Types of Christ · The Tabernacle's Furniture
The Showbread
Twelve loaves on a gold table, kept in front of God’s face and swapped out every Sabbath. Its Hebrew name is bread of the Presence — and the strangest thing that ever happened to it is the incident Jesus Himself used to defend His disciples.
THE ARTWORKThis is the sanctuary at Nob, and it is on this page for a reason that is easy to miss. De Gelder — Rembrandt’s last pupil — painted the moment the priest Ahimelech hands David the sword taken from Goliath. Minutes earlier in the same conversation, he handed him something stranger: the holy bread off the table, because there was no ordinary bread in the house. That loaf is what this page is about, and a thousand years later Jesus put it in the middle of an argument about the Sabbath.
Bread of the Presence
— Exodus 25:23-30 · Leviticus 24:5-9 — what stood on the tableOn the north side of the holy place, opposite the lampstand, stood a small table of acacia wood overlaid with gold. On it sat twelve loaves of fine flour, arranged in two rows of six, with pure frankincense laid along each row. Every Sabbath the loaves came off and fresh ones went on, and the priests ate the old ones in a holy place. Nothing was ever taken outside.
The English name is unhelpful. “Showbread” sounds like a display. The Hebrew is lechem panim, and panim is the ordinary word for a face — bread of faces, bread of the Presence. It was not there to be looked at by worshippers, who never entered the room. It was there to be in front of God, without a break, forever.
Shew-bread - לחם פנים lechem panim literally, bread of faces; so called, either because they were placed before the presence or face of God in the sanctuary, or because they were made square, as the Jews will have it.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Methodist
Exodus 25:30
showbread--literally, presence bread, so called because it was constantly exhibited before the Lord, or because the bread of His presence, like the angel of His presence, pointed symbolically to Christ.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Exodus 25:30
And place the Bread of the Presence on the table before Me at all times.The bread of the Presence, before Me at all times.
You are also to take fine flour and bake twelve loaves, using two-tenths of an ephah for each loaf, and set them in two rows—six per row—on the table of pure gold before the LORD. And you are to place pure frankincense near each row, so that it may serve as a memorial portion for the bread, an offering made by fire to the LORD. Every Sabbath day the bread is to be set out before the LORD on behalf of the Israelites as a permanent covenant. It belongs to Aaron and his sons, who are to eat it in a holy place; for it is to him a most holy part of the offerings made by fire to the LORD—his portion forever.”Twelve cakes, two rows of six, frankincense on each row, every Sabbath — and Aaron's sons eat the rest.
Count them. Twelve, for twelve tribes — Leviticus sets the number directly beside “the children of Israel,” so the arithmetic is the text’s own, not a reader’s. Whether the six sat side by side or stacked one on another is a question the Hebrew leaves open, and commentators have taken it both ways.
And thou shall set upon the table shewbread before me always. Which consisted of twelve cakes loaves, set in two rows upon the table, and stood there a whole week, and every sabbath were renewed; and when the old ones were took away, which were eaten by the priests, new ones were set, so that they were always before the Lord; and being continually before him, were called shewbread, or "bread of faces", being always before the face of God.
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament, 1748-1763Reformed Baptist
Exodus 25:30
And thou shalt set them in two rows,.... The twelve cakes: six on a row; not by the side of each other, but six upon one another: upon the pure table; the shewbread table, so called because overlaid with pure gold, and kept clean and bright, Exo 25:24, before the Lord; for this stood in the holy place, in the same place as the candlestick did, which has the same position, Lev 24:4; of the mystical and typical sense of these cakes; see Gill on Exo 25:30.
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament, 1748-1763Reformed Baptist
Leviticus 24:6
Notice the small disagreement in the second of those. Most pictures of the table show twelve loaves laid out flat in two lines. Gill argues the Hebrew means six stacked on each other, twice over. The text does not settle it, and the diagram in your Bible margin is somebody’s reconstruction either way.
Pure frankincense - Unmixed and uncorrupted, or of the best sort, to be burnt before the Lord. On the bread - And this was done every time that the bread was changed.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765Wesleyan
Leviticus 24:7
Leviticus calls the arrangement a lasting covenant, made on behalf of the children of Israel — which is why the twelve is not a coincidence anyone has to argue for. The number of loaves is the number of tribes, and the text puts the two beside each other itself.
10 in the whole Bible
maareketh
the row
Almost a technical term. Outside the showbread and its record in Chronicles, Hebrew barely uses this word at all.
