors out of what God has given, and dedicating those labors to God and man. As it says here, a portion of the grain offering is put on the altar for God, while the remainder is given to the priest, who can represent mankind in general in this parable.
