When anyone brings a grain offering to the Lord, the offering must consist of bran flour. The offerer shall pour oil on it and put frankincense over it… (Leviticus 2:1)
In contrast to the dramatic bloody animal sacrifices, the grain offering can easily be overlooked as some benign ritual of lesser importance. The grain motif, however, is vital to our understanding of human redemption.
It all began with the divine curse on the ground, where Adam must strive with it by the sweat of his brow, and battle tenacious weeds. True, we only hear about the fruit trees in the Garden in Eden, but the implication is that Adam and Eve were workers of the soil planting grains; after all, we see plants sprouting on day 3 of creation. Since the fall, grain is precious and comes at the price of human toil. The problem with Cain’s sacrifice was not that it was a grain offering in contrast to Abel’s animal sacrifice, but his dark attitude, jealousy and envy, a lack of heart devoid of faith.
Grain is the fundamental nourishment for humanity. Abraham offers his mysterious guests not only meat, but bread and wine. Indeed, meat was provided only on special occasions, but grains and bread daily. We have seen how Joseph was elevated in Egypt as the great provider of grain, saving the whole world around Egypt. Moreover, whatever the mysterious “manna” was, it is described in Scripture as a sort of bread given to Israel without the toil of planting or weeding, and simply gathered (See Panis Angelicus: Man Ate the Bread of Angels post in Exodus 16-18).
Cereal offerings, like animal sacrifices, were common with Israel’s pagan neighbors. They were offered to the vegetation deities in hope of a favorable harvest in the context of magical ritual. In contrast, the Israelites offered their grain offerings as a tribute to YHWH, Lord of the Harvest, presenting their Firstfruits in thanksgiving. It seems they were also commonly offered with other sacrifices, such as the burnt offering we have discussed in the previous post, and the thanksgiving offering we will discuss in our next post.
The grain could be offered in three different ways: baked in an oven, cooked on a griddle, fried in a pan. If offered at harvest as Firstfruits, it was offered roasted or as grounded meal. The flour used must be of fine quality and unleavened, and the oil pure. Salt must be added with a pinch of frankincense. Only a small portion (a “handful”) was offered up on the altar as a “soothing aroma” to YHWH, as we have seen with the burnt offering. The rest goes to the provision for the priests.
How deeply this cereal offering was ingrained into the warp and woof of the first century Jewish experience is very evident in the teachings of Jesus and His Apostles. Jesus saw Himself as a grain of wheat that must fall into the earth and die so as to rise and bear much fruit (John 12:24). This imagery naturally ties in with the sacrifice of the grain offering, and most specifically the Firstfruits offering at harvest, which every Jew had experienced yearly throughout their lives who lived at this time. The grain offering is therefore a type fulfilled in Christ’s offering of Himself as “Firstfruits” to God in sacrificial death. Rising from the dead, He promises a harvest to come for all who are united in Christ (I Corinthians 15:20f.).
This imagery naturally takes us to ecclesiology, or our understanding of the Church, and her sacrament of the Eucharist. In the middle of St. Paul’s argument against those believers who may be tempted to combine pagan ritual and the Holy Eucharist, he brings us to the grain/bread motif:
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of one bread. Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?
I Cor. 10:16ff.
The theology here is deep and rich. Jesus Christ is the grain offering fulfilling the Old Testament type, a “soothing aroma” pleasing to God. He is the one bread from which we all partake. By this participation, we, who are many, become one body. The “we” are the whole diversity split apart at the Tower of Babel, unifying in Christ what the fall separated. But we can go even further than that and go back to the sacrifices of Cain and Abel, where we see God bringing together Cain’s grain sacrifice with Abel’s bloody sacrifices. The nations exiled like Cain are now integrated with the covenantal people of God into one loaf of bread (Radner).
Our minds, of course, take us to John Chapter Six, the Bread of Life discourse. In the old grain offering in Leviticus, only YHWH devoured a small portion of the sacrifice through sacred flame, and the priests ate the rest. Here in John Six, all believers must eat the Eucharistic Body of our Lord, cloaked in the appearance of the bread offered by the people and sanctified by the priest, in order to have eternal life. It is just as physical an act of worship as what the Old Covenant worshippers experienced, except it is perfectly spiritual in its essence, not a mere type. The Eucharist is the perfect integration of the physical and the spiritual, just as the Incarnate Christ is perfectly integrated.
Christ is the perfection of this offering. The fact that the grain must be pure as well as the oil poured over it, representing the Holy Spirit and pure joy, brings to the experience of worship the wonderful sensation of the rich and rare, unadulterated perfection we ultimately find in Jesus Christ. The pinch of salt, mentioned three times in one verse (v. 13), emphasizes the preservation of the covenant, or perhaps the Church as a preserver of this world (Matthew 5:13, so the Navarre Bible). Frankincense links this offering to the Altar of Incense in the Tabernacle, enhancing the sacred aura of the liturgical act of prayer ascending to God.
Takeaway: We cannot adequately understand the Incarnation, the sacrifice of Christ, worship and the Eucharist, the Church, and the resurrection, without a thorough understanding of the Grain Offering.
Questions:
- What have you learned that is new to you, or something you have seen in a new light, from this post?
- Explain how meditating on the grain offering can help your experience of worship at the Eucharist?
Resources Used:
Radner, E., pp. 47ff.
The Pentateuch, in the Navarre Bible Commentary Series. Dublin: The Four Courts Press, 1999.
Wenham, G. pp. 67ff.