Numbers 15:20 MEANING

(20) Of the first of your dough.--Or, mixed meal. The word arisoth is used only in the plural number, and is found only in Nehemiah 10:37 and Ezekiel 44:30, besides this and the following verse.

Verse 20. - A cake of the first of your dough. עַרִסֹת, only used here and in the two passages which refer to this enactment (Nehemiah 10:87; Ezekiel 44:30). It probably means whole meal coarsely ground, the first preparation of the new corn available for baking and eating. Septuagint has ἀπαρχὴ φυράματος, an expression used by St. Paul in Romans 11:16. As... the heave offering of the threshing floor, so shall ye heave it, i.e., the offering of bread from the home was to be made in addition to the offering of ears or grains from the threshing-floor, and in the same manner. No doubt this latter offering was a very ancient (Genesis 4:3) and general one, but it is not clearly described in the Law (see, however, Leviticus 2:14; Leviticus 23:10). All these heave offerings were the perquisite of the priest.

15:1-21 Full instructions are given about the meat-offerings and drink-offerings. The beginning of this law is very encouraging, When ye come into the land of your habitation which I give unto you. This was a plain intimation that God would secure the promised land to their seed. It was requisite, since the sacrifices of acknowledgment were intended as the food of God's table, that there should be a constant supply of bread, oil, and wine, whatever the flesh-meat was. And the intent of this law is to direct the proportions of the meat-offering and drink-offering. Natives and strangers are placed on a level in this as in other like matters. It was a happy forewarning of the calling of the Gentiles, and of their admission into the church. If the law made so little difference between Jew and Gentile, much less would the gospel, which broke down the partition-wall, and reconciled both to God.Ye shall offer up a cake of the first of your dough for an heave offering,.... Of the first dough made of the first corn that was threshed, winnowed and ground, they were to make a cake, and offer it an heave offering unto the Lord; the quantity of it is not expressed, but was left to the people's generosity; no stinted measure was fixed by the law; but according to the Scribes, or the traditions of the elders, the quantity of the cake was the twenty fourth part of the first dough that was kneaded; not the forty fourth, as Buxtorf (p) through mistake says; so the Targum of Jonathan,"of the first of your dough, one out of twenty four (i.e. the twenty fourth part of it), ye shall separate a separation for the priests,''with which agrees the Misnah (q), though according to that, if made to sell publicly it was the forty eighth part of it. Some, because Numbers 15:21 begins and ends with "mem", which numerically signifies "forty", think this is an instruction to a bountiful person to give the fortieth part (r):

as ye do the heave offering of the threshing floor, so shall ye heave it; as the two wave loaves and firstfruits of their harvest, Leviticus 23:16.

(p) Synagog. Jud. c. 34. p. 602. (q) Challah, c. 2. sect. 7. so Schulchan Aruch, par. 2. c. 322. so Jarchi & Ben Gersom in loc. (r) Baal Hatturim in loc.