14; Josh. v. 11);
at the end they are prepared in the form of common bread.
Thus the _maccoth_ now begin to be intelligible. As has been
already said (see p. 69), they are not, strictly speaking,
duly prepared loaves, but the bread that is hurriedly baked
to meet a pressing emergency (1Sam. xxviii. 24); thus they
are quite correctly associated with the haste of the exodus,
and described as bread of affliction. At first people do not take
time in a leisurely way to leaven, knead, and bake the year's new
bread, but a hasty cake is prepared in the ashes; this is what is
meant by maccoth. They are contrasted with the Pentecostal
loaves precisely as are the sheaf and the parched ears, which
last, according to Josh. v. 11, may be eaten in their stead, and
without a doubt they were originally not the Easter food of men
merely, but also of the Deity, so that the sheaf comes under the
category of the later spiritual refinements of sacrificial
material. Easter then is the opening, as Pentecost is the closing
festivity, or (what means the same thing) `acereth, /1/ of the seven
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