Seder 79: Lev 7:12-15---The Thanksgiving Offering

 The seventh chapter of Leviticus describes three types of peace/fellowship offerings.  One was called a toda, an offering of praise and thanksgiving.  It was given in gratitude for rescue or deliverance. 

Some examples are described in Psalm 107.  In one of them, a person receives healing from God:

"He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction.  Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man!  And let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving, and tell of his deeds in songs of joy!" (verses 20-22)

Other examples in Psalm 107 involve people who have been rescued from the wilderness, released from imprisonment, or safely brought through a sea voyage.  

A thanksgiving offering involved a communal meal that had to be eaten on the day of the offering.  This requirement encouraged the offeror to invite a large group of people to share the feast.  As it says in Psalm 107:32, "Let them extol him in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders."

The feast included lots of bread, both unleavened and leavened (Lv 7:12-14).  Sharon Rimon suggests that the unleavened bread might represent the trial the person had endured, while the leavened bread might represent the fact that the offeror had been completely delivered from the trial.  

Rimon points out that a toda is in several ways similar to a Passover meal, which is a kind of national toda:

• Both give thanks for deliverance.
• Both are shelamim (offerings of peace or wellbeing).
• Both have to be finished by the following morning.
• Both are eaten with bread.

One major difference is that the bread at a Passover meal is strictly unleavened bread.  Rimon observes that Passover celebrates a redemption that has begun but has not yet been completed.  The redemption of the Exodus is completed when Israel receives the Torah at Mt Sinai, inherits the Promised Land, and begins harvesting crops there.  These things are celebrated at Pentecost, when leavened bread is part of the liturgy (Lv 23:15-21).