What It Was

What was the meat offering?

Even a cursory reading of the law for the meat offering in Leviticus 2 elicits that question.

Where was the blood? Unlike the four bloody offerings presented at God’s altar, the meat offering had no shedding of blood. The meat offering did not involve the death of a bull or goat or sheep. Instead, the meat offering required grain that had been harvested from the field: “When any will offer a meat offering unto the Lord, his offering shall be of fine flour” (Lev. 2:1).

What we notice right away about the meat offering is that the word “meat” must be understood according to its archaic sense; that is, meat according to the old English usage does not refer specifically to the flesh of an animal but to food in general. The basic material for the meat offering was not beef or kid or lamb but grain.

Neither could the meat offering consist of raw grain. The grain for the meat offering had to be fine flour. That grain was first processed into fine flour by grinding it at a hand mill and by sifting away any undesirable particles. It was the finest form that grain could take, a table luxury, suitable for a king’s household or for an honored guest.¹ And for the meat offering, that fine flour could also be further prepared into a cake or a wafer and baked in an oven (Lev. 2:4) or cooked on a large iron plate (v. 5) or fried in a skillet of oil (v. 7).

Besides all this, the meat offering was to be mingled or anointed with oil, scented with frankincense, and seasoned with salt. Especially the latter ingredient was given special emphasis in the law: “Every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt” (Lev. 2:13). And while these three things could not be lacking, the meat offering was to be free from all leaven and honey: “No meat offering, which ye shall bring unto the Lord, shall be made with leaven: for ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of the Lord made by fire” (v. 11). Unleavened, fine flour and oil, sprinkled with frankincense and seasoned with salt, formed one meat offering.

When these things were presented to the priest, he would take a “memorial” portion to burn upon God’s altar. The remainder of the meat offering was designated by the law as “most holy” and allotted to the priesthood for food. What the priest was required to do with the meat offering, being briefly mentioned in Leviticus 2, is further expounded in Leviticus 6:14–18:

14. This is the law of the meat offering: the sons of Aaron shall offer it before the Lord, before the altar.

15. And he shall take of it his handful, of the flour of the meat offering, and of the oil thereof, and all the frankincense which is upon the meat offering, and shall burn it upon the altar for a sweet savour, even the memorial of it, unto the Lord.

16. And the remainder thereof shall Aaron and his sons eat: with unleavened bread shall it be eaten in the holy place; in the court of the tabernacle of the congregation they shall eat it.

17. It shall not be baken with leaven. I have given it unto them for their portion of my offerings made by fire; it is most holy, as is the sin offering, and as the trespass offering.

18. All the males among the children of Aaron shall eat of it. It shall be a statute for ever in your generations concerning the offerings of the Lord made by fire: every one that toucheth them shall be holy.

What was the bloodless meat offering, with all its unique ingredients and rituals?

For if there was no shedding of blood, then the purpose of the meat offering in the temple service could not be expiatory, and its function as a shadow of the old dispensation could not be that of the vicarious satisfaction of the Lord Jesus Christ. Scripture itself forbids such an interpretation in Hebrews 9:22: “Almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.” God had given blood at his altar to atone for sin. God had given the soul of an animal to suffer the sentence of death in behalf of the sinner. But if the meat offering was bloodless, then what was God’s purpose by its prescription?

What is more, the meat offering was never an independent offering.

Though the law for the meat offering in Leviticus 2 does not speak of any relationship between the meat offering and other offerings, there are other passages of the law that do. What the law tells us, first, is that the meat offering was often—if not always—accompanied with a drink offering of wine. Second, the law tells us that the meat offering always followed a bloody sacrifice, which was most often a burnt offering but could be a peace offering as well (Lev. 7:11–12).

For example, when the continual burnt offering—the sacrifice of a lamb both evening and morning—was prescribed in Exodus 29, then the law added this requirement:

40. With the one lamb a tenth deal of flour mingled with the fourth part of an hin of beaten oil; and the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering.

41. And the other lamb thou shalt offer at even, and shalt do thereto according to the meat offering of the morning, and according to the drink offering thereof, for a sweet savour, an offering made by fire unto the Lord.

