Charles Ellicott Commentary Exodus 29:31-34

"And thou shalt take the ram of consecration, and boil its flesh in a holy place. And Aaron and his sons shall eat the flesh of the ram, and the bread that is in the basket, at the door of the tent of meeting. And they shall eat those things wherewith atonement was made, to consecrate [and] to sanctify them: but a stranger shall not eat thereof, because they are holy. And if aught of the flesh of the consecration, or of the bread, remain unto the morning, then thou shalt burn the remainder with fire: it shall not be eaten, because it is holy." — Exodus 29:31-34 (ASV)

THE FEAST UPON THE CONSECRATION OFFERINGS.

Having digressed in Exodus 29:27 from his main subject (the consecration of Aaron and his sons) to consider certain permanent laws that arose from the occasion, the writer returns to his main subject at this point.

He then records the directions he received regarding the feast that, as a matter of course, followed the consecration sacrifice. The parts of the victim not consumed on the altar nor assigned to the officiating priest were to be boiled at the door of the Tabernacle (Leviticus 8:31). There, they were to be consumed by Aaron and his sons, along with the loaf of unleavened bread, the oiled cake, and the wafer that still remained in the “basket of consecrations” (Leviticus 8:31), mentioned in Exodus 29:3, 23.

No “stranger”—i.e., no layman—was to join them in the feast (Exodus 29:33); and if they were unable to consume the whole, what remained was to be burned. (Compare this to the injunctions regarding the paschal lamb, given in Exodus 12:10 and Exodus 23:18.) Christian ritualism draws from these injunctions the propriety of an entire consumption of the elements on each occasion of the celebration of the Eucharist.