“Every grain offering baked in the oven, cooked in a pot or fried on a griddle will belong to the cohen who offers it. But every grain offering which is mixed with olive oil or is dry will belong to all the sons of Aharon equally. This is the law for sacrificing peace offerings offered to Adonai: If a person offers it for giving thanks, he is to offer it with the thanksgiving sacrifice of unleavened cakes mixed with olive oil, matzah spread with olive oil, and cakes made of fine flour mixed with olive oil and fried.”-Leviticus 7:9-12
The Bible has some verses that are just downright peculiar and real head scratchers.
Verses 9 and 10 are no exception to this phenomenon.
Concerning the MINCHAH offering, if the dough has been cooked, the priest who offered it gets to keep it all to himself.
But any other kind of MINCHAH, meaning uncooked dough I guess, has to be shared among the priests.
Why?
Beats me and no reason is given, so we’ll just have to leave it at that.
One thing I can say for sure is that there is no way the common worshipper would have been allowed to partake of this particular MINCHAH.
Let’s move on.
From verse 11, the ZEVAH or “Peace Offering” is addressed.
Since there were many different ways the ZEVAH was performed, calling it a “Peace Offering” hardly captures all of the nuances of this offering.
Probably one of the most important things you need to understand about Leviticus chapters 6 and 7 (remember, chapters 6 and 7 should be treated as ONE whole) is that starting from verse 11, a whole different class of offerings is introduced.
Up until verse 11, we’ve been talking about the KODESH KODASHIM class or the “most Holy” sacrifices.
However, from verse 11, we will begin to deal with those sacrifices classified as KODESH KALLIM or those offerings of lesser holiness or sanctity.
Understand I’m not in any way implying that they’re not holy at all.
They are just of a lesser degree of holiness, that’s all.
A good way to think of it is to look at the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle.
Both places are holy, but the Holy Place is of a lesser degree of holiness than the Holy of Holies.
A snapshot formula would look something like this:
KODESH KODASHIM=Most Holy Offerings
KODESH KALLIM=Holy Offerings
One of the clearest ways to distinguish between the KODESH KODASHIM (Most Holy Offerings) and KODESH KALLIM (simply the Holy Offerings) is to look at the rules governing the eating of the meat (or grain) from these respective types of sacrifices.
BOTH the common worshipper and the priests could eat of the KODESH KALLIM.
However, ONLY the priests could eat of the KODESH KODASHIM.
Also, with the KODESH KALLIM, even though both the priests and the common worshipper could partake of this type of sacrifice, they could NOT eat them together in the same area.
The common worshipper had to eat his KODESH KALLIM outside of the Tabernacle.
And the priests had to eat their KODESH KALLIM inside the Tabernacle.
So can you see how the subject of the Lord’s holiness is hardly as simplistic as the church has made it out to be?
Depending on who you are, the time, and the place, and the purpose, the rules governing the Lord’s holiness change.
Man, this stuff is so exciting!
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