“He is to bring with his own hands the offerings for Adonai made by fire — he is to bring the breast with its fat. The breast is to be waved as a wave offering before Adonai.“-Leviticus 7:30
The instructions in chapter 6 and chapter 7 of Leviticus are directed towards the priesthood.
However, from verse 29, the target of God’s instructions changes to “the people of Israel” or the “common worshippers”.
The offering being discussed is the ZEVAH SHELAMIM.
In English, the ZEVAH refers to the class of “Peace Offerings” and ZEVAH SHELAMIM would be the “Vow Offering” within this type of offering.
We are told that the worshipper must “present” the ZEVAH SHELAMIM to the Lord with his own hands.
What does this mean exactly, that the worshipper must “present” the offering to the Lord?
First, let me tell you one thing that it doesn’t mean.
It did not mean that worshipper placed the sacrificial animal on the Brazen Altar.
That was a work reserved for only the priest alone.
What “present” means in this context is that the common worshipper would with both hands lift his offering up over his head and perform a waving motion.
This action is called TENUFAH in Hebrew.
Actually, literally TENUFAH means “presentation”.
The lay worshipper brings his sacrificial animal to the Tabernacle, he slaughters it, and then performs TENUFAH (the waving motion).
Afterwards, the animal is turned over to the priest who places the fat portions on the Bible to be burned up.
Now recall the two primary classes of offerings as follows:
KODESH-KODASHIM=Most Holy
KODESH KALLIM=Offerings lesser Holiness
We know that the ZEVAH SHELAMIM offering we are discussing here falls under KODESH KALLIM because the lay worshipper “presented” the offering himself.
Recall that with the KODESH-KODASHIM, the common worshipper’s degree of participation was very limited, but not so with the KODESH KALLIM.
The remaining verses of this chapter reinforce much of what we’ve already discussed.
Notice verse 34.
“For the breast that has been waved and the thigh that has been contributed I have taken from the people of Israel out of their sacrifices of peace offerings and given them to Aharon the cohen and to his descendants as their share forever from the people of Israel.”
The Lord has taken the meat from the offering and given it to the priests.
This reinforces the point that what is sacrificed to the Lord becomes His property, and since it is His property He can do with it whatever He pleases.
In this case, we see that it was pleasing for Him to give the meat of the ZEVAH SHELAMIM sacrifice to the priests.
Finally, notice verses 35-36.
“This is the portion of the food offerings presented to the Lord that were allotted to Aaron and his sons on the day they were presented to serve the Lord as priests. On the day they were anointed, the Lord commanded that the Israelites give this to them as their perpetual share for the generations to come.”
The point I want to make is that everything we are reading about here in chapter seven HAS NOT YET TAKEN PLACE.
In fact, at this point in time, the Wilderness Tabernacle has not yet been built.
All of these instructions are preparation for what is to take place in the not so distant future.
NEXT TIME WE BEGIN LEVITICUS CHAPTER 8
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