It is not easy to say whether the words, “bread of his God,” refer generally to the sacrifices and offerings, or specially to the “shewbread.” We take them as pointing to the latter; as, indeed, in any interpretation of the expression, the shewbread must be included, if not mainly intended. It was called the “shewbread”; or, more properly, “the bread of the presence”; the bread that stood on the King’s table, and in the King’s presence; the bread which was therefore intimately connected with Him who is called “the Angel of the Presence” (Isa_62:9); the bread which was associated with Him whose “presence” went with Israel whithersoever they went (Exo_33:14).
I. It is provided by God. As in carrying out His purpose in the old creation, He provided every fruit-bearing tree for man, so, in accomplishing the new creation, He has supplied the “food convenient.” He has made the provision for His house; and He has also blessed it. For the sustaining the life which He imparts, He provides the food required.
II. It is prepared by God himself. Moses, as representing God, prepared the twelve loaves; and God Himself has prepared the better bread, the flesh of the Son of Man. “A body hast Thou prepared Me.” In the history of the birth, the life, the sorrows, the hardships, the blood-shedding, the death of the incarnate Son of God, we have a description of the way it, which the “shewbread” or “presence-bread” of the Church was prepared, according to God’s own method, for our everlasting food.
III. It is given to us by God. God causes it to be provided for us; nay, He prepares it Himself; and then having thus provided and prepared it, He gives it: “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son” (Joh_3:16); “The bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give,” &c.
IV. Who they are who feast on it. Perhaps the answer to such a question will be--God’s priesthood, His Church. Nor would this be incorrect; yet it would be defective. No doubt this heavenly bread is for them, just as the tree of life was for Adam, or the Temple shewbread was for the sons of Aaron. But it is so specially called “the bread of our God”; and the table on which it is set is so specially God’s own table; and the place where it is to be eaten is somanifestly the royal banquet-hall of heaven, that we come to theconclusion that God Himself is partaker of this feast aswell as we. The King, sitting at His own table, in His own festal chamber, not only feeds His guests, bat Himself partakes of that which is set before them. Israel’s various sacrifices and offerings of all kinds were the various dishes set upon the great Temple table; each of them full of meaning; each of them containing that which would satisfy and comfort; every one of them setting forth some part of the glorious fulness of the God-man, as the true food of souls; and all of them together representing that complete and blessed feast of “fat things” partaken of by God and His redeemed, in some measure now, but hereafter to be more fully enjoyed at the great marriage-supper in the New Jerusalem, when that shall be fulfilled, so long realised but in parts and fragments, “I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me” (Rev_3:20). (H. Bonar, D. D.)
The bread of God
It was an ancient heathen notion that in sacrifice food was provided for the deity in order thus to show him honour. And, doubtless, in Israel, ever prone to idolatry, there were many who rose no higher than this gross conception of the meaning of such words. Thus, in Psa_50:8-15, God sharply rebukes Israel for so unworthy thoughts of Himself, using language at the same time which teaches the spiritual meaning of the sacrifice, regarded as the “food” or “bread” of God . . . Of which language the plain teaching is this. If the sacrifices are called in the law “the bread of God,” God asks not this bread from Israel in anymaterial sense, or for any material need. He asks that which the offerings symbolise; thanksgiving, loyal fulfilment of covenant engagements to Him, and that loving trust which will call on Him in the day of trouble. Even sol Gratitude, loyalty, trust! this is the “food of God,” this the bread which He desires that we should offer, the bread which those Levitical sacrifices symbolised. For even as man, when hungry, craves food, and cannot be satisfied without it, so God, who is Himself Love, desires our love, and delights in seeing its expression in all those offices of self-forgetting and self-sacrificing service in which love manifests itself. This is to God even as is food to us. Love cannot be satisfied except with love returned; and we may say, with deepest humility and reverence, the God of love cannot be satisfied without love returned. Hence it is that the sacrifices, which in various ways symbolize the self-offerings of love and the fellowship of love, are called by the Holy Ghost “the food” or “bread of God.” And yet we must, on no account, hasten to the conclusion, as many do, that therefore the Levitical sacrifices were only intended to express and symbolise the self-offering of the worshipper, and that this exhausts their significance. On the contrary, the need of infinite love for this “bread of God” cannot be adequately met and satisfied by the self-offering of any creature, and, least of all, by the self-offering of a sinful creature, whose very sin lies just in this, that he has fallen away from perfect love. The symbolism of the sacrifice as “the food of God,” therefore, by this very phrase, points toward the self-offering in love of the eternal Son to the Father, and in behalf of sinners for the Father’s sake. It was the sacrifice on Calvary which first became, in innermost reality, that “bread of God,” which the ancient sacrifices were only in symbol. It was this, not regarded as satisfying Divine justice (though it did this), but as satisfying the Divine love; because it was the supreme expression of the perfect love of the incarnate Son of God to the Father, in His becoming “obedient unto death, even the death of theCross.” (S. H. Kellogg, D. D.)
