'And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 34. Speak unto
the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of
this seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for
seven days unto the Lord. 35. On the first day shall be
an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.
36. Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire
unto the Lord; on the eighth day shall be an holy
convocation unto you; and ye shall offer an offering made
by fire unto the Lord: it is a solemn assembly; and ye
shall do no servile work therein. 37. These are the
feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy
convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the
Lord, a burnt offering, and a meat offering, a sacrifice,
and drink offerings, every thing upon his day: 38. Beside
the sabbaths of the Lord, and beside your gifts, and
beside all your vows, and beside all your freewill
offerings, which ye give unto the Lord. 39. Also in the
fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered
in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto
the Lord seven days: on the first day shall be a sabbath,
and on the eighth day shall be a sabbath. 40. And ye
shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly
trees, branches of palm-trees, and the boughs of thick
trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice
before the Lord your God seven days. 41. And ye shall
keep it a feast unto the Lord seven days in the year.
It shall be a statute for ever in your generations: ye
shall celebrate it in the seventh month. 42. Ye shall
dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born
shall dwell in booths: 43. That your generations may
know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in
booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt:
I am the Lord your God. 44. And Moses declared unto
the children of Israel the feasts of the Lord.'
--LEV. xxiii. 33-44.
These directions for the observance of the great festival at the close
of harvest are singularly arranged. Verses 33-36 give part of the
instructions for the Feast, verses 37 and 38 interrupt these with a
summary of the contents of the chapter, and verses 39 to the end pick
up the broken thread, and finish the regulations for the feast.
Naturally, this apparent afterthought has been pointed out as clear
evidence of diversity of authorship. But a reasonable explanation may
be given on the hypothesis of the unity of the section, by observing
that verses 33-36 deal only with the sacrificial side of the feast, as
worship proper, and thus come into line with the previous part of the
chapter, which is occupied with an enumeration of the annual 'feasts of
the Lord' (v. 4). It was natural, therefore, that, when the list had
been completed by the sacrificial prescriptions for the last of the
series, the close of the catalogue should be marked, in verses 37, 38,
and that then the other parts of the observances connected with this
feast, which are not sacrificial, nor, properly speaking, worship,
should be added. There is no need to invoke the supposition of two
authors, and a subsequent stitching together, in order to explain the
arrangement. The unity is all the more probable because, otherwise, the
first half would give the name of the feast as that of 'tabernacles,'
and would not contain a word to account for the name.
We need not, then, include the separating wedge, in verses 37, 38, in
our present consideration. The ritual of the feast is broadly divided
by it, and we may consider the two portions separately. The first half
prescribes the duration of the feast as seven days (the perfect
number), with an eighth, which is named, like the first, 'an holy
convocation,' on which no work was to be done, but is also called 'a
solemn assembly,' or rather, as the Revised Version reads, in margin,
'a closing festival,' inasmuch as it closed, not only that particular
feast, but the whole series for the year. The observances enjoined,
then, are the public assembly on the first and eighth days, with
cessation from labour, and a daily offering. We learn more about the
offering from Numbers xxix. 12 _et seq._, which appoints a very
peculiar arrangement. On each day there was to be, as on other feast
days, one goat for a sin offering; but the number of rams and lambs for
the burnt offering was doubled, and, during the seven days of the
feast, seventy bullocks were offered, arranged in a singular
diminishing scale,--thirteen on the first day, and falling off by one a
day till the seventh day, when seven were sacrificed. The eighth day
was marked as no part of the feast proper, by the number of sacrifices
offered on it, dropping to one bullock, one ram, and seven lambs. No
satisfactory account of this regulation has been suggested. It may
possibly have meant no more than to mark the first day as the chief,
and to let the worshippers down gradually from the extraordinary to the
ordinary.
