The verse opens the Lord's instruction to Moses for the Day of Atonement and its appointed feasts. That day was the yearly closing service on the tenth day of the seventh month, a most solemn holy convocation and sabbath of rest for final cleansing, when all were to afflict their souls, do no work, and offer fire offerings under penalty of being cut off. Its annual sabbaths are kept besides the Sabbaths of Jehovah, being temporary ceremonial shadows pointing to Christ that were nailed to the cross, while the weekly seventh-day Sabbath of the moral law instituted at creation remains binding and perpetual. On that day the high priest entered the most holy with the blood of the Lord's goat to cleanse the sanctuary and send away sin by the goat for Azazel, showing Christ slain for sin and Satan finally destroyed. As the spring types were fulfilled exactly as to time, its grand antitype commenced on the tenth day of the seventh month at the end of the 2300 days in 1844, when Christ began His closing work in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary to conduct the investigative judgment and blot out the sins of the faithful.
Verse Context and Wording
The verse is the introductory formula in which the Lord speaks to Moses to give the instructions for the Day of Atonement and the appointed feasts. It begins the fuller account of that special annual day and its work of atonement and cleansing, the closing service that completed the yearly round of sanctuary ministry on the tenth day of the seventh month. It belongs to the former ceremonial system of types and shadows whose fulfillment is found collectively in the gospel dispensation and in Christ's work as High Priest in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary.
The chapter is the fullest list of the set feasts of Jehovah, the holy convocations beginning at Leviticus 23:4. It presents the annual feasts and ceremonies of Israel's law — Passover and unleavened bread, firstfruits, weeks or Pentecost, trumpets, atonement, and ingathering or tabernacles — with their sacrifices and priestly service. Within it Leviticus 23:23-36 gives three feasts in the seventh month, the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. It brings before view all the yearly sabbaths and feast days, including the Day of Atonement and the sacrifices upon that day, several of which were kept as sabbaths on which no servile work was to be done.
The feasts occurred once a year at appointed times rather than on fixed weekdays, on certain days of certain months and feasts. Their timing followed the calendar of months and new moons, so they naturally fell on all days of the week and fell on different weekdays from year to year. Feast dates could change the day of the week on which a feast sabbath fell, but they did not change which day was the seventh day. The sacred year varied with moon and harvest, and Pentecost and the wave sheaf were determined by the ripening barley rather than a fixed month date, the sheaf of ripe barley being waved on the sixteenth day of the first month, the day after the Sabbath.
The first, seventh, and eighth days named in those instructions are days of the feast concerned, not days of the week. The eighth day means the eighth day of the feast, not a day of the week, and the chapter contains nothing about reckoning the days of the week. Those eighth days are counted from fixed days of fixed months so they fall on different days of the week from year to year and do not always mean the first day of the week. The word Sabbath is applied in Scripture to great festivals as well as to the seventh day, and not to the seventh day alone, so the plural sabbaths can refer to Jewish feast days as well as the weekly Sabbath. To use the eighth day to argue for Sunday-keeping assumes without right that it is a day of the week, and since that assumption is the central and vital point of the argument, the argument falls to the ground.
The seventh month is the seventh month of the first year of Cyrus, the year the Jews left Babylon for Jerusalem, when the blowing of trumpets called all the people together preparatory to the building of the altar. The gathering after the wall was finished, when the people asked for the book of the law and Ezra read to them, took place in that festal month of feasts. The Day of Atonement fell on the tenth of Tizri or Tisri, a month nearly corresponding to September, within the first ten days of the Jewish year known as the ten days of penitence. Kippur means pardon or expiation, and the yearly faults were expiated on that solemn day of rest and strict fasting.
Although this day had the most important sanctuary service, no recorded instance of its observance survives. The observance of the other seventh-month festivals connected with it is recorded repeatedly.
Day of Atonement Service
The Day of Atonement was the yearly closing service on the tenth day of the seventh month, a holy convocation and sabbath of rest kept from evening to evening. It was the most solemn day of the year, a yearly judgment day and strict fast for final cleansing and remission of sins for the sanctuary and the people, completing the sanctuary service in type. To afflict the soul meant to enter earnestly into the work through repentance, confession, and seeking God, with no work done and atonement sought before the Lord. The service was performed once a year and foreshadowed the final atonement work carried forward by Christ as High Priest in heaven.
All the congregation and any sojourner were to afflict their souls, do no work of any kind, eat no food, and offer fire offerings to make atonement. Anyone indifferent to the day, working on that day, failing to humble himself, or disobedient was cut off from the people and from Israel. That cutting off was punishment with death for the working and disobedient. Those who humbled themselves and ceased from work were left free from guilt.
Through the year sins were transferred in figure to the sanctuary by the daily ministration, when the repentant sinner's sin-offering blood was sprinkled before the veil or when the priest ate the flesh to bear the iniquity of the congregation. By this transfer the holy places were defiled, so a special atoning work became necessary for the removal of the sins. Leviticus 23 therefore commands that an atonement be made for each of the sacred apartments, as for the altar, to cleanse it and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel. That divinely appointed cleansing accomplished final riddance of sin from the people and the sanctuary every year.