Exodus 25:30
panim
face, presence
The Hebrew name of the bread is lechem panim — bread of faces, or bread of the Presence. Bread kept in front of God's face.
Leviticus 24:7
lebonah
frankincense
Laid on each row and burned when the loaves were changed. The bread was eaten; the incense went up.
The Day the Rule Bent
— 1 Samuel 21 — a fugitive, a frightened priest, and the holy breadDavid is running for his life. Saul wants him dead, he has left in such a hurry that he has no food and no weapon, and he arrives at the sanctuary town of Nob. The priest Ahimelech comes out trembling — the king’s son-in-law does not usually turn up alone — and David asks for bread.
There is none. The only bread in the building is the holy bread, which by law belongs to the priests alone. Ahimelech asks one question, about whether the young men have kept themselves from women, and then hands it over. Tell the story plainly and let it stay strange: a priest gave consecrated bread to a layman on the run, and Scripture records it without a word of rebuke.
there is hallowed bread--There would be plenty of bread in his house; but there was no time to wait for it. "The hallowed bread" was the old shew-bread, which had been removed the previous day, and which was reserved for the use of the priests alone (Le 24:9).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
1 Samuel 21:4
And the priest answered David, and said, there is no common bread under mine hand,.... In the tabernacle, though he might have such in his own house; which was common for any man to eat of, even such as were not priests; but he had none there, and David was in haste to be gone because of Doeg, and could not stay till such was fetched: but there is hallowed bread; such as was devoted to sacred use.
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament, 1748-1763Reformed Baptist
1 Samuel 21:4
The first of those supplies the detail that makes the whole scene work. The loaves David was given were the loaves that had just come offthe table — the week’s bread, removed the day before and set aside for the priests to eat. It was not stolen from in front of God. It was food that was already on its way to a meal, given to the wrong man.
Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever can be found.” “There is no common bread on hand,” the priest replied, “but there is some consecrated bread—provided that the young men have kept themselves from women.” David answered, “Women have indeed been kept from us, as is usual when I set out. And the equipment of the young men is holy, as it is even on common missions, and all the more at this time.” So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there but the Bread of the Presence, which had been removed from before the LORD and replaced with hot bread on the day it was taken away.No ordinary bread in the house — only consecrated bread, and the priest gives it.
So the priest gave him hallowed bread - To this history our Lord alludes, Mar 2:25, in order to show that in cases of absolute necessity a breach of the ritual law was no sin. It was lawful for the priests only to eat the shew-bread; but David and his companions were starving, no other bread could be had at the time, and therefore he and his companions ate of it without sin.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Methodist
1 Samuel 21:6
Jesus Uses This Table
— Matthew 12:3-8 — the New Testament's reading of this object is His ownMost of the tabernacle’s furniture reaches the New Testament through an apostle’s argument. This one reaches it through Christ’s own mouth, in a live confrontation. His disciples are accused of breaking the Sabbath, and the first thing He reaches for is not a principle. It is this table, and that afternoon at Nob.
Jesus replied, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for them to eat, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and yet are innocent? But I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If only you had known the meaning of ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”Have you not read what David did… and then three sentences that climb.
Watch the three moves after the story, because they escalate. One: something greater than the temple is here— said in the temple’s own courts. Two: I desire mercy, not sacrifice, a line lifted out of Hosea and turned on the men quoting the law. Three: the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. He has taken a piece of tabernacle furniture and used it to say who He is.
He entered into the house of God - Into the tabernacle. The temple was not yet built. The show bread - So they called the bread which the priest, who served that week, put every Sabbath day on the golden table that was in the holy place, before the Lord.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Matthew 12:4
(Verse 6.) But I tell you that here is a greater temple. Here, is not a pronoun, but an adverb of place; that the place, which holds the Lord of the temple, is greater than the temple.
Jerome· Commentary on Matthew, 420Church Father
Matthew 12:6
Wesley catches a detail worth having: the “house of God” David entered was the tabernacle. Solomon’s temple did not exist yet. Jesus is arguing from the tent, from this exact table, in its portable form.
I will have mercy, etc. - See this explained, Mat 9:13. There are four ways in which positive laws may cease to oblige. First, by the natural law of necessity. Secondly, by a particular law, which is superior. Thirdly, by the law of charity and mercy.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Methodist
Matthew 12:7
What this page is not doingone page, one place
Matthew 12 is a major teaching about the Sabbath, and it has its own page: what the Sabbath law required, what the objection was, what the answer means for Christians now. None of that is repeated here.
