Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Table of the Show Bread

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Table of the Show Bread

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 90

Dictation Name: RR171AW90

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Thus saith the high and lofty one who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite. If thou shalt seek the Lord they God, thou shalt find Him, if thou seek Him with all thy heart, and with all thy soul. Let us pray.

O Lord, Our God, who hast made heaven and earth and all things therein, we thank thee that thou art mindful of all thy creation from the greatest to the smallest. That all things are in thy hand and under thy providential care. Teach us daily to walk in faith, to trust in thee, to rejoice in thy creation and thy providential purposes, to know that thou art he who dost make all things work together for good to them that love thee, to them that are the called according to thy purpose. We give thanks unto thee that thy work is being advanced in every corner of the world and thy triumph is assured because thou hast so stated it. How great thou art and we praise thee. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture is Exodus 25:23-30. Our subject: The Table of the Show Bread. The Table of the Show Bread. Exodus 25:23-30. “Thou shalt also make a table of shittim wood: two cubits shall be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof. And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, and make thereto a crown of gold round about. And thou shalt make unto it a border of an hand breadth round about, and thou shalt make a golden crown to the border thereof round about. And thou shalt make for it four rings of gold, and put the rings in the four corners that are on the four feet thereof. Over against the border shall the rings be for places of the staves to bear the table. And thou shalt make the staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold, that the table may be borne with them. And thou shalt make the dishes thereof, and spoons thereof, and covers thereof, and bowls thereof, to cover withal: of pure gold shalt thou make them. And thou shalt set upon the table shewbread before me alway.”

Calvin Coolidge, in an historical essay wrote, and I quote, “It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow.” “It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow.” True worship compels a man to look beyond himself, beyond man, and beyond time. It is opposed to a humanistic self-absorption. True worship will require us, among other things, to be charitable to all men, but for the Lord’s sake, not man’s.

This fact is important as we come to the table of the show bread. It was to be overlaid with gold. At this point, many, over the centuries have, like Judas, been ready to condemn any use of wealth simply to glorify God. We are told that all the disciples resented seeing an alabaster cru{?} of very precious ointment poured over Jesus. John tells us that Judas Iscariot was the instigator of this protest. According to John 12:1-5, we read, “Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?”

The obvious opinion was that the Lord doesn’t deserve our best, but that men do, especially the poor. This is an opinion which is very much with us today, and has been prominent over the centuries. Many have protested strongly in the Medieval Era as now, that the idea that any church should be beautiful or costly, any shack has been their idea, will do. This was not merely a spiritual Franciscan idea in the medieval era, and it is certainly very popular in many evangelical circles today, and also among liberation theology adherence, both Protestant and Roman Catholic. This view is clearly not biblical, and its origins are in a Marcionite kind of thinking. It also has roots in the prevailing neo-Platonism at the time of Marcion. After all, we must remember that some of the Greek adherence to this kind of thinking were against everything materials, including people, because people are material. So, the life and death of people was a matter of unconcern. Clothing and morality became matters of unconcern with many. The Bible has no such perspective and is militant against it.

We do not know the exact dimensions of this table because we are ignorant of the exact length of a cubit in that era. The usual opinion is that it was the length from the elbow to the end of the hand. Then the question is: whose elbow, because that could make a difference. We do have a depiction of this table in the triumphal arch of Emperor Titus, erected to commemorate the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Several other temple items are show on that arch. The table of the showbread refers literally to the bread of the face, or presence bread. It was located in the Holy of Holies, or near the Holy of Holies where the ark was. The bread was to be perpetually before the Lord, it was called holy bread, or hallowed bread as in 1 Samuel 21:3-6. It was regularly replaced on the table, and its meaning was akin to the offering of the first fruits. Because the product of the earth is God’s gift to men, it should be used by men in God’s service, and therefore, it was returned to God as a gift. This ritual of the showbread is echoed in the Lord’s Prayer, in praying “Give us this day our daily bread.” We recognize God as the giver, and we dedicate ourselves and His gifts to us for His service, because immediately before that we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

There were rings on the feet of the table of showbread for carrying it by staves. In verse 15, there are strict rules about transporting the ark. The staves were to remain in their rings. Because the table of showbread represented man’s life dedicated to God, it did not have the same unapproachable sacredness as the ark. The bread was changed every Sabbath and normally only the priests could eat it. The perpetual presence of the bread before God represented man’s perpetual consecration to God. The showbread, among other things, sets forth the fact that we are always in God’s presence and therefore, our dedication and service must be perpetual.

