Sabbaths and feasts.
I. SABBATHS.
1. The Sabbatic year (Exodus 23:10, Exodus 23:11). Every seventh year the land was to lie fallow, and what it spontaneously produced was to be a provision for the poor, and for the beasts of the field. There was connected with the ordinance a special promise of unusual fertility in the sixth year—of such plenty as would make the nation independent of a harvest in the seventh (Le Exodus 25:21, Exodus 25:22). The Sabbatic year was
2. The weekly Sabbath (Exodus 23:12). The invaluable seventh day's rest was also to be sacredly observed by the nation. Well-kept Sabbaths have much to do with national prosperity.
II. FEASTS. The stated festivals were three (Exodus 23:14 17). The design in their appointment was to commemorate mercies, to keep alive the memory of national events, to foster a sense of unity in the people, to quicken religious life, to furnish opportunities of public worship. They afforded a means of strengthening the bond between the people and Jehovah, promoted brotherly intercourse, infused warmth and gladness into religious service, and were connected with a ritual which taught the worshippers solemn and impressive lessons. The feasts were:—
1. The Passover—here called "the feast of unleavened bread" (Exodus 23:15-18). It commemorated the great National Deliverance (see on Exodus 12:1-51.). The use of unleavened bread was a call to spiritual purity (1 Corinthians 5:8). The blood was offered (Exodus 23:18) as an ever-renewed atonement for sin. The "fat" of the sacrifice betokened the consecration of the best.
2. Pentecost—here called "the feast of harvest, the first-fruits of thy labours" (Exodus 23:16). Its primary reference was agricultural. It was a recognition of God in the gift of the harvest. It besought his blessing upon the labours of the field. It consecrated to him the first-fruits (Exodus 23:19) of what he had given (two wave-loaves, Le Exodus 23:17). In the dedication of the wave-loaves, as in the weekly presentation of the shewbread in the tabernacle (Exodus 25:30), there was further symbolised the dedication to God of the life which the bread nourished. Fitly, therefore, was this day chosen for the presentation to God of the first-fruits of his Church (Acts 2:1-47.).
3. The feast of Tabernacles—"the feast of ingathering" (Exodus 23:16). This was the feast of the completed harvest, when the corn, the wine, and the oil, had all been gathered in. During the seven days of the feast the people dwelt in booths, in commemoration of their wanderings in the wilderness. The dwelling in booths was a symbol also of their present pilgrim condition on earth, as "strangers and sojourners" (Psalms 39:12). The precept in Exodus 23:19, which seems related to this feast,—"Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk," had probably reference to some harvest superstition. On its moral lessons, see Deuteronomy 14:21.—J.O.