The Lord speaking to Moses introduces the instruction for the Feast of Tabernacles, also called the Feast of Booths or Ingathering, as part of the ordered yearly round of appointed feasts and sanctuary service. The feast began on the fifteenth day of the seventh month and lasted seven days with dwelling in booths made of gathered branches, followed by an eighth-day holy convocation, coming after harvest and after the Day of Atonement as a week of rejoicing and thanksgiving for God's providential blessings. These yearly sabbaths fell on fixed dates of the month on different weekdays from year to year and are expressly declared to be beside the Sabbaths of the Lord, in contrast to the weekly Sabbath of the seventh day which is constant, originated before sin as the memorial of creation, and belongs to the moral law while they belong to the ceremonial law that ended at Christ's death. The annual feasts and their sabbaths were shadows whose substance is Christ, typifying His priesthood and final work of cleansing the heavenly sanctuary and gathering the harvest, so there is no condemnation for not observing them and they are the Sabbath days of Colossians 2:16 nailed to the cross while the seventh-day Sabbath remains. The Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year when the whole harvest is gathered points forward to the kingdom of God and the immortal state when all saints are gathered to the New Jerusalem, kept antitypically after the great Day of Atonement when wanderings are ended and the saints possess the earth.
Verse Wording and Setting
The Lord spoke to Moses to give instruction about the sanctuary services and the appointed feasts of Israel, introducing the section on the Feast of Tabernacles. That feast is also called the Feast of Booths and the Feast of Ingathering. It was to begin on the fifteenth day of the seventh month and last seven days, followed by an eighth-day holy convocation, with its first and last days as special days of holy convocation and restraint. Those feast days are each called a sabbath but are not the Sabbath, for the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week made when God made the heavens and the earth and not made by these ceremonies, though a feast day could at times fall upon it. The chapter distinguishes the yearly festival Sabbaths from the Lord's seventh-day Sabbath, listing the festival observances in addition to that weekly Sabbath.
The verse stands in the chapter that gives a complete list of the set feasts of Jehovah kept by Israel in connection with Passover, Pentecost, and the other yearly feasts, describing the yearly round of sanctuary service and its feast sabbaths. That round includes three seventh-month gatherings: the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. The blowing of trumpets summoned all the people together in preparation for building the altar. The weekly Sabbath is separately presented as a holy convocation and a day of rest, while the appointed feasts begin afterward in verse 4. Verse 38 sets these feast days and their sacrifices apart as distinct from the Sabbath of Jehovah, which is the regular weekly Sabbath of Exodus 20:10.
The instruction rests on an express divine appointment of time for instituting and observing Israel's feasts, meaning feast observance rests on a specific statement of time such as the Lord's Supper does not have. It belongs to an ordered yearly system of prescribed forms instituted to draw the people nearer to God and make them a mighty people and a praise in the earth. That system required obedience in its particulars, and departing from them brought blame. The main features of the sanctuary service appointed for the worship of God were given with purpose and not in vain, as part of Scripture profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness and written for learning to give hope. They serve as an object-lesson of God's way in the sanctuary and Christ's priestly service in the heavenly temple.
The eighth day named in the chapter is the day of the feast counted from the fixed day of the month on which the feast begins, not a day of the week and not Sunday. The chapter contains nothing about reckoning the days of the week, so using it to support Sunday-keeping rests on an unwarrantable assumption and falls to the ground. That eighth day falls on a different weekday from year to year, as New Year's Day and the Fourth of July do, and likewise the eighth day for circumcision counted from the day of birth falls on every day of the week. Therefore the eighth days in Leviticus 23 do not prefigure the exaltation of the eighth day or first day of the week as the Sabbath under the gospel, and types relating to gospel events and ordinances must be interpreted in harmony with plain gospel facts where there is no declaration that the Lord exalted the first day as a weekly Sabbath. The appointed days of observance of the commemorative institutions are different from the days on which they were instituted, for the time of instituting an ordinance does not determine the time of observing it, else nearly all those institutions would have fallen on different days than they did and nearly all on the same day.
The festivals of the seventh month recorded in Leviticus 23:24-39, including the observances before and after the Day of Atonement, were repeatedly recorded as observed. No instance of observing the Day of Atonement itself is recorded, but that silence does not prove the day was not observed. The gathering and reading of the law in Nehemiah 8 took place in the month of feasts under the law of the feasts of the seventh month. The instruction regarding the yearly feasts is somewhat parallel with Deuteronomy 16.
Feast of Tabernacles Described
The verse opens the Lord's direction for the Feast of Tabernacles, also called the Feast of Booths and the Feast of Ingathering, the third yearly feast. It is one of the three festivals together with Passover and the Feast of Weeks, coming once each year at its appointed time rather than on a fixed day of the week. The feast began on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, Tisri 15, and lasted seven days, followed by an eighth-day holy convocation. In the fuller reckoning Tisri 15 is the first day and Tisri 16 the second day, Tisri 16 through Tisri 20 are middle days kept as half-holidays, Tisri 21 is the seventh day called Hoshana Rabba, Tisri 22 is the eighth day called Shemini Atseret or Eighth Day Festival, and Tisri 23 is the ninth day called Simhath Tora or Rejoicing of the Law, making nine days in all. It is one of the feasts of the Lord, a holy convocation set apart from common days.
