You shall offer up a cake of the first of your dough for a heave offering: as you do the heave offering of the threshingfloor, so shall you offer it up.
All Commentaries on Numbers 15:20 Go To Numbers 15
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
All the morally good emotions of your senses are the first fruits of the threshing floor of the soul in the same manner as grain is separated in an actual barn floor. On this barn floor the wheat and the barley are separated by a winnowing process from the chaff and from other impurities, while the solid parts, now rid of their lighter coating, settle on the floor. In a similar fashion our thoughts, when sifted, provide a solid food and pure nourishment for the exercise of virtue. .
