“You shall observe a feast to me three times a year. You shall observe the feast of unleavened bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib (for in it you came out of Egypt), and no one shall appear before me empty. And the feast of harvest, the first fruits of your labors, which you sow in the field; and the feast of ingathering, at the end of the year, when you gather in your labors out of the field. Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord Yahweh.
Parallel Translations
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“You shall observe a feast to me three times a year.
You shall observe the feast of unleavened bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib (for in it you came out of Egypt), and no one shall appear before me empty.
And the feast of harvest, the first fruits of your labors, which you sow in the field; and the feast of ingathering, at the end of the year, when you gather in your labors out of the field.
Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord Yahweh.
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Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.
Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty:)
And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.
Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord GOD.
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Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto Me in the year.
The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep; seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, at the time appointed in the month Abib — for in it thou camest out from Egypt; and none shall appear before Me empty;
and the feast of harvest, the first-fruits of thy labours, which thou sowest in the field; and the feast of ingathering, at the end of the year, when thou gatherest in thy labours out of the field.
Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord GOD.
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Cross-references (43)
- Exodus 34:22 (v16) “You shall observe the feast of weeks with the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of harvest at the year’s end.
- Deuteronomy 16:16 (vv14, 15, 17) Three times in a year all of your males shall appear before Yahweh your God in the place which he chooses: in the feast of unleavened…
- Exodus 34:20 (v15) You shall redeem the firstborn of a donkey with a lamb. If you will not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. You shall redeem all the…
- Luke 22:7 (v15) The day of unleavened bread came, on which the Passover must be sacrificed.
- Leviticus 23:9-21 (v16) Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘When you have come into the land which I give to you, and…
Show all 41 cross-references
- Numbers 28:16-25 (v15) “ ‘In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, is Yahweh’s Passover. On the fifteenth day of this month shall be a feast.…
- Proverbs 3:9-10 (v15) Honor Yahweh with your substance, with the first fruits of all your increase: so your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will…
- Exodus 22:29 (v16) “You shall not delay to offer from your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. “You shall give the firstborn of your sons to me.
- Exodus 34:23 (v17) Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord Yahweh, the God of Israel.
- Leviticus 23:5-8 (v15) In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening, is Yahweh’s Passover. On the fifteenth day of the same month is the…
- Leviticus 23:34-44 (v16) “Speak to the children of Israel, and say, ‘On the fifteenth day of this seventh month is the feast of booths for seven days to Yahweh. On…
- Deuteronomy 16:1-8 (v15) Observe the month of Abib, and keep the Passover to Yahweh your God; for in the month of Abib Yahweh your God brought you out of Egypt by…
- Deuteronomy 16:9-15 (v16) You shall count for yourselves seven weeks. From the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain you shall begin to count seven…
- 2 Kings 23:21-23 (v15) The king commanded all the people, saying, “Keep the Passover to Yahweh your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant.” Surely…
- Exodus 12:14-28 (v15) This day shall be a memorial for you. You shall keep it as a feast to Yahweh. You shall keep it as a feast throughout your generations by…
- Exodus 12:43-49 (v15) Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover. No foreigner shall eat of it, but every man’s servant who is bought…
- Exodus 13:4 (v15) Today you go out in the month Abib.
- Exodus 13:6-7 (v15) Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day shall be a feast to Yahweh. Unleavened bread shall be eaten throughout…
- Exodus 23:14 (v17) “You shall observe a feast to me three times a year.
- Exodus 23:17 (v14) Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord Yahweh.
- Exodus 34:18 (v15) “You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the…
- Exodus 34:22-24 (v14) “You shall observe the feast of weeks with the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of harvest at the year’s end. Three times in…
- Leviticus 23:5 (v14) In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening, is Yahweh’s Passover.
- Leviticus 23:10 (v15) “Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘When you have come into the land which I give to you, and shall reap its harvest, then…
- Leviticus 23:16 (v14) The next day after the seventh Sabbath you shall count fifty days; and you shall offer a new meal offering to Yahweh.
- Leviticus 23:34 (v14) “Speak to the children of Israel, and say, ‘On the fifteenth day of this seventh month is the feast of booths for seven days to Yahweh.
- Numbers 29:12-39 (v16) “ ‘On the fifteenth day of the seventh month you shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no regular work. You shall keep a feast to…
- Deuteronomy 12:5 (v17) But to the place which Yahweh your God shall choose out of all your tribes, to put his name there, you shall seek his habitation, and you…
- Deuteronomy 31:11 (v17) when all Israel has come to appear before Yahweh your God in the place which he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in…
- Joshua 5:10-11 (v15) The children of Israel encamped in Gilgal. They kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month at evening in the plains of Jericho.…
- Nehemiah 8:14-18 (v16) They found written in the law how Yahweh had commanded by Moses that the children of Israel should dwell in booths in the feast of the…
- Zechariah 14:16-19 (v16) It will happen that everyone who is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King,…
- Mark 14:12 (v15) On the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover, his disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go and prepare…
- Luke 2:42 (v17) When he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast,
- John 7:2 (v16) Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was at hand.
- John 7:37 (v16) Now on the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink!
- Acts 2:1 (v16) Now when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all with one accord in one place.
- 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 (v15) Purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in…
- Numbers 9:2-14 (v15) “Let the children of Israel keep the Passover in its appointed season. On the fourteenth day of this month, at evening, you shall keep it…
- Numbers 28:26-31 (v16) “ ‘Also in the day of the first fruits, when you offer a new meal offering to Yahweh in your feast of weeks, you shall have a holy…
- Psalms 84:7 (v17) They go from strength to strength. Every one of them appears before God in Zion.
41 distinct cross-references across this passage (43 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (20 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv15–16 That is, Easter, in remembrance that the Angel passed…
That is, Easter, in remembrance that the Angel passed over and spared the Israelites, when he slew the firstborn of the Egyptians.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv14–17 Exo 23:14 Three times thou shalt keep a feast…
Exo 23:14 Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.