On that day the high priest entered the most holy place with incense and the blood of the Lord's goat, and sprinkled it on and before the mercy seat above the transgressed law. The ceremonies, given with Leviticus 16, centered on the taking of two goats, one for the Lord and one for Azazel, the sacrificing of the Lord's goat and the sending of the scapegoat into the wilderness, with all accompanying ceremonies to fill observers with awe and thoughts of the final decisions of the judgment day. The high priest then brought the people's sins out of the sanctuary and, by confession, placed them on the goat for Azazel, which was sent into the wilderness to be destroyed. The penitents were thus left free from sin, cleansed, justified, free from guilt, and at one with God, and the cleansing with the following ingathering typified judgment and cleansing followed by the gathering of the righteous. The order shows divine wisdom and not human devising, for human reasoning would kill the devil's goat and spare the one representing innocent Jesus, while the divine plan is that He who knew no sin was made sin and the just suffered death for the unjust guilty race, and that Satan the author of sin is destroyed finally in his proper time.
Annual and Weekly Sabbaths
Leviticus 23 sets out seven annual sabbaths at specified month dates distinct from the weekly Sabbath, with the verse itself introducing the Lord's instruction to Moses for the Day of Atonement. The annual days include the first, tenth, fifteenth, and twenty-second or twenty-third days of the seventh month, and two connected with Passover on the first and seventh days of unleavened bread, all kept as holy convocations in which no servile work was done. They fell nine, ten, five, and four days apart rather than every seventh day, falling on fixed days of fixed months and feasts and so naturally on all days of the week, and they could fall between two weekly Sabbaths or coincide with them without regularly doing so. They belonged to the three yearly feasts at which the males were to appear before the Lord, were dependent on the typical feasts to which they belonged for their existence, and were distinct from the Lord's weekly Sabbath even when they fell on the same day.
These yearly days are called your sabbaths and her sabbaths, and are kept besides or beside the Sabbaths of Jehovah, meaning the weekly Sabbath described in verses 1-3 and verse 38. They are additional observances expressly distinguished from the Lord's Sabbaths, with the Day of Atonement on the tenth day of the seventh month coming as a solemn sabbath of rest distinct from and beside the weekly Sabbath. The distinction is marked by nature and timing, for the weekly Sabbath is always the seventh day in constant succession while the yearly sabbaths could fall on any day of the week. The yearly festival sabbaths are therefore to be kept on their appointed dates besides the Lord's Sabbaths, and their ceremonial character does not make the weekly Sabbath ceremonial.
The annual sabbaths belong to Moses' ceremonial ordinances with meats, drinks, offerings, new moons, and festivals, given at Sinai long after creation in the midst of meat-offering, sacrifice, and drink-offerings. They arose after the fall because of sin as local, temporary shadows and types pointing forward to Christ and to Christ's death, and all met their fulfillment in Christ Jesus. The weekly Sabbath belongs to the moral law, instituted at creation before sin and the fall as a universal, perpetual memorial of creation and of God's power, not a shadow of Christ's death. The chapter's actual list of feasts begins in verse 4, and verse 38 again distinguishes those feasts from the Lord's Sabbaths, so the weekly Sabbath is not one of the ceremonial feast days.
The ceremonial sabbaths expired by limitation when the shadow reached the substance, when the type met its fulfillment and the thing typified was reached. They were abolished, blotted out, and nailed to the cross at Christ's death, taken out of the way with the ceremonial ordinances from which they derived their force, and were not binding afterward. As the Passover ceased in Christ the paschal lamb its connected sabbaths could no longer exist, and the annual sabbaths and feasts set apart as days to bring special offerings ceased when the sacrificial law ceased at the cross. The weekly seventh-day Sabbath was not abolished but remains binding, eternal, and absolute and independent as old as the world, commemorating an event equally concerning every person and remaining a memorial of creation and redemption.
The plural sabbath days with holy day, meats, drinks, and new moons in Colossians 2:16 are these annual feast sabbaths, not the fourth-commandment weekly Sabbath, so that passage does not abolish the seventh day. The sabbaths in Colossians 2 that were against us and taken out of the way are these festival sabbaths kept with meat offerings and drink offerings and expressly distinguished as besides the Sabbath of the Lord, including the Passover festival denoted by holy day. The esteemed days in Romans 14 are likewise these annual feast sabbaths, and the teaching about meat and drink and judging in sabbaths has no reference to the fourth-commandment Sabbath. Leviticus 23:24-39 gives the ceremonial sabbaths and feast days cited as describing the plural sabbaths distinguished from the Sabbath of the fourth commandment.