During the week-long festival Israel lived in booths or tents, including two Sabbaths. The booths were made with gathered branches, as the returned exiles learned when the command was read, and they promptly obeyed in making them. That obedience in restoring the observance brought great gladness.
The feast came at the end of the year after the crops were harvested and followed the Day of Atonement, when the sanctuary was cleansed. As the third gathering at the harvest ingathering, the people brought produce from land and labor, along with pledged and freewill offerings. The males were required to appear before the Lord at the sanctuary three times each year at the appointed times.
The feast commemorated Israel's history and wilderness sojourn and recalled that sojourn at the end of the sanctuary year. It was especially intended to deepen devotion and gratitude for God's providential blessings and abundant yield in bringing in the harvest. Its command to rejoice before God makes it a thanksgiving celebration and time of religious worship.
The feast days are each called a sabbath but are not the Sabbath, which is the seventh day of the week made when God made the heavens and the earth and not made by these ceremonies, though a feast day could at times fall upon it. They are holy convocations of restraint on the first and last days, sabbaths in which no servile work is to be done, standing beside the Sabbaths of the Lord and separate from the weekly Sabbath. The Jewish month was counted from the first appearance of the new moon, so these yearly sabbaths fell on different days of the week. They were kept with rest from labor beginning at sunset on the day before the feast and with special rules about food. These appointed periods of rest show that God did not intend people to work so hard as to harm health, though He did not intend them to be idle.
Annual Sabbaths Contrasted Weekly
The chapter sets forth seven yearly sabbaths connected with the annual feasts, distinct from the weekly Sabbath of the Lord. They include sabbaths on the first day of the seventh month, on the tenth day of the seventh month as a sabbath of rest, and on the first and eighth days of the seven-day feast beginning the fifteenth day of the seventh month, reckoned in one listing as the fifteenth and the twenty-second days. They are expressly distinguished as kept beside or besides the Sabbaths of the Lord, in addition to the Lord's Sabbaths, and are called your sabbaths and her sabbaths while the weekly day is the Sabbath of the Lord. They stand in the midst of the ordinances of Moses with burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, sacrifices and drink-offerings, to be observed at their appointed times, and are named with meats, drinks, new moons and feasts as the list blotted out and nailed to the cross.
The yearly sabbaths fell on specified dates of the month and therefore naturally fell on different days of the week from year to year, while the weekly Sabbath is always the seventh day in constant succession. Their intervals are irregular, with ten days between the first and the tenth of the seventh month and five days between the tenth and the fifteenth, sometimes nine days or only four days between them, so an annual Sabbath could fall between two seventh-day Sabbaths or on the day after a weekly Sabbath. They sometimes coincided with the weekly Sabbath but did not regularly do so, and changes in feast dates do not change which day is the seventh day of the week. Their dates therefore cannot establish that the weekly Sabbath always fell on the fifteenth day of the month.
The weekly Sabbath originated before sin entered, in Genesis 2:2-3 and Exodus 20:10, as God's memorial of creation, and is therefore not a type or shadow of things to come. The yearly sabbaths connected with the feasts came in consequence of sin after sin entered, grew out of man's actions as a sinner, have to do with sin and the putting away of sin, and would never have existed but for sin. They were introduced this side of the fall after types and shadows were instituted, which marks them as shadowy and typical, while the Sabbath was given in Eden before types were instituted. They served as types and prophecies pointing forward to Christ and centering in Christ Jesus, met their fulfillment in Him, and expired by limitation when the thing typified was reached, when the shadow reached the substance and the shadow ended.
The weekly Sabbath belongs to the eternal, unchangeable moral law of the Ten Commandments, proclaimed by God's own voice and written in stone, while the yearly sabbaths belong to the ceremonial law of Moses, the typical sacrificial system. The festival days derived their force from the ceremonial law and ceased when that law ended, whereas the weekly Sabbath is not one of the ceremonial feast days abolished at the cross but remains binding. The annual observances belonged to that system and pointed forward to the Saviour, separate from the singular seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment.
The weekly Sabbath is fundamental, permanent, universal and unchangeable for all people in all ages, made for man and the race at creation before the fall as a memorial pointing back to creation, to exist in the new earth when all types and shadows have vanished away. The yearly sabbaths were only ceremonial, temporal and for one nation, local and temporary, binding only upon the Jews till the death of the Messiah, having their origin in the peculiar circumstances in which a peculiar people were placed for a time. They were designed especially for dwellers in the land of Canaan, were not kept till the Jews reached Palestine, could be kept only by the circumcised and only by going up to Jerusalem with required pilgrimages and sacrifices, while the Sabbath can be kept by Gentiles without circumcision wherever they live. They pertained to the land and its earthly inheritance so that observance was affected when the land was overrun by Gentiles, while the weekly Sabbath belonged to a higher order and remained unaffected, and as a burdening barrier and middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles they were against us, contrary to us, a yoke Gentiles could not bear, abolished by Christ and nailed to the cross.
