Is Thanksgiving in the Bible? The word is, and it was a meal

The holiday is not in the Bible. The fourth Thursday in November is an American civil holiday, and the Thanksgiving section of our Bible verses about gratitude tells how it began. The word is. The Old Testament’s word for thanksgiving, todah, appears thirty-two times, and in the law of Moses it names a sacrifice that ended as a meal: meat and four kinds of bread, eaten on the same day, with nothing left until morning. Psalm 100 carries the word in its heading. Here is that thanksgiving, quoted in full, and the places where the English hides it.

Thirty-two times, five ways

The word is todah (8426), a noun from yadah, the verb our gratitude page explains: it covers thanking, praising and confessing. The concordance lists thirty-two occurrences, and the King James renders them five different ways:

• thanksgiving, eighteen times, thirteen of them in Leviticus and the Psalms;
• praise or praises, six times, including the heading of Psalm 100 and Jeremiah 33:11, both below;
• thank offerings, three times, in 2 Chronicles;
• companies of them that gave thanks, three times in Nehemiah 12, where the word means a choir: two of them went in procession along the rebuilt wall of Jerusalem at its dedication;
• confession, twice, when Joshua questions Achan (Joshua 7:19) and when Ezra calls the returned exiles to account (Ezra 10:11).

So a reader of the King James meets the Bible’s thanksgiving under five names, and in one short psalm under two of them.

A thanksgiving you could eat

In Leviticus a todah is one kind of peace offering, the sacrifice the worshipper took part in eating. This is the law for it:

If he offers it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer with the sacrifice of thanksgiving unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and cakes mixed with oil. He shall offer his offering with the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving with cakes of leavened bread. Of it he shall offer one out of each offering for a heave offering to the LORD. It shall be the priest’s who sprinkles the blood of the peace offerings. The flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving shall be eaten on the day of his offering. He shall not leave any of it until the morning.Leviticus 7:12-15 · World English Bible

If he offer it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer with the sacrifice of thanksgiving unleavened cakes mingled with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and cakes mingled with oil, of fine flour, fried. Besides the cakes, he shall offer for his offering leavened bread with the sacrifice of thanksgiving of his peace offerings. And of it he shall offer one out of the whole oblation for an heave offering unto the LORD, and it shall be the priest’s that sprinkleth the blood of the peace offerings. And the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving shall be eaten the same day that it is offered; he shall not leave any of it until the morning.Leviticus 7:12-15 · King James Version

Count the bread. Three kinds are made without yeast, and then comes a fourth kind, leavened. That fourth one is odd, because five chapters earlier the same book keeps yeast away from the altar:

“‘No meal offering which you shall offer to the LORD shall be made with yeast; for you shall burn no yeast, nor any honey, as an offering made by fire to the LORD.Leviticus 2:11 · World English Bible

The commentaries on Leviticus 7:13 resolve it the same way: the leavened loaves never went on the altar. Ellicott says “no portion of it was burnt on the altar as a memorial, for leaven was forbidden to be on the altar.” One of each kind went to the priest, and the rest was for eating. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown gives the reason the bread was there at all: such bread was “common at feasts”. The Bible’s thanksgiving had ordinary bread on the table.

How much bread, Leviticus does not say. The Mishnah does: ten loaves of each kind, forty in all, ten of them leavened (Menachot 7:1). That is the rabbis’ rule, written down centuries later, not a line of Scripture, but it gives you the scale.

Then the deadline. All of it was to be eaten on the day of his offering, and none left until the morning. Keil and Delitzsch point out the contrast in the verses that follow: a vow or a freewill offering could still be eaten on the second day, and a thanksgiving could not. Why is argued, by name. Ellicott says the limit “was designed both to encourage liberality to the poor” and to keep it a sacred meal rather than “unseemly conviviality”. Benson says the offerer was to show his piety “by his love to his fellow-creatures, forthwith inviting his friends to partake of it with him”, and Gill has the poor invited too. Keil and Delitzsch, on the rule for burning what is left in the verses that follow, reject the idea that it was there to make the offerer invite the poor, which they attribute to Theodoret and Clericus, and put it down to the holiness of the meat instead. All four are at Bible Hub’s commentaries on Leviticus 7:15.