Besides the continual burnt offering, the meat offering was joined in the laws for certain feast days to the drink offering and a bloody sacrifice.

For example, when the sheaf of the firstfruits was waved before the Lord in the court of the sanctuary on the Sunday after the passover feast, then this waving of the sheaf was not done without the following offerings:

12. Ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf an he lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the Lord.

13. And the meat offering thereof shall be two tenth deals of fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto the Lord for a sweet savour: and the drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the fourth part of an hin. (Lev. 23:12–13)

Here scripture uses an important grammatical construction to teach the inseparable relationship between the meat offering and the bloody burnt offering. What the King James Version translates in verse 13 as “the meat offering thereof,” we should read as “the meat offering of it,” where “it” refers to back to “a burnt offering” in verse 12. Therefore, scripture teaches that the meat offering belongs to the burnt offering and depends on that bloody sacrifice. The same applies to “the drink offering thereof.”²

We also observe this inseparable relationship between the meat offering and the drink offering as well as their dependence upon a bloody offering in the law for the feast of Pentecost:

16. Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the Lord.

17. Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the Lord.

18. And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without blemish of the first year, and one young bullock, and two rams: they shall be for a burnt offering unto the Lord, with their meat offering, and their drink offerings, even an offering made by fire, of sweet savour unto the Lord. (Lev. 23:16–18)

When the two wave loaves were presented before God at Pentecost, then that was not done without burnt offerings and their corresponding meat and drink offerings.

Finally, when all the sacrificial laws were reiterated by Moses in Numbers 28 and 29 with a view toward Israel’s possession of the land of Canaan, then the very things may be observed: The burnt offerings sacrificed daily and weekly and monthly and on feast days always included their meat and drink offerings.

Therefore, we may conclude that when the law for the meat offerings was given in Leviticus 2, it presumed that the Israelite had also brought both a drink offering and a burnt offering. And we may take note that the meat offering’s dependence upon the burnt offering also explains the peculiar placement of the law for the meat offering in scripture. Scripture, having set down the law for the burnt offering in Leviticus 1, immediately proceeds to prescribe the law for the meat offering in Leviticus 2 rather than the other bloody sacrifices. In the mind of Israel, the burnt offering, meat offering, and drink offering were inseparable.

Now, what was the meat offering, with its attendant drink offering of wine and its dependence upon a bloody sacrifice?

What did the meat offering have to do with the gospel of the vicarious satisfaction of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross?

God’s Gift

To arrive at the meaning and significance of the meat offering, we must first consider its name, which name God ascribed to the offering as his divine word of revelation. What is called a “meat offering” in our English version was called minchah in the Hebrew tongue.

Minchah was used by the Jew to speak generally of a gift or present. It was a minchah that Jacob presented to Esau, that Jacob sent to the lord of Egypt by the hands of his sons, that Gideon made ready for the angel of Jehovah, that the children of Belial refused to give to Saul after he had been anointed, and that the king of Babylon sent to Hezekiah after he had heard that Hezekiah was sick. But in a more technical sense, minchah referred strictly to the meat offering. The meat offering was a gift.

But we must not immediately speak of the meat offering as being man’s gift to God. To speak of the meat offering as only man’s gift to God is the direction that so many scholars and commentators are eager to tread according to their man-centered theology. For example, here is C. F. Keil’s comment on the name of the meat offering:

The usual epithet applied to [meat offerings] is minchah, lit., a present with which any one sought to obtain the favour or goodwill of a superior…then the gift offered to God as a sign of grateful acknowledgment that the offerer owed everything to Him, as well as of a desire to secure His favour and blessing.³

Now, although I reject Keil’s language of securing God’s favor and blessing, I do not altogether deny that the meat offering served as an instrument by which faith in the old dispensation expressed its gratitude to God, worshiping him as the overflowing fountain of all good. Yet, to understand properly the idea of minchah, we must remember that the early sanctuary, together with all its sacrifices and various articles, was but a temporal picture of eternal and spiritual verities, even as Moses was admonished of God to make all things according to the pattern that God showed him in the mount. We must remember that Canaan with its earthly bounties of corn and wine and oil was but a reflection of the heavenly.

