Exodus 29:26 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And thou shalt take the breast of the ram, &c.— Moses, acting as priest in the consecration of the priests, was to take to himself the breast of the ram, as well as to sanctify or set apart that, together with the shoulder, (Exodus 29:27-28.) for the priest, use in all future times, having first acknowledged it to be the Lord's by a solemn waving or heaving it up before the Lord. The difference between waving and heaving, as some say, is, that the latter was only a lifting up towards heaven in token of the offering being devoted to God; the other was a waving it up and down, east, west, north, and south, to signify, as Maimonides explains it, that He, to whom it was offered, was Lord of the whole world: the words, however, are sometimes used for an offering in general. Something like this ceremony of waving the oblation is intimated in that aphorism of Pythagoras, "worship, turning round," which Plutarch ascribes to Numa; one of whose institutions it was, that those who were about to worship the deity should turn themselves round. See Plutarch's Life of Numa. Houbigant, however, observes, that by this waving the offering from one side to the other, and heaving or lifting it up and down, was adumbrated or typified that Cross, upon which that peace-offering of the human race was lifted, whom all the ancient offerings prefigured.