Year 1, Day 91: Leviticus 2

Split Offerings

Three things caught my attention as I read up on the grain offering.  The first is that grain offerings were partially given to God, but predominantly given to Aaron and his family.  This appears in stark contrast to yesterday when we saw that the burnt offering to God was completely consumed except for the skin. 

Why is this offering not completely consumed as well?  I don’t honestly know God’s reason.  But I do know that it allows Aaron and his family to eat from it.  In this way we can see that God is caring for His priests.  I do know that the priests were to be provided for out of the sacrificial system; that much is true and clear.  But as to what makes the grain offering different from the burnt offering as far as God wanting one to be wholly consumed verses the other to be partially consumed I am not sure.

No Leaven

The second thing that stuck out to me was that the offering could contain no leaven.  I always hear this and wonder what God really has against leaven.  After all, is yeast really all that bad?

Of course, I then think about the exodus story and the reminder that the people had to leave in a hurry.  Through that, we have this predetermined course that God prefers no leavening.  By the time we get into the era of Jesus, leavening is actually symbolic for sin.  Just as leaven mixes throughout the whole dough and makes it change, so sin mixes through throughout our whole life and makes it change, too. 

We can see that as the theology and teachings spread throughout time this natural divine displeasure against leaven becomes a symbol for God’s divine displeasure with sin in general.  That is a good thing to remember.  Once introduced into the body, sin is a very hard thing to root out.

It isn’t that God has an issue with leaven as much as God is setting up future teaching.  God wants us to understand how dangerous things can be when we think them small, harmless, and not worth worrying about.

Salt

The third thing that jumped out at me today was that salt was to be added to the grain offering.  For me, this was the biggest concept to jump out at me.  What is salt? 

Well, salt is a preservative.  It does enhance the flavor, but primarily it helps to preserve things by making it hard for bacteria to grow.  In fact, one could say that salt makes it hard for yeast to grow – thus salt (preservation of life) and yeast (sin – destruction of life) have a hard time existing together.  The addition of salt is a symbolic gesture that mixes well with the exclusion of yeast.

However, I think the use of salt runs deeper than a simple reminder of preservation.  In ancient days, salt was a symbol of friendship.  Salt was at the very least a reminder of relationship to one another.  In fact, in both Numbers 18:19 and 2 Chronicles 13:5 we have reference to the covenant between God and the Hebrews as a “covenant of salt.”

Thus, the salt used here is not just for preserving the sacrifice.  It is also a reminder of the bond between the people and God.  It is a reminder of the covenant between the people and their God.

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