Bread
Bread is the staple of the biblical table, the daily ration that the working day produces and the meal needs. It is also the sign Yahweh chooses again and again to mark out covenant time — the wilderness manna, the Passover unleavened bread, the showbread on its table before the sanctuary, the loaves that Jesus multiplies and the loaf he breaks the night before he dies. The same word, in scripture's hands, runs from the morsel offered to a stranger to the bread of life that Jesus claims to be.
The Staff of Life
Bread is what work produces and what hunger needs. The curse on the man after Eden fixes the terms: "in the sweat of your face you will eat bread, until you return to the ground" (Gen 3:19). Agur's prayer asks for that staple and no more, "Give me neither poverty nor riches; Feed me with the food that is needful for me" (Pr 30:8). The Psalter names bread among the gifts that sustain the body: "wine that makes glad the heart of common man, [And] oil to make his face to shine, And bread that strengthens common man's heart" (Ps 104:15). Sirach lists "water and bread, And a garment, and a house to cover nakedness" as the chief requisites for life (Sir 29:21), and again names "flour of wheat, and milk and honey, The blood of the grape, oil and clothing" among the chief of all things necessary to the life of man (Sir 39:26).
Withholding bread is therefore violence. "The bread of the needy is the life of the poor, He who deprives him of it is a man of blood" (Sir 34:25). The prophets name siege and exile as Yahweh's withdrawal of the same staff. "I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they will eat bread by weight, and with fearfulness; and they will drink water by measure, and in dismay" (Eze 4:16). The threat repeats: "I will increase the famine on you⁺, and will break your⁺ staff of bread" (Eze 5:16); and again, when Yahweh stretches out his hand against a sinning land, he will "break the staff of its bread, and send famine on it" (Eze 14:13). Sirach reads Elijah's days the same way — Yahweh "broke for them the staff of bread, And by his zeal he made them small in number" (Sir 48:2).
The siege bread of Ezekiel's sign-act is the picture in detail: wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt, eaten by weight and baked in the open as the sons of Israel will eat their bread "unclean, among the nations" (Eze 4:9-13). Yahweh's verdict on Jerusalem: "they may want bread and water, and be dismayed a man and his brother, and pine away in their iniquity" (Eze 4:17).
Bread Shared With Strangers
Bread is the offering hospitality makes. Abraham at Mamre says to the three visitors, "I will fetch a morsel of bread, and strengthen your⁺ heart; after that you⁺ will pass on" (Gen 18:5), then runs to Sarah: "Quickly prepare three seahs of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes" (Gen 18:6). The setting is Sarah's kneading and Abraham's calf, butter, and milk, with the host standing by while the strangers eat (Gen 18:7-8). Lot in Sodom matches it — "he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate" (Gen 19:3). Boaz extends the same to the foreigner Ruth: "Come here, and eat of the bread, and dip your morsel in the vinegar" (Ru 2:14). The gift of bread is also gift of place — Jesse sends bread, wine, and a young goat to Saul by David's hand (1 Sam 16:20); ravens carry bread and flesh to Elijah morning and evening (1 Ki 17:6); a man from Baal-shalishah brings the man of God "bread of the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley, and fresh ears of grain" (2 Ki 4:42).
Bread From Heaven
In the wilderness Yahweh feeds Israel with bread that has no work behind it. "I will rain bread from heaven for you⁺; and the people will go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or not" (Ex 16:4). When Israel sees it on the ground, "they said one to another, What is it? For they didn't know what it was. And Moses said to them, It is the bread which Yahweh has given you⁺ to eat" (Ex 16:15). An omerful is laid up in a pot before Yahweh "to be kept throughout your⁺ generations" (Ex 16:33). The manna itself is "like coriander seed, and its appearance as the appearance of bdellium," and the people grind it, beat it, boil it, and bake it into cakes that taste "as the taste of fresh oil" (Num 11:7-8); it falls with the dew (Num 11:9).
The wilderness generation tires of it — "now our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all but this manna to look at" (Num 11:6) — but the lesson Moses draws is that bread is not the only thing man lives by. "He humbled you, and allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna, which you did not know, neither did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread only, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of Yahweh does man live" (Deut 8:3). The Psalter sings the manna as bread of heaven: "he rained down manna on them to eat, And gave them food from heaven" (Ps 78:24); "They asked, and he brought quails, And satisfied them with the bread of heaven" (Ps 105:40). Nehemiah's prayer recalls that Yahweh "did not withhold your manna from their mouth, and gave them water for their thirst" (Neh 9:20). The manna ceases at the entry into Canaan: "the manna ceased on the next day, after they had eaten of the produce of the land" (Josh 5:12). Paul reads Israel's wilderness ration sacramentally: "all ate the same spiritual food" (1 Cor 10:3). And the risen Christ promises "the hidden manna" to him who overcomes (Rev 2:17).
Unleavened Bread of Passover
Passover is bread without leaven. The flesh is roasted with fire and "eaten with unleavened bread; with bitter herbs they will eat it" (Ex 12:8). Through seven days "there will be no leavened bread seen with you, neither will there be leaven seen with you, in all your borders" (Ex 13:7). The first day is the deadline — "you⁺ will put away leaven out of your⁺ houses: for whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul will be cut off from Israel" (Ex 12:15). The penalty repeats: "Seven days there will be no leaven found in your⁺ houses: for whoever eats that which is leavened, that soul will be cut off from the congregation of Israel" (Ex 12:19). The annual feast is fixed in the calendar: "The feast of unleavened bread you will keep: seven days you will eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib" (Ex 23:15). The deuteronomic statute closes the seventh day with a solemn assembly: "Six days you will eat unleavened bread; and on the seventh day will be a solemn assembly to Yahweh your God" (Deut 16:8); leaven is banished from all the borders the same span (Deut 16:4). The supplementary Passover in the second month keeps the same rule — "they will eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs" (Num 9:11) — and the fifteenth day of the first month is the start: "seven days will unleavened bread be eaten" (Num 28:17).