This page has a narrower job. It follows one object — twelve loaves on a gold table — from Exodus to Nob to the mouth of Christ, and stops there.
And there is the obvious step past it, which this page will point at rather than walk. Bread was kept in the holy place so that the Presence was never without it. In John’s Gospel a Man stands in front of a crowd who had just eaten loaves out of His hands and says that He is the bread — not that He gives it. The full discourse belongs to its own pages.
For Christ is our Bread; because Christ is Life, and bread is life. "I am," saith He, "the Bread of Life; " and, a little above, "The Bread is the Word of the living God, who came down from the heavens.
Tertullian· On Prayer, 220Church Father
John 6:35
Jesus answered, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and whoever believes in Me will never thirst.I am the bread of life — the Presence, and the bread, in one Person.
What Readers Added, and What Nobody Knows
— reception history, named as reception historyChristian readers have made a good deal of this table, early and often. Bede matched the six working days to the six loaves in each row and read the Sabbath change as the rest that follows labour. Cyril of Jerusalem, teaching candidates for baptism in the fourth century, said the old covenant’s loaves had come to an end and the new covenant had bread of its own. Both are readings of the object, not statements the object makes, and this page prints them as what they are: old, thoughtful, and downstream of the text.
The loaves are properly commanded to be changed before the Lord every sabbath day. For surely the loaves that were set out on the table of the Lord through the six days of work are exchanged for new loaves on the sabbath when all the …
Bede· On the Tabernacle 1.7, 735Church Father
Leviticus 24:8
The Old Covenant had its loaves of proposition, but they, as belonging to that covenant, have come to an end. The New Covenant has its heavenly bread and cup of salvation to sanctify both body and soul. For as the bread is for the body, the Word suits the soul.
Cyril of Jerusalem· Catechetical Lecture 4.5, 386Church Father
Leviticus 24:5
Cyril’s line has been used since as a weapon, and it is not being used as one here. He was catechising new Christians about their own communion table, not attacking anybody, and Christians who read Leviticus 24 differently are not answered by quoting him at them.
Where Scripture simply does not sayfour honest gaps
Scripture never describes what the loaves looked like. It does not say whether they were leavened or unleavened. It never explains how bread stayed presentable on a table for a week, and it never says exactly what the frankincense was for beyond calling it a memorial portion burned to the LORD.
Later Jewish sources describe the mechanics in detail — moulds, golden tubes to let air between the loaves, shelves to carry the weight. Those descriptions come from the Mishnah, compiled around AD 200, in the tractate Menachot: a record of how the second temple was remembered, written down after it was destroyed. Worth knowing, and not the same kind of thing as Leviticus.
The artwork
A Victorian Bible engraving of the three gold pieces, drawn to be shown side by side — which is the one thing that never happened, since the table and the lampstand stood in the holy place and the ark behind the veil. Look at the table on the left: the rim, the rings for carrying poles, and the loaves stacked rather than spread flat. Every one of those choices is the engraver reconstructing from the text, and the stacked loaves are him siding with Gill.
Holman Bible engravers, Table of Shew-Bread, Ark, Golden Candlestick (1890) — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Read the Great Books
— the writers quoted above, in their own handsCommentary on the Bible
Adam Clarke · 1832
Clarke gives the Hebrew name of the bread and both explanations of it, then makes the connection from Nob to the Gospels in one sentence. The best single companion to this page.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Exposition of the Old Testament
John Gill · 1748-1763
Enormous, patient, and unusually willing to disagree with the standard picture — his argument that the six loaves were stacked rather than spread is a small example of why he is worth the shelf space.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament
John Wesley · 1755
Short and exact. The note that David entered the tabernacle, not the temple, is the kind of correction that quietly fixes a reader's mental picture of Matthew 12.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →On the Tabernacle
Bede · 735
An eighth-century English monk reading the tent room by room. Frankly allegorical, and honest about being so — the best way to see how the tradition on this page actually developed.
In print — find it wherever books are sold.
Catechetical Lectures
Cyril of Jerusalem · 386
Instruction given to adults preparing for baptism in Jerusalem itself, and one of the earliest windows into how the fourth-century church taught its own table.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Cross the room: the lampstand stood directly opposite this table and lit it, since there were no windows. Then take the priestly line — the men who ate these loaves every Sabbath for a thousand years.