Meat Offering

The meat offering — better rendered the grain or meal offering (Hebrew minchah, "gift, tribute") — was the single bloodless sacrifice of the Mosaic law. In the King James Version "meat" simply means food, not flesh; the offering consisted of fine flour, oil, and frankincense, or of unleavened cakes and wafers, presented to the LORD as an act of worship (Leviticus 2:1). It was the worshipper's homage of the staple fruit of his labor laid upon God's altar.

Leviticus 2 prescribes its forms. From the raw flour the priest took a "memorial portion" (azkarah) of the flour and oil with all the frankincense and burned it on the altar as "a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the LORD"; the remainder belonged to Aaron and his sons as "a most holy part of the LORD's food offerings" (Leviticus 2:2–3). It could be offered as fine flour or baked into cakes and wafers (Leviticus 2:4–7). Two ingredients were strictly forbidden: "no grain offering that you bring to the LORD shall be made with leaven, for you shall burn no leaven nor any honey" (Leviticus 2:11) — both being agents of fermentation and corruption. Every grain offering was instead to be seasoned with "the salt of the covenant" (Leviticus 2:13), the emblem of an enduring, incorruptible bond.

Because it carried no blood, the grain offering was not for atonement but for consecration and thanksgiving. It expressed the dedication of one's life, labor, and substance to God, and so it regularly accompanied the burnt and peace offerings, joined with a drink offering of wine (Numbers 15:1–10). The full "law of the grain offering" governing the priests' portion is given in Leviticus 6:14–18. Where the burnt offering presented the worshipper's person, the grain offering presented the fruit of his daily work as a grateful gift.

The grain offering finds its meaning in Christ. The fine flour without the leaven of sin, anointed throughout with oil and made fragrant with frankincense, foreshadows his sinless humanity — a perfect human life, anointed by the Spirit, wholly devoted to the Father and rising to him as a sweet aroma. Jesus is "the bread of life" (John 6:35), and the grain of wheat that falls into the earth and dies to bear much fruit (John 12:24). His flawless life of obedience, offered up to God, is the true and final meal offering of which the Levitical gift was only the shadow.

For faith the offering teaches that worship embraces the consecration of ordinary labor — the flour and oil of common life — and that acceptable service is rendered only through a mediator unmixed with the leaven of corruption.