Ver. 14. Three times.] See Deu 16:16. The Hebrew hath it three feet, because the most went up to those three feasts every year afoot, saith Aben Ezra.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv15–17 This may be either,
This may be either,
1. A precept, as it is generally understood, that none should ever come at those times without some offering or other, for the support of the Levites, and of the worship of God; but the determination of this, or what they would give, was left to their choice. Or,
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2. A promise to encourage them to come so oft from their remotest habitations to Jerusalem, because
they should never appear before God in vain, i.e. to no purpose, or without some benefit, for so the word rekam oft signifies. So it may be parallel to Isa 45:19, I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain. But the former sense is more probable, by comparing this with its parallel place, Deu 16:16,17.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv14–17 And the feast of harvest,.... This is the second…
And the feast of harvest,.... This is the second feast, the feast of wheat harvest, between which and barley harvest were fifty days; or between the firstfruits of the one and the first fruits of the other were seven weeks, as Aben Ezra observes, and was sometimes called the feast of weeks; at which feast were to be brought:
the first fruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field; the two wave loaves or cakes, made of the first new wheat, which was the effect of their labour in tilling the field, and sowing it with wheat, and reaping it:
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and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field; this is the third feast in the year to be kept, and was kept at the close of the year, at the revolution of it, when a new year began that is, according to the old account, which made Tisri the month in which this feast was kept, the first month of the year; whereas, according to the new count, it was the seventh month from the month Abib, now made the first of the months upon the Israelites coming out of Egypt in that month: this is the same feast with the feast of tabernacles, but here called the feast of ingathering, because at this time of the year all the fruits of the earth were gathered in; the corn, and wine, and oil, and all other fruits, on account of which there was great rejoicing, as there ought to be.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv14, 17 The Passover, Pentecost, and feast of Tabernacles, in spring,…
The Passover, Pentecost, and feast of Tabernacles, in spring, summer, and autumn, were the three times appointed for their attendance; not in winter, because travelling was then uncomfortable; nor in the midst of their harvest.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv14, 17 Verse 14. Three times thou shalt keep a feast…
Verse 14. Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.] The three feasts here referred to were,
1. The feast of the PASSOVER;
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2. The feast of PENTECOST;
3. The feast of TABERNACLES.
1. The feast of the Passover was celebrated to keep in remembrance the wonderful deliverance of the Hebrews from Egypt.
2. The feast of Pentecost, called also the feast of harvest and the feast of weeks, Ex 34:22, was celebrated fifty days after the Passover to commemorate the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, which took place fifty days after, and hence called by the Greeks Pentecost.
3. The feast of Tabernacles, called also the feast of the ingathering, was celebrated about the 15th of the month Tisri to commemorate the Israelites' dwelling in tents for forty years, during their stay in the wilderness. See Clarke on Le 23:34.
"God, out of his great wisdom," says Calmet, "appointed several festivals among the Jews for many reasons:
1. To perpetuate the memory of those great events, and the wonders he had wrought for the people; for example, the Sabbath brought to remembrance the creation of the world; the Passover, the departure out of Egypt; the Pentecost, the giving of the law; the feast of Tabernacles, the sojourning of their fathers in the wilderness, c.
2. To keep them faithful to their religion by appropriate ceremonies, and the splendour of Divine service.
3. To procure them lawful pleasures, and necessary rest.
4. To give them instruction for in their religious assemblies the law of God was always read and explained.
5. To consolidate their social union, by renewing the acquaintance of their tribes and families; for on these occasions they come together from different parts of the land to the holy city."
Besides the feasts mentioned above, the Jews had,
1. The feast of the Sabbath, which was a weekly feast.
2. The feast of the Sabbatical Year, which was a septennial feast.
3. The feast of Trumpets, which was celebrated on the first day of what was called their civil year, which was ushered in by the blowing of a trumpet; Le 23:24, &c.
4. The feast of the New Moon, which was celebrated on the first day the moon appeared after her change.
5. The feast of Expiation, which was celebrated annually on the tenth day of Tisri or September, on which a general atonement was made for all the sins, negligences, and ignorances, throughout the year.
6. The feast of Lots or Purim, to commemorate the preservation of the Jews from the general massacre projected by Haman. See the book of Esther.
7. The feast of the Dedication, or rather the Restoration of the temple, which had been profaned by Antiochus Epiphanes. This was also called the feast of Lights.
Besides these, the Jews have had several other feasts, such as the feast of Branches, to commemorate the taking of Jericho.
The feast of Collections, on the 10th of September, on which they make contributions for the service of the temple and synagogue.
The feast for the death of Nicanor. 1Mac 7:48, &c.
The feast for the discovery of the sacred fire, 2Mac 1:18, &c.
The feast of the carrying of wood to the temple, called Xylophoria, mentioned by Josephus. - WAR, b. ii. c. 17.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv14, 17 Exo 23:14. The passover, pentecost, and feast of tabernacles,…
Exo 23:14. The passover, pentecost, and feast of tabernacles, in spring, summer, and autumn, were the three times appointed for their attendance; not in winter, because travelling was then uncomfortable; nor in the midst of their harvest.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On v14 This is the first mention of the three great…
This is the first mention of the three great Yearly Festivals. The feast of Unleavened bread, in its connection with the Paschal Lamb, is spoken of in Exo. 12; 13: but the two others are here first named. The whole three are spoken of as if they were familiarly known to the people. The points that are especially enjoined are that every male Israelite should attend them at the sanctuary (compare Exo 34:23), and that he should take with him an offering for Yahweh, presenting himself before his King with his tribute in his hand. That this condition belonged to all the feasts, though it is here stated only in regard to the Passover, cannot be doubted. See Deu 16:16.
Exo 23:15-16
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On the Feast of Unleavened Bread, or the Passover, see Exo. 12:1-20, Exo 12:43-50; Exo 13:3-16; Exo 34:18-20; Lev 23:4-14. On the Feast of the Firstfruits of Harvest, called also the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Pentecost, see Exo 34:22; Lev 23:15-21. On the Feast of Ingathering, called also the Feast of Tabernacles, see Lev 23:34-36, Lev 23:39-43.
Exo 23:16
In the end of the year - Compare Exo 34:22. The year here spoken of must have been the civil or agrarian year, which began after harvest, when the ground was prepared for sowing. Compare Lev 23:39; Deu 16:13-15. The sacred year began in spring, with the month Abib, or Nisan. See Exo 12:2 note, and Lev 25:9.
