ALONE WITH GOD     

The term "feast" where used in our common English Bible to designate the set sacred season or stated solemnities of the Israelites is somewhat misleading because of the sense in which feast is often understood by many today. These seasons were not all times of banqueting or of elaborate meals, for one called a feast was really a fast. They were principally times of religious rejoicing. Probably a better name for these holy festivals is "sacred seasons." This designation includes the great annual set "feasts," or other holy days, and the various holy years.

These sacred seasons are referred to many times in the Pentateuch, but are more formally described in Leviticus 23 and Numbers 28, 29. One weekly and six annual feasts are described in Leviticus 23. They are: (1) Sabbath, (2) Passover (including Unleavened Bread), (3) First- fruits, (4) Pentecost, (5) Trumpets, (6) Atonement, (7) Tabernacles. To these must be added the Sabbatic Year, which occurred each seventh year, and the Jubilee Year, each fiftieth year. Besides these the new moon was a time for special observance by offering special sacrifices.

Every day, in fact, was sanctified in a sense by the daily burnt offering, or the morning and evening sacrifice. This consisted in offering a lamb each morning and another each evening as a continual burnt offering. This was a national offering for general acceptance and worship and was offered after the manner of the ordinary burnt offering. With it was offered a common meal offering of one tenth ephah of fine flour and one fourth part of an hin of oil, also a drink- offering of wine equal in quantity to the oil. Each Sabbath this daily sacrifice was doubled in number of animals and in quantity of other materials. On each new moon besides the regular burnt offering nine other animals were offered for burnt offerings, with meat-offerings for each, besides a sin-offering. On every day the great annual feasts several animals were offered in addition to the regular offering, amounting to no fewer than thirty-two on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles.

The Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles were the three great feasts. At these each of the male Israelites was required to gather at the national sanctuary. "Three times in the year all they males shall appear before the Lord God" (Exod. 23:17; Deut. 16:16). The first and last days of the Unleavened Bread and Tabernacles, also Pentecost, Trumpets, and atonement, were to be observed as "holy convocations," or solemn assemblies. No work was to be done in them. They were special sabbaths in addition to the weekly Sabbaths. These assemblies were not necessarily at the tabernacle, but, except in the great feasts, in the communities where the people lived.

Though these were religious occasions, yet they had great value socially, politically, and commercially. These national gatherings were a wise provision of God for the general good of Israel, so far- reaching in their effects were they that it is difficult to believe they could have been so well thought out in their various aspects by any other than the infinite mind. They were observed at the season of the year when travel was the easiest and when most convenient for an agricultural people to be absent from their work. At the house of God in a season of rejoicing, a place and time most favorable to the development of friendship, Israel met three times each year. The males only were required to attend, but often women such as Hannah the devout mother of Samuel went. Also families, like that holy family of Nazareth, "went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover." (Luke 2:41). There old friendships were renewed. There under the benign influence of the worship of the Lord new and wider circles of friendships were formed. There those of near kin, like Mary and Elizabeth, living at widely separated points could greet each other and converse of things of mutual interest. And men who had fought the Lord's battles under Joshua or David met again and talked of events of long ago.

These gatherings could not fail to have great educational value. They required those living in remote places to get out of their own little corner and to see somewhat of the world. In a day when newspapers were unknown and means of communication and travel were most primitive, these feasts could not fail to be a place for general exchange of news. Those coming from distant Beersheba in the south not only would tell of their events, but would doubtless bring somewhat of the doings and culture of the Egyptians, their near neighbors. Worshipers from distant Dan would have the latest news from Damascus and the east. Others from the northwest and southwest would tell of the discoveries or newly planted colonies of the Phoenicieans or the conquests of the Philistines. And especially would there be an exchange of intertribal news.

Politically these gathering did much to mold the nation in one. Thrice yearly tribal jealousies must be laid aside for a national meeting. They developed the spirit of nationalism by this reminder that all who gathered were one nation of common ancestry, with a common history, a common religion, and different from all the surrounding nations. The internal commerce of the people could not fail to be built up by these gatherings at the feasts. They opened the ways for trade and business between the different parts of the country. Commercially these feasts had a value not very different from that of modern fairs. Such religious festivals have always had much value commercially. Mecca, because of the annual pilgrimage of the Mohammedans there, has become one of the greatest markets in the Eastern world. Doubtless this simple requirements of all males attending the feasts at Jerusalem three times each year had a tremendous influence in developing the nation of Israel commercially, socially, intellectually, politically, and especially religiously. He who can attribute this and other equally wise laws to the semibarbarous people which lived under them certainly possesses a credulity far exceeding that necessary to believe they were divinely given.

The religious influence of these feasts was very great. The very fact that they furnished set times for worship was of importance in making it easier for a man to break away from his daily routine. Similar set times are equally important now. Then the association of others in worship could not help but fan one's zeal for God and warm the heart. Inspiration to worship would naturally be the result of many worshiping together. Men more easily move with the mass than singly. Also there the isolated Israelite would be impressed with the holiness of Jehovah as he gazed from a distance upon His holy house. He would be impressed with the reality of the unseen God as he saw His representative the high priest performing his solemn duties there. The sinfulness of sin and that most glorious truth of pardon through vicarious suffering would grip him as he beheld the bleeding sacrifices at the altar of God. He would hear the priests and Levites teaching God's holy law and go home with a renewed zeal for his most holy faith. Times of the Feasts. - To know the time of those ancient Jewish feasts it is necessary to do more than name the month and date. They all varied several days each year, as our modern observance of Easter varies according to the common solar calendar. The Jews used the lunar calendar, counting the month by the moon and twelve moons to the year. This meant an average of 29 1/2 days to the month and 354 days to the year. This falling short of the full year by eleven days meant that about every three years, or, to be exact, seven times every nineteen years, an extra moon must be added.

