Numbers 15:20
Ye shall offer up a cake of the first of your dough for an heave offering: as ye do the heave offering of the threshingfloor, so shall ye heave it.
Ye shall offer up a cake of the first of your dough for an heave offering,.... Of the first dough made of the first corn that was threshed, winnowed and ground, they were to make a cake, and offer it an heave offering unto the Lord; the quantity of it is not expressed, but was left to the people's generosity; no stinted measure was fixed by the law; but according to the Scribes, or the traditions of the elders, the quantity of the cake was the twenty fourth part of the first dough that was kneaded; not the forty fourth, as Buxtorf {p} through mistake says; so the Targum of Jonathan,
"of the first of your dough, one out of twenty four (i.e. the twenty fourth part of it), ye shall separate a separation for the priests,''
with which agrees the Misnah {q}, though according to that, if made to sell publicly it was the forty eighth part of it. Some, because
Numbers 15:21 begins and ends with m, "mem", which numerically signifies "forty", think this is an instruction to a bountiful person to give the fortieth part {r}:
as ye do the heave offering of the threshing floor, so shall ye heave it; as the two wave loaves and firstfruits of their harvest,
{p} Synagog. Jud. c. 34. p. 602.
{q} Challah, c. 2. sect. 7. so Schulchan Aruch, par. 2. c. 322. so Jarchi & Ben Gersom in loc.
{r} Baal Hatturim in loc.