When thou hast gathered - Rather, when thou gatherest in.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv14–15 Three. Women are not here mentioned; but they are,…
Three. Women are not here mentioned; but they are, Deuteronomy xxxi. 12. Children under 13 were exempted from the obligation, according to the Caraites. Men from 20 to 60, not lawfully hindered, were bound to appear, Leviticus xxvii. 3.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On v14 Three times . . . keep a feast .…
Three times . . . keep a feast . . . in the year--This was the institution of the great religious festivals--"The feast of unleavened bread," or the passover--"the feast of harvest," or pentecost--"the feast of ingathering," or the feast of tabernacles, which was a memorial of the dwelling in booths in the wilderness, and which was observed in the seventh month (Exo 12:2). All the males were enjoined to repair to the tabernacle and afterwards the temple, and the women frequently went. The institution of this national custom was of the greatest importance in many ways: by keeping up a national sense of religion and a public uniformity in worship, by creating a bond of unity, and also by promoting internal commerce among the people. Though the absence of all the males at these three festivals left the country defenseless, a special promise was given of divine protection, and no incursion of enemies was ever permitted to happen on those occasions.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv14, 17 14-16. Three times… a feast unto me in the…
14-16. Three times… a feast unto me in the year — These three great annual festivals, ordained for Israel, are here called the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of harvest, and the feast of ingathering. They are more fully described in other passages, but when the entire arrangement for the three is considered as a whole, it exhibits a magnificent scheme of national festivity, naturally and beautifully connected, and wisely adapted to serve as a great national bond. “Whoever has a thorough knowledge of these festivals,” says the learned Ewald, “will be persuaded that they have not arisen by slow degrees from the blind impulse of external nature, nor from the history of the people, but are the product of a lofty genius.” These festivals were arranged on a system of sevens, as if growing out of sabbatic ideas. The feast of unleavened bread is more commonly known as the passover, instituted at the Exodus, and described in Exo_12:1-28; Exo_12:43-51; Exo_13:3-10, where see notes. It was to be a feast of seven days’ duration, and to commence on the fifteenth day of the first month, (Abib,) that is, after twice seven days from the beginning of the year. This occurred at the time when the firstfruits of the barley harvest could be waved as an offering before Jehovah. Lev_23:10-12.
The feast of harvest was observed seven weeks after the offering of the wave-sheaf of the passover, that is, on the fiftieth day thereafter, (Lev_23:15-21,) whence it obtained also the names of “Pentecost,” (Act_2:1,) and “the feast of weeks.” Exo_34:22; Deu_16:10. This was the time of the wheat harvest, so that passover and Pentecost enclosed the harvest season, which in Palestine extends from March-April into June-July. The feast of in-gathering is more commonly known as “the feast of tabernacles,” (Leviticus xxiii, 34-41; Deu_16:13-15,) and occurred in the end of the year, that is, of the agrarian year, “after thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine.” Deu_16:13. This end, or going forth, (צאת,) of the year, (in Exo_34:22, called the תקופה, circle of the year,) occurred in the seventh month, (September-October,) which was observed as the sabbatic month. Its first day was signalled by the blowing of trumpets, (Lev_23:24; Num_29:1;) the tenth, was the great day of atonement, (Lev_16:29-34; Lev_23:27-32;) after which, on the fifteenth, (the day following the twice seventh from the feast of trumpets, which opened the sabbatic month,) the feast of tabernacles commenced and continued seven days, and the eighth was also consecrated as a sabbath. Lev_23:39. The sounding of the trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month of the fiftieth year (the one following seven times seven years) was the proclamation of the year of jubilee, and of “liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Lev_25:10. Thus all the great Hebrew festivals were linked by a system of sevens, and form one complete plan.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv14–17 14. times] Heb. regâlîm, lit. feet, i.e. foot-beats, fig.…
14. times] Heb. regâlîm, lit. feet, i.e. foot-beats, fig. for ‘times’; so besides only Num_22:28; Num_22:32-33 (also E). In v. 17 the more ordinary Heb. word is used (pe‘âmîm).
keep a pilgrimage] The word (ḥag) means a feast accompanied by a pilgrimage (see on Exo_10:9): there were only three of these in the Jewish year. Ḥag is to be carefully distinguished from the wider term mô‘çd (rendered variously in RV. set feast, appointed feast, solemn [i.e., like the Lat. solemnis, stated, recurring] feast, solemn assembly, solemnity: see e.g. Lev_23:2; Lev_23:4; Lev_23:37; Lev_23:44, Hos_2:11; Hos_9:5; Hos_12:9, Isa_1:14; Isa_33:20, Lam_1:4; Lam_1:15; Lam_2:6-7, Eze_36:38; Eze_44:24; Eze_45:17; Eze_46:9; Eze_46:11), which means properly a fixed time or season, and is applied to any fixed sacred season (including e.g. the Day of Atonement and New Year’s Day), whether observed by a pilgrimage or not (see esp. Leviticus 23, which, as vv. 2, 4 shew, is a Calendar of such mô‘ãdim).
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14–17. The three annual pilgrimages, at which every male was to appear before God at a sanctuary. These pilgrimages were festivals which marked originally stages in the agricultural operations of the year: they were the occasions of thanksgiving to Jehovah, the Owner of the land, for the gifts of the soil—the festivals of Maẓẓoth and Harvest celebrating the beginning and close of harvest, and the feast Ingathering the completion of the vintage and olive-gathering. In later times a historical significance was attached to them, and they were regarded as commemorative of events connected with the Exodus; in the case of Maẓẓoth and Ingathering this character is attached to them in the OT. itself, in the case of the feast of Harvest (or of weeks), it is first met with in the post-Bibl. literature (see on v. 16a). The present passage, with the nearly verbal parallel in Exo_34:18; Exo_34:22 f., contains the earliest legislation on the subject: the festivals are already recognized institutions; and the Israelite is merely commanded to observe them. The later codes prescribe the ritual with which, as time went on, they gradually came to be celebrated: see Deu_16:1-17; Leviticus 23 (H, expanded in parts from P); Numbers 28-29 (P); and (for Maẓẓoth) Exo_12:14-20 (also P).
14–19. Further ceremonial regulations (cf. Exo_20:24-26, Exo_22:29-31).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv14–17 (14-17) The first great festival—the Passover festival—had been already…
(14-17) The first great festival—the Passover festival—had been already instituted (Exo_12:3-20; Exo_13:3-10). It pleased the Divine Legislator at this time to add to that festival two others, and to make all three equally obligatory. There is some reason to suppose that, in germ, the “feast of harvest” and the “feast of ingathering” already existed. All nations, from the earliest time to which history reaches back, had festival seasons of a religious character; and no seasons are more suitable for such festivities than the conclusion of the grain-harvest, and the final completion of the entire harvest of the year. At any rate, whatever the previous practice, these three festival-seasons were now laid down as essential parts of the Law, and continued—supplemented by two others—the national festivals so long as Israel was a nation. In other countries such seasons were more common. Herodotus says that the Egyptians had six great yearly festival-times (ii. 59); and in Greece and Rome there was never a month without some notable religious festivity. Such institutions exerted a political as well as a religious influence, and helped towards national unity. This was more especially the case when, as in the present instance, they were expressly made gatherings of the whole nation to a single centre. What the great Greek panegyries, Olympic, Pythian, &c., were to Hellas, that the three great annual gatherings to the place where God had fixed His name were to Israel—a means of drawing closer the national bond, and counteracting those separatist tendencies which a nation split into tribes almost necessarily developed.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv14–17 Vers. 14-17. Law of Festivals. "The sanctification of days…
Vers. 14-17. Law of Festivals. "The sanctification of days and times," says Richard Hooker, "is a token of that thankfulness and a part of that public honour which we owe to God for admirable benefits, whereof it doth not suffice that we keep a secret calendar, taking thereby our private occasions as we list ourselves to think how much God hath done for all men; but the days which are chosen out to serve as public memorials of such his mercies ought to be clothed with those outward robes of holiness whereby their difference from other days may be made sensible" (Eccles. Pol. 5:70, All ancient religions had solemn festival seasons, when particular mercies of God were specially commemorated, and when men, meeting together in large numbers, mutually cheered and excited each other to a warmer devotion and a more hearty pouring forth of thanks than human weakness made possible at other times. In Egypt such festivals were frequent, and held a high place in the religion (Heb 2:58-64:). Abraham"s family had probably had observances of the kind in their Mesopotamian home. God"s providence saw good now to give supernatural sanction to the natural piety which had been accustomed thus to express itself. Three great feasts were appointed, of which the most remarkable features were
1. That they were at once agricultural and historical connected with theregularly recurrent course of the seasons, and connected also with great events in the life of the nation;
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2. That they could be kept only at one spot, that namely where thetabernacle was at the time located;
