“The son of an Israelite woman…went out” – from where did he go out? Rabbi Levi said: He went out of his world, just as it says: “The champion went out” (I Samuel 17:4).14Just as Goliath blasphemed God and lost his place in the World to Come, the same is true of the blasphemer, the son of the Israelite woman who went out, meaning he lost his place in the World to Come. Rabbi Berekhya said: He went out of the previous portion and said: It is written: “You shall take fine flour and you shall bake it” (Leviticus 24:5).15The reference is to the showbread, which would be placed on the table in the Tabernacle.
New bread would be placed each Shabbat, and when it would be removed the following Shabbat the priests would eat it. It is the way of a king to eat hot bread. Is it perhaps to eat cold? It is as we learned there: The showbread is eaten no fewer than nine days and no more than eleven days [after it is baked].
How so? It is baked on the day before Shabbat and eaten on [the following Shabbat], on the ninth [day from when it was baked]. If a Festival occurs on the day before Shabbat it is eaten on the tenth day. If the two festival days of Rosh HaShana occur it is eaten on the eleventh,16Mishna Menaḥot 11:9. as it appears in Tanḥuma.17See Tanḥuma, Leviticus 23, where this is explained at greater length.
The midrash is asserting that the blasphemer scoffed at the mitzva of the showbread, and it was that which ultimately led to his blaspheming God. Rabbi Ḥiyya taught: He went out from the portion of the lineage. He sought to pitch his tent in the camp of Dan. They said to him: ‘What leads you to pitch your tent in the camp of Dan?’
He said to them: ‘I am from one of the daughters of Dan.’ They said to him: ‘It is written: “Each man by his banner with the insignias of his patrilineal house” (Numbers 2:2) – and not his matrilineal house.’ He entered the court of Moses and lost his case. He stood and blasphemed.