The Table of Shewbread is important to Christians because it helps tie together the manna in the wilderness to the miracle of the loaves and fishes with the 5000 to Yeshua as being the manna from heaven. The 5 loaves of the young lad in the crowd of 5000 is like the request of young David for 5 loaves for his hungry men. There is also a eucharist depicted in the tabernacle using the shewbread and wine. For Yeshua becomes the manna and shewbread of the presence.
- Description of the Table
Core texts: Ex. 25:23-30 & Ex. 37:10-16
We start here with the eight (or nine) ‘you shall’ commandments:
You shall also make a table of acacia wood; two cubits shall be its length, a cubit its width, and a cubit and a half its height.
You shall overlay it with pure gold, and make a molding of gold all around.
You shall make for it a frame of a handbreadth all around.
You shall make a gold molding for the frame all around.
You shall make for it four rings of gold, and put the rings on the four corners that are at its four legs. The rings shall be close to the frame, as holders for the poles to bear the table.
You shall make the poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with gold, that the table may be carried with them.
You shall make its dishes, its pans/spoons, its pitchers (jug), and its bowls for pouring. You shall make them of pure gold.
You shall set the showbread on the table before Me always.
What is not brought out in this text is the idea that the priests would eat the showbread and using the utensils partake of bread and wine in a communal meal just like we would partake of the bread and wine to commemorate the death and resurrection of Yeshua.
— Weekly practice for the shewbread
Core text: Lev. 24:5-9
You shall take fine flour and bake twelve cakes with it. Two-tenths of an ephah shall be in each cake. You shall set them in two rows, six in a row, on the pure gold table before the LORD. You shall put pure frankincense on each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, an offering made by fire to the LORD. Every Sabbath he shall set it in order before the LORD continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant. It shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place; for it is most holy to him from the offerings of the LORD made by fire, by a perpetual statute.
Twelve cakes of bread is what was left over each week after the sabbath when the old bread was removed from the table of shewbread. It is said that each loaf consisted of about 4 quarts of flour — roughly equivalent to the amount of of manna collected on the day before the Sabbath.
We shall see that during the ministry of Yeshua he called the disciples to himself and with five barley loaves and two fishes told them to feed the 5000 during the miracle of this name. We read in each of the gospels that there were twelve basketfulls of leftovers after feeding all of the people. The twelve disciples had in essence 12 loaves of the holy shewbread remaining, but we are not told if the feeding of the 5000 happened on the sabbath.
Five loaves is also significant in that it represents the five books of the Torah, five offerings according to Leviticus, and many things in the Tabernacle represented by five ingredients in the holy anointing oil; five curtains bars, and pillars; and an alter 5×5 cubits.
Two fish represents opposites (day and night, good and evil, hot and cold, two sexes, binary).
— King David’s experience with the shewbread
Core text: 1 Samuel 21:1-6
Now David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech was afraid when he met David, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one is with you?”
So David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has ordered me on some business, and said to me, ‘Do not let anyone know anything about the business on which I send you, or what I have commanded you.’ I have directed my young men to such and such a place. Now therefore, what have you on hand? Give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever can be found. The priest answered David and said, “There is no common bread on hand; but there is holy bread, if the young men have at least kept themselves from women. Then David answered the priest, and said to him, “Truly, women have been kept from us about three days since I came out. The vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in effect common, even though it was consecrated in the vessel this day.”
So the priest gave him holy bread; for there was no bread there but the showbread which had been taken from before the LORD, in order to put hot bread in its place on the day when it was taken away.
One comment about the three days of ritual purity in which David’s men kept away from woman. It was only a requirement at Mount Sinai for three days purity (Ex. 19:15). It is also the same chapter where Moses told the children of Israel they would be a kingdom of priests unto the LORD (vs. 6). I am not sure David was thinking of Sinai when he made that statement or not but it does fit with the idea of receiving shewbread for his men.
Another comment here. It says that Ahimelech the priest was afraid. It is true he had need to be afraid for at this point in time King Saul was looking to do harm to David and any that helped him. Hence David concocted this story about being on a secret mission for the king. A spy called Doeg the Edomite reported all these things to the King and in the end Ahimelech and 85 priests got executed. It is also another case where David gets grace but those around him get hurt.
–– Yeshua’s comments on the shewbread
Core text: Matthew 12:1-4
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!” But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?
The text in 1 Samuel does not explicitly say it was the Sabbath but the objections of the Pharisees centered on activities Yeshua and his followers were doing on the sabbath and included the priests ministering on the sabbath, healing a withered hand on the sabbath, and care for an animal who falls into a ditch on the sabbath. For sure, eating the shewbread, which was reserved for the priest and his family, was not legal for David to do.
— Yeshua our bread of life
Later we hear Yeshua giving a sermon on the true bread from heaven and states:
Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world (John 6:31-33)
The sermon on bread of life was most directly pointing to the manna in the wilderness but it was also referring to the shewbread because that is why the table of shewbread was put into the tabernacle and temple: to remind everyone of the manna. Now Yeshua goes even further and claims he is that bread.
John 6:53-55:: Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.
Many abandoned Yeshua at this point in his ministry. Many will say this is because he seemed to be telling them to eat his flesh and drink his blood pointed to a gruesome requirement of cannibalism. Some may have taken it that way but I am more inclined to think they were merely offened by the implication that he is the manna from heaven. They did understand him speaking as a metaphor but they did not like the implications. He said ‘the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven’. He spoke of My Father. He was calling them to accept him as the Son of God. The miracle of feeding the 5000 was supposed to validate his claim.
Sources:
https://www.wikihow.com/Bible-Number-5-Meaning#:~:text=In%20the%20Bible%