The other half of the regulations deals with the more domestic aspect
of the festival. Observe, as significant of the different point of view
taken in it, that the first and eighth days are there described, not as
'holy convocations,' but as 'sabbaths,' or, as the Revised Version
gives it better, 'a solemn rest.' Observe, also, that these verses
connect the feast with the ingathering of the harvest, as does Exodus
xxiii. 16. It is quite possible that Moses grafted the more
commemorative aspect of the feast on an older 'harvest home'; but that
is purely conjectural, however confidently affirmed as certain. To
tumble down cartloads of quotations about all sorts of nations that ran
up booths and feasted in them at vintage-time does not help us much.
The 'joy of harvest' was unquestionably blended with the joy of
remembered national deliverance, but that the latter idea was
superadded to the former at a later time is, to say the least, not
proven. Would it matter very much if it were? Three kinds of trees are
specified from which 'the fruit,' that is branches with fruit on them,
if the tree bore fruit, were to be taken: palms, 'thick trees,' that is
thick foliaged, which could give leafy shade, and willows of the brook,
which the Rabbis say were used for binding the others together. Verse
40 does not tell what is to be done with these branches, but the later
usage was to carry some of them in the hand as well as to use them for
booths. The keynote of the whole feast is struck in verse 40: 'Ye shall
rejoice before the Lord your God.' The leafy spoils come into view here
as tokens of jubilation, which certainly suggests their being borne in
the hand; but they were also meant to be used in building the booths in
which the whole nation was to live during the seven days, in
commemoration of God's having made them 'dwell in booths, when I
brought them out of the land of Egypt.' This is all that is enjoined by
Moses. Later additions to the ceremonial do not concern us here,
however interesting some of these are. The true intention of the feast
is best learned from the original simple form. What, then, was its
intention? It was the commemoration of the wilderness life as the
ground of rejoicing 'before the Lord.' But we must not forget that,
according to Leviticus, it was appointed while the wilderness life was
still present, and so was not to be observed then. Was it, then, a dead
letter, or had the appointment a message of joy even to the weary
wanderers who lived in the veritable booths, which after generations
were to make a feast of mimicking? How firm the confidence of entering
the land must have been, which promulgated such a law! It would tend to
hearten the fainting courage of the pilgrims. A divinely guaranteed
future is as certain as the past, and the wanderers whom He guides may
be sure of coming to the settled home. All words which He speaks
beforehand concerning that rest and the joyful worship there are
pledges that it shall one day be theirs. The present use of the
prospective law was to feed faith and hearten hope; and, when Canaan
was reached, its use was to feed memory and brighten godly gladness.
The feast of tabernacles was the consecration of joy. Other religions
have had their festivals, in which wild tumult and foul orgies have
debased the worshippers to the level of their gods. How different the
pure gladness of this feast 'before the Lord'! No coarse and sensuous
delights of passion could live before the 'pure eyes and perfect
witness' of God. In His 'presence' must be purity as well as 'fullness
of joy.' If this festival teaches us, on the one hand, that they
wofully misapprehend the spirit of godliness who do not find it full of
gladsomeness, it teaches us no less, on the other, that they wofully
misapprehend the spirit of joy, who look for it anywhere but 'before
the Lord.' The ritual of the feast commanded gladness. Joy is a duty to
God's children. There were mourners in Israel each year, as the feast
came round, who would rather have shrunk into a corner, and let the
bright stream of merriment flow past them; but they, too, had to open
their heavy hearts, and to feel that, in spite of their private
sorrows, they had a share in the national blessings. No grief should
unfit us for feeling thankful joy for the great common gift of 'a
common salvation.' The sources of religious joy, open to all
Christians, are deeper than the fountains of individual sorrow, deep as
life though these sometimes seem.