The Sabbath is the only weekly feast among the Jews, appointed before the apostasy as a special memorial of the goodness and power of God displayed in the finished work of creation. Those other days grew out of man's actions as a sinner and would never have existed but for sin, originating this side of the fall after types and shadows were introduced, which marks them as shadowy and typical, while the Sabbath grew out of the action of a holy and infinite God given in Eden before types were instituted. Gentiles could keep the Sabbath without being circumcised, but to keep those other days they must be circumcised, and those other days had to be kept by going up to Jerusalem yearly with sacrifices while the Sabbath was kept wherever people are. The seventh-day Sabbath was weekly, but all those other holy days were yearly, showing the Sabbath is unchangeable, perpetual, and for all people, while they are only ceremonial, temporal, and for one nation.
Types Fulfilled in Christ
Each and all of the feasts of Leviticus 23 are typical, finding fuller meaning in the sacrifice, life, and priestly work of Jesus Christ. They were annual feasts and ceremonies celebrated from year to year, yearly institutions that came in consequence of sin as types and prophecies pointing forward to Christ, and all met their fulfillment in Him. They are distinct from the Sabbath of Jehovah and from the eternal Sabbath of the Lord by nature and timing, for the weekly Sabbath is always the seventh day in constant succession while the yearly sabbaths and feasts fell on certain days of certain months and so naturally fell on all days of the week. They were typical and shadowy, shadows of things to come with Christ as their body, and expired by limitation when the thing typified was reached, when the shadow reached the substance, so they are not to be celebrated annually until their complete antitypical fulfillment but their meaning is met in Christ's ministry and in a life that walks in newness.
The Passover lamb is fulfilled in Christ's death, the sheaf of firstfruits waved on the sixteenth of the first month in Christ risen as firstfruit of them that slept, Pentecost on the fiftieth day in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:1, 2, the ceremonies and Day of Atonement in Christ's work as priest, and the Feast of Tabernacles in its great antitype in the home-coming to the New Jerusalem. The Passover killed on the fourteenth of the first month, the firstfruits, and the Feast of Weeks were each fulfilled exactly as to time in Christ sacrificed, Christ risen, and the outpouring of the Spirit, and mere preliminary and circumstantial burnt offerings belonging alike to those days and to the Day of Atonement did not prevent the grand event of the day from meeting its antitype on the very day pointed out in the type. The seven yearly sabbaths were holy convocations in which no servile work was done, including two connected with the Passover on the first and seventh days of unleavened bread, and were dependent on the typical feasts to which they belonged for their existence, so they ceased when the type met its antitype in the work of Christ, as the Passover ceased in Christ the paschal lamb and its connected sabbaths could no longer exist. This dependent, shadowy, typical character distinguishes them from the weekly Sabbath of the Lord, which is an absolute and independent institution as old as the world commemorating an event equally concerning every person, and each of the three annual festivals at which all the males were commanded to appear before the Lord at His sanctuary was fulfilled in Christ's antitypical priestly service.
God appointed holy convocations on days other than the seventh day, showing that the people of God for ages met for worship on other days, so meeting for worship on a day does not prove that day is the rest-day or Sabbath. Holding an all-day religious meeting on a weekday with no ordinary labor did not cancel the command to work six days and rest on the seventh. The eighth day named in the feast law means the eighth day of the feast, not a day of the week, and the chapter contains nothing about reckoning the days of the week, so to use the eighth day to argue for Sunday-keeping assumes without right that it is a day of the week, and since that assumption is the central and vital point the argument falls to the ground. Those eighth days are counted from fixed days of fixed months as a great day and even a Sabbath in connection with certain feasts, so they fall on different days of the week from year to year and do not always mean the first day of the week, and requiring Sabbath observance on fixed calendar dates would make the weekday vary from year to year and disrupt the regular weekly cycle. God honored the antitype of the Feast of Pentecost with the outpouring of the Spirit, not the first day of the week, and spoke nothing there about changing His Sabbath.
The regulations for these gatherings included special offerings from the land's produce and the people's labor, along with pledges, vows, and freewill offerings, with worshipers to give in keeping with the blessings God had given them. The yearly Sabbaths attached to Israel's feasts are types, and calling the Sabbath a type places it among positive, typical institutions rather than moral institutions.
Prophetic Antitype in Heaven
The tenth day of the seventh month governs the timing of its fulfillment, for as Passover on the fourteenth of the first month was met in Christ sacrificed, the sheaf waved on the sixteenth in Christ risen as firstfruit, and the fiftieth day in the outpouring of the Spirit in Acts 2, so the grand work performed in the holiest must commence its antitype on the very day pointed out in the type. That commencement came at the end of the 2300 days in 1844, when the closing service foreshadowed in Leviticus 23:26-32 began to be carried forward by Christ as High Priest in heaven. The fact that burnt offerings and other preliminary and circumstantial offerings belonged also to the day of firstfruits, the feast of weeks, and the Day of Atonement does not delay the central work, for those did not prevent the grand event of the day from meeting its antitype on the appointed day. Like Christ our Passover still fed upon and the Spirit of Pentecost still abiding, that cleansing of the sanctuary then occupies a space corresponding to its magnitude and importance and continues until the end.
