4 And if thou bring an oblation of a meat offering baken in the oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or unleavened wafers anointed with oil.

5 And if thy oblation be a meat offering baken in a pan, it shall be of fine flour unleavened, mingled with oil.

6 Thou shalt part it in pieces, and pour oil thereon: it is a meat offering.

7 And if thy oblation be a meat offering baken in the fryingpan, it shall be made of fine flour with oil.

11 No meat offering, which ye shall bring unto the Lord, shall be made with leaven: for ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of the Lord made by fire.

In the last post we discussed the meat offering made from separate ingredients, now we see the option to have it already baked as a cake or a wafer. One key detail from verse four and eleven is that if the offering were baked, it needed to be “unleavened,” which is to say having no germ agent that would cause it to cause it to rise. Thus, what they were bringing was not like bread, but crackers.

Many scholars have already explained that the reason for this was as a symbol of purity. You were to keep the ingredients plain, not introduce a foreign agent that transformed the end result. Those coming to the tabernacle were expected to eschew all foreign doctrines, all forms of idolatry, and all pagan superstitions. They were to keep the word of God pure, uncompromised by the philosophies of the world.

Of course, we do interact and cooperate with the larger world, and the Israelites did use leaven in their home cooking. But all of us should have a place that is pure. Just as the Israelites would not bring leaven into the tabernacle, we should not bring the world into our most sacred moments of worship.

One other point regarding leaven. Some may recall that Jesus spoke favorably of it when he compared it to the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 13:33. While leaven is usually used as a negative symbol in the scriptures, including from Jesus, it is not, in and of itself, good or evil. Broadly speaking, it is a symbol of influence and transformation. And influence and transformation can be good, but they can also be evil.

Sacrifice	Eligible oblation	Steps	Explanation
Meat Offering	Flour, oil, frankincense		Giving gratitude for blessings
		Separate ingredients burned on altar	Body, spirit, and prayer uniting in gratitude
		Ingredients baked into unleavened cakes	Devotion to God’s law, unsullied by pagan practices

Full table.