In Leviticus 24:5-9, we have the specific directions for the preparation and presentation of the show bread. There were to be twelve loaves, one for each table. There were various utensils also on the table for the drink offering and the incense offerings. Offerings of food and drink were here symbolically set forth to signify that man, who depends on God for his life, must be ready in faith to surrender the means of life to the giver and thereby manifest his trust in the Lord. We have a reference to this in Deuteronomy 8:2-3 which reads, “And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.”

In Numbers 4:7, the showbread is called the “continual bread,” or in Moffatt’s translation, “the perennial bread.” Both terms reflect the same fact, man’s dedication is not limited to his appearance in a temple or church, but is a perpetual one, continual, perennial. We are always to live in His presence and in His service.”

The parallel between the tabernacle and a palace can be seen also in the table of the showbread. The subjects of the great kings set forth their continual allegiance by means of a bread offering. Bread is an ancient type of life, and the term “bread of life” is a very familiar one in the Bible and elsewhere. Since God the great king is the author of life, we acknowledge our total dependence on Him by giving Him bread, the bread of human life. Paul refers to this in 1 Corinthians 10:17, “For we, being many are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread.” Jesus Christ is our bread of life, and in Him we are one bread, or one life, one body. According to Edersheim, and I quote, “The bread laid before him in the northern or most sacred part of the holy place, was that of his presence, and meant that the covenant people owned his presence as their bread and their life.” The showbread represented a covenantal fact. It meant the acceptability of the covenant people and their service to God. More than a century ago, U.Z. Rule wrote, and I quote, “The showbread, literally presence bread, was so-called from its being set before God in His presence. It did not signify atonement. That had already been made. It was the offering of a people who are in unimpaired covenant with God. It signified free access into his presence, and it was in that access a thankful offering by God’s people of a gift received from Him. That gift was God’s own best of material gifts: bread. But further, as bread is not a raw material, but a product of human industry, the offering signified the dedication to God of human industry, the use of men’s powers in His service. And then again, it being eaten every Sabbath by the priests, the representatives of the people, signified the people’s continual enjoyment of communion with God by eating His bread. The whole idea expressed was that of a grateful acknowledgement of unimpaired and continuous privilege.”

It is important to note that the sacrifices that were acceptable to God were not merely offerings of a clean sort. Fish and venison were both clean meats according to the law, but they could not be offered to God, because they did not represent work on the part of man. So, it had to be something that work went into, because it symbolized dedication of man and his work, his substance, everything he had to God, and so it had to be bread, not only had the grain been the product of man’s work, but also the preparation as a loaf of bread. The bread used was unleavened bread.

According to some scholars, the table of the showbread was close to the ark and in the outer area of the Holy of Holies, beyond the curtain, to the right of the golden candlesticks, and with the altar of incense between it, and the curtain separating the ark and the holiest area. In the forefront of the tabernacle, was the altar of burnt offerings and the laver. This seems to be the most faithful account of the position of these things. Just a quick reference to one aspect: the altar of incense. It makes clear again to us, because incense then was a costly product, and the best incense such as was used then is still a very costly product, and so worship was to represent a cost on the part of man. Moreover, it was to be in a house or tabernacle, or temple marked by beauty and costliness, and it was to be pleasing, both in the music and in the incense. This puts a stress on the material side of worship. It does not mean, contrary to the mythology of the modern age, that if you stress the material, you are therefore immediately unspiritual. An analog of that is if you have money, you obviously are unspiritual.

We have an artificial antithesis here. The table of the showbread was thus an important part of the sanctuary, one not commonly seen by men, and that’s an important fact. Some late Medieval cathedral sculpturers, in working on stone figures high on a cathedral wall carved only the front, but other men, most sculpturers over the centuries, carved the stone front and back, even though they knew that the backside would never be seen by people standing far below, what men could not see, they believed was still visible to God, and this is why even though only the priests entered certain portions of the sanctuary, still everything there had to be for beauty and for glory, according to the language of scripture.

In humanistic worship, the audience is man, and what man sees is regarded as alone important. With the Renaissance, men saw life as a stage play before other men, and they used the language of the theatre to describe life, and what has happened since then is that there has been a steady conversion of everyday life from the reality that is required by life to stage and theatrical productions, so that people are putting on an act for other people. This began with the Renaissance. It came again into focus with the Enlightenment, and with the rise of the modern era, in particular especially with television and films, all life has become theatre, and therefore, reality is no longer regarded as essential.