That continuing work is Christ's closing work as High Priest in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary. It is the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary and the investigative judgment, the yearly judgment day and final atonement in antitype. In it the sins of the faithful are blotted out and the names of the unworthy are removed, when the mystery of God is finished. The yearly typical cleansing was followed by ingathering, typifying judgment and cleansing followed at the end of the world by the gathering of the righteous.
The yearly cleansing by the blood of the sacrificial goat pointing to Christ cannot itself be the cleansing foretold in Daniel 8:14. The two thousand and three hundred prophetic days, reckoned a day for a year, reach far beyond that typical dispensation. They reach to the antitypical Day of Atonement, the judgment work and cleansing of the sanctuary in heaven.
The Day of Atonement on the tenth day was announced by the feast of trumpets on the first day of the same month, ten days earlier, when trumpets were blown at Jerusalem announcing the definite time of that solemn event. Its antitype is the 1840-44 Advent movement sounding the warning before the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary and work of judgment began in 1844. That ten-day trumpet warning requires a similar manifestation on schedule marking the day-for-a-year prophetic period, given ten years beforehand in the falling of the stars over the Western Hemisphere on the night of November 13, 1833.
On the Day of Atonement the high priest came out of the sanctuary to bless the people. This points to Christ, the great High Priest, coming from heaven to bless His waiting people with immortality. That coming stands in the autumn, in harmony with the autumn types and with the end of the 2300-year period.
Practical Lessons and Connections
The yearly closing service on the tenth day of the seventh month was a holy convocation when all were to afflict their souls, do no work, and seek atonement before the Lord, and anyone indifferent or working on that day was cut off from the people. To afflict the soul means to enter earnestly into the work through repentance, confession, prayer and self-examination, confessing sins and making every wrong right while Christ as High Priest carries forward the final atonement in heaven begun in 1844 at the end of the 2300 days. During the year the blood of sin-offerings had transferred sins into the sanctuary, and on this most solemn day, the great day of judgment announced by the feast of trumpets on the first day of the same month, the high priest entered the most holy place with incense and with atoning blood which he sprinkled on the mercy-seat and before the ark containing the law that condemned the transgressor. The sins were then taken and placed on the head of the scapegoat, which was sent away into the wilderness, ending sin in the yearly typical service.
God's instruction for keeping a certain Sabbath from evening to evening shows the seventh-day Sabbath is to be kept from sunset to sunset, which is definite. This sunset manner reaches back to creation week and agrees with the way God kept the first Sabbath, and the Jewish keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath at sunset is right with reference to time because it agrees with this instruction. The chapter lists annual sabbaths appointed by God on days other than the weekly seventh day, showing that God can make any day a sabbath. Alongside the weekly Sabbath the Lord appointed several feasts lasting several days when Israel was not to work, showing that God did not intend people to labor so much that they harmed their health, while also not intending them to be idle.
Those festival holy days are of a very different nature from the seventh-day Sabbath, for they grew out of man's actions as a sinner and would never have existed but for sin, while the Sabbath grew out of the action of a holy and infinite God and was given in Eden before types and shadows were instituted. Gentiles could keep the Sabbath without being circumcised and wherever people were, but to keep those other days they must be circumcised and go up to Jerusalem, and the Sabbath was weekly while all those other holy days were yearly, showing the Sabbath is unchangeable, perpetual and for all people, while they are only ceremonial, temporal and for one nation. Those annual Sabbaths fall on certain days of certain months, and with going to Jerusalem three times a year with sacrifices they would consume all time and be a yoke Gentiles could not bear, a middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles, against and contrary to Gentiles, a shadow of things to come, and so were done away. They belong to the Jewish ritual system of meats, drinks and carnal ordinances, a connected whole separate from the seventh-day Sabbath, about which nothing was spoken by God with His own voice or written by Him on the tables of stone where the rest-day commandment was engraved. The days of that system are the days spoken of in Romans 14, regarded by converted Jews as morally binding while Gentile Christians had no such scruples, and keeping them is a matter of indifference and Christian liberty where one may esteem one above other days or regard all alike without judging or being judged, unless they are used to seek justification and so reject the sacrifice of Christ; unlike them the weekly Sabbath is God's and remains.
The annual sabbaths of the Jews and the sabbaths of the land could typify the seventh millennium in which the earth shall rest from the curse, which the seventh-day Sabbath made at creation before the fall and made for man could not do. Leviticus 23 describes the main features of the service of the sanctuary where God dwells and manifests His presence, revealing God's way, power and glory and teaching concerning the temple of God in heaven and Christ's priestly service there as High Priest and Minister of the sanctuary. Its yearly priestly service culminated in the Day of Atonement, when the people's sins were brought out and sent away with the scapegoat, a type of the final judgment, and the sacrifices throughout were types of Jesus Christ, the slain animals pointing to the Lamb who takes away the world's sin. It belongs to the ordered system of religious services arranged in a yearly series of observances, in which departing from a required detail was blameworthy. The Day of Atonement is counted among the Jewish religious holidays observed with release from labor.
