question is legitimate; let us return to the passage that supplies the

'If I be Offered upon the Sacrifice and Service of your faith, I joy,

and rejoice with you all' (Phil. 2:17).

It may seem somewhat incongruous to us to speak of being 'offered upon

a sacrifice'.  We can understand a sacrifice being offered, but we observe

that in this case it is the 'faith' of the Philippians that is the

'sacrifice' upon which Paul is 'offered'.  When we consult the original we

find the apostle uses the word spendomai 'to pour out as a drink offering, a

The first occurrence of this word in the Old Testament is found in the

LXX of Genesis 35:14:

'And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where He talked with him, even

a pillar of stone: and he poured a drink -offering thereon, and he

poured oil thereon'.

Here, there is no sacrifice of a victim, no shedding of blood, but an

act denoting great gratitude.  Coming to the ritual of Israel's daily

service, we find that day by day continually throughout the year, a lamb was

offered in the morning and another in the evening, and accompanying this was

a 'drink -offering' of a fourth part of a hin of wine 'for a sweet savour'

(Exod. 29:38 -41).

A voluntary offering, made by the children of Israel, was accompanied

by a drink -offering.  We observe that for the first offering of a lamb, the

accompanying drink -offering is the usual 'fourth part of an hin of wine'

(Num. 15:1 -5).  For a ram, the drink -offering is increased, it must be 'a

third part of an hin of wine' (15:7), and for a bullock, the drink -offering

became 'half an hin of wine' (15:10).  Evidently as the value of the

sacrifice increased, the accompanying drink -offering increased too.  This is

summarized in Numbers 28:14.

This word spendomai is used in the LXX of David in 2 Samuel 23:16.  In

the commemoration of the mighty deeds of valour of those who stood by him in

his distress and who were advanced to positions of high trust in the kingdom,

we have those who formed the 'first three' and among their exploits we find

the following:

'And three of the thirty chief went down, and came to David in the

harvest time unto the cave of Adullam ... And David longed, and said,

Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem,

which is by the gate!  And the three mighty men brake through the host

of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that

was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David: nevertheless he

would not drink thereof, but Poured It Out unto The Lord.  And he said,

Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should do this: is not this the blood

of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives?  Therefore he would

not drink it' (2 Sam. 23:13 -17).

Here we have the idea of the drink -offering carried over into actual

service, and the passage supplies us with a yet further confirmation of our

teaching concerning Philippians and 2 Timothy.  The word spendomai occurs but

twice, namely, Philippians 2:17, and 2 Timothy 4:6, both epistles having