We are not settling it. Read either way, the Bible’s thanksgiving was a big meal with a one-day limit, and by law it had no leftovers.

Psalm 100 has the word in its heading

Most Bibles print a one-line heading above Psalm 100. In Hebrew it is two words, mizmor letodah (interlinear). The World English Bible prints it as “A Psalm of thanksgiving.” The King James prints “A Psalm of praise.” Three verses later both translations say thanksgiving for the same word:

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, and bless his name.Psalms 100:4 · World English Bible

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.Psalms 100:4 · King James Version

So the King James spends two English words on one Hebrew word inside a five-verse psalm. Our toggles print verses, not headings, so you cannot see the first half of that above; the two links are there instead.

Several commentators read the heading as a direction for use: not only a psalm about thanksgiving, but a psalm for the thank offering, sung while one was brought. The Cambridge Bible says the title “should probably be rendered A Psalm for the thankoffering”, ties it to Leviticus 7, and thinks the psalm was not written for that use but “adopted on account of” verse 4. Ellicott calls the heading “a liturgical direction”. Keil and Delitzsch take it the same way, with the Targum (Cambridge, Ellicott, Keil and Delitzsch). If they are right, the psalm our gratitude page suggests for the Thanksgiving table was sung over the Bible’s own thanksgiving meal. The whole psalm is printed there.

Four rescues, four thank-yous

Psalm 107 opens with the sentence whose second half, his loving kindness endures forever, our gratitude page counts twenty-six times in Psalm 136. Then it tells four short stories of people in trouble: lost in the desert, shut in prison, sick almost to death, and caught at sea in a storm. Each one ends with the same line:

Let them praise the LORD for his loving kindness, for his wonderful deeds to the children of men!Psalms 107:8 · World English Bible

Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!Psalms 107:8 · King James Version

It comes at verses 8, 15, 21 and 31, word for word in the King James; the modern rendering changes one small word the fourth time. After the third rescue, the sick who were healed, the psalm says what to do about it:

Let them praise the LORD for his loving kindness, for his wonderful deeds to the children of men! Let them offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and declare his deeds with singing.Psalms 107:21-22 · World English Bible

Both of our translations say praise in the refrain, and this is a place where the toggles cannot show you what is underneath. The verb is yodu, from yadah, the thanks verb (interlinear), and it is the same verb that opens the psalm, where both translations say give thanks. The sacrifices of thanksgiving in verse 22 are todah, the offering from Leviticus. Read the refrain the way the interlinear glosses it, let them give thanks, and the psalm is four rescues, four thank-yous and a thank offering.

The Talmud read it that way. In Berakhot 54b, Rav Yehuda says in the name of Rav: “Four must offer thanks to God with a thanks-offering and a special blessing. They are: Seafarers, those who walk in the desert, and one who was ill and recovered, and one who was incarcerated in prison and went out. All of these appear in the verses of a psalm.” Abaye adds that the thanks are to be given before ten people, from verse 32’s congregation (Berakhot 54b on Sefaria). The psalm’s four stories became a rule about who owes a thank-you.

The sound of a city coming back

Three times Jeremiah lists the same four sounds and says they will stop, in 7:34, 16:9 and 25:10:

Then I will cause to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride; for the land will become a waste.”Jeremiah 7:34 · World English Bible

Then, in chapter 33, the four voices come back, and two more are added:

The LORD says: “Yet again there will be heard in this place, about which you say, ‘It is waste, without man and without animal, even in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, that are desolate, without man and without inhabitant and without animal,’ the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voice of those who say, ‘Give thanks to the LORD of Armies, for the LORD is good, for his loving kindness endures forever;’ who bring thanksgiving into the LORD’s house. For I will cause the captivity of the land to be reversed as at the first,” says the LORD.Jeremiah 33:10-11 · World English Bible

