Sunday, October 18, 2020

Leviticus 23:1- 14 comments: on the Sabbath and the Passover

 

Leviticus 23:1 ¶  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2  Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts. 3  Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings.

 

The Sabbath, that seventh day when no work was to be done, was a gift to the Jews and it is not a stretch to say that it was a gift to man. It is holy. The reason I say that it was a gift to man is that it is written in creation. God rested from His labor of creation on the seventh day.

Exodus 20:11  For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

 

This is our emblem, our token for what God ordained. You, man or woman, are entitled by God to have a day off in a week in which you can rest and refresh. These are the instructions for what was to be done on that day in the Hebrew camp.

Exodus 16:29  See, for that the LORD hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.

 

A preacher saying that Jesus is our Sabbath does not mean that a human being doesn’t need or isn’t entitled to a day of doing absolutely nothing each week. I think that some of our emotional stress and even disease comes as a result of refusing God’s offering of a day to do nothing. It is certainly an un-American idea. We have to fill up our days off with personal work, entertaining, visiting, or entertainments.

The weekly Sabbath is the most important of God’s holy days, set apart by Him.

 

Leviticus 23:4 ¶  These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons. 5  In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD’S passover. 6  And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread. 7  In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. 8  But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. 9  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 10  Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest: 11  And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it. 12  And ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf an he lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the LORD. 13  And the meat offering thereof shall be two tenth deals of fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto the LORD for a sweet savour: and the drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the fourth part of an hin. 14  And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

 

From weekly to seasonal God takes us to His Passover. The Passover, as reported in verses 5 and 6 includes the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Luke 22:1  Now the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover…7  Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed.

 

We have a full explanation of the Passover in Exodus, chapter 12. Please read it and the comments I and others have made on it. It memorialized forever the Exodus from Egypt and the killing of the firstborn of the Egyptians, the passing over of the Hebrew houses that had lamb’s blood smeared on the door frames.

The Feast of Weeks was a feast of firstfruits. See Exodus 23:16.

 

So, three feasts are prescribed and two are mentioned here. The Passover represents the Jews leaving Egypt while the Feast of Weeks, also called the Feast of Harvest, and Ingathering, also called the Feast of Tabernacles.

Deuteronomy 16:16  Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles: and they shall not appear before the LORD empty:

See Exodus 34:18 and comments as well.

 

Notice how the word corn is used in the Bible. A corn of wheat in John 12:24 or just corn is the seed or the head of the wheat depending on the context. The word corn was not used for the Native American maize plant until later than the King James Bible was translated. Around the time of the translation the phrase for the American plant was Indian corn but the Indian was later dropped.

While there is some argument about whether what we know as New World (the Americas) maize existed in the Old World (see Ohio State article http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/maize.html) the statement corn of wheat in John 12:24 makes clear what is referred to here. For those who argue that Leviticus 2:14 saying green ears of corn cannot refer to wheat I refer you to the Arab dish called greenwheat freekeh and an old commentary that says, “Green or half-ripe ears of wheat parched with fire is a species of food in use among the poor people of Palestine and Egypt to the present day.”[1]



[1] Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, published in the early 1800’s and made available on the web at http://www.studylight.org/commentary/leviticus/2-14.html.

 

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