The Year Becomes an Ordered Remembrance

This formula recurs at verses 9, 23, 26 and 33, so the calendar is delivered in five separate speeches: the spring festivals, the first sheaf and the weeks, the trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles.

Feasts is mo‘adim, appointed times, the word of Genesis 1:14, where the lights are set for seasons. Holy convocations is miqra’ey qodesh, sacred callings, from qara’, to call; the same root gives proclaim in the same verse. These are days summoned by announcement.

Six days shall work be done is passive: work will be done, not you must work. The weekly sabbath is kept in all your dwellings, at home rather than at the sanctuary, which sets it apart from the pilgrimage feasts that follow.

A second heading, nearly repeating verse 2, restarts the list after the sabbath. Many scholars take the sabbath verse as set in front of the annual list deliberately. In their seasons is bemo‘adam, at their appointed time, fixed by the calendar rather than chosen.

At even is bein ha‘arbayim, literally between the two evenings, the twilight between sunset and dark, as in Exodus 12:6. Passover itself receives one verse and no rules here; the Book of Exodus has already given them in chapter 12.

Feast here is chag, a pilgrimage festival, the word related to the Arabic hajj. Unleavened bread is matsoth, bread made in haste without time to rise. Passover is one evening; the feast of matsoth is seven days, beginning the day after.

Servile work is melekheth ‘avodah, labouring work: the tasks of one’s trade. The weekly sabbath of verse 3 forbade all work. Exodus 12:16 allows the preparation of food on these feast days, save that which every man must eat.

Seven days of fire offerings are only named here; Numbers 28:19–24 fills in the numbers, two bullocks, a ram and seven lambs every day. The seventh day closes the week as the first opened it, with an assembly.

The second speech looks ahead to a harvest Israel did not yet have. In the wilderness no one reaped anything; the instruction is given before there is a field to apply it to.

Sheaf is ‘omer, which is also a measure of grain (Exodus 16:36). The first grain to ripen was barley, and Ruth arrived in Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest (Ruth 1:22). Firstfruits is re’shith, beginning, the word that opens Genesis.

The morrow after the sabbath divided the Jewish parties. The Pharisees read sabbath as the first day of Unleavened Bread, so the sheaf was waved on the sixteenth day of the month. The Sadducees and later the Karaites read it as the Sunday after the weekly sabbath.

One lamb of the first year is the only animal offered with the sheaf. A single yearling stands for the whole nation’s harvest, alongside the grain it accompanies.

Two tenth deals is double the flour that normally goes with a lamb (Numbers 15:4). The drink offering, nesekh, is named here for the first time in Leviticus: a quarter of a hin of wine, about a litre, poured out at the altar.

Bread, parched corn and green ears are every form of new grain: baked, roasted and fresh. Joshua 5:11 records the first time Israel kept this in Canaan: they ate parched corn in the selfsame day, and the manna stopped the next morning.

This counting became the Jewish sefirat ha‘omer, the counting of the sheaf, done day by day. Seven sabbaths here means seven weeks. Complete is temimoth, whole: the weeks are to be counted in full, none left short.

Fifty days in Greek is pentēkostē, which gives Pentecost, the day of Acts 2:1. Exodus 34:22 calls it the feast of weeks. A new meat offering is minchah chadashah, grain from the new harvest.

Out of your habitations: the loaves are baked in ordinary homes, not in the sanctuary. The omer was barley; these are wheat, since Exodus 34:22 ties this feast to the wheat harvest. The two harvests, barley and wheat, bracket the fifty days.

Seven lambs, one bullock and two rams. Numbers 28:27 gives the same feast as two bullocks and one ram, and the rabbis reconciled the two lists by saying both sets were offered, one with the loaves and one for the day.

The two lambs of the peace offering are the only public peace offering in the whole calendar. Peace offerings were usually a private family meal; here the congregation brings one together.

Holy to the LORD for the priest: the lambs and loaves become priestly food. Because the bread is leavened, it cannot go on the altar (2:11); it is waved before the LORD and then given to the priest to eat.

The selfsame day is proclaimed, but the text gives it no date in the month. Of the three pilgrimage feasts, this is the only one fixed by counting from another day rather than by a date on the calendar.

