Gift offering

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A gift offering (Hebrew: minchah), also referred to as grain offerings, meal offerings, and in the King James Version as meat offerings^[1], is a type of Biblical sacrifice, specifically a sacrifice that did not include meat. Gift offerings were often made on their own, but also accompanied the whole offering. Scholars believe that the term gift offering originally referred to all voluntary sacrifices, but that it later came to just refer to non-meat offerings^[2].

The quintessential gift offering was one of grain (not just high quality flour), frankincense, and oil. The grain could either be raw and mixed with oil, or mixed with oil and cooked into unleavened bread, or cooked into wafers and spread with oil. According to tradition ten such cakes of bread/wafers had to be made for each offering^[3]. A portion of this was then burnt on the altar, along with the frankincense, while the remainder was allocated to the priests, who were to eat it within the sanctuary.

[edit] See also

• Challah

[edit] Notes and citations

1. ^ At the time the King James Version was written, meat referred to food in general rather than the flesh of animals in particular - Peake's commentary on the Bible
2. ^ Peake's commentary on the Bible
3. ^ ibid