Thus there was a constant shifting of the beginning of the year, which makes confusion for us in determining the date in our year for these feasts. The Israelites had the civil year, beginning near the time of the fall equinox, and which was common in the Eastern nations of the time. And they also had a sacred year, instituted by Moses, which was peculiar to themselves and which began six months prior to the civil year, about the time of the spring equinox. THis sacred-year calendar is the one that determined the time of the feasts. It properly began with the first new moon before the first full moon after the twenty- first of March. But the Israelites, not having the latter date established, began it, ordinarily, with the moon following the twelfth. If, however, it was seen that on the sixteenth of the moon following Adar, the twelfth, the barley would not yet be ripe, the intercalary month, Veader, was inserted as a thirteenth moon. But two intercalary years were not allowed in succession. The Jewish month and date of each feast we will give in connection with its discussion.

THE SABBATH (Lev. 13:1-3)

In the text referred to above God himself names the Sabbath first in his enumeration of the feasts of the Lord. It was most frequently observed, and more often enjoined than any of the other sacred seasons. Yet we are compelled to differ with those who hold that this primacy of the Sabbath among the feasts was pre-Mosaic in its origin and observance. It is true that in Leviticus it is not first mentioned, but as much may be said of the Passover, the observance of which was prior to the exodus and before any observance of the Sabbath by men. Not one text in all the Bible enjoins the observance of the Sabbath upon any man before the exodus, nor since Pentecost. Its first recorded observance was at the time of the giving of the manna. (Exod. 16:23). Objection is sometimes made to this position on the ground of Gen. 2:3, but it is well to remember in reading that text that it was written, not at creation, but by Moses after the Sabbath was commanded to Israel at Sinai. When God wanted to set apart a day each week for himself, he chose the seventh. "And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." Observe that the sanctifying of the day was subsequent to the resting - "he had rested." God's resting was at creation; the setting apart of the day for men's observance was at least twenty-five hundred years after man's creation - after the exodus. This is positively stated in Neh. 9:13, 14 and Deut. 5:2, 3, 12.

Its purpose was for a memorial or a sign (Exod. 31:17) of their deliverance from Egypt and that they were the special people of God (Deut. 5:15; Ezek. 20:12). It was observed in commemoration of the beginning of their nation at the exodus, as Americans observe the fourth of July for a similar purpose. It was a weekly reminder of their peculiar relation to Jehovah. When the father failed to go to the field to work on the Sabbath he answered his little son's inquiry of, "Why?" with the explanation that it was in commemoration of God's mighty deliverance of their fathers from Egypt. Thus it always had great value as a memorial besides the physical benefit that cannot but result from that wise practice of resting from toil on one day of each seven.

It was observed by a complete cessation from work (Exod. 20:10; 35:2; Lev. 23:3). The law was very strict in its requirement of Sabbath observance. No fire was to be kindled and no cooking done. This could easily be observed in Palestine, where fire is not needed for heating purposes. The violation of the Sabbath was punishable by death. But the Sabbath was not merely negative, it was also positive. It was not to be spent in listless idleness. It was set apart for a holy convocation or assembly, doubtless for the reading of the law and worship. We are not told exactly what was the nature of these holy convocations prior to the Babylonish captivity, but we know after that and in New Testament times the Jews met for worship on the Sabbath, and our blessed Lord himself read the law and taught in the synagogues. The object, then, of the Old Testament Sabbath was (1) for a memorial, (2) for needed physical rest, (3) for divine worship, (4) for a type of good things now the heritage of Christians.

The Antitypical Sabbath. - That the Sabbath was a type, one of the shadows of good things, is clear from various New Testament texts. "Let no man therefore judge you ... in respect ... of the sabbath-days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." (Col. 2:16, 17). It was a type or shadow of a body or substance which we obtain in Christ. The main idea of the Sabbath was physical rest. That physical rest therefore must have been typical of some higher rest to be found by the Christian. The strict observance of the Sabbath which God required of the Jews, like the requirement of strict adherence to the divine pattern for the tabernacle, was because it was to typify a perfect soul-rest of the Christian.

Centuries before Moses, the patriarch Jacob predicted Christ's coming under the name "Shiloh," or Rest-giver. (Gen. 49:10). Jesus himself said, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matt. 11:28). He is the rest-giver, and the rest he gives from the burden and bondage of sin is the Christian's Sabbath foreshadowed by that ancient Mosaic rest-day. It was predicted that "his rest shall be glorious," and thank God, it is so. That this is the true Sabbath-keeping is argued by the inspired writer to the Hebrews (chap. 4:3-11). He who ceases from his own works to obtain righteousness and trusts in the mercy of God for pardon of sin has entered the true Sabbath. The Sabbath, like the other ceremonial requirements of the law of Moses, is abolished (Col. 2:14-17; Heb. 8:6- 13), but the blessed soul-rest it prefigured remains for the people of God.