The verse opens the Lord's instruction to Moses for the Day of Atonement and its appointed feasts. That day was the yearly closing service on the tenth day of the seventh month, a most solemn holy convocation and sabbath of rest for final cleansing, when all were to afflict their souls, do no work, and offer fire offerings under penalty of being cut off. Its annual sabbaths are kept besides the Sabbaths of Jehovah, being temporary ceremonial shadows pointing to Christ that were nailed to the cross, while the weekly seventh-day Sabbath of the moral law instituted at creation remains binding and perpetual. On that day the high priest entered the most holy with the blood of the Lord's goat to cleanse the sanctuary and send away sin by the goat for Azazel, showing Christ slain for sin and Satan finally destroyed. As the spring types were fulfilled exactly as to time, its grand antitype commenced on the tenth day of the seventh month at the end of the 2300 days in 1844, when Christ began His closing work in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary to conduct the investigative judgment and blot out the sins of the faithful.
Verse Context and Wording
The verse is the introductory formula in which the Lord speaks to Moses to give the instructions for the Day of Atonement and the appointed feasts. It begins the fuller account of that special annual day and its work of atonement and cleansing, the closing service that completed the yearly round of sanctuary ministry on the tenth day of the seventh month. It belongs to the former ceremonial system of types and shadows whose fulfillment is found collectively in the gospel dispensation and in Christ's work as High Priest in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary.
The chapter is the fullest list of the set feasts of Jehovah, the holy convocations beginning at Leviticus 23:4. It presents the annual feasts and ceremonies of Israel's law — Passover and unleavened bread, firstfruits, weeks or Pentecost, trumpets, atonement, and ingathering or tabernacles — with their sacrifices and priestly service. Within it Leviticus 23:23-36 gives three feasts in the seventh month, the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. It brings before view all the yearly sabbaths and feast days, including the Day of Atonement and the sacrifices upon that day, several of which were kept as sabbaths on which no servile work was to be done.
The feasts occurred once a year at appointed times rather than on fixed weekdays, on certain days of certain months and feasts. Their timing followed the calendar of months and new moons, so they naturally fell on all days of the week and fell on different weekdays from year to year. Feast dates could change the day of the week on which a feast sabbath fell, but they did not change which day was the seventh day. The sacred year varied with moon and harvest, and Pentecost and the wave sheaf were determined by the ripening barley rather than a fixed month date, the sheaf of ripe barley being waved on the sixteenth day of the first month, the day after the Sabbath.
The first, seventh, and eighth days named in those instructions are days of the feast concerned, not days of the week. The eighth day means the eighth day of the feast, not a day of the week, and the chapter contains nothing about reckoning the days of the week. Those eighth days are counted from fixed days of fixed months so they fall on different days of the week from year to year and do not always mean the first day of the week. The word Sabbath is applied in Scripture to great festivals as well as to the seventh day, and not to the seventh day alone, so the plural sabbaths can refer to Jewish feast days as well as the weekly Sabbath. To use the eighth day to argue for Sunday-keeping assumes without right that it is a day of the week, and since that assumption is the central and vital point of the argument, the argument falls to the ground.
The seventh month is the seventh month of the first year of Cyrus, the year the Jews left Babylon for Jerusalem, when the blowing of trumpets called all the people together preparatory to the building of the altar. The gathering after the wall was finished, when the people asked for the book of the law and Ezra read to them, took place in that festal month of feasts. The Day of Atonement fell on the tenth of Tizri or Tisri, a month nearly corresponding to September, within the first ten days of the Jewish year known as the ten days of penitence. Kippur means pardon or expiation, and the yearly faults were expiated on that solemn day of rest and strict fasting.
Although this day had the most important sanctuary service, no recorded instance of its observance survives. The observance of the other seventh-month festivals connected with it is recorded repeatedly.
Day of Atonement Service
The Day of Atonement was the yearly closing service on the tenth day of the seventh month, a holy convocation and sabbath of rest kept from evening to evening. It was the most solemn day of the year, a yearly judgment day and strict fast for final cleansing and remission of sins for the sanctuary and the people, completing the sanctuary service in type. To afflict the soul meant to enter earnestly into the work through repentance, confession, and seeking God, with no work done and atonement sought before the Lord. The service was performed once a year and foreshadowed the final atonement work carried forward by Christ as High Priest in heaven.
All the congregation and any sojourner were to afflict their souls, do no work of any kind, eat no food, and offer fire offerings to make atonement. Anyone indifferent to the day, working on that day, failing to humble himself, or disobedient was cut off from the people and from Israel. That cutting off was punishment with death for the working and disobedient. Those who humbled themselves and ceased from work were left free from guilt.
Through the year sins were transferred in figure to the sanctuary by the daily ministration, when the repentant sinner's sin-offering blood was sprinkled before the veil or when the priest ate the flesh to bear the iniquity of the congregation. By this transfer the holy places were defiled, so a special atoning work became necessary for the removal of the sins. Leviticus 23 therefore commands that an atonement be made for each of the sacred apartments, as for the altar, to cleanse it and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel. That divinely appointed cleansing accomplished final riddance of sin from the people and the sanctuary every year.