Thus saith the LORD; Again there shall be heard in this place, which ye say shall be desolate without man and without beast, even in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, that are desolate, without man, and without inhabitant, and without beast, The voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the LORD of hosts: for the LORD is good; for his mercy endureth for ever: and of them that shall bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the LORD. For I will cause to return the captivity of the land, as at the first, saith the LORD.Jeremiah 33:10-11 · King James Version

The new voices are people singing the refrain from Psalm 107 and Psalm 136, and people bringing todah into the house of the LORD. Ellicott notes that the four voices are the very words “which the prophet had himself used” when “foretelling the desolation of the city”, and Ellicott, Barnes, Keil and Delitzsch and the Cambridge Bible all identify the refrain as a fixed liturgical form, “the ever-recurring doxology of the Temple-services” in Ellicott’s words (commentaries on Jeremiah 33:11). Poole and Jamieson-Fausset-Brown both point ahead to Ezra 3:11, where it is sung as the foundation of the second temple is laid:

They sang to one another in praising and giving thanks to the LORD, “For he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever towards Israel.” All the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the LORD’s house had been laid.Ezra 3:11 · World English Bible

And here the two translations split where you can see it. The modern rendering of Jeremiah 33:11 has Give thanks to the LORD of Armies and bring thanksgiving; the King James has Praise the LORD of hosts and the sacrifice of praise. The same verb and the same noun both times, and the King James calls the Bible’s thanksgiving “praise” again.

The grace comes after the meal

You shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which he has given you.Deuteronomy 8:10 · World English Bible

When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.Deuteronomy 8:10 · King James Version

Grace before meals is the habit most of us know. This verse puts the blessing after: eat, be full, and then bless. Jewish practice keeps that order. The Talmud derives the grace after meals from this verse as a commandment of the Torah itself, “From where is the mitzva by Torah law to recite Grace after Meals, derived? As it is stated: ‘And you shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord your God’”, and works out the blessing before a meal by argument, later in the same passage (Berakhot 21a). The blessing after the meal is still said today, often aloud together at Shabbat meals and weddings (My Jewish Learning on Birkat Hamazon).

Read on two verses and the Hebrew repeats itself. The warning that follows opens with the same two verbs:

Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;Deuteronomy 8:11-14 · King James Version

The King James makes it easy to see: When thou hast eaten and art full at verse 10, Lest when thou hast eaten and art full at verse 12. Both are akal (398) and saba (7646), to eat and to be satisfied (interlinear). The blessing is set at the very moment the next verses say people forget. A full table is the risk Deuteronomy names, and the grace is placed right there.

The New Testament’s word, and a thanksgiving story

In Greek the verb is eucharisteo (2168). It is what Jesus does over five barley loaves before a crowd of thousands eats:

Jesus took the loaves, and having given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to those who were sitting down, likewise also of the fish as much as they desired.John 6:11 · World English Bible

The nearest thing in the gospels to a thanksgiving story is in Luke 17. Ten men with leprosy are cleansed on their way to show themselves to the priests, and one comes back:

One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice. He fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks; and he was a Samaritan.Luke 17:15-16 · World English Bible

Giving him thanks is the same verb (interlinear). What Jesus says next is a question about the others:

Jesus answered, “Weren’t the ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there none found who returned to give glory to God, except this foreigner?”Luke 17:17-18 · World English Bible

It reads well beside Psalm 107, where the sick who are healed are the group the psalm sends to bring a thank offering.

What to read at the table

Before the meal, Psalm 100:4 or Psalm 107:1, each a single line. After it, Deuteronomy 8:10, which is where the Bible puts the blessing. For a table where someone has come through a hard year, Psalm 116:17, a thank offering promised by someone who says you have delivered my soul from death earlier in the same psalm:

I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call on the LORD’s name.Psalms 116:17 · World English Bible

And for a year that went well, Jeremiah 33:11 is a whole city’s worth of noise to read aloud.

For the rest of the season, our fall Bible verses post covers the harvest feast and the autumn rain, and the Thanksgiving section of our Bible verses about gratitude has Lincoln, Sarah Josepha Hale, the feast of booths and Psalm 100 in full. Everything quoted here is public domain: print it on a place card, a menu or a church bulletin with no permission and no fee.