Exodus 29:38-42

The burnt-offering, to be offered daily, morning and evening, on behalf of the community. A law in great measure verbally identical, but somewhat fuller, recurs in Numbers 28:3-8, in a table, Numbers 28-29, of public sacrifices prescribed for different days in the year. Here it interrupts the connexion between vv.37 and 43; so it is probable (Di. al.) that it has been introduced here from Numbers 28 with some abridgements, and adjustments in vv.38a, 42b, fitting it to its new place, by a later hand, just as Exodus 27:20 f. seems to have been similarly introduced from Leviticus 24:2 f. Its position (after v.36 f.) is suitable: for the daily burnt-offering was a central and fundamental element in the worship (cf. Wellh. Hist.p. 80) notice the terms in which its suspension by Antiochus Epiphanes is alluded to in Daniel 8:12 f., Daniel 11:31; Daniel 12:11 and its proper maintenance was one of the chief duties to be performed on the altar of v.36 f.

The law, like Numbers 28:3-8 (cf. also Leviticus 6:9), regulates the post exilic usage. Before the exile, as 2 Kings 16:15 shews, it was the custom to offer a burnt-offering in the morning, but only a minḥâh, i.e. a cereal, or -meal," offering in the evening; Ezek. also (Ezekiel 48:13-15) prescribes for the restored temple only a morning burnt-offering (with accompanying meal-offering: he prescribes no evening offering at all). Before the exile the minḥâhthus held an independent position, as the evening offering: the present law duplicates the burnt-offering, and at the same time subordinates the evening minḥâhto the evening burnt-offering (cf. on v.40).