Commentaries:
No entry exists in Forerunner Commentary for Leviticus 24:5.
Leviticus 24:5-7
Excerpted from: Approaching God Through Christ (Part 4)Here are the Levites' instructions for baking the bread. In various places this bread is called "showbread," "cakes" (as it is here), "hallowed bread," and "continual, or perpetual bread," which is an interesting name for it.
The term "shewbread" or "showbread" is not a very good translation. It came to us from Luther through Tyndale, and then through the King James Version. Luther used a German word that sounds like "shoat-brot," and it was basically copied over from that. It is not a good English way of describing or naming this thing.
Literally, showbread is, "bread of the face"—so, I guess you could call it "face-bread." It is also called "bread of the presence." This is what "face" implies. The "face" is God's face. So this is bread that is in front of God's face, therefore it is the bread of His presence—the bread in His presence. God was behind the veil, sitting on His throne—the mercy seat—so it was the bread of His presence, the bread that was always before Him.
Remember that we saw there in Exodus 25:30 that the bread was to be there always. This is the idea of the continual, or perpetual, bread comes from. It was always supposed to be there. There was never, ever to be a lack of bread in His house. And when they came in to change it, there was new bread to replace the old bread. So there was always 12 loaves of bread in the tabernacle at all times. So, it was there perpetually before Him.
As to the bread, these loaves—each of the twelve loaves was made from two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour. The best I can tell, this two-tenths of an ephah is about 18 cups of flour. This is about 6 and a half pounds of flour—each. And it was unleavened, so these "cakes" were flat, heavy loaves.
Now, it never says in the Bible that they were unleavened, but the Bread of God—Jesus Christ—was unleavened, and He would not be approached with sin in any way. And so, it is most likely that these were unleavened.
These were big loaves. I do not know just how big they were, but to put them in rows—two rows of six each—side by side, would not fit on the table, because you also had utensils and such also on this table. And it is only the size of an end table, 36 inches by 18 inches. And, you had to get twelve large loaves on this thing.
The way it worked out at the temple in the time of Christ is that they were in two stacks—they were two rows, with six stacked loaves of bread each. So it was relatively high even for flat bread, because there was 18 cups of flour in each, plus whatever else they put in it.
Now, a cup or a spoon, was placed on top of each of these piles of bread. And inside the cup or spoon was the frankincense. It is difficult to know how the frankincense was used. If they tried to keep this incense burning every day, it would use up an awful lot of incense. Most authorities say that the incense was burned on the incense altar, not on the bread.
Probably what happened was that when the new bread was set out on the Sabbath, they put the cup or spoon on top, and put incense in there, and let it burn until it was consumed. But it was this offering, it says here, an offering made by fire to the Lord, as part of the consecration of the new bread. More than likely, this is what happened.
Leviticus 24:5-9
Excerpted from: The Commandments (Part Seven)Take note of that: this day. Now what day was it? It was the Sabbath day. Whenever David went to this synagogue, or Tabernacle, or whatever it was, it must have been the Tabernacle, it was on the Sabbath day. And if you want to chase it out in Leviticus 24:5-9, we find that the bread had to be baked on the Sabbath day, so that when it was put out on the Sabbath day, it was absolutely as fresh as one could get. There is some symbolism there.
Now here is God's law. He is telling these people involved with the operation of the Tabernacle that they are to do something on the Sabbath that would ordinarily profane the Sabbath. Now if one of you ladies decided to bake bread on the Sabbath, there is a 99.99% likelihood it would be unlawful for you to do so, you would be breaking the Sabbath. But here we find God ordered them to make the bread fresh on the Sabbath. So all the ingredients had to be put together, it had to be kneaded, put in the oven and baked, and then put out on the tables fresh on the Sabbath day.
Leviticus 24:5-9
Excerpted from: The Fourth Commandment (Part 3)You put those five verses there together with I Samuel 21 and you will find that, not only were they putting the bread there, but they were also baking it on the Sabbath. Thus, when they put it out there on the Sabbath, it was hot—right out of the oven. Now, was it lawful for a woman—in the ordinary course of her household responsibilities—to bake twelve loaves of bread on the Sabbath? It was not. This is the illustration that Jesus is using here in Matthew 12.
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing Leviticus 24:5:
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