The Manger and the Bread Offering

Bethlehem had many stables scattered around town the day Mary and Joseph arrived, each with its own manger or two. While most of those mangers were filled with hay, one cradled a baby.

Why did God arrange for the one who would be known as the Prince of Peace, the King of Glory, His only begotten Son to begin life in a feeding trough?

Before the Israelites could add grain to their mangers, God commanded they separate a portion as an offering to Him. They could present it as fine flour, as beaten and roasted grain, or baked it as cakes or wafers. They were to drizzle any of these types with olive oil, but to the fine flour or grain a dusting of frankincense would be added.

How fitting that the Christmas baby—the one who would be called the Bread of Life—was born in Bethlehem (whose name means House of Bread in Hebrew). More significant still, His first home was a manger—the place of grain.

While each form of the grain offering hinted at a different facet of Jesus’ mission, I find the fate of fine flour especially interesting. (see Leviticus 2:1–3)

Fine Flour

To make flour “fine,” the grain was cut down while it was still green. Harvesters threw it under the feet of oxen and crushed it beneath a threshing sledge (a raft of boards studded with sharp stone “teeth”) until the kernels cracked open.

They tossed the chaffy mixture into the air with winnowing forks again and again, allowing the wind to sweep the hulls away. Then they subjected the naked seeds to grinding between two stones, until repeated grinding and sifting qualified the flour as “fine.”

Oil and Frankincense

A portion of the flour became their offering to God. They poured olive oil, like balm over a wounded soul, atop their gift and presented it before the tabernacle. A priest separated a handful of the offering, sprinkled it with frankincense and toss it into the altar’s fire. What remained of the grain offering became food for the priests.

Olive oil was acquired by pressing, but what of the frankincense?

The heady perfume came from the Boswellia, a tough tree living in the forbidding, rocky environments of the Middle East. Within it oozed a precious resin that could only be obtained by slashing open the tree’s bark and allowing it to “bleed.” After hardening into opaque “tears,” the dried crystals were crushed into powder and sprinkled over the fine flour offering.

Away in a manger

Crushed grain. Bleeding trees. Purified flour. Oil and tears. Have you seen the relationship to Jesus?

The Bread of Life lay in a manger. Wise men would provide the frankincense. The oil of the Holy Spirit would pour out upon Him from above. He would be cut down in green youth, threshed and winnowed by adversity, and crushed between the twin grinding stones of divine and human judgment.

Jesus presented Himself at God’s altar as the ultimate fine flour. Yet, like the priest with the grain offering, He extends a generous portion of Himself to us. We cannot live on bread alone, but ah! The fine flour of His life and oil of His Holy Spirit poured out. Aren’t these nourishment indeed? What finer food can we feast on than this?

(Want to learn more about Jesus’ relationship to the tabernacle and the offerings? Read my devotional, A Place for Me in God’s Tent on Amazon or Barnes & Noble)