Exodus 25:23-30
Shewbread before me alway
The table is described in the same terms as the ark, gold and rings and staves, and the instruction ends with a word about continuity.
Objects of the Bible
The table of the bread of the Presence
Twelve loaves replaced every sabbath, set out in front of a God who does not eat.
The table is shittim wood overlaid with pure gold, with a border of an handbreadth round about and a golden crown to the border, and rings and staves like everything else. On it go twelve cakes of fine flour, two tenth deals in each, set in two rows of six with pure frankincense on each row. The name is literal: bread of faces, set in continual order before the LORD.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The table of the bread of the Presence
- 01
- 02
Leviticus 24:5-9
Two rows, six on a row
The arrangement is specified down to the flour, the rows and the frankincense, and the bread is called most holy.
- 03
Leviticus 24:8-9
It shall be Aaron’s and his sons’
The bread set before God is eaten by the men who set it there. Nothing is wasted and the eating is part of the rite.
- 04
1 Samuel 21:1-6
There is no common bread under mine hand
David arrives at Nob hungry and the priest has only the holy bread, taken from before the LORD to put hot bread in its place.
- 05
Matthew 12:3-8
Have ye not read what David did
The episode is used as a precedent about sabbath and hunger, and the argument ends with a line from Hosea about mercy.
Why it matters
Every sabbath the loaves are replaced and the old ones go to Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in the holy place, for it is most holy unto him. It is an offering that ends as a meal. Twelve loaves for twelve tribes, kept in the presence week after week by people who never see them being looked at. Centuries later David, running with nothing, asks a priest at Nob for bread and is given the shewbread, and that transaction is quoted by Jesus in an argument about the sabbath.
1 song
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
