Numbers 28:1

These two chapters are being treated together because they actually constitute a summary of the offerings Israel was commanded to make throughout the whole year. Every one of the requirements laid down in Numbers 28 and Numbers 29 has already been discussed at length in this series of commentaries under those verses where they were first mentioned in the Pentateuch. The last syllable of the material here is Mosaic, both as to authorship and from the standpoint of the time when the instructions were given. Our text states (Numbers 28:1) that God commanded Moses to give this summary, and we have discovered no good reason for assigning it to any other.[1]

Neither is there very much mystery as to just why the summary appears at this particular place in the Books of Moses. God's people had certainly not been able, for many reasons, to observe all of the sacrifices and ordinances commanded at Sinai. In fact, "The whole Mosaic system presupposed an almost immediate entry into Canaan."[2] But then, through human rebellion, there resulted the forty-year delay, and during that forty years it is clear enough that all of those ordinances so clearly designed for a people settled in Canaan were in fact neglected and disobeyed, but now that entry into the Promised Land was immediately to be an accomplished fact, it was appropriate indeed that God should again have given a summary of what their duties in Canaan would be.

When Joshua brought the people into their inheritance, the thrill and joy of having a homeland could have led to a sense of having arrived or of having concluded their purpose.[3]

Such a danger was averted by this divine summary of the strict and continual duties of worship and sacrifices which God expected of them. Israel in no sense had arrived! It was not the end of God's purpose with them, but only the beginning.

"And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel, and say unto them, My oblation, my food for my offerings made by fire, of a sweet savor unto me, shall ye observe to offer unto me in their due season."

The use of the possessive personal pronoun "my" is impressive here. The conception is that of God's food, God's pleasing odor, and God's oblations. As Owens noted, "All of these expressions stem from a time when people thought of God as eating and drinking with his worshippers in the sacrificial meals."[4] However, it is important to remember that this same concept has been brought over into the New Covenant particularly in the ordinance of the Lord's Supper during which Jesus "drinks the fruit of the vine new with his disciples in the kingdom of heaven!" (Matthew 26:29). See Leviticus 3:11.