The work rules prove the difference, for no work at all is to be done on the seventh day while no servile work is to be performed on the annual days, and preparation of food is expressly forbidden on the weekly Sabbath while expressly allowed on the annual day such as Abib 15. The weekdays on which the yearly rests fell had no separate blessing or sanctification, and God had not rested on them, since their observance rested on temporary institutions rather than on an original claim grounded in creation. The fifteenth of Abib as the first day of unleavened bread comes once a year, not once a week like the Sabbath of the Lord, and holds the same rank as the other annual sabbaths, with the exception that the tenth of the seventh month is more sacred than the rest. Pentecost was counted from the annual Passover Sabbath, not from the weekly Sabbath, so it could fall on any day of the week, and its date does not show that God specially honored the first day of the week.
Those who held the opposing position placed the Sabbath itself in the category of typical positive institutions with no moral basis, on the ground that moral institutions are not typical and typical institutions are not moral. In that reckoning holy day means the feasts including their yearly sabbaths and Sabbath days means the weekly Sabbaths.
Types and Prophetic Fulfillment
The yearly feasts and their sabbaths were types and prophecies that came in consequence of sin and pointed forward to Christ and to events in redemption, shadows whose substance is Christ, and when the thing typified was reached the shadow ended by limitation, so there is no condemnation for not observing them and their ceremonies need not be revived. They are enumerated as seven yearly sabbaths and feasts distinct from and beside the Sabbaths of Jehovah, connected with Passover, First-fruits, Trumpets and Atonement, and their complete fulfillment is met in Christ's ministry and in a life of walking in newness of life rather than in celebrating the feast year by year. The yearly round typified the entire priesthood of Jesus, with 359 days of ministry in the holy place where blood was sprinkled before the veil behind which was the ark containing the law, thus bearing the sins of Israel in by figure and acknowledging them before God. The last day was the great Day of Atonement on the tenth day of the seventh month, the judgment-day of the year when all cases of the days before were brought in final review, when sins brought into remembrance were in the person of the high priest brought into the most holy place and confessed before the ark with sprinkling of the blood of the atonement-goat upon and before the mercy-seat and upon the horns of the altar to cleanse and hallow the sanctuary and altar from uncleanness. The priest then in his own person brought out those sins and placed them upon another goat chosen for Satan, the scapegoat sent by a fit man into the wilderness into a land of oblivion to perish with them, so that all who afflicted their souls, confessed and put away their sins stood clear before God while those who did not were cut off, revealing God's way of life and salvation and the end of those who obey not the Gospel.
The spring types were fulfilled at the exact time: Passover killed on the fourteenth of the first month, the sheaf of firstfruits waved on the sixteenth, and the feast of weeks fifty days from firstfruits, met by Christ our Passover sacrificed on the fourteenth, risen on the day of firstfruits as the firstfruit of them that slept, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on that very day of weeks. The same work of burnt offerings on the day of firstfruits and the feast of weeks as on the day of atonement proves that mere preliminary and circumstantial offerings do not prevent the grand event of the day from meeting its antitype at the time pointed out in the type. The rule drawn is that the antitype commences on the day of the type but may extend forward a great distance, as believers still feed on Christ the Passover, still keep the feast of unleavened bread, and the Spirit given at Pentecost still abides, so the work in the holiest on the tenth day of the seventh month must commence at that time and occupy a space corresponding to its magnitude. As the high priest came out of the sanctuary on that tenth day, Christ the great High Priest will come from heaven to bless His waiting people with immortality, though the central work begun then could continue for a long time.
The Feast of Tabernacles, the third yearly feast also called the Feast of Booths or Feast of Ingathering, came at the end of the year after the crops were harvested and followed the Day of Atonement when the sanctuary was cleansed, and together the cleansing and ingathering typified Christ's work in the heavenly sanctuary at the end of the world: judgment and cleansing followed by gathering the harvest of the righteous, the fruits of His love and labor. Its antitypical fulfillment is still ahead in its proper order as part of the work centered in Christ, when the Lord will send His angels as reapers to gather His people, the wheat, into the garner, and its ceremonies need not be revived after Christ's death. At the end of the year when the whole harvest has been gathered it points forward to the kingdom of God and the immortal state, when all saints are gathered from the four winds as the great harvest of the earth to the New Jerusalem. The seven days of greater rejoicing after Atonement typify a latter-time work of the Holy Ghost before the harvest, the latter rain bringing times of refreshing and completing Joel's prophecy with dreams, visions, signs and wonders, a work under the third angel that is great but short. The feast recalled Israel's sojourn in the wilderness and typified the saints' rest as a thanksgiving celebration at the end of the sanctuary year, and its antitypical observance follows the great antitypical Day of Atonement after God's people have ended their wanderings and entered their inheritance, placed at the close of the thousand years when the saints possess the earth and Jerusalem celebrates that wandering is over and they have entered their lasting home.