The witch at Endor bakes unleavened bread for Saul out of a fatted calf and kneaded flour (1 Sam 28:24); the priests of the high places, after Josiah's reform, "ate unleavened bread among their brothers" (2 Ki 23:9); the day of unleavened bread is the day on which the Passover must be sacrificed (Luke 22:7). Paul reads the Passover instruction Christologically: "let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Cor 5:8). Leaven, in his use as in Jesus's parable, is what spreads through a lump and changes it — "It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until it was all leavened" (Luke 13:21); "A little leaven leavens the whole lump" (Gal 5:9). The cultic rule that bars leaven from meal-offerings stands behind it: "No meal-offering, which you⁺ will offer to Yahweh, will be made with leaven" (Lev 2:11).
Sanctuary Bread: The Showbread
Cultic bread sits before Yahweh continually on its own table. Moses receives the rule: "you will set on the table showbread before me always" (Ex 25:30). The ordinance specifies twelve cakes of fine flour, two-tenths of an ephah each, set in two rows on the pure table with frankincense on each row, "that it may be to the bread for a memorial, even an offering made by fire to Yahweh" (Lev 24:5-7). It is renewed every Sabbath as "an everlasting covenant" on behalf of the sons of Israel, and Aaron and his sons eat it in a holy place because it is most holy (Lev 24:8-9). On the march, the table of showbread is covered with a cloth of blue, and "the continual bread will be on it" (Num 4:7). The Kohathites are over the showbread, "to prepare it every Sabbath" (1 Chr 9:32). The post-exilic community taxes itself for it among the standing offerings (Neh 10:33). The tabernacle's first room held "the lampstand, and the table, and the showbread; which is called the Holy place" (Heb 9:2). Sirach names it as Aaron's portion: "The bread of the presence is his portion, A gift for him and for his seed" (Sir 45:21).
The David episode is the famous breach. He comes to Ahimelech at Nob and asks for "five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever there is present" (1 Sam 21:3). The priest answers, "There is no common bread under my hand, but there is holy bread" (1 Sam 21:4). David swears the young men's vessels are clean, "So the priest gave him holy [bread]; for there was no bread there but the showbread, that was taken from before Yahweh, to put hot bread in the day when it was taken away" (1 Sam 21:6).
Melchizedek and the Priestly Bread
Bread and wine appear together at the earliest priestly scene. "Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was priest of God Most High" (Gen 14:18). The priestly meal-offering uses bread without leaven: "unleavened bread, and unleavened cakes mingled with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil: of fine wheat flour you will make them" (Ex 29:2). The Nazirite's basket is the same — "a basket of unleavened bread, cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and their meal-offering, and their drink-offerings" (Num 6:15).
The Multiplications of Bread
Jesus twice takes a few loaves, blesses, breaks, and feeds thousands. By the lake, with five loaves and two fish, "he took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and broke the loaves; and he gave to his disciples to set before them" (Mark 6:41); the twelve basketfuls of broken pieces follow, and "those who ate the loaves were five thousand men" (Mark 6:43-44). Luke gives the same scene: five loaves and two fish, sat down in companies of fifty, blessed, broken, distributed, twelve baskets gathered (Luke 9:13-17). John names the source — "There is a lad here, who has five barley loaves, and two fish: but what are these among so many?" — and the gathering at Jesus's word: "Gather up the broken pieces which remain over, that nothing be lost. So they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with broken pieces from the five barley loaves" (John 6:9, 12-13). The second feeding takes seven loaves and a few small fish for about four thousand: "having given thanks, he broke, and gave to his disciples, to set before them ... they took up, of broken pieces that remained over, seven baskets" (Mark 8:6, 8).
Jesus the Bread of Life
The morning after the lakeshore feeding, Jesus tells the crowd that the bread their fathers ate is not the true bread. "Has not Moses given you⁺ the bread out of heaven? But my Father gives you⁺ the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world" (John 6:32-33). They ask for it. He answers: "I am the bread of life: he who comes to me will not hunger, and he who believes on me will never thirst" (John 6:35). The contrast with the wilderness ration is explicit: "Your⁺ fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, that a man may eat of it, and not die. I am the living bread which came down out of heaven: if any man eats of this bread, he will live forever: yes and the bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world" (John 6:49-51). The discourse closes the same way: "This is the bread which came down out of heaven: not as the fathers ate, and died; he who eats this bread will live forever" (John 6:58). Sirach has already sketched the figure — Wisdom feeds her seeker "the bread of discretion" and "the waters of understanding" (Sir 15:3); and yet "Those who eat me still hunger [for me], And those who drink me still thirst [for me]" (Sir 24:21).
The Bread of the Lord's Supper
On the night he was delivered up, Jesus takes bread one more time. Mark: "as they were eating, he took bread, and when he had blessed, he broke it, and gave to them, and said, Take⁺: this is my body" (Mark 14:22). Luke: "he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and gave to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you⁺: this do in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19). Paul hands on the same tradition — "the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was delivered up took bread; and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, This is my body, which is for you⁺: this do in remembrance of me" — and adds the proclamation: "as often as you⁺ eat this bread, and drink the cup, you⁺ proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" (1 Cor 11:23-24, 26). The one loaf is also the church: "The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ? seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Cor 10:16-17).