(14) And if thou offer.--The third kind of meat offering (Leviticus 2:14-16) is of the firstfruits. These verses should properly come immediately after Leviticus 2:12, since Leviticus 2:13 concludes the directions about the different kinds of minchas or bloodless offerings, with general remarks applying to all animal sacrifices. Such transpositions are not uncommon in the Hebrew Scriptures. Parched or roasted corn, as here described, was, and still is, a favourite article of food in the East (Leviticus 23:14; Joshua 5:11; 1Samuel 17:17; 1Samuel 25:18; 2Samuel 17:28; Ruth 2:14). It was, therefore, an appropriate meat offering. Hence the regulations about it, Leviticus 2:14-16, are the same as those given with regard to the other two kinds of bloodless offerings.

Verses 14-16. - The third form of meat offering, parched grains of corn, with oil, salt, and frankincense. The mark of a new paragraph should be transferred from verse 12 to the beginning of verse 14.

2:12-16 Salt is required in all the offerings. God hereby intimates to them that their sacrifices, in themselves, were unsavoury. All religious services must be seasoned with grace. Christianity is the salt of the earth. Directions are given about offering their first-fruits at harvest. If a man, with a thankful sense of God's goodness in giving him a plentiful crop, was disposed to present an offering to God, let him bring the first ripe and full ears. Whatever was brought to God must be the best in its kind, though it were but green ears of corn. Oil and frankincense must be put upon it. Wisdom and humility soften and sweeten the spirits and services of young people, and their green ears of corn shall be acceptable. God takes delight in the first ripe fruits of the Spirit, and the expressions of early piety and devotion. Holy love to God is the fire by which all our offerings must be made. The frankincense denotes the mediation and intercession of Christ, by which our services are accepted. Blessed be God that we have the substance, of which these observances were but shadows. There is that excellency in Christ, and in his work as Mediator, which no types and shadows can fully represent. And our dependence thereon must be so entire, that we must never lose sight of it in any thing we do, if we would be accepted of God.And if thou offer a meat offering of thy firstfruits unto the Lord,.... This, according to Aben Ezra, was not any of the offerings of the firstfruits, which they were obliged to, as at the passover or pentecost, or feast of tabernacles, but a free will offering; but Jarchi thinks it is to be understood of the meat offering of the Omer, Leviticus 23:13 and so Gersom, which was offered up on the sixteenth of Nisan; and this is the general sense of the Jewish writers (b):

thou shalt bring for the meat offering of thy firstfruits green ears of corn dried by the fire; these were ears of barley, which began to be ripe in the month Abib, which month had its name from hence, and is the word here used; these were dried by the fire, being green and moist, or otherwise they could not have been ground; for, according to Gersom, these were afterwards ground into fine flour:

even corn beaten out of full ears; and so made the finest flour: the firstfruits were a type of Christ, who is so called, 1 Corinthians 15:23 the beating of the ears of corn, and drying of them by the fire, and the grinding of them, denoted the sufferings of Christ.

(b) Maimon. & Bartenora in Misn. Menachot, c. 10. sect. 4.