Renaissance men cease to live in the ever-watchful eye of God, and began to perform for men. Castiglione and Machiavelli made a philosophy of this perspective. They said that one should perform in battle bravely when the eyes of the prince were upon them, other times you just indulged in a holding action. Everything was for viewing. Biblical living stressed the glory of God and service to Him. It sees no sin in the beauty of churches and worship, and it does see a contempt for God comparable to that of Judas, and all resentment towards the glory of God’s house. We have now come full circle in this hostility to beauty and glory, because as Dr. David Estrada Horero{?} pointed out at our London conference, and is writing a book on the subject, we now have the cult of the ugly, which is the dethronement of all standards, a hostility to any standard whatsoever, and this dethronement of beauty in favor of the ugly is a governing temper in our age, it is a part of the hostility to God and to life. Let us pray.

O Lord our God, we thank thee that in a world that is determined to run from reality, from beauty and glory, and to enthrone the ugly, thy purposes are altogether glorious for thy creation, thy kingdom, and thy people. We thank thee that thou hast summoned us to live in the realm of beauty and glory, and to know how great and marvelous are thy purposes for thy people and for thy kingdom. Teach us to walk day by day in the joy of salvation, in a holy confidence in thy word and in thy promises, and in the peace of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, in His name we pray. Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Paul’s instructions to women in the church to avoid expensive clothes and gold, and fancy hairdos and so on seem to run almost counter to the message that you’ve given.

[Rushdoony] That is a very popular text and it’s in Peter. In Peter’s epistle.

[Audience] Also in 1 Timothy.

[Rushdoony] Yes, but the basic text is Peter’s, and his point is that our trust is not to be in gold or silver ornaments, or the hairdo or costly apparel, but in a meek and quiet spirit before the Lord. So, the point of what is said is not that we are to shun these things, but not to put our trust in them, because if we take the text as some people do, then all Christians should be nudists, because apparel is among the, are among the things named and listed. So, it’s a misuse of the text. We are very clearly told that God glories in these things. Now, one of the texts in case you haven’t thought of it yet that is used against what I have said here is that it is easier for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, therefore riches are bad.

Well, if you look at the context of that, our Lord cites three things. How shall a man be saved? That’s the basic question the apostles, or disciples have in mind, and first, he speaks of marriage and he says men, essentially, cannot be single or married except in terms of their calling under God. This they didn’t like. Their view of marriage was man-centered. “It’s for my fulfillment,” so they were very upset about that. Then he made the statement that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Then, the third statement was that unless you have the simple faith and trust of a little child, a child never doubts that his parents are going to feed him. He never worries about the fact that he may be unemployed, or that he may be having problems, or inflation is hitting him. He knows that his father loves him and is going to care for him, so it never occurs to him to doubt. Now, after that, what did the disciples say? Who then can be saved? They got the point. And our Lord said, with men, this is impossible. Men cannot save themselves, but with God, all things are possible so, even you can be saved. That’s what he was saying.

So, we have to interpret such texts carefully and they’re very much abused and have been over the centuries. The corrections are there, but people seem to prefer some kind of erroneous interpretation, and get a kick out of renouncing good clothes, or this or that, or food, as though bad food made you feel more spiritual. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience] I met a young theologian in Romania who is writing a book that notes that the wealth here, the gold that’s being used in the tabernacle, is actually the wealth of Egypt.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] Wicked Egypt which is being sanctified here . . .

[Rushdoony] That’s right, and, excuse me.

[Audience] He pointed out that it’s the resources of the world which have been turned to the {?} of God.

[Rushdoony] Isaiah, among others, but Isaiah very heavily stresses the fact that the wealth of the ungodly will, in due time, be a part of the kingdom of God, and all that they have done will not serve their purposes but God’s purposes. Well, if there are no further questions, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee that thy ways are great and marvelous, never niggardly, always generous. Grant that we avoid the sin of treating thee as an ascetic God, as one who is poor towards His children, and that we come into thy presence knowing that thou art king of kings and Lord of Lords, so great a king that none can ever ask too much, and so we come to cast our every care upon thee knowing that thou carest for us, and to commit all our needs and our hopes into thine omnipotent hands. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape.