John Gill Commentary Numbers 28

And the Lord spoke to Moses
The number of the children of Israel being taken, and orders given to divide the land to them, according to their numbers; it was thought proper by the Lord to renew, or to put in mind of, the laws concerning sacrifices which had been made, and which they were to observe when they came into the land of Canaan;

The rather this was necessary, as it was now thirty eight years ago since these laws were first made, and during that time were much in disuse, at least some of them: and besides, this was a new generation of men that were sprung up, those that were at Mount Sinai at the giving of the law being all dead, except a very few;

and now Moses also was about to die, and would be no more with them to remind them of these laws, and see that they were observed; and a successor of him being appointed and constituted, it may be likewise on his account, as well as the people's, that these laws were repeated:

saying ;
as follows.

Command the children of Israel, and say to them
For what follows concerned them all; namely, the offering of their daily, weekly, monthly, and anniversary sacrifices, which were not for private persons, but for the whole congregation; and these might be considered by them not merely as commands and duties to be observed, but as tokens of the divine favour to them, that notwithstanding all their rebellions and provocations in the wilderness, sacrifices for sin were ordered, continued, and accepted of by the Lord; and his acceptance of them, and well pleasedness in them, may easily be observed in the expressions used concerning them:

my offering, and my bread ;
by "offering" may be meant in general all sacrifices which were offered to the Lord, and by his command; and more especially the burnt offering, which was wholly and peculiarly his, and is after explained by sacrifices made by fire, and it is chiefly of burnt offerings this chapter treats; and by "bread" may be meant either the shewbread, which was set upon a table before the Lord continually, as his bread; so the Targum of Jonathan, ``my oblation, the bread of the order of my table, shall the priests eat, but what you offer on the altar no man has power to eat;''

or else the meat offering, or rather, as it may be called, the bread offering, which always went along with burnt offerings; though the copulative "and", which is not in the text, may be omitted, and both may signify the same, "my offering", that is, "my bread"; for the sacrifices were the food of God, the provisions of his house, of which there were all sorts in the sacrifices, flesh, bread, and wine; particularly the daily sacrifice was his food every day, and the fat of sacrifices burnt is called the food of the offering made by fire, (Leviticus 3:16) , so Jarchi interprets it, "my offering", this is the blood; "my bread", the "amurim", or fat that covereth the inward parts, which were burnt on the altar:

for my sacrifices made by fire for a sweet savour to me ;
which respects burnt offerings, wholly consumed by fire, and were entirely the Lord's, and which he smelled a sweet savour in, or were acceptable to him: these the children of Israel were

to observe to offer to him in their due season ;
the daily sacrifice, morning and evening; not before morning, nor after evening, as Aben Ezra observes; and so all the rest at the proper time fixed, whether weekly, monthly, or yearly.

The Jews, from this phrase, "observe to offer to me", conclude the necessity of fixing stations, or stationary men, as Jarchi notes; so the tradition is, ``these are the stations, as is said, "command the children of Israel" but how can the offering of a man be offered, and he not stand by it? wherefore the former prophets appointed twenty four courses, and to every course there was a station at Jerusalem of priests, Levites, and Israelites; and when the time of each course came to go up, the priests and Levites went up to Jerusalem, and the Israelites who belonged to that course went into their cities, and read the history of the creation ^F4 :'' now these stations, or stationary men, were substitutes for, or representatives of all Israel, and stood by the sacrifices when they were offered, in which all Israel were concerned, as particularly in the daily sacrifice, which is here first taken notice of.

FOOTNOTES:

• F4: Taanith, c. 4. sect. 2.

And you shall say unto them
Having directed Moses to command the people of Israel to observe to offer all the sacrifices of God in general, the Lord proceeds to order him to speak of them to them particularly and distinctly; this, according to Jarchi, is an admonition to the sanhedrim:

this is the offering made by fire, which you shall offer unto the Lord;
the daily burnt offering, which was wholly consumed by fire:

two lambs of the first year without spot, day by day for a continual
burnt offering ;
this law was made before, and is directed to in (Exodus 29:38) where the same things are said as here, only, as a further descriptive character of the lambs, they are here said to be "without spot"; so all sacrifices were to be without blemish, whether expressed or not; and in this, as in other things, these lambs were typical of Christ, the Lamb of God, without spot and blemish; and are said to be a "continual" burnt offering, because they were offered every day in the week, without any intermission, on any account whatever, which is frequently observed in this chapter: and this was to continue, and did continue until the Messiah came, who put an end to it by the sacrifice of himself, as to any real use of it; and was in fact made to cease a few years after, by the utter destruction of Jerusalem, and was before that a little while interrupted in the times of Antiochus, (Daniel 8:11Daniel 8:12) (9:27) .

The one lamb shall you offer in the morning
Every morning, to make atonement for the sins of the night, as the Targum of Jonathan:

and the other lamb shall you offer in the evening ;
or "between the two evenings", to make atonement for the sins of the day, as the same Targum; in which they prefigured Christ, the Lamb of God, who continually, every day, morning and night, and every moment, takes away the sins of his people, through the virtue and efficacy of his sacrifice, (John 1:29) , (See Gill on Exodus 29:39).

And the tenth part of an ephah of flour for a meat offering , &c.] Which always went along with the burnt offering:

mingled with the fourth part of an hin of beaten oil : which in those times and countries was used instead of butter; and fine flour and this mingled together made a "minchah", or bread offering, as it should rather be called; of the measures used, (See Gill on Exodus 29:40).