On that day the high priest entered the most holy place with incense and the blood of the Lord's goat, and sprinkled it on and before the mercy seat above the transgressed law. The ceremonies, given with Leviticus 16, centered on the taking of two goats, one for the Lord and one for Azazel, the sacrificing of the Lord's goat and the sending of the scapegoat into the wilderness, with all accompanying ceremonies to fill observers with awe and thoughts of the final decisions of the judgment day. The high priest then brought the people's sins out of the sanctuary and, by confession, placed them on the goat for Azazel, which was sent into the wilderness to be destroyed. The penitents were thus left free from sin, cleansed, justified, free from guilt, and at one with God, and the cleansing with the following ingathering typified judgment and cleansing followed by the gathering of the righteous. The order shows divine wisdom and not human devising, for human reasoning would kill the devil's goat and spare the one representing innocent Jesus, while the divine plan is that He who knew no sin was made sin and the just suffered death for the unjust guilty race, and that Satan the author of sin is destroyed finally in his proper time.
Annual and Weekly Sabbaths
Leviticus 23 sets out seven annual sabbaths at specified month dates distinct from the weekly Sabbath, with the verse itself introducing the Lord's instruction to Moses for the Day of Atonement. The annual days include the first, tenth, fifteenth, and twenty-second or twenty-third days of the seventh month, and two connected with Passover on the first and seventh days of unleavened bread, all kept as holy convocations in which no servile work was done. They fell nine, ten, five, and four days apart rather than every seventh day, falling on fixed days of fixed months and feasts and so naturally on all days of the week, and they could fall between two weekly Sabbaths or coincide with them without regularly doing so. They belonged to the three yearly feasts at which the males were to appear before the Lord, were dependent on the typical feasts to which they belonged for their existence, and were distinct from the Lord's weekly Sabbath even when they fell on the same day.
These yearly days are called your sabbaths and her sabbaths, and are kept besides or beside the Sabbaths of Jehovah, meaning the weekly Sabbath described in verses 1-3 and verse 38. They are additional observances expressly distinguished from the Lord's Sabbaths, with the Day of Atonement on the tenth day of the seventh month coming as a solemn sabbath of rest distinct from and beside the weekly Sabbath. The distinction is marked by nature and timing, for the weekly Sabbath is always the seventh day in constant succession while the yearly sabbaths could fall on any day of the week. The yearly festival sabbaths are therefore to be kept on their appointed dates besides the Lord's Sabbaths, and their ceremonial character does not make the weekly Sabbath ceremonial.
The annual sabbaths belong to Moses' ceremonial ordinances with meats, drinks, offerings, new moons, and festivals, given at Sinai long after creation in the midst of meat-offering, sacrifice, and drink-offerings. They arose after the fall because of sin as local, temporary shadows and types pointing forward to Christ and to Christ's death, and all met their fulfillment in Christ Jesus. The weekly Sabbath belongs to the moral law, instituted at creation before sin and the fall as a universal, perpetual memorial of creation and of God's power, not a shadow of Christ's death. The chapter's actual list of feasts begins in verse 4, and verse 38 again distinguishes those feasts from the Lord's Sabbaths, so the weekly Sabbath is not one of the ceremonial feast days.
The ceremonial sabbaths expired by limitation when the shadow reached the substance, when the type met its fulfillment and the thing typified was reached. They were abolished, blotted out, and nailed to the cross at Christ's death, taken out of the way with the ceremonial ordinances from which they derived their force, and were not binding afterward. As the Passover ceased in Christ the paschal lamb its connected sabbaths could no longer exist, and the annual sabbaths and feasts set apart as days to bring special offerings ceased when the sacrificial law ceased at the cross. The weekly seventh-day Sabbath was not abolished but remains binding, eternal, and absolute and independent as old as the world, commemorating an event equally concerning every person and remaining a memorial of creation and redemption.
The plural sabbath days with holy day, meats, drinks, and new moons in Colossians 2:16 are these annual feast sabbaths, not the fourth-commandment weekly Sabbath, so that passage does not abolish the seventh day. The sabbaths in Colossians 2 that were against us and taken out of the way are these festival sabbaths kept with meat offerings and drink offerings and expressly distinguished as besides the Sabbath of the Lord, including the Passover festival denoted by holy day. The esteemed days in Romans 14 are likewise these annual feast sabbaths, and the teaching about meat and drink and judging in sabbaths has no reference to the fourth-commandment Sabbath. Leviticus 23:24-39 gives the ceremonial sabbaths and feast days cited as describing the plural sabbaths distinguished from the Sabbath of the fourth commandment.
