Leviticus 23

HOLINESS IN DAYS FESTIVALS INSTITUTED. INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

Time, as a priceless gift of God, is subject to his claims. In addition to the seventh day he set apart other times to be observed by the Israelites for the threefold purpose of preserving a knowledge of the great facts on which their religion was based, of the maintenance of the feeling of national unity, and of developing their religious sentiments. These are the passover, in memory of the miraculous deliverance from Egypt; and two festivals which plainly have an agricultural significance the feast of firstfruits, variously styled the feast of wheat-harvest, of weeks, or pentecost, and the feast of ingathering, called also the feast of tabernacles. It is supposed that the feast of pentecost commemorates the giving of the law, which was given just fifty days after the exode; but no Scripture proof can be cited for this opinion. Great wisdom is manifest in the times selected for the three great national gatherings. The passover was just before the harvest, pentecost between the grain harvest and the vintage, and the feast of tabernacles was called the ingathering because, like the national thanksgiving in the United States, it occurred after all the products of the soil were garnered. Two important events subsequent to the Mosaic era gave rise to two additional feasts, namely, Purim, (Esther 9:20,) celebrating the providential deliverance of the Jews from the massacre plotted by Haman, and the Dedication, ( 1Ma 4:56 ), commemorating the renewal of the temple worship after the three years’ profanation by Antiochus Epiphanes.

CONCLUDING NOTES.

(1.) In the celebration of three of these festivals, called the great feasts, all the males were to appear before the Lord at the tabernacle or in Jerusalem. Deuteronomy 16:16. This requirement, together with the prohibition of sacrifices, except in the one place chosen by Jehovah, is a key to the whole dispensation of Judaism. It shows that it was designed to be a purely local religion, confined to limits so narrow that its adherents could easily perform the great offices of the worship in person in the holy city thrice every year. Hence the system must be strictly conservative, and not aggressive and all conquering. In perfect accord with this is the absence, in the Old Testament, of all commands of a missionary character, like the great commission given by Jesus Christ to disciple all nations. The conservative character of Judaism would not of itself, if Jehovah were a mere national divinity, betoken that it was a preparation for a future world-wide system. But when we find Him styling himself “the Most High,” who hath divided to the nations their inheritance, (Deuteronomy 32:8,) and solemnly affirming that there is no respect of persons with him, (2 Chronicles 19:7,) we have sufficient ground for the expectation that a universal scheme of religion will, in due time, spring up from the germ of the Jewish Church, affording to the whole human family the opportunity of acceptable worship, not in Jerusalem only, but everywhere, where men “worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” John 4:23.

(2.) The great difficulty which arises from interpreting the sabbath in Leviticus 23:11 to signify the decalogue sabbath is this it requires the year to begin invariably on the seventh day of the week in order to make the fifteenth and twenty-first of the first month fall on the sabbath. But since three hundred and sixty-five is not an exact multiple of seven, we have an odd day to dispose of. There are only two ways out of this difficulty, either to make one week contain eight days, in violation of the decalogue and of the deep-seated respect for the seventh day in the bosom of every pious Jew, or the year must begin one day earlier every year, which in a century would carry the harvest month back to the month of seed-time, and completely confound and destroy the agricultural significance of the festivals, and their appropriateness as anniversaries of historical events. Hence the great majority of writers consider the beginnings of the festivals as movable, so that pentecost would one year in seven fall on Sunday, as it probably did in the year of the ascension of our Lord Jesus. See Alford on Acts 2:1.

(3.) Besides their religious purpose, the great festivals must have had an important bearing on the maintenance of a feeling of national unity. This may be traced in the apprehensions of Jeroboam, (1 Kings 12:26-27,) and in the attempt at reformation by Hezekiah, (2 Chronicles 30:1,) as well as in the necessity which, in later times, was felt by the Roman government of mustering a considerable military force at Jerusalem during the festivals. (Josephus, Antiquities, Leviticus 17:9 ; Leviticus 17:3; Leviticus 17:10; Leviticus 17:2. Compare Matthew 26:5; Luke 13:1.) Another effect of these festivals Michaelis has found in the furtherance of internal commerce. They would give rise to something resembling our modern fairs. Among the Mohammedans similar festivals have had this effect.