Those who held it taught that all six kinds of Jewish Sabbaths and all feasts were regulated by the moon and by a sheaf of the firstfruits of the barley harvest, with Passover always on the fourteenth day of the moon in the first month of the sacred year, the sheaf waved on the definite sixteenth day on the morrow after the Sabbath and on no other day or month, and the first day of Unleavened Bread on the fifteenth as their first weekly Sabbath in each sacred year governing cycles of sevens for the year following. In that teaching the beginning of the sacred year was irregular because the barley harvest varied with early or late seasons, so Passover varied between March and April and the first weekly Sabbath fell on Sunday when Passover fell on Saturday, on Monday when Passover fell on Sunday, and so on, so that Jews never kept continued cycles of seventh-day Sabbaths while governed by lunar months, and when Passover fell on Friday two Sabbaths came together as a double Sabbath as at the Saviour's crucifixion, all holy days, new moons and Sabbath days being a shadow of things to come whose body is Christ. A related position asserted that the Sabbath of the fourth commandment written with the finger of God and recorded in Deuteronomy 5 required observance on fixed dates falling on different weekdays in different years, so that while Christ kept the true Sabbath the Sabbaths named twenty-eight times in the Gospels fell mostly on Thursday, once on Friday, and sometimes on Saturday during the last year of His teaching, showing no one now keeps the Sabbath as Christ kept it.
Law Sabbath and Sunday
The yearly sabbaths listed with meats and drinks, holydays and new moons are the sabbath days of Colossians 2:16 and the handwriting of ordinances blotted out and nailed to the cross. That text says nothing about abolishing the seventh-day Sabbath, which remains in force because it is a memorial pointing back to creation rather than a shadow pointing forward to Christ. The chapter sets out several yearly sabbaths besides the Lord's Sabbath with no connection between them, including a sabbath on the first day of the seventh month, a sabbath of rest on the tenth day, and sabbaths on the first and eighth days of the seven-day feast beginning the fifteenth day, all expressly kept beside the Sabbaths of the Lord. Their dates prove they are not the weekly Sabbath, since the first and the tenth are ten days apart and the tenth and the fifteenth are five days apart. They belonged to the typical system enforced with meat offerings and drink offerings, stood for sin and became a yoke of bondage when trusted for righteousness, and with everything typical ceased to have significance or further use.
The festival sabbaths of the first and eighth days of certain feasts derived their force from the ceremonial law and ceased when that law ended at Christ's death, and they are not the enduring Sabbath commandment. The annual feast-day Sabbaths are distinct from the Sabbath instituted at creation and were repealed through Christ's death on the cross. The moral law including the weekly Sabbath, proclaimed by the Lord's own voice and written in stone by His own hand, remains holy and just and good, vindicated in Christ's flesh, established by faith, and giving knowledge of sin.
The feast days do not prove Sunday sacredness, for the Jewish month counted from the first appearance of the new moon put these yearly Levitical sabbaths on different days of the week rather than on a fixed Sunday or weekly Sabbath. The eighth day named in the chapter is the day of the feast, not a day of the week and not Sunday, and the chapter contains nothing about reckoning the days of the week, so using it to support Sunday-keeping rests on an unwarrantable assumption and falls to the ground. Pentecost was counted from the annual Passover Sabbath, not from the weekly Sabbath, so it could fall on any day of the week and its date does not show that God specially honored the first day. An annual Sabbath could fall between two seventh-day Sabbaths, so a Sabbath between weekly Sabbaths need not be a first-day Sabbath. The people of God for ages held holy convocations on days besides the seventh day, so meeting for worship on a day does not make that day the rest-day or Sabbath, and a meeting day with no servile work did not itself replace or cancel the command to work six days and rest on the seventh.
The days over which one esteems one day above another in Romans 14 are the feast and fast days and yearly sabbaths with meats and drinks and carnal ordinances of the Jewish ritual given through Moses, not the weekly Sabbath. Their observance is a matter of indifference and Christian liberty so long as men do not seek justification through them and thereby reject the sacrifice of Christ, and is no ground for judging another believer, while the Sabbath remains of lasting obligation. Observance of ceremonial days such as Passover or the Day of Atonement is therefore not grounds for judging another, and the Sabbath is not included among the days that may be treated as ordinary days.
The annual festivals rested on their own specific commands, not on the Fourth Commandment, so their observance did not make that commandment a general rule requiring observance of whichever day God appointed. The Sabbath day begins at evening, at sunset, and is to be observed from evening until evening, and the same beginning applies to every day, so the whole seventh day — not part of it — must be kept as holy time.
The weekly Sabbath is a memorial of creation sanctified before sin entered, not a type pointing forward to redemption, and it is the Sabbath unto Jehovah in all dwellings and the only Sabbath mentioned as the Sabbath of the Lord. The yearly ceremonial sabbaths and feast-days named after verse 3 through verse 38 stand in contradistinction to the Sabbath of the Lord, being declared to be besides the Sabbaths of Jehovah, and they came in because of sin, had to do with sin and the putting away of sin, and pointed forward to Christ who takes away sins. They were typical and shadowy and were lost in Him as a shadow is lost in the substance, expiring when fulfilled, so Christians are released from observing them as sacred days because their meaning is fulfilled in Christ, while the Lord's Sabbath remains a memorial of creation and a sign of His redeeming power.