The law of 19:9 returns with changes: make clean riddance is kalah, to finish off, and the vineyard is dropped, since this is the grain harvest. Synagogues read the book of Ruth at this feast, the account of a stranger gleaning barley and wheat.

The third speech is the shortest. It opens the seventh month, the month that gathers more holy days than any other in the year.

Blowing of trumpets is teru‘ah, a shout or blast, and the verse does not name the instrument. Later practice used the ram’s horn, the shofar. The day became Rosh Hashanah, the new year, though Leviticus calls it only the first day of the seventh month.

The calendar in Leviticus counts from the spring (Exodus 12:2), so this autumn day is in the seventh month. The offerings are only mentioned; Numbers 29:1–6 lists them, a bullock, a ram and seven lambs, beside the new moon offerings.

The fourth speech is given its own opening formula though it is only seven verses long, marking the Day of Atonement as a separate instruction within the seventh month.

Also is ’akh, an emphatic particle, surely or only. The day of atonement is plural in Hebrew, yom hakkippurim, the day of atonements, and this is the name used for it throughout the Hebrew Bible.

No work at all, kol melakhah, the phrase used for the weekly sabbath in verse 3, stricter than the servile work of the feast days. To make an atonement for you shifts the focus to the people; chapter 16 spoke mostly of cleansing the sanctuary.

Not be afflicted is passive, not humbled. Isaiah 58:5 turns the prophet on the day itself: is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush? The ritual alone is not the point.

Will I destroy is ha’avadti, from ’avad, to perish. It is the only place Leviticus uses this verb for the penalty; everywhere else it is cutting off. God himself acts, and the word is stronger.

The third statement in four verses that no work may be done. In all your dwellings takes the fast into every household, wherever it is, not only among those near the sanctuary.

From even unto even is the only place in the Torah where the evening-to-evening reckoning of a holy day is spelled out. The fast starts on the ninth day at sunset, which is already the tenth by that reckoning.

The fifth and final speech covers the longest festival, Tabernacles, and is followed by the chapter’s summary and a closing appendix on the same feast.

Tabernacles translates sukkoth, booths or huts. The English comes from the Latin tabernaculum, a hut, which is why the same English word names the sanctuary. The Hebrew keeps them apart: the sanctuary is the mishkan, the dwelling; these are sukkoth.

The first day is a holy convocation. This feast was often called simply the feast, hechag, and Solomon dedicated the temple at the feast in the month Ethanim, the seventh month (1 Kings 8:2).

Solemn assembly is ‘atsereth, from ‘atsar, to hold back, a closing gathering that keeps the people one day more. Numbers 29 prescribes seventy bullocks over the seven days. John 7:37 places Jesus at the last day, that great day of the feast.

Every thing upon his day is devar yom beyomo, each day’s portion on its day, the phrase for the daily quota of bricks in Exodus 5:13 and the daily manna in 16:4. The summary names four kinds of offering.

Beside is millevad, in addition to. The feasts’ offerings do not replace the weekly sabbath offerings, nor gifts, vows or freewill offerings. The calendar adds; it does not substitute.

Also is the ’akh of verse 27 again. After the summary, the chapter goes back to Tabernacles. When ye have gathered in the fruit gives the feast its other name, the feast of ingathering (Exodus 23:16).

Boughs of goodly trees is literally fruit of the tree hadar, which Jewish tradition took as the citron, the etrog. Palm, thick trees (the myrtle) and willows of the brook complete the four kinds. Nehemiah 8:15 lists olive, pine, myrtle and palm branches for building the booths.

Seven days in the year, and in the seventh month. Zechariah 14:16 foresees the nations going up year by year to keep the feast of tabernacles, the only feast the prophets extend to the nations in that way.

All that are Israelites born, the native ’ezrach, dwell in booths; the stranger is not named, as he is in many other laws. Nehemiah 8:14–17 records the returned exiles finding this verse written in the law and building booths as not seen since Joshua.

Whether the booths of the wilderness were literal huts or the clouds of glory was debated by Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Akiva (Talmud, Sukkah 11b). Israel’s first camp out of Egypt was a place called Succoth (Exodus 12:37).

Moses declared, vaydabber, the verb for speaking a formal word. The chapter began with the LORD telling him to speak of feasts which ye shall proclaim, and it ends with the proclamation made.