The Table of Showbread |  Model A

1. Isn’t this just a table? At first glance, the Table of Showbread appears to be quite simple. However, some of the words used in Scripture cast doubt on how the table was arranged and how it worked logistically. In large part, the unknowns of this table extend from questions about the centerpiece of the table: the bread. That’s why I present two models, either of which may answer the description given in Exodus.
2. Rows or stacks? The ESV suggests the “stacked” interpretation: “two piles, six in a pile” (Leviticus 24:6), but Hebrew Bibles (and the King James) read “two rows, six on a row.” Either might be a viable understanding, and there are external supports for either model.
3. The bread itself. The showbread would have been a dense mass of unleavened bread, each cake of two tenth parts of an ephah of flour. Cooked “flat” like a pita, the loaves would be quite large, and the table is only a cubit (18 inches) across, with plates, dishes and flagons on it too (Exodus 37:16). A thin caked bread would also be fragile, would go stale, and, stacked tightly, would risk mold as the week went on.
4. Model A: rows. The bread is baked in a loaf-shaped mold, perhaps with a cup-like rim to hold frankincense, and enclosed in a gold cover with small holes for airflow (“covers thereof,” Exodus 25:29, AV). The key to the bread’s survival appears to be the frankincense, which has natural preservative properties. It is likely the frankincense, rather than the bread, was offered as a burnt offering each week. The Arch of Titus appears to show a table similar to this.
5. Model B: stacks. The bread may have been stacked using special modular racks. Rashi describes “kesot” as half-hollow golden pipes set between the loaves “so that the air may flow between them and they will not become moldy.” This is the model endorsed by the Showbread Institute and the Temple Institute. If true, the racks were not considered a “true” part of the table, and might have been modular, so the table would always have exactly 12 loaves on it.
6. Traveling with gold vessels. With so many pure gold vessels to carry over uneven ground, my thought is that the center of the table was sunken, perhaps with a divider between the bread and the vessels. The staves may not have been round; a rectangular shape with notches for the rings would have ensured less shifting. Unlike the Ark, the table appears to have had its poles put in only for travel (Numbers 4:8).

“I’ve only scratched the surface of the research for this Tabernacle/Temple furnishing. I highly recommend supplementing my research with your own; there is so much information!”

See the other version: Model B (stacks). See also the Golden Lampstand and the Ark of the Covenant.