Leviticus 24:5-9

24:5 “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.”

[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 Lord (cf. NIV “Along [Alongside CEV] each row”; NRSV “with each row”; NLT “near each row”; B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 165). This particular preposition can have such a meaning.

[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 mss, the LXX, and the Syriac delete the second occurrence of the expression.

[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.”