3. That they were to be attended by the whole male population.
The three festivals are here called
1. The Feast of Unleavened Bread (ver. 15), the early spring festival, at the beginning of barley harvest in the month Abib (Nisan), commemorative of the going forth from Egypt;
2. The Feast of Harvest (elsewhere called "of weeks") at the beginning of summer, when the wheat crop had been reaped, commemorative of the giving of the law; and
3. The Feast of Ingathering (ver 16) in Tisri, at the close of the vintage, when all the crops of every kind had been gathered in, commemorative of the sojourn in the wilderness. The first of the three, the feast of unleavened bread, had been already instituted; (Exo_13:3-10) the two others are now for the first time sketched out, their details being kept back to be fined in subsequently. (Lev_23:15-21, and Lev_23:34-36) Here the legislator is content to lay it down that the great feasts will be three, and that all the males are to attend them.
Vers. 14-17. Festival times.
I FESTIVALS ARE COMMEMORATIONS. The joyful occurrences of our own lives we by a natural instinct commemorate yearly, as the day comes round when they happened to us. Our birth-day, our wedding-day, are thus made domestic festivals. Similarly, a nation commemorates the Day of its Independence, or the three glorious days of its Revolution, or the day on which its armies gained a great and crowning victory. It is reasonable that the practice thus established should be followed also in the Church of God, and the days on which great spiritual blessings or deliverances were granted to it kept in remembrance by some appropriate and peculiar observance. The Jews kept three great festivals, to which afterwards two others were added, all of them more or less commemorative. The Passover commemorated the passing over of the houses of the Israelites by the destroying angel and the hasty flight out of Egypt; the feast of Pentecost commemorated, according to Jewish tradition, the giving of the law; tabernacles recalled and perpetuated the dwelling in tents in the wilderness; Purim, the deliverance kern the malice of Haman; the Dedication, that from Antiochus Epiphanes. And Christian festivals are of a similar character. Advent commemorates the approach, and Christmas the birth, of Christ, Epiphany his manifestation to the Gentiles, Easter his resurrection from the dead, Ascension-day his ascent into heaven, Whitsuntide the coming of the Holy Ghost. "Saints" days," as they are called, commemorate the entrance into final bliss of those whose names they bear. All the greater, and almost all the lesser, festivals of the Christian Church are commemorations, days appointed for perpetuating the remembrance of events dear to the Christian heart and deeply interwoven with the Christian life. It follows that
II FESTIVALS ARE TIMES OF SPIRITUAL JOY". There are some to whom religion seems altogether a melancholy thing. Religious persons they suppose to be dwellers in perpetual sadness, gloomy, ascetic, dull, cheerless, miserable. But this is altogether a mistake. Holy joy is continually required of men as a duty in the Bible. "Rejoice evermore," says the great apostle of the Gentiles; (1Th_5:16) and again, "Rejoice with them that do rejoice". (Rom_12:15) "O be joyful in the Lord," is a constant cry of the Psalmist. Our Lord bade us "rejoice and he exceeding glad," even when we are persecuted, and assured us that "our joy no man taketh from us." There may be a sobriety in Christian joy which distinguishes it from the fitful, feverish, and excited joy of the world; but it is joy true joy nevertheless. And for this joy no times are so fitting as festival times. "This is the day which the Lord hath made," said holy David; let us rejoice and be glad in it." "Offices and duties of religious joy," as Hooker notes, "are that wherein the hallowing of festival times consisteth" (Eccl. Pol. 5:70, The set services of religion on festival days take a tone of gladness beyond the common; and the "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" suited for such occasions are of a still more jubilant type. Then especially do the precepts hold in the Lord," "Serve the Lord with gladness," "Show yourselves joyful unto the Lord sing, rejoice, and give thanks.
III FESTIVALS SHOULD BE TIMES OF THANKSGIVING. Nothing is more remarkable in man than his deadness, and dulness, and apathy in respect to all that God has done for him. Warm gratitude, lively thankfulness, real heartfelt devotion, are rare, even in the best of us. Festivals are designed to stir and quicken our feelings, to rouse us from our deadness, to induce us to shake off our apathy, and both with heart and voice glorify God, who hath done so great things for us. Festivals bring before us vividly the special Divine mercy which they commemorate, and at the same time present to our view the beneficent side, so to speak, of the Divine nature, and lead- us to contemplate it. God is essentially love; "he declares his Almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity" (Collect for Eleventh Sunday after Trinity). Festivals remind us of this. We lose the advantage of them wholly if we do not stir ourselves, on occasion of them, to some real outpouring of love and thanks to him who granted us the blessing of the time, as well as every other blessing, and every "good and perfect gift" of which we have the enjoyment.
IV FESTIVALS SHOULD BE TIMES OF BOUNTY. When the soul of a man is glad, and penetrated with the sense of God"s goodness and mercy towards it, the heart naturally opens itself to a consideration of other men"s needs and necessities. Being glad itself, it would fain make others glad. Hence, in the old world, great occasions of joy were always occasions of largess. The Israelites were commanded to remember the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow at the time of their festivals; (Deu_16:14) and the practice was to "send portions" to them. (Neh_8:10 Est_9:22) We shall do well to imitate their liberality, and to make, not Christmas only, but each festival season a time of "sending portions" to the poor and needy.
HOMILIES BY G.A. GOODHART Vers. 14-17. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.
