A cake was a small baked loaf or wafer made from wheat, barley, or other ingredients. Cakes could be used as ordinary food, gifts, festival provisions, or unleavened offerings at the sanctuary; some were also connected with idolatrous worship.
Definition
A cake was a small baked loaf, pancake, wafer, or crisp bread made from wheat, barley, or other ingredients. Cakes could be mingled with oil, baked in an oven, made from figs or honey, or used as a whole piece of bread. Some were soft pancakes, while others were hard like biscuits.
Biblical Usage
Unleavened, salted cakes and wafers were used in offerings at the sanctuary. Cakes also served as ordinary food, gifts, and provisions. Thin cakes were offered in idolatrous worship to the queen of heaven, and hard cakes appear in accounts involving Jeroboam’s wife and the Gibeonites.
Historical Background
The supplied material describes cakes made from wheat or barley and prepared by baking, mixing with oil, or forming into wafers. Ordinary bread could become dry and very hard after several days, resembling biscuit.
Historical Bible Dictionaries
Easton's Bible Dictionary
Cakes made of wheat or barley were offered in the temple. They were salted, but unleavened (Ex. 29:2; Lev. 2:4). In idolatrous worship thin cakes or wafers were offered “to the queen of heaven” (Jer. 7:18; 44:19). Pancakes are described in 2 Sam. 13:8, 9. Cakes mingled with oil and baked in the oven are mentioned in Lev. 2:4, and “wafers unleavened anointed with oil,” in Ex. 29:2; Lev. 8:26; 1 Chr. 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 (1 Kings 14:3). Such hard cakes were carried by the Gibeonites when they came to Joshua (9:5, 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 1 Kings 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 (Ex. 16:31), “cakes of figs” (1 Sam. 25:18), “cake” as denoting a whole piece of bread (1 Kings 17:12), and “a [round] cake of barley bread” (Judg. 7:13). In Lev. 2 is a list of the different kinds of bread and cakes which were fit for offerings.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)
<p>See BREAD.</p>
