AN OFFERING FROM THE DOUGH: DOMESTIC RELIGION
I. A DALLY OFFERING, or if not daily, be practically daily. God has spoken so far of free-will offerings, but here is one connected with such a frequent and necessary act as the eating of bread. There are occasions for free-will offerings when evident mercies and peculiar gains prompt to something special in the way of acknowledgment; but men are only too prone to forget the common and daily mercies which in reality are greatest of all. Where we abound in forgetting, God most abounds in reminding. The time of eating bread was an appointed opportunity for acknowledging his daily goodness. The manna was so evidently miraculous, that very little was needed to remind Israel how entirely it was produced without their intervention. It was not the sort of food they would have cultivated. They took it, not that they liked it, but it was the only thing to be got. But bread is a thing on which man spends much care. It goes through so many processes before it reaches his mouth that he easily exaggerates his share in the production of it. Sowing and reaping, grinding and baking, help to hide the good hand of God behind them. Hence the giving of the first from every piece of dough was a deliberate and frequent recognition of dependence on God for the bread in Canaan, as much as for the manna in the wilderness.
II. A DOMESTIC OFFERING. Thus religion was brought into the house to sanctify a common homely duty. There was something to excite the curiosity of children. It was an opportunity of explaining to them, from whose loving-kindness came their daily bread; teaching them lessons of dependence and gratitude in the seed-time and the harvest, by the mill and the oven. Contrast with this the melancholy picture by Jeremiah of the children gathering the wood, the fathers kindling the fire, and the women kneading dough to make cakes to the queen of heaven (Deuteronomy 28:5; Nehemiah 10:37; Psalms 104:14, Psalms 104:15; Jeremiah 7:18; Ezekiel 44:30; Haggai 1:9).—Y.