Discovery BoxLeviticus 24:5-9
Context24:5 “You must take choice wheat flour 1 and bake twelve loaves; 2 there must be two tenths of an ephah of flour in 3 each loaf, 24:6 and you must set them in two rows, six in a row, 4 on the ceremonially pure table before the Lord. 24:7 You must put pure frankincense 5 on each row, 6 and it will become a memorial portion 7 for the bread, a gift 8 to the Lord. 24:8 Each Sabbath day 9 Aaron 10 must arrange it before the Lord continually; this portion 11 is from the Israelites as a perpetual covenant. 24:9 It will belong to Aaron and his sons, and they must eat it in a holy place because it is most holy to him, a perpetual allotted portion 12 from the gifts of the Lord.”
The Song of Songs 5:1
ContextThe Lover to His Beloved:
5:1 I have entered my garden, O my sister, my bride;
I have gathered my myrrh with my balsam spice.
I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey;
I have drunk my wine and my milk!
The Poet to the Couple: 13
Eat, friends, and drink! 14
Drink freely, O lovers!
Revelation 3:20
Context3:20 Listen! 15 I am standing at the door and knocking! If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come into his home 16 and share a meal with him, and he with me.
[24:5] 1 sn See the note on Lev 2:1.
[24:5] 2 tn Heb “and bake it twelve loaves”; KJV, NAB, NASB “cakes.”
[24:5] 3 tn The words “of flour” are supplied in the translation for clarity.
[24:6] 4 tn Heb “six of the row.”
[24:7] 5 tn This is not just any “incense” (קְטֹרֶת, qÿtoret; R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 3:913-16), but specifically “frankincense” (לְבֹנָה, lÿvonah; R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 2:756-57).
[24:7] 6 tn Heb “on [עַל, ’al] the row,” probably used distributively, “on each row” (J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 395-96). Perhaps the frankincense was placed “with” or “along side of” each row, not actually on the bread itself, and was actually burned as incense to the
[24:7] 7 sn The “memorial portion” (אַזְכָרָה, ’azkharah) was normally the part of the grain offering that was burnt on the altar (see Lev 2:2 and the notes there), as opposed to the remainder, which was normally consumed by the priests (Lev 2:3; see the full regulations in Lev 6:14-23 [6:7-16 HT]).
[24:7] 8 sn See the note on Lev 1:9 regarding the term “gift.”
[24:8] 9 tn Heb “In the day of the Sabbath, in the day of the Sabbath.” The repetition is distributive. A few medieval Hebrew
[24:8] 10 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Aaron) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[24:8] 11 tn The word “portion” is supplied in the translation here for clarity, to specify what “this” refers to.
[24:9] 12 tn Or “a perpetual regulation”; NRSV “a perpetual due.”
[5:1] 13 sn There is no little debate about the identity of the speaker(s) and the audience addressed in 5:1b. There are five options: (1) He is addressing his bride. (2) The bride is addressing him. (3) The wedding guests are addressing him and his bride. (4) He and his bride are addressing the wedding guests. (5) The poet is addressing him and his bride. When dealing with this issue, the following factors should be considered: (1) the form of both the exhortations and the addressees are plural. This makes it unlikely that he is addressing his bride or that his bride is addressing him. (2) The exhortation has an implicitly sexual connotation because the motif of “eating” and “drinking” refers to sexual consummation in 5:1a. This makes it unlikely that he or his bride are addressing the wedding guests – an orgy is quite out of the question! (3) The poet could be in view because as the writer who created the Song, only he could have been with them – in a poetic sense – in the bridal chamber as a “guest” on their wedding night. (4) The wedding guests could be in view through the figurative use of apostrophe (addressing an audience that is not in the physical presence of the speaker). While the couple was alone in their wedding chambers, the wedding guests wished them all the joys and marital bliss of the honeymoon. This is supported by several factors: (a) Wedding feasts in the ancient Near East frequently lasted several days and after the couple had consummated their marriage, they would appear again to celebrate a feast with their wedding guests. (b) The structure of the Song is composed of paired-dialogues which either begin or conclude with the words of the friends or daughters of Jerusalem (1:2-4, 5-11; 3:6-11; 5:9-16; 6:1-3, 4-13; 7:1-10) or which conclude with an exhortation addressed to them (2:1-7; 3:1-5; 8:1-4). In this case, the poetic unit of 4:1-5:1 would conclude with an exhortation by the friends in 5:1b.
[5:1] 14 sn The physical love between the couple is compared to eating and drinking at a wedding feast. This is an appropriate figure of comparison because it would have been issued during the feast which followed the wedding and the consummation. The term “drink” refers to intoxication, that is, it compares becoming drunk on wine with enjoying the physical love of one’s spouse (e.g., Prov 5:19-20).
