Leviticus 24:5–9

24:5 “You must take choice wheat flour7 and bake twelve loaves;8 there must be two tenths of an ephah of flour in9 each loaf, 24:6 and you must set them in two rows, six in a row,10 on the ceremonially pure table before the Lord. 24:7 You must put pure frankincense11 on each row,12 and it will become a memorial portion13 for the bread, a gift14 to the Lord. 24:8 Each Sabbath day15 Aaron16 must arrange it before the Lord continually; this portion17 is from the Israelites as a perpetual covenant. 24:9 It will belong to Aaron and his sons, and they must eat it in a holy place because it is most holy to him, a perpetual allotted portion18 from the gifts of the Lord.”

7	sn See the note on Lev 2:1.
8	tn Heb “and bake it twelve loaves”; KJV, NAB, NASB “cakes.”
9	tn The words “of flour” are supplied in the translation for clarity. sn See the note on Lev 5:11.
10	tn Heb “six of the row.”
11	tn This is not just any “incense” (קְטֹרֶת, qétoret; R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 3:913–16), but specifically “frankincense” (לְבֹנָה, lévonah; R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 2:756–57).
12	tn Heb “on [עַל, ’al] the row,” probably used distributively, “on each row” (J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 395–96). Perhaps the frankincense was placed “with” or “along side of” each row, not actually on the bread itself, and was actually burned as incense to the Lord (cf. NIV “Along [Alongside CEV] each row”; NRSV “with each row”; NLT “near each row”; B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 165). This particular preposition can have such a meaning.
13	sn The “memorial portion” (אַזְכָרָה, ’azkharah) was normally the part of the grain offering that was burnt on the altar (see Lev 2:2 and the notes there), as opposed to the remainder, which was normally consumed by the priests (Lev 2:3; see the full regulations in Lev 6:14–23 [6:7–16 HT]).
14	sn See the note on Lev 1:9 regarding the term “gift.”
15	tn Heb “In the day of the Sabbath, in the day of the Sabbath.” The repetition is distributive. A few medieval Hebrew mss, the LXX, and the Syriac delete the second occurrence of the expression.
16	tn Heb “he”; the referent (Aaron) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
17	tn The word “portion” is supplied in the translation here for clarity, to specify what “this” refers to.
18	tn Or “a perpetual regulation”; NRSV “a perpetual due.”