Leviticus2chapter 2

Leviticus 2:1-3

This is the one offering in the list with no death in it. What comes is grain, oil and frankincense off a man's own ground, and nothing is killed and no blood is applied anywhere in the chapter. The priest burns a handful and the remnant is Aaron's and his sons', called a thing most holy, which is the phrase Leviticus keeps for what only the priests may eat. Numbers 15:4 later attaches a meat offering to the burnt offering and to the sacrifice, so in practice the bloodless gift arrives beside a bloody one.

Leviticus 2:4-7

Three ways of preparing it are given and they are three ways of cooking at home, an oven, a flat pan and a fryingpan. Oil is in every one of them and it enters differently each time, mingled into the flour, anointed onto the wafer, poured over the pieces. The law bends to the utensil a household happens to own, the same accommodation chapter 1 makes when it lets a man bring two turtledoves in place of a bullock.

Leviticus 2:8-10

A handful goes up in smoke and the priesthood eats the rest. The portion burned is called a memorial, so the fire is treated as something that puts God in mind of the man rather than as a fee paid. Twice in these verses the smoke is a sweet savour, a phrase that falls sixteen times in Leviticus and never once on the sin offering or the trespass offering.

Leviticus 2:11-12

Two things are barred from the fire and the chapter gives no reason for either. Adam Clarke points to the place honey held in the sacrifices of the surrounding nations, and John Calvin reads the leaven by way of Matthew 16:11, where Christ tells the disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. What the text states is narrower than either reading. Both may be brought as an oblation of the firstfruits and neither may go on the altar, and Leviticus 23:17 will require the two wave loaves of the fiftieth day to be baken with leaven.

Leviticus 2:13

Against the two prohibitions stands one requirement, and it is put three ways in a single verse. Salt seasons the oblation, salt may not be lacking, and with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt. The verse names it the salt of the covenant of thy God, tying a kitchen preservative to the agreement itself, and Numbers 18:19 and 2 Chronicles 13:5 both speak of a covenant of salt. Mark 9:49-50 and Colossians 4:6 pick the word up again, one for disciples and one for speech.

Leviticus 2:14-16

The last form of the offering is the first of a harvest, green ears parched at the fire and corn beaten out of full ears. It is brought before the crop is in and before the year has shown what it will yield. Oil and frankincense return, the priest burns the memorial, and the chapter ends on the same handful it began with.