Cake
Cakes made of wheat or barley were offered in the temple. They were salted, but unleavened ( Exodus 29:2 ; Leviticus 2:4 ). In idolatrous worship thin cakes or wafers were offered "to the queen of heaven" ( Jeremiah 7:18 ; 44:19 ).
Pancakes are described in 2 Samuel 13:8 2 Samuel 13:9 . Cakes mingled with oil and baked in the oven are mentioned in Leviticus 2:4 , and "wafers unleavened anointed with oil," in Exodus 29:2 ; Leviticus 8:26 ; 1Chronicles 23:29 . "Cracknels," a kind of crisp cakes, were among the things Jeroboam directed his wife to take with her when she went to consult Ahijah the prophet at Shiloh ( 1Kings 14:3 ). Such hard cakes were carried by the Gibeonites when they came to ( Joshua 9:5 Joshua 9:12 ). They described their bread as "mouldy;" but the Hebrew word nikuddim , here used, ought rather to be rendered "hard as biscuit." It is rendered "cracknels" in 1Kings 14:3 . The ordinary bread, when kept for a few days, became dry and excessively hard. The Gibeonites pointed to this hardness of their bread as an evidence that they had come a long journey.
We read also of honey-cakes ( Exodus 16:31 ), "cakes of figs" ( 1Samuel 25:18 ), "cake" as denoting a whole piece of bread ( 1Kings 17:12 ), and "a [round] cake of barley bread" ( Judges 7:13 ). In Leviticus 2 is a list of the different kinds of bread and cakes which were fit for offerings.
M.G. Easton M.A., D.D., Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Third Edition,
published by Thomas Nelson, 1897. Public Domain, copy freely.
Bibliography InformationEaston, Matthew George. "Entry for Cake". "Easton's Bible Dictionary".