To forget is far easier than to remember. Festivals are like posts to which we can fasten the cords of memory, so that, securely fastened, we may not drift down the stream of Lethe. To forget facts is to ignore the duties to which facts prompt us. We must leave undone what we ought to do, unless we take measures to keep us in remembrance. The great fact which the Israelites needed to remember was the relation of dependence in which they stood to God. He had freed them from slavery, he had provided them with food, he had given them, besides, the means of enjoyment wine and oil above all that they could ask or think. By means of the three great annual festivals threefold security was given against forgetfulness of this fact. To keep the festivals was to realise the relation, and to strengthen it by practical acknowledgment. Consider
I THE FEAST OF FREEDOM. In this connection (ver. 15) the unleavened bread is the point emphasised to be eaten for seven days, a full week, at the commencement of the sacred year. As a reminder it suggested
1. Past slavery. The tyrannous oppression of Egypt; hopeless condition ere God looked upon them; life but a synonym for bare existence; even sustenance depending upon the caprice of others.
2. Past deliverance. The paschal night; unleavened bread the accompaniment of the first paschal feast; food a very secondary consideration when freedom was in question.
3. Present duties. God had delivered them from slavery that they might serve him as his free people; an inner slavery worse than the outer; a purification needed in the heart even more important than that in the home. The leaven of malice and wickedness must be sought out and put away; so long as they retained that, freedom was but a nominal privilege.
II THE FEAST OF FIRST-FRUITS. Linked on to the second day of unleavened bread. God would have his children look forward; and so he makes the first blessing a seed in which are enwrapped others. Freed by God, the people could appropriate, as his children, the promise made to children Gen_1:29, as modified by the fall. (Gen_3:19) The gift of food was God"s gift, but their cooperation was needed for its fruition; it was to be the fruit , not the creation of their labours. Familiarity breeds forgetfulness as often as it breeds contempt. A reminder needed that human labour can, at most, work up God"s raw material. The cerealia, or corn plants, well called "a standing miracle." Apparently a cultivated grass, yet no known grass can be improved into corn by cultivation. Corn can be degraded by artificial means into a worthless perennial; as it is, it is an annual, exhausting itself in seeding, needing man"s labour to its perfection and preservation. To get his food, man is constantly reminded that he must be a fellow-worker with God.
III THE FEAST OF INGATHERING. As the year rolls on, it exhibits more and more of God"s goodness and bounty. It calls for ever fresh acknowledgment of that love which gives "liberally and upbraideth not." Freedom a great gift, the capacity to work for one"s own livelihood; so, too, food, the means through which that capacity may find exercise; further, God gives all the fruits of the earth in their season, so that man through his labour may find not merely health but happiness. Naturally this was the most joyful of all the festivals the blossoms which glorified the stem springing from the root of freedom. To rejoice in the Lord is the final outcome of that faith which enables us to realise our sonship.
Conclusion. These festivals have more than a historical interest. They teach the same truths as of old, but for Christians their meaning is intensified. Unleavened bread is associated with Calvary, freedom from the tyranny of sin. (1Co_5:7, 1Co_5:8) Linked to this is our first-fruits festival; Christ, the first-fruits, (1Co_15:20) made our food through the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost. The feast of ingathering is not yet, but we may rejoice in it by anticipation. (1Pe_1:6) The final festival is described for us by St. John in the Revelation (vii. 9-17). Blessed are they who, with robes washed white, shall share the joy of that feast of Ingathering. G.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v16 The feast of harvest.
Exo_23:16
The feast of harvest.
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The feast of harvest
I. The instruction it communicates
1. It exhibits the wonderful power of God.
2. We have an establishment of the faithfulness and truth of God.
3. We have a manifestation of the goodness and bounty of God.
4. It displays the mercy and forbearance of God.
5. It shows us the connection between means and the end.
II. What feelings it should produce. It should produce feelings--
1. Of deep humiliation.
2. Of heartfelt gratitude.
3. Our constant dependence upon God.
4. A constant desire to please Him.
III. What practical influence the subject should exert upon us.
1. To labour for the provision suited to our souls.
2. To do good in our respective spheres and stations in life.
3. Prepare for the final harvest.
Application:
1. Let us gratefully enjoy the bounties of Providence. Many are abusing, many forgetting, etc.
2. Let us be especially anxious about the blessings of eternal life.
3. Let us always act in reference to the final harvest of the world. (J. Burns, D. D.)
Pilgrimage feasts
I. Religious feasts are memorials.
1. Of Gods past dealings.
2. Of our dependence on Gods care.
3. Of our present condition. Pilgrims. This earth is not our rest.
II. Religious feasts are not to interfere with the duties of life.
III. stated religious feasts are helpful to a religious spirit.
IV. Religious feasts must promote the social and benevolent instincts of our nature.
V. The offerings at religious feasts must be--
1. Pure,
2. Of the best. (W. Burrows, B. A.)
The feast of harvest
This was their Pentecost; so called from a Greek word signifying fifty--because it occurred on the fiftieth day from the feast of unleavened bread. It was, properly, a harvest festival, in which the Jew offered thanksgiving unto God for the ripened fruits of the earth. To understand the peculiar interest the Jew took in this holiday, you must remember that the Israelites, after their establishment in Canaan, were almost entirely a nation of farmers. The peasant and the noble, in their respective spheres, were alike husbandmen. And the whole land of Israel was in the highest state of cultivation. Now, to such a people, inhabiting such a country, the feast of harvest was necessarily a grand festival.
1. We, too, want great national and religious holidays, to keep in mind great national providences.
2. We need them, moreover, as verily as the Jews, for their conservative political influence--to counteract the sectional and unsocial tendencies of our great tribal divisions. If we could come up nationally to such Pentecosts, then no living man would ever again dare breathe of discord and disunion--for chords, tender as our loves and stronger than our lives woven of religion and holy with old memories, as the memorial festivals uniting Judah and Ephraim, would bind us together and bind us to God!
3. Meanwhile we need such pentecostal holidays for those personal advantages which they brought to the Hebrews. They furnish that harmless relaxation so constitutionally necessary to our highest well-being. Real pleasure, as well physical as moral, is always the true law of life. True virtue is genial and joyous, walking earth in bright raiment, and with bounding footsteps. And the nervous, restless, unreposing, devouring intensity of purpose wherewith our men follow their business, is as disastrous to the nobler moral bloom and aroma of the heart, as a roaring hurricane to a garden of roses. Above all, our religious nature needs them. The true joy of the Lord is the Christians strength. Cheerfulness is a very element of godliness.