The wilderness life came into view in the feast as a wandering life of
privation and change. The booths reminded of frail and shifting
dwellings, and so made the contrast with present settled homes the
sweeter. They were built, not of such miserable scrub as grew in the
desert, and could scarcely throw shade enough to screen a lizard, but
of the well-foliaged branches of trees grown by the rivers of water,
and so indicated present abundance. The remembrance of privations and
trials past, of which the meaning is understood, and the happy results
in some degree possessed, is joy. Prosperous men like to talk of their
early struggles and poverty. This feast teaches that such remembrance
ought always to trace the better present to God, and that memory of
conquered sorrows and trials is wholesome only when it is devout, and
that the joy of present ease is bracing, not when it is
self-sufficient, but when it is thankful. The past, rightly looked at,
will yield for us all materials for a feast of tabernacles; and it is
rightly looked at only when it is all seen as God's work, and as
tending to settled peace and abundance. Therefore the regulations end
with that emphatic seal of all His commands, to impress which on our
hearts is the purpose of all His dealings with us as with Israel, 'I am
the Lord your God.'
III. We may note our Lord's allusions to the feast. There are probably
two, both referring to later additions to the ceremonies. One is in
John vii. 37. We learn from the Talmud that on each of the seven days
(and according to one Rabbi on the eighth also) a priest went down to
Siloam and drew water in a golden pitcher, which he brought back amid
the blare of trumpets to the altar, and poured into a silver basin
while the joyous worshippers chanted the 'Great Hallel' (Psa.
cxiii.-cxviii.), and thrice waved their palm branches as they sang. We
may venture to suppose that this had been done for the last time; that
the shout of song had scarcely died away when a stir in the crowd was
seen, and a Galilean peasant stood forth, and there, before the priests
with their empty vessels, and the hushed multitude, lifted up His
voice, so as to be heard by all, and cried, saying: 'If any man thirst,
let him come unto Me, and drink.' What increased force is given to the
extraordinary self-assertion of such words, if we picture this as the
occasion of their utterance! Leviticus gives no preeminence to any one
day, but John's expression, 'that great day of the feast,' may well
have been warranted by later developments.
The other allusion is less certain, though it is probable. It is found
in the saying at John viii. 12: 'I am the Light of the world,' etc. The
Talmud gives a detailed account of the illuminations accompanying the
feast. Four great golden lamps were set up in the court, each tended by
four young priests. 'There was not a court in Jerusalem that was not
lit up by the lights of the water-drawing.' Bands of grave men with
flashing torches danced before the people, while Levites 'accompanied
them with harps, psalteries, cymbals, and numberless musical
instruments,' and another band of Levites standing on the fifteen steps
which led to the women's court, chanted the fifteen so-called 'songs of
degrees,' and yet others marched through the courts blowing their
trumpets as they went. It must have been a wild scene, dangerously
approximating to the excitement of heathen nocturnal festivals, and our
Lord may well have sought to divert the spectators to higher thoughts.
But the existence of the allusion is doubtful.
We have one more allusion to the feast, considered as a prophecy of the
true rest and joy in the true Canaan. The same John, who has preserved
Christ's references, gives one of his own in Revelation vii. 9, when he
shows us the great multitude out of every nation 'with palms in their
hands.' These are not the Gentile emblems of victory, as they are often
taken to be. There are no heathen emblems in the Apocalypse, but all
moved within the circle of Jewish types and figures. So we are to think
of that crowd of 'happy palmers' as joyously celebrating the true feast
of tabernacles in the settled home above, and remembering, with eyes
made clear by heaven, the struggles and fleeting sorrows of the
wilderness. The emblem sets forth heaven as a festal assembly, as the
ingathering of the results of the toils of earth, as settled life after
weary pilgrimage, as glad retrospect of the meaning and triumphant
possession of the issues of God's patient guidance and wise discipline.
Here we dwell in 'the earthly house of this tabernacle'; there, in a
'building of God ... eternal.' Here we are agitated by change, and
wearied by the long road; there, changeless but increasing joy will be
ours, and the backward look of thankful wonder will enhance the
sweetness of the blessed present, and confirm the calm and sure hope of
an ever-growing glory stretching shoreless and bright before us.