Chapter V.
What do the fat and lard of sacrifices and offerings signify?
17. We have spoken about first-borns; let us also speak about fatness, about which David sufficiently teaches, saying: My soul shall be filled as with marrow and fatness (Ps. 62:5-6). And further he says: And let thy burnt-offering be fat (Ps. 20:4). Teaching that an acceptable sacrifice is one that is fat, that is shining, and that has been nourished with the food of faith and devotion, fattened by the abundant nourishment of the heavenly word. We often describe as fat a work that we want to be thick and laborious; and a rich offering is praised, which is not thin, not slender. And hence we rightly call it a rich sacrifice, because we desire to signify its abundance. Moreover, it is also supported by the evidence that fat cows, in prophetic interpretation, have been compared to bountiful years (Gen. XLI, 26).