4. This is our Pentecost--our feast of harvest. And even in its lowest aspect, as a grateful acknowledgment of Gods goodness, in preserving for our use the kindly fruits of the earth, it is a fitting occasion of thankfulness. It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the importance of agriculture. It surpasses commerce and manufacture, as a cause is superior to its effects--as an inner life is of more moment than its various outward functions. Meanwhile, the reflex influences of industrial agriculture on our physical and social well-being are as well incalculable. After all, the finest products of our farm-lands are found in our farm-houses. Things better than corn and cabbages are grown on plough-ground--bone, muscle, sinew, nerve, brain, heart; these all thrive and strengthen by agriculture. The specimens of strong, hale, common-sense manhood seen at our annual fairs are a finer show than all the fat cattle and sheep, and noble horses, and the brave array of farm-fruits and implements. Agriculture purifies morals, chastens taste, deepens the religious element, develops the individual man.
5. Our thanksgiving is partly in view of the ripened fruits of the earth; but mainly in view of other and higher blessings. And in this regard as well, it is properly--a feast of harvest. In respect of all things--not merely the natural fruits of the earth, but all great human interests, political, intellectual, religious--we may be said to live in the worlds great harvest time. We have reaped, and are reaping, the ripened and ripening fruits of all earths past generations. Consider this a little.
(1) First: This is true--politically. Philosophically considered, the grand end and aim of all civil progress is human freedom--the highest development and culture of the individual and free manhood. Monarchy the one-man-power, oligarchy the few-men-power, are but the successive stages of the growing life, up to the ripened product of the true democracy--the all-men power. To this end hath tendered all political progress; and beyond this there is no progress. This is the harvest of earths long political husbandry, and we are reaping it.
(2) Then passing from the political, the same thought is true in regard of the intellectual. It is a thought well worthy our pondering, on an occasion like this--that we live in the harvest-time of mind and thought! Carefully considered, the development of the mental follows the law of material development. First, the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. Genius is first poetical, then practical. First, the flaunting blossom; then the substantial fruit. From the beginning, mans law of intellectual progress has been from the abstract to the practical--from ideas to facts. The practical, being the fruit of the imaginative, as the ripened corn is the fruit of the plants inner life. In past generations, intellect has been busy in a rudimental husbandry--felling the great forests; draining the low marshes; subduing the rugged soil; scattering the seed; and watching and waiting for the increase. The old philosophy; the old civilization; the old polities, civil and ecclesiastical; the old chivalry; the old poetry--these were the thought-germs, the thought-leaves, the thought-blossoms, which have ripened, and are ripening around us into Gods glorious fruit! We live in earths prodigal and luxuriant autumn--in times when marvellous things are the rule, and mean things the exception--in an economy of prodigies, each one a seeming miracle to mens earlier comprehension, and yet all, only the ripened development of their own thought-germs. And if the law of all husbandry be to sow in tears and reap in joy, then our thanksgiving, that we live in these eventful times, should be unto God, this day, a great feast of harvest!
(3) Passing this, we observe once more, and finally, That this same law of development we have been tracing through the political and intellectual, will be found to rule in the spiritual--and in this regard should we mainly rejoice that we live in lifes harvest-time.
6. In respects, then, like these, political, intellectual, religious, we live in times of unexampled blessedness. We have come up to Zion from hills purple with vintage, and valleys golden with corn, in the rapturous harvest-home of the mortal! And it becomes us to keep festival before God as the old Jew kept his Pentecost. As men, as patriots, as philanthropists, as Christians, our cup of joy mantles brightly. What more could God have done for us that He hath not done? What people can be happy before God, if we are not happy? Living here, in this nineteenth century, free men--free Christians--we seem to stand on the very mount of God, flung up in the waste of ages, for the enthronement of His great man-child! We look backward, and lo! all the past has been working together for our national and individual beatitude. Patriarchs, prophets, bards, sages, mighty men, conquerors, have all been our servants. Generation after generation, that have lived and died--great empires, that have risen and flourished, and trod imperial paths, and passed away for ever--seem to rise from their old death-dust, and march in vision before us, laying down all their accumulated thoughts, and arts, and honours--all the trophies of their mighty triumphs, in homage, at our feet! We look forward, and the eye is dazzled with the vision of the glory about to be accorded to Gods kingly creature, man! when standing upon this redeemed world, he shall assert his birthright--a child of God here! an heir of God for ever! Verily, we have cause for thanksgiving. The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Let us give, then, free course to our grateful emotions! Thankful for the present, trustful for the future, let us rejoice before God with the joy of harvest. (C. Wadsworth.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v14 Exo_23:19. Thou shalt not seethe, &c.]—This command, taken in…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Exo_23:19. Thou shalt not seethe, &c.]—This command, taken in connection with the preceding one, justifies the explanation of ancient commentators that it was given to banish a pagan rite, in the offering up as an harvest thanks-offering of a kid seethed in its mothers milk. With the milk of this oblation the fields, gardens, and orchards were sprinkled, in the belief that favour of the deities for a good harvest in the coming year would be thus secured. This commandment may, however, also imply a prohibition against cruelty and outrage of nature. Rabbinism took occasion to adduce from this commandment injunctions of an extensive culinary kind, according to which every Jew was strictly prohibited, not only from using milk, butter, or cheese with meat, but he is obliged to keep separate sets of kitchen utensils for each of those two classes of food.
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MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Exo_23:14-19
PILGRIMAGE FEASTS
The three feasts referred to in this passage are—The Feast of the Passover, the Feast of Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles or ingathering; and may be regarded as the pilgrimage feasts. We do not consider them to be of patriarchal origin. They evidently refer not to a pastoral but to an agricultural state of society. The offerings are such as an agricultural people might be expected to present. They are indicative of the fact that the people were not mere keepers of sheep, but tillers of the land. Our religious feasts must be appropriate to our conditions. Our religious offerings must be characteristic of our state, and proportioned to our means. God requires from us only that which we are able to give. Let each give according to that which he has received from the great Giver.
I. Religious feasts are memorials. The feasts of this world very often are made only for empty laughter, and too frequently the laughter is turned into mourning. Many of those who give feasts give them in order to minister to the desire of display, or for the purpose of gaining some advantage. For this reason our blessed Lord tells the givers of feasts to call in the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind. But the feasts appointed to be observed by God are memorials. These three feasts are—
1. Memorials of God’s past dealings. The word Passover indicates the nature of the feast of unleavened bread. It is a memorial, not of the fact that the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea; but of the fact that the destroying angel passed over the abodes of the Israelites. It is a memorial of a wonderful Divine deliverance. Of all the feasts of the Jewish economy, this is the one great feast which has been brought into prominence by the observance of the feast of the Lord’s Supper. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” This great memorial feast of the Jews was typical and prophetical. It pointed onwards through the intervening centuries to the greater feast of the Lord’s Supper. The one feast celebrated the deliverance of the natural Israel, while the other celebrates the deliverance of the spiritual Israel. The one feast has become absorbed and lost in a greater feast; but the other feast will be perpetually celebrated. We shall pass away from drinking the symbolical wine of earth to the glorious privilege of drinking the new wine in our Father’s kingdom. The one feast was local, but the other was intended to be universal. It is a significant fact that the feast of the Lord’s Supper has been so widely observed. Churches that have departed from the faith and lapsed into idolatry have stuck to this Christian ordinance. And we may consider it prophetical of the destined universality of Christ’s kingdom.