Worship Practice and Connections
The Feast of Tabernacles gives the pattern for gatherings devoted to God's glory and the good of His cause, calling all of God's people to come together to a camp-meeting and remain until its close. The gathering at Wolcott is called by that name, with believers urged to come prepared to labor for the Lord, and a proposed five-day gathering of Sabbath-keepers after harvest follows the same model for prayer, social worship, and preaching. Provision is made for the temporal wants of man and beast at such meetings.
Such gatherings prepare believers for the ripening time of the harvest of the earth by seeking the power and Spirit of God to overcome tendencies to wrongdoing. They serve for spiritual renewal through maturing more fully the graces of the Spirit and being brought into condition to be perfected by the latter rain soon to be poured out.
The regulations belong to Israel's three annual gatherings before the Lord, with this section connected to the third gathering, the feast at the harvest ingathering in the seventh month. At that time the people brought produce from their land and labor, along with pledged and freewill offerings for the support of God's cause.
The sanctuary services were given with purpose and not in vain, as part of Scripture profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, written for learning to give hope. They serve as an object-lesson of God's way in the sanctuary and Christ's priestly service in the heavenly temple. The yearly round reaches its closing service on the tenth day of the seventh month, the day of atonement, when sins transferred into the sanctuary all year by the daily service in the first apartment are cleansed with final riddance of sin. The high priest casts lots over two goats, kills the Lord's goat as a sin offering for the people, sprinkles its blood before and upon the mercy-seat and upon the horns of the altar to make atonement and cleanse the sanctuary, then bears the sins from the sanctuary and lays them upon the head of the scapegoat, which is sent away into the wilderness to perish with them, so that sin is finally removed from the people and the sanctuary every year, revealing God's way of life and salvation and His power and glory, and giving understanding of the end of those who obey not the Gospel.
The feast days of the chapter are the feasts of the Lord meant by Paul's reference to a feast, not the seventh-day Sabbath of the Ten Commandments. They are linked to ceremonial offerings, including drink-offerings prescribed for particular days. The chapter lists several ceremonial Sabbaths coming every year, distinct from the weekly seventh-day Sabbath kept every seventh day and distinct from the Sabbath of the land coming every seventh year, yet weekly, yearly, and seventh-year Sabbaths together are included in the Sabbaths of Leviticus 26:34. The annual feasts of the Levitical service are distinct from the weekly Sabbath, so the day of the weekly Sabbath is not lost in the Old Testament by mixing it with those annual feasts, and festival-day passages are distinguished from weekly-Sabbath references, with festival sabbaths expiring by limitation at the cross.
The ceremonial sabbaths and solemn feasts are distinguished from the Lord's Sabbath and could be taken away from the wicked by judicial sentence, as exclusion from the Lord's Supper could be imposed. The chapter lists seven annual sabbaths whose observance was not pleasing to God when accompanied by the people's sins.
The instruction regarding the yearly feasts is somewhat parallel with Deuteronomy 16. The record of holy days in the seventh month shows that certain days of that month were holy, not that the entire month was kept as a Sabbath. The annual feast days and their sabbaths belong to the ritual system, expire with it, and are distinct from the Lord's weekly seventh-day Sabbath, contradicting the claim that the Lord's Sabbath and the Jewish sabbaths are the same.
The Lord speaking to Moses introduces the instruction for the Feast of Tabernacles, also called the Feast of Booths or Ingathering, as part of the ordered yearly round of appointed feasts and sanctuary service.
The feast began on the fifteenth day of the seventh month and lasted seven days with dwelling in booths made of gathered branches, followed by an eighth-day holy convocation, coming after harvest and after the Day of Atonement as a week of rejoicing and thanksgiving for God's providential blessings.
These yearly sabbaths fell on fixed dates of the month on different weekdays from year to year and are expressly declared to be beside the Sabbaths of the Lord, in contrast to the weekly Sabbath of the seventh day which is constant, originated before sin as the memorial of creation, and belongs to the moral law while they belong to the ceremonial law that ended at Christ's death.
The annual feasts and their sabbaths were shadows whose substance is Christ, typifying His priesthood and final work of cleansing the heavenly sanctuary and gathering the harvest, so there is no condemnation for not observing them and they are the Sabbath days of Colossians 2:16 nailed to the cross while the seventh-day Sabbath remains.
The Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year when the whole harvest is gathered points forward to the kingdom of God and the immortal state when all saints are gathered to the New Jerusalem, kept antitypically after the great Day of Atonement when wanderings are ended and the saints possess the earth.
Verse Wording and Setting
The Lord spoke to Moses to give instruction about the sanctuary services and the appointed feasts of Israel, introducing the section on the Feast of Tabernacles. That feast is also called the Feast of Booths and the Feast of Ingathering. It was to begin on the fifteenth day of the seventh month and last seven days, followed by an eighth-day holy convocation, with its first and last days as special days of holy convocation and restraint. Those feast days are each called a sabbath but are not the Sabbath, for the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week made when God made the heavens and the earth and not made by these ceremonies, though a feast day could at times fall upon it. The chapter distinguishes the yearly festival Sabbaths from the Lord's seventh-day Sabbath, listing the festival observances in addition to that weekly Sabbath.