The Sabbath is the only weekly feast among the Jews, appointed before the apostasy as a special memorial of the goodness and power of God displayed in the finished work of creation. Those other days grew out of man's actions as a sinner and would never have existed but for sin, originating this side of the fall after types and shadows were introduced, which marks them as shadowy and typical, while the Sabbath grew out of the action of a holy and infinite God given in Eden before types were instituted. Gentiles could keep the Sabbath without being circumcised, but to keep those other days they must be circumcised, and those other days had to be kept by going up to Jerusalem yearly with sacrifices while the Sabbath was kept wherever people are. The seventh-day Sabbath was weekly, but all those other holy days were yearly, showing the Sabbath is unchangeable, perpetual, and for all people, while they are only ceremonial, temporal, and for one nation.
Types Fulfilled in Christ
Each and all of the feasts of Leviticus 23 are typical, finding fuller meaning in the sacrifice, life, and priestly work of Jesus Christ. They were annual feasts and ceremonies celebrated from year to year, yearly institutions that came in consequence of sin as types and prophecies pointing forward to Christ, and all met their fulfillment in Him. They are distinct from the Sabbath of Jehovah and from the eternal Sabbath of the Lord by nature and timing, for the weekly Sabbath is always the seventh day in constant succession while the yearly sabbaths and feasts fell on certain days of certain months and so naturally fell on all days of the week. They were typical and shadowy, shadows of things to come with Christ as their body, and expired by limitation when the thing typified was reached, when the shadow reached the substance, so they are not to be celebrated annually until their complete antitypical fulfillment but their meaning is met in Christ's ministry and in a life that walks in newness.
The Passover lamb is fulfilled in Christ's death, the sheaf of firstfruits waved on the sixteenth of the first month in Christ risen as firstfruit of them that slept, Pentecost on the fiftieth day in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:1, 2, the ceremonies and Day of Atonement in Christ's work as priest, and the Feast of Tabernacles in its great antitype in the home-coming to the New Jerusalem. The Passover killed on the fourteenth of the first month, the firstfruits, and the Feast of Weeks were each fulfilled exactly as to time in Christ sacrificed, Christ risen, and the outpouring of the Spirit, and mere preliminary and circumstantial burnt offerings belonging alike to those days and to the Day of Atonement did not prevent the grand event of the day from meeting its antitype on the very day pointed out in the type. The seven yearly sabbaths were holy convocations in which no servile work was done, including two connected with the Passover on the first and seventh days of unleavened bread, and were dependent on the typical feasts to which they belonged for their existence, so they ceased when the type met its antitype in the work of Christ, as the Passover ceased in Christ the paschal lamb and its connected sabbaths could no longer exist. This dependent, shadowy, typical character distinguishes them from the weekly Sabbath of the Lord, which is an absolute and independent institution as old as the world commemorating an event equally concerning every person, and each of the three annual festivals at which all the males were commanded to appear before the Lord at His sanctuary was fulfilled in Christ's antitypical priestly service.
God appointed holy convocations on days other than the seventh day, showing that the people of God for ages met for worship on other days, so meeting for worship on a day does not prove that day is the rest-day or Sabbath. Holding an all-day religious meeting on a weekday with no ordinary labor did not cancel the command to work six days and rest on the seventh. The eighth day named in the feast law means the eighth day of the feast, not a day of the week, and the chapter contains nothing about reckoning the days of the week, so to use the eighth day to argue for Sunday-keeping assumes without right that it is a day of the week, and since that assumption is the central and vital point the argument falls to the ground. Those eighth days are counted from fixed days of fixed months as a great day and even a Sabbath in connection with certain feasts, so they fall on different days of the week from year to year and do not always mean the first day of the week, and requiring Sabbath observance on fixed calendar dates would make the weekday vary from year to year and disrupt the regular weekly cycle. God honored the antitype of the Feast of Pentecost with the outpouring of the Spirit, not the first day of the week, and spoke nothing there about changing His Sabbath.
The regulations for these gatherings included special offerings from the land's produce and the people's labor, along with pledges, vows, and freewill offerings, with worshipers to give in keeping with the blessings God had given them. The yearly Sabbaths attached to Israel's feasts are types, and calling the Sabbath a type places it among positive, typical institutions rather than moral institutions.
Prophetic Antitype in Heaven
The tenth day of the seventh month governs the timing of its fulfillment, for as Passover on the fourteenth of the first month was met in Christ sacrificed, the sheaf waved on the sixteenth in Christ risen as firstfruit, and the fiftieth day in the outpouring of the Spirit in Acts 2, so the grand work performed in the holiest must commence its antitype on the very day pointed out in the type. That commencement came at the end of the 2300 days in 1844, when the closing service foreshadowed in Leviticus 23:26-32 began to be carried forward by Christ as High Priest in heaven. The fact that burnt offerings and other preliminary and circumstantial offerings belonged also to the day of firstfruits, the feast of weeks, and the Day of Atonement does not delay the central work, for those did not prevent the grand event of the day from meeting its antitype on the appointed day. Like Christ our Passover still fed upon and the Spirit of Pentecost still abiding, that cleansing of the sanctuary then occupies a space corresponding to its magnitude and importance and continues until the end.