How we must interpret the meat offering is made clear by the prophet Isaiah in the sixty-sixth chapter of his prophecy, wherein he stands as a seer of the entire new dispensation and observes the following:

20. They [God’s messengers] shall bring all your brethren for an offering [minchah] unto the Lord out of all nations upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the Lord, as the children of Israel bring an offering [minchah] in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord.

21. And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the Lord.

22. For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain.

23. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord. (Isa. 66:20–23)

What the inspired prophet observed was both the shadow and the fulfillment of the meat offering. He saw the gathering of God’s elect from every nation, tribe, and tongue by means of the glad tidings of the gospel. Isaiah saw them being brought up to God’s holy mount in the new Jerusalem. And he recognized that such a glorious event had its pattern in the meat offering. Even as Israel brought her minchah up to the earthly sanctuary, so all God’s elect are brought into the new heavens and new earth as the true minchah unto God.

And the apostle Paul, standing in the time of this prophecy’s fulfillment, echoed the prophet’s language in Paul’s epistle to the Romans when he spoke of himself as a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, preaching “the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost” (Rom. 15:16, emphasis added).

Therefore, the meat offering was God’s impress or stamp of a new humanity into the moldable substance of the old dispensation, a new humanity that the triune God desired for himself as his own gift. The meat offering was a representation of a righteous nation, the branch of God’s planting, the work of his hands, that he might be glorified (Isa. 60:21). The meat offering was God’s Jezreel: a people who deserved to be scattered to the four winds of heaven but a people whom God eternally favors, so that he sows them in the earth, nurtures them by his blessing and favor, gathers them in the time of the harvest, threshes them of all the reprobate chaff, and presents them to himself as his minchah.

A gift!

Yea, more—the meat offering was God’s gift to his Son, Jesus Christ.

Just as the priests in the earthly sanctuary were able to partake of the meat offerings that Israel brought to God’s altar, so our high priest after the order of Melchizedek is given a people as God’s gift. We hear such heavenly language in the Lord’s high-priestly prayer recorded in John 17. There Christ intercedes for a people—a people whom God had given to Christ and bestowed unto him as a gift! Just read how often Christ speaks this way:

1. These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:

2. As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

6. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

9. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.

10. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.

24. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:1–2, 6, 9–10, 24)

What was the meat offering?

A gift! The meat offering was God’s gift to God. The meat offering was God’s gift to his Son. The meat offering was God’s gift in the Spirit.

The meat offering was the gift of a new humanity, a planting and gathering by the Lord of the harvest, to the glory of God and his Son, Jesus Christ. It was the gift of a perfect living entity, formed by the grinding of many grains into one meal, kneaded and baked into a complete loaf. It was the gift of a new lump, purged of old leaven and free from malice and wickedness. It was a gift well-seasoned with salt, wholly agreeable to the holy palate of the living God and not that which he spewed out of his mouth. It was a gift of a people whose life is made perfect, whose earthly sorrow and misery transformed into the fullness of heavenly joy, even as grape juice ferments and is transformed into wine. It was the gift of a chosen generation who, having been redeemed and renewed, live as holiness to the Lord.

What was the meat offering?

A gift by God’s living decree of election!

Only because God gives that gift by his decree in eternity did that gift take a form of a meat offering in the old dispensation. Because God gives that gift in eternity, that gift is being formed even now, the time of fulfillment, when the Lord sends out his servants to gather his grain and to cast away all the tares. And when the harvest is complete, when all God’s choicest grain is sifted from all that is undesirable, when that grain has been perfectly united together to form one baked bread, and his minchah is presented to him in the heavenly sanctuary, then that living decree shall be perfectly manifest!

What is this meat offering? It is a gift that is found centrally in Jesus Christ.

It is a gift that God purchased for himself by the precious blood of his Son. It is a gift that began to be formed when God raised his Son from the dead. It is a gift that the risen Lord prepared for God, gathering the elect by his word and Spirit. It is a gift that he completes when he returns on the clouds of glory to raise the dead, to purge away all old leaven from the earth, and to present to God a new and perfect lump.

In the next article, the Lord willing, I will finish my treatment of the meat offering by examining its ingredients and dependence on the burnt offering.