The verse stands in the chapter that gives a complete list of the set feasts of Jehovah kept by Israel in connection with Passover, Pentecost, and the other yearly feasts, describing the yearly round of sanctuary service and its feast sabbaths. That round includes three seventh-month gatherings: the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. The blowing of trumpets summoned all the people together in preparation for building the altar. The weekly Sabbath is separately presented as a holy convocation and a day of rest, while the appointed feasts begin afterward in verse 4. Verse 38 sets these feast days and their sacrifices apart as distinct from the Sabbath of Jehovah, which is the regular weekly Sabbath of Exodus 20:10.
The instruction rests on an express divine appointment of time for instituting and observing Israel's feasts, meaning feast observance rests on a specific statement of time such as the Lord's Supper does not have. It belongs to an ordered yearly system of prescribed forms instituted to draw the people nearer to God and make them a mighty people and a praise in the earth. That system required obedience in its particulars, and departing from them brought blame. The main features of the sanctuary service appointed for the worship of God were given with purpose and not in vain, as part of Scripture profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness and written for learning to give hope. They serve as an object-lesson of God's way in the sanctuary and Christ's priestly service in the heavenly temple.
The eighth day named in the chapter is the day of the feast counted from the fixed day of the month on which the feast begins, not a day of the week and not Sunday. The chapter contains nothing about reckoning the days of the week, so using it to support Sunday-keeping rests on an unwarrantable assumption and falls to the ground. That eighth day falls on a different weekday from year to year, as New Year's Day and the Fourth of July do, and likewise the eighth day for circumcision counted from the day of birth falls on every day of the week. Therefore the eighth days in Leviticus 23 do not prefigure the exaltation of the eighth day or first day of the week as the Sabbath under the gospel, and types relating to gospel events and ordinances must be interpreted in harmony with plain gospel facts where there is no declaration that the Lord exalted the first day as a weekly Sabbath. The appointed days of observance of the commemorative institutions are different from the days on which they were instituted, for the time of instituting an ordinance does not determine the time of observing it, else nearly all those institutions would have fallen on different days than they did and nearly all on the same day.
The festivals of the seventh month recorded in Leviticus 23:24-39, including the observances before and after the Day of Atonement, were repeatedly recorded as observed. No instance of observing the Day of Atonement itself is recorded, but that silence does not prove the day was not observed. The gathering and reading of the law in Nehemiah 8 took place in the month of feasts under the law of the feasts of the seventh month. The instruction regarding the yearly feasts is somewhat parallel with Deuteronomy 16.
Feast of Tabernacles Described
The verse opens the Lord's direction for the Feast of Tabernacles, also called the Feast of Booths and the Feast of Ingathering, the third yearly feast. It is one of the three festivals together with Passover and the Feast of Weeks, coming once each year at its appointed time rather than on a fixed day of the week. The feast began on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, Tisri 15, and lasted seven days, followed by an eighth-day holy convocation. In the fuller reckoning Tisri 15 is the first day and Tisri 16 the second day, Tisri 16 through Tisri 20 are middle days kept as half-holidays, Tisri 21 is the seventh day called Hoshana Rabba, Tisri 22 is the eighth day called Shemini Atseret or Eighth Day Festival, and Tisri 23 is the ninth day called Simhath Tora or Rejoicing of the Law, making nine days in all. It is one of the feasts of the Lord, a holy convocation set apart from common days.
During the week-long festival Israel lived in booths or tents, including two Sabbaths. The booths were made with gathered branches, as the returned exiles learned when the command was read, and they promptly obeyed in making them. That obedience in restoring the observance brought great gladness.
The feast came at the end of the year after the crops were harvested and followed the Day of Atonement, when the sanctuary was cleansed. As the third gathering at the harvest ingathering, the people brought produce from land and labor, along with pledged and freewill offerings. The males were required to appear before the Lord at the sanctuary three times each year at the appointed times.
The feast commemorated Israel's history and wilderness sojourn and recalled that sojourn at the end of the sanctuary year. It was especially intended to deepen devotion and gratitude for God's providential blessings and abundant yield in bringing in the harvest. Its command to rejoice before God makes it a thanksgiving celebration and time of religious worship.
The feast days are each called a sabbath but are not the Sabbath, which is the seventh day of the week made when God made the heavens and the earth and not made by these ceremonies, though a feast day could at times fall upon it. They are holy convocations of restraint on the first and last days, sabbaths in which no servile work is to be done, standing beside the Sabbaths of the Lord and separate from the weekly Sabbath. The Jewish month was counted from the first appearance of the new moon, so these yearly sabbaths fell on different days of the week. They were kept with rest from labor beginning at sunset on the day before the feast and with special rules about food. These appointed periods of rest show that God did not intend people to work so hard as to harm health, though He did not intend them to be idle.