That continuing work is Christ's closing work as High Priest in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary. It is the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary and the investigative judgment, the yearly judgment day and final atonement in antitype. In it the sins of the faithful are blotted out and the names of the unworthy are removed, when the mystery of God is finished. The yearly typical cleansing was followed by ingathering, typifying judgment and cleansing followed at the end of the world by the gathering of the righteous.
The yearly cleansing by the blood of the sacrificial goat pointing to Christ cannot itself be the cleansing foretold in Daniel 8:14. The two thousand and three hundred prophetic days, reckoned a day for a year, reach far beyond that typical dispensation. They reach to the antitypical Day of Atonement, the judgment work and cleansing of the sanctuary in heaven.
The Day of Atonement on the tenth day was announced by the feast of trumpets on the first day of the same month, ten days earlier, when trumpets were blown at Jerusalem announcing the definite time of that solemn event. Its antitype is the 1840-44 Advent movement sounding the warning before the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary and work of judgment began in 1844. That ten-day trumpet warning requires a similar manifestation on schedule marking the day-for-a-year prophetic period, given ten years beforehand in the falling of the stars over the Western Hemisphere on the night of November 13, 1833.
On the Day of Atonement the high priest came out of the sanctuary to bless the people. This points to Christ, the great High Priest, coming from heaven to bless His waiting people with immortality. That coming stands in the autumn, in harmony with the autumn types and with the end of the 2300-year period.
Practical Lessons and Connections
The yearly closing service on the tenth day of the seventh month was a holy convocation when all were to afflict their souls, do no work, and seek atonement before the Lord, and anyone indifferent or working on that day was cut off from the people. To afflict the soul means to enter earnestly into the work through repentance, confession, prayer and self-examination, confessing sins and making every wrong right while Christ as High Priest carries forward the final atonement in heaven begun in 1844 at the end of the 2300 days. During the year the blood of sin-offerings had transferred sins into the sanctuary, and on this most solemn day, the great day of judgment announced by the feast of trumpets on the first day of the same month, the high priest entered the most holy place with incense and with atoning blood which he sprinkled on the mercy-seat and before the ark containing the law that condemned the transgressor. The sins were then taken and placed on the head of the scapegoat, which was sent away into the wilderness, ending sin in the yearly typical service.
God's instruction for keeping a certain Sabbath from evening to evening shows the seventh-day Sabbath is to be kept from sunset to sunset, which is definite. This sunset manner reaches back to creation week and agrees with the way God kept the first Sabbath, and the Jewish keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath at sunset is right with reference to time because it agrees with this instruction. The chapter lists annual sabbaths appointed by God on days other than the weekly seventh day, showing that God can make any day a sabbath. Alongside the weekly Sabbath the Lord appointed several feasts lasting several days when Israel was not to work, showing that God did not intend people to labor so much that they harmed their health, while also not intending them to be idle.
Those festival holy days are of a very different nature from the seventh-day Sabbath, for they grew out of man's actions as a sinner and would never have existed but for sin, while the Sabbath grew out of the action of a holy and infinite God and was given in Eden before types and shadows were instituted. Gentiles could keep the Sabbath without being circumcised and wherever people were, but to keep those other days they must be circumcised and go up to Jerusalem, and the Sabbath was weekly while all those other holy days were yearly, showing the Sabbath is unchangeable, perpetual and for all people, while they are only ceremonial, temporal and for one nation. Those annual Sabbaths fall on certain days of certain months, and with going to Jerusalem three times a year with sacrifices they would consume all time and be a yoke Gentiles could not bear, a middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles, against and contrary to Gentiles, a shadow of things to come, and so were done away. They belong to the Jewish ritual system of meats, drinks and carnal ordinances, a connected whole separate from the seventh-day Sabbath, about which nothing was spoken by God with His own voice or written by Him on the tables of stone where the rest-day commandment was engraved. The days of that system are the days spoken of in Romans 14, regarded by converted Jews as morally binding while Gentile Christians had no such scruples, and keeping them is a matter of indifference and Christian liberty where one may esteem one above other days or regard all alike without judging or being judged, unless they are used to seek justification and so reject the sacrifice of Christ; unlike them the weekly Sabbath is God's and remains.
The annual sabbaths of the Jews and the sabbaths of the land could typify the seventh millennium in which the earth shall rest from the curse, which the seventh-day Sabbath made at creation before the fall and made for man could not do. Leviticus 23 describes the main features of the service of the sanctuary where God dwells and manifests His presence, revealing God's way, power and glory and teaching concerning the temple of God in heaven and Christ's priestly service there as High Priest and Minister of the sanctuary. Its yearly priestly service culminated in the Day of Atonement, when the people's sins were brought out and sent away with the scapegoat, a type of the final judgment, and the sacrifices throughout were types of Jesus Christ, the slain animals pointing to the Lamb who takes away the world's sin. It belongs to the ordered system of religious services arranged in a yearly series of observances, in which departing from a required detail was blameworthy. The Day of Atonement is counted among the Jewish religious holidays observed with release from labor.