From the first of your dough, you are to lift up a cake as a contribution; offer it just like an offering from the threshing floor.
Parallel translations
- WEB Of the first of your dough you shall offer up a cake for a wave offering. As the wave offering of the threshing floor, so you shall heave it.
- KJV Ye shall offer up a cake of the first of your dough for an heave offering: as ye do the heave offering of the threshingfloor, so shall ye heave it.
- NKJV You shall offer up a cake of the first of your ground meal as a heave offering; as a heave offering of the threshing floor, so shall you offer it up.
- NASB Of the first of your dough you shall lift up a loaf as an offering; as an offering of the threshing floor, so you shall lift it up.
- NLT Present a cake from the first of the flour you grind, and set it aside as a sacred offering, as you do with the first grain from the threshing floor.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
A cake from the first of the dough was to be offered, like the wave offering from the threshing floor. God claims the firstfruits of even ordinary bread.
Overview
By dedicating the first of their dough, the Israelites consecrated their everyday food to the LORD, acknowledging him in the mundane rhythms of life. The firstfruits represented the whole harvest set apart as holy. This devotion of the first portion points to Christ, who as firstfruits sanctifies the whole (Romans 11:16).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 17
- Lev 2:14If you bring a grain offering of firstfruits to the LORD, you shall offer crushed heads of new grain roasted on the fire.
- Deut 26:2–10you are to take some of the firstfruits of all your produce from the soil of the land that the LORD your God is giving you and put them in a basket. Then go to the place the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for His Name,
- Exod 34:26Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God. You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
- Ezek 44:30The best of all the firstfruits and of every contribution from all your offerings will belong to the priests. You are to give your first batch of dough to the priest, so that a blessing may rest upon your homes.
- Lev 23:14–17You must not eat any bread or roasted or new grain until the very day you have brought this offering to your God. This is to be a permanent statute for the generations to come, wherever you live.
- Neh 10:37Moreover, we will bring to the priests at the storerooms of the house of our God the firstfruits of our dough, of our grain offerings, of the fruit of all our trees, and of our new wine and oil. A tenth of our produce belongs to the Levites, so that they shall receive tithes in all the towns where we labor.
- Lev 23:10“Speak to the Israelites and say, ‘When you enter the land that I am giving you and you reap its harvest, you are to bring to the priest a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest.
- Prov 3:9–10Honor the LORD with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your harvest;
- Exod 23:19Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God. You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.
- Lev 23:20The priest is to wave the lambs as a wave offering before the LORD, together with the bread of the firstfruits. The bread and the two lambs shall be holy to the LORD for the priest.
- Matt 6:33But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.
- Jas 1:18He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we would be a kind of firstfruits of His creation.
- Deut 14:22You must be sure to set aside a tenth of all the produce brought forth each year from your fields.
- Num 18:12I give you all the freshest olive oil and all the finest new wine and grain that the Israelites give to the LORD as their firstfruits.
- 1 Cor 15:20But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
- Rom 11:16If the first part of the dough is holy, so is the whole batch; if the root is holy, so are the branches.
- Rev 14:4These are the ones who have not been defiled with women, for they are virgins. They follow the Lamb wherever He goes. They have been redeemed from among men as firstfruits to God and to the Lamb.
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Christ at the center
In the wilderness Christ is the water from the rock, the bronze serpent lifted up that the dying might look and live (John 3:14), and the star and scepter that Balaam saw rising out of Jacob.
How Numbers 15:20 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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