Annual Sabbaths Contrasted Weekly
The chapter sets forth seven yearly sabbaths connected with the annual feasts, distinct from the weekly Sabbath of the Lord. They include sabbaths on the first day of the seventh month, on the tenth day of the seventh month as a sabbath of rest, and on the first and eighth days of the seven-day feast beginning the fifteenth day of the seventh month, reckoned in one listing as the fifteenth and the twenty-second days. They are expressly distinguished as kept beside or besides the Sabbaths of the Lord, in addition to the Lord's Sabbaths, and are called your sabbaths and her sabbaths while the weekly day is the Sabbath of the Lord. They stand in the midst of the ordinances of Moses with burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, sacrifices and drink-offerings, to be observed at their appointed times, and are named with meats, drinks, new moons and feasts as the list blotted out and nailed to the cross.
The yearly sabbaths fell on specified dates of the month and therefore naturally fell on different days of the week from year to year, while the weekly Sabbath is always the seventh day in constant succession. Their intervals are irregular, with ten days between the first and the tenth of the seventh month and five days between the tenth and the fifteenth, sometimes nine days or only four days between them, so an annual Sabbath could fall between two seventh-day Sabbaths or on the day after a weekly Sabbath. They sometimes coincided with the weekly Sabbath but did not regularly do so, and changes in feast dates do not change which day is the seventh day of the week. Their dates therefore cannot establish that the weekly Sabbath always fell on the fifteenth day of the month.
The weekly Sabbath originated before sin entered, in Genesis 2:2-3 and Exodus 20:10, as God's memorial of creation, and is therefore not a type or shadow of things to come. The yearly sabbaths connected with the feasts came in consequence of sin after sin entered, grew out of man's actions as a sinner, have to do with sin and the putting away of sin, and would never have existed but for sin. They were introduced this side of the fall after types and shadows were instituted, which marks them as shadowy and typical, while the Sabbath was given in Eden before types were instituted. They served as types and prophecies pointing forward to Christ and centering in Christ Jesus, met their fulfillment in Him, and expired by limitation when the thing typified was reached, when the shadow reached the substance and the shadow ended.
The weekly Sabbath belongs to the eternal, unchangeable moral law of the Ten Commandments, proclaimed by God's own voice and written in stone, while the yearly sabbaths belong to the ceremonial law of Moses, the typical sacrificial system. The festival days derived their force from the ceremonial law and ceased when that law ended, whereas the weekly Sabbath is not one of the ceremonial feast days abolished at the cross but remains binding. The annual observances belonged to that system and pointed forward to the Saviour, separate from the singular seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment.
The weekly Sabbath is fundamental, permanent, universal and unchangeable for all people in all ages, made for man and the race at creation before the fall as a memorial pointing back to creation, to exist in the new earth when all types and shadows have vanished away. The yearly sabbaths were only ceremonial, temporal and for one nation, local and temporary, binding only upon the Jews till the death of the Messiah, having their origin in the peculiar circumstances in which a peculiar people were placed for a time. They were designed especially for dwellers in the land of Canaan, were not kept till the Jews reached Palestine, could be kept only by the circumcised and only by going up to Jerusalem with required pilgrimages and sacrifices, while the Sabbath can be kept by Gentiles without circumcision wherever they live. They pertained to the land and its earthly inheritance so that observance was affected when the land was overrun by Gentiles, while the weekly Sabbath belonged to a higher order and remained unaffected, and as a burdening barrier and middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles they were against us, contrary to us, a yoke Gentiles could not bear, abolished by Christ and nailed to the cross.
The work rules prove the difference, for no work at all is to be done on the seventh day while no servile work is to be performed on the annual days, and preparation of food is expressly forbidden on the weekly Sabbath while expressly allowed on the annual day such as Abib 15. The weekdays on which the yearly rests fell had no separate blessing or sanctification, and God had not rested on them, since their observance rested on temporary institutions rather than on an original claim grounded in creation. The fifteenth of Abib as the first day of unleavened bread comes once a year, not once a week like the Sabbath of the Lord, and holds the same rank as the other annual sabbaths, with the exception that the tenth of the seventh month is more sacred than the rest. Pentecost was counted from the annual Passover Sabbath, not from the weekly Sabbath, so it could fall on any day of the week, and its date does not show that God specially honored the first day of the week.
Those who held the opposing position placed the Sabbath itself in the category of typical positive institutions with no moral basis, on the ground that moral institutions are not typical and typical institutions are not moral. In that reckoning holy day means the feasts including their yearly sabbaths and Sabbath days means the weekly Sabbaths.
Types and Prophetic Fulfillment
The yearly feasts and their sabbaths were types and prophecies that came in consequence of sin and pointed forward to Christ and to events in redemption, shadows whose substance is Christ, and when the thing typified was reached the shadow ended by limitation, so there is no condemnation for not observing them and their ceremonies need not be revived. They are enumerated as seven yearly sabbaths and feasts distinct from and beside the Sabbaths of Jehovah, connected with Passover, First-fruits, Trumpets and Atonement, and their complete fulfillment is met in Christ's ministry and in a life of walking in newness of life rather than in celebrating the feast year by year. The yearly round typified the entire priesthood of Jesus, with 359 days of ministry in the holy place where blood was sprinkled before the veil behind which was the ark containing the law, thus bearing the sins of Israel in by figure and acknowledging them before God. The last day was the great Day of Atonement on the tenth day of the seventh month, the judgment-day of the year when all cases of the days before were brought in final review, when sins brought into remembrance were in the person of the high priest brought into the most holy place and confessed before the ark with sprinkling of the blood of the atonement-goat upon and before the mercy-seat and upon the horns of the altar to cleanse and hallow the sanctuary and altar from uncleanness. The priest then in his own person brought out those sins and placed them upon another goat chosen for Satan, the scapegoat sent by a fit man into the wilderness into a land of oblivion to perish with them, so that all who afflicted their souls, confessed and put away their sins stood clear before God while those who did not were cut off, revealing God's way of life and salvation and the end of those who obey not the Gospel.