2. Memorials of our dependence upon God’s care. While the feast of unleavened bread brings into prominence the lesson that God is a deliverer to His people, the feasts of harvest and of ingathering bring into prominence the lesson that God is a provider and a sustainer. They make impressive, and teach by appropriate symbolism, the utterance of the great singer of the Israelitish Church—“He maketh peace in thy borders, He filleth thee with the finest of the wheat.” They have a manifest tendency to raise the heart in adoring gratitude to “God, who gives rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, and fills our hearts with food and gladness.” Let us never forget that it is God who makes the earth fruitful. While some keep their feasts in honour of “natural causes,” the “uniformity of Nature’s laws,” and a “fortuitous concourse of atoms,” let us keep our feasts to celebrate the goodness of Him who is the first cause of all so-called natural causes, the Giver and Enforcer of Nature’s laws, and the Glorious Designer who causes the atoms to consort together, so as to produce the useful and the beautiful.
3. Memorials of our present condition. Not only and merely in the sense of being dependent creatures, but that while in this world we are but pilgrims. The feast of ingathering was the feast of tabernacles. During this festival, the Jews were to dwell in tents or booths. It was a reminder of their wilderness life. Even in our feasts let there be the chastening thought that here we have no continuing city. Our feasts are but temporary as were the booths in which the Israelites dwelt. The only perpetual feast is that which shall be celebrated in heaven. This earth is not our rest.
II. Religious feasts are not to interfere with the duties of life. The wisdom of Divine arrangements is seen in the appointment of these feasts. The Passover was observed in the month Abib—the month of the ears of corn; the Feast of Pentecost, after the corn had all been safely gathered; and the Feast of Tabernacles, after the vines and fruit-trees had been stripped, so that no feast interfered with those times when work was most pressing. Diligence in business is, or may be, religious worship. God may be honoured by the work of this life. Those are divine who do lowliest acts in a divine spirit. The Jew was religious, not only when he brought the first-fruits of his labours as an offering to God, but when he ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, that he might have first-fruits to place upon God’s altar.
III. Stated religious feasts are helpful to a religious spirit. “Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto Me in the year.” “Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord God.” There are some who object to set times, and say that set times develop mere empty formalism, and that we ought always to be in a religious spirit. The Divine Legislator did not follow this method. And while the gospel sets us free from the trammels of the law, it nevertheless shows the propriety of stated religious observances. And we are “not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together.” The more loyal a man is, the more he will rejoice in stated seasons for the expression of his loyalty. The more spiritual a man is, the more thankful will he be for opportunities of public worship, to break up the course of his earthly life, and to develop his spiritual nature.
IV. Religious feasts must promote the social and benevolent instincts of our nature. All are to appear together before the Lord God. The separateness brought about by daily pursuits is to be broken up. There is to be a commingling of feeling and sentiment. This is an Old Testament provision which is greatly needed in these times. Cold isolation pervades the business, the social, and the religious worlds. We do not appear together before the Lord God. None are to appear empty before the Lord. The grasping spirit of selfishness must not be allowed to move on without being disturbed. The best way to uproot selfishness and to develop benevolence is to give unto God’s cause.
V. The offerings at religious feasts must be—
Exo_23:1. Pure. No leavened bread is to be eaten. Nothing that savours of corruption. We must seek for purity of motive in our religious feasts. They must be free from heathen luxury, or heathen magical arts. “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.” Arabs boil the flesh of kids in sour milk. A delicacy for the feast. Or to scatter the milk on the field for the production of a good harvest.
2. Of the best. The best of the first-fruits. The best in the Old Testament, and surely the best in the New Testament. Such offerings are productive of prosperity. The very effort to secure a surplus will promote care and develop provident habits. Nothing that is given to God can be lost.—W. Burrows, B.A.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
GOD’S PROVISION FOR HIS PEOPLE’S ENJOYMENT.—Exo_23:14-16
We remark—
I. That seasons for rejoicing were commanded. Let those who think that the old dispensation was gloomy remember that there was Divine injunction for joy and feasting three times a year.
II. That these seasons for rejoicing were conveniently appointed. Not in winter, but—
1. In spring, Passover.
2. Summer, first-fruits.
3. Autumn, ingathering.
III. That these seasons for rejoicing had a religious basis.
1. The feasts were “unto God.”
2. Were in remembrance of Divine services which made rejoicing possible.
IV. That these seasons for rejoicing were connected with religious acts, Exo_23:17 to Exo_19:1. Personal dedication.
2. Sacrifices.
V. That seasons of rejoicing must not engender slovenliness and uncleanness, Exo_23:18.
VI. That seasons of rejoicing must not be desecrated by unnatural or superstitious ceremonies, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk;” an outrage on nature and connected with witchcraft. In conclusion—
If Judaism was a religion of joy, much more so is Christianity. The latter—i. was inaugurated as “glad tidings of great joy.” ii. Its leading fact and doctrines are grounds of joy (1Jn_1:1-4). iii. Its great central and fundamental principle is an occasion of joy (Rom_5:11). iv. The “fruits of the Spirit are joy.” v. It provides an eternity of joy. vi. But remember the joy of the Lord is your strength, and it is only “in the Lord” that we can rejoice evermore (Php_4:4).
—J. W. Burn.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WILLIAM ADAMSON
Mosaic Morals! Exo_23:1-19. A modern jurist, Hennequin, says: “Good right had Moses to challenge the Israelites, what nation hath statutes like yours? a worship so exalted—laws so equitable—a code so complex?” A Frenchman and an infidel, he observes that, compared with all the legislations of antiquity, none so thoroughly embodies the principles of everlasting righteousness. Lycurgus wrote, not for a people, but for an army: It was a barrack which he erected, not a commonwealth. Solon, on the other hand, could not resist the surrounding effeminate influences of Athens. It is in Moses alone that we find a regard for the right, austere and incorruptible; a morality distinct from policy, and rising above regard for times and peoples.
“But what could Moses’ law have done
Had it not been divinely sent?
The power was from the Lord alone,
And Moses but the instrument.”
—Newton.
