Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Leviticus 2:4 - 2:4

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Leviticus 2:4 - 2:4


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The second kind consisted of pastry of fine flour and oil prepared in different forms. The first was maapheh tannur, oven-baking: by תַּנּוּר we are not to understand a baker's over (Hos 7:4, Hos 7:6), but a large pot in the room, such as are used for baking cakes in the East even to the present day (see my Archäol. §99, 4). The oven-baking might consist either of “cakes of unleavened meal mixed (made) with oil,” or of “pancakes of unleavened meal anointed (smeared) with oil.” Challoth: probably from חָלַל to pierce, perforated cakes, of a thicker kind. Rekkim: from רָקַק to be beaten out thin; hence cakes or pancakes. As the latter were to be smeared with oil, we cannot understand בָּלוּל as signifying merely the pouring of oil upon the baked cakes, but must take it in the sense of mingled, mixed, i.e., kneaded with oil (pefurame'nous lxx, or according to Hesychius, μεμιγμένους).

Lev 2:5-6

Secondly, if the minchah was an offering upon the pan, it was also to be made of fine flour mixed with oil and unleavened. Machabath is a pan, made, according to Eze 4:3, of iron-no doubt a large iron plate, such as the Arabs still use for baking unleavened bread in large round cakes made flat and thin (Robinson, Palestine i. 50, ii. 180). These girdles or flat pans are still in use among the Turcomans of Syria and the Armenians (see Burckhardt, Syr. p. 1003; Tavernier, Reise 1, p. 280), whilst the Berbians and Cabyles of Africa use shallow iron frying-pans for the purpose, and call them tajen, - the same name, no doubt, as τήγανον, with which the lxx have rendered machabath. These cakes were to be broken in pieces for the minchah, and oil to be poured upon them (the inf. abs. as in Exo 13:3; Exo 20:8, vid., Ges. §131, 4); just as the Bedouins break the cakes which they bake in the hot ashes into small pieces, and prepare them for eating by pouring butter or oil upon them.

Lev 2:7

Thirdly, “If thy oblation be a tigel-minchah, it shall be made of fine flour with oil.” Marchesheth is not a gridiron (ἔσχαρα, lxx); but, as it is derived from חָרַשׁ, ebullivit, it must apply to a vessel in which food was boiled. We have therefore to think of cakes boiled in oil.