Bible Strands
Numbers 15:20
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.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Moses addresses the Israelites in the wilderness, giving ritual instructions for the moment they begin eating the food of the land.
The words — חַלָּה (challah) means a cake, and תְּרוּמָה (terumah) denotes a lifted contribution.
The thread — This directive aligns with the firstfruits mandates in Leviticus 2:14, Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 26:2, while Numbers 15:19 and Numbers 15:21 bracket it as a permanent generational requirement.
Why it lands — The text commands giving the initial portion of dough to God and treating it with the exact same ritual status as grain offered from the threshing floor.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
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.
Cross-references
- Leviticus 2:14 If you bring a grain offering of firstfruits to the LORD, you shall offer crushed heads of new grain roasted on the fire.
- Exodus 34:26 Bring 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.”
- Deuteronomy 26:2 you 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,
- Exodus 23:19 Bring 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.
- Leviticus 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.
- Leviticus 23:14 You 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.
- Nehemiah 10:37 Moreover, 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.
- Proverbs 3:9 Honor the LORD with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your crops;
- Ezekiel 44:30 The 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.
- Leviticus 23:20 The 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.