Festival Functions! Exo_23:14-17. The Israelites were to be peculiar people. They existed not for themselves, but they had a function to fulfil towards all mankind. In order to fulfil this function, it was needful that they should be for a time a people separate and self-contained, singular in their usages, and sequestered in their dwellings. In order to fix them down to one spot, they had their local worship. It was a law that all the men amongst them should rendezvous at the central shrine three times a year. Thus foreign settlements and distant journeys were made impossible more or less. The Hebrew home must be within a short and easy radius round the Temple; and if he went abroad, he carried this tether, and was pulled back again by the Passover or some other feast.
“Where’er I roam, whatever realms I see,
My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee;
Still to Mount Sion turns with ceaseless strain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.”
—Goldsmith.
Humanity and Heathenism! Exo_23:19. Various explanations have been given of this precept. It may have been intended, like Lev_22:28, to enforce humane feelings towards animals. But probably the forbidden dish was connected with idolatry. Thomson says that the Arabs are fond of it, highly seasoned with onions and spices. The Arabs call it “Lehn immû.” The Jews will not eat it, because they say that it is an unnatural and barbarous dish. It is also a gross and unwholesome dish, calculated to kindle up animal and ferocious passions. It is associated with immoderate feasting, and was connected with idolatrous sacrifices. As the Abyssinians are fond of slicing the shoulders and hips of living animals, and as other civilised and semi-civilised heathen are addicted to boiling and roasting animals alive, there may have been a similar practice extant among them in the time of Moses of shearing the kid, and seething it alive. M‘Cheyne, when in Poland, offered a Jewish boy some bread-and-butter. Though he looked eagerly at it, he laid it aside for some hours, remarking that he had just eaten flesh, and if he had immediately tasted butter, it would have been a violation of Exo_23:19.
“Verily, they are all thine; freely mayest thou serve thee of them all;
They are thine by gift for thy needs, to be used in all gratitude and kindness.”
—Tupper.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v16
Exodus
THE FEAST OF INGATHERING IN THE END OF THE YEAR
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Exo 23:16.
The Israelites seem to have had a double beginning of the year-one in spring, one at the close of harvest; or it may only be that here the year is regarded from the natural point of view-a farmer’s year. This feast was at the gathering in of the fruits, which was the natural close of the agricultural year.
This festival of ingathering was the Feast of Tabernacles. It is remarkable that the three great sacred festivals, the Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, had all a reference to agriculture, though two of them also received a reference to national deliverances. This fact may show that they were in existence before Moses, and that he simply imposed a new meaning on them.
Be that as it may, I take these words now simply as a starting-point for some thoughts naturally suggested by the period at which we stand. We have come to the end of another year-looked for so long, passed so swiftly, and now seeming to have so utterly departed!
I desire to recall to you and to myself the solemn real sense in which for us too the end of the year is a ‘time of ingathering’ and ‘harvest.’ We too begin the new year with the accumulated consequences of these past days in our ‘barns and garners.’
Now, in dealing with this thought, let me put it in two or three forms.
I. Think of the past as still living in and shaping the present.
It is a mere illusion of sense that the past is gone utterly. ‘Thou carriest them away, as with a flood.’ We speak of it as irrevocable, unalterable, that dreadful past. It is solemnly true that ‘ye shall no more return that way.’
But there is a deeper truth in the converse thought that the apparently transient is permanent, that nothing human ever dies, that the past is present. ‘The grass withereth, the flower fadeth,’-yes, but only its petals drop, and as they fall, the fruit which they sheltered swells and matures.
The thought of the present as the harvest from the past brings out in vivid and picturesque form two solemn truths.
The first is the passing away of all the external, but of it only. It has all gone where the winter’s cold, the spring rains, the summer’s heats have gone. But just as these live in the fruitful results that have accrued from them, just as the glowing sunshine of the departed ardent summer is in the yellow, bending wheat-ear or glows in the cluster, so, in a very solemn sense, ‘that which hath been is now’ in regard to every life. The great law of continuity makes the present the inheritor of the past. That law operates in national life, in which national characteristics are largely precipitates, so to speak, from national history. But it works even more energetically, and with yet graver consequences, in our individual lives. ‘The child is father of the man.’ What we are depends largely on what we have been, and what we have been powerfully acts in determining what we shall be. Life is a mystic chain, not a heap of unconnected links.
And there is another very solemn way in which the past lives on in each of us. For not only is our present self the direct descendant of our past selves, but that past still subsists in that we are responsible for it, and shall one day have to answer for it. The writer of Ecclesiastes followed the statement just now quoted as to the survival of the past, with another, which is impressive in its very vagueness: ‘God seeketh again that which is passed away.’
So the undying past lives in its results in ourselves, and in our being answerable for it to God.
This metaphor is insufficient in one respect. There is not one epoch for sowing and another for reaping, but the two processes are simultaneous, and every moment is at once a harvest and a seed-time.
This fact masks the reality of the reaping here, but it points on to the great harvest when God shall say, ‘Gather the wheat into My barns!’
II. Notice some specific forms of this reaping and ingathering.
{1} Memory.
It is quite possible that in the future it may embrace all the life.
‘Chambers of imagery.’
{2} Habits and character. Like the deposit of a flood. ‘Habitus’ means clothing, and cloth is woven from single threads.
{3} Outward consequences, position, reputation, etc.
III. Make a personal reference to ourselves.
What sort of harvest are we carrying over from this year? Lay this to heart as certain, that we enter on no new year-or new day-empty-handed, but always ‘bearing our sheaves with us.’ ‘Be not deceived! God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’
But remember, that while this law remains, there is also the law of forgiveness, ‘Go in peace!’ and there may be a new beginning, ‘Sin no more!’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv14–15 Three times
Three times
Cf. Lev 23:4-44. Exodus for the wilderness; Leviticus for the land.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv14, 16 General Information:
General Information:
Yahweh continues telling Moses his laws for the people of Israel.
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Aviv
This is the name of the first month of the Hebrew calendar. Aviv is during the last part of March and the first part of April on Western calendars. See how you translated this in Exodus 13:4. (See: Hebrew Months and How to Translate Names)
not appear before me empty-handed
Here understatement is used to emphasize that the Israelites must bring a suitable offering to Yahweh. AT: "come to me without a proper offering" or "always bring an offering to me" (See: Double Negatives)
translationWords
festival
command
unleavened bread
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv14–16 23:14-17 God’s command was that every man in Israel…
23:14-17 God’s command was that every man in Israel must appear before . . . the Lord (23:17), that is, at the Tabernacle, three times each year. While all the people were camped around the Tabernacle in the wilderness, this requirement did not create any problems. Later, when the people were dispersed throughout the land at a distance from the Tabernacle (later the Temple), it was more difficult. The stipulation seems to have been intended to keep the people from building local worship centers, which would splinter them as a people and allow for pagan influences on the worship of Yahweh. Sadly, these stipulations were not carefully carried out (see, e.g., 2 Kgs 23:21-23).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.