The spring types were fulfilled at the exact time: Passover killed on the fourteenth of the first month, the sheaf of firstfruits waved on the sixteenth, and the feast of weeks fifty days from firstfruits, met by Christ our Passover sacrificed on the fourteenth, risen on the day of firstfruits as the firstfruit of them that slept, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on that very day of weeks. The same work of burnt offerings on the day of firstfruits and the feast of weeks as on the day of atonement proves that mere preliminary and circumstantial offerings do not prevent the grand event of the day from meeting its antitype at the time pointed out in the type. The rule drawn is that the antitype commences on the day of the type but may extend forward a great distance, as believers still feed on Christ the Passover, still keep the feast of unleavened bread, and the Spirit given at Pentecost still abides, so the work in the holiest on the tenth day of the seventh month must commence at that time and occupy a space corresponding to its magnitude. As the high priest came out of the sanctuary on that tenth day, Christ the great High Priest will come from heaven to bless His waiting people with immortality, though the central work begun then could continue for a long time.
The Feast of Tabernacles, the third yearly feast also called the Feast of Booths or Feast of Ingathering, came at the end of the year after the crops were harvested and followed the Day of Atonement when the sanctuary was cleansed, and together the cleansing and ingathering typified Christ's work in the heavenly sanctuary at the end of the world: judgment and cleansing followed by gathering the harvest of the righteous, the fruits of His love and labor. Its antitypical fulfillment is still ahead in its proper order as part of the work centered in Christ, when the Lord will send His angels as reapers to gather His people, the wheat, into the garner, and its ceremonies need not be revived after Christ's death. At the end of the year when the whole harvest has been gathered it points forward to the kingdom of God and the immortal state, when all saints are gathered from the four winds as the great harvest of the earth to the New Jerusalem. The seven days of greater rejoicing after Atonement typify a latter-time work of the Holy Ghost before the harvest, the latter rain bringing times of refreshing and completing Joel's prophecy with dreams, visions, signs and wonders, a work under the third angel that is great but short. The feast recalled Israel's sojourn in the wilderness and typified the saints' rest as a thanksgiving celebration at the end of the sanctuary year, and its antitypical observance follows the great antitypical Day of Atonement after God's people have ended their wanderings and entered their inheritance, placed at the close of the thousand years when the saints possess the earth and Jerusalem celebrates that wandering is over and they have entered their lasting home.
Those who held it taught that all six kinds of Jewish Sabbaths and all feasts were regulated by the moon and by a sheaf of the firstfruits of the barley harvest, with Passover always on the fourteenth day of the moon in the first month of the sacred year, the sheaf waved on the definite sixteenth day on the morrow after the Sabbath and on no other day or month, and the first day of Unleavened Bread on the fifteenth as their first weekly Sabbath in each sacred year governing cycles of sevens for the year following. In that teaching the beginning of the sacred year was irregular because the barley harvest varied with early or late seasons, so Passover varied between March and April and the first weekly Sabbath fell on Sunday when Passover fell on Saturday, on Monday when Passover fell on Sunday, and so on, so that Jews never kept continued cycles of seventh-day Sabbaths while governed by lunar months, and when Passover fell on Friday two Sabbaths came together as a double Sabbath as at the Saviour's crucifixion, all holy days, new moons and Sabbath days being a shadow of things to come whose body is Christ. A related position asserted that the Sabbath of the fourth commandment written with the finger of God and recorded in Deuteronomy 5 required observance on fixed dates falling on different weekdays in different years, so that while Christ kept the true Sabbath the Sabbaths named twenty-eight times in the Gospels fell mostly on Thursday, once on Friday, and sometimes on Saturday during the last year of His teaching, showing no one now keeps the Sabbath as Christ kept it.
Law Sabbath and Sunday
The yearly sabbaths listed with meats and drinks, holydays and new moons are the sabbath days of Colossians 2:16 and the handwriting of ordinances blotted out and nailed to the cross. That text says nothing about abolishing the seventh-day Sabbath, which remains in force because it is a memorial pointing back to creation rather than a shadow pointing forward to Christ. The chapter sets out several yearly sabbaths besides the Lord's Sabbath with no connection between them, including a sabbath on the first day of the seventh month, a sabbath of rest on the tenth day, and sabbaths on the first and eighth days of the seven-day feast beginning the fifteenth day, all expressly kept beside the Sabbaths of the Lord. Their dates prove they are not the weekly Sabbath, since the first and the tenth are ten days apart and the tenth and the fifteenth are five days apart. They belonged to the typical system enforced with meat offerings and drink offerings, stood for sin and became a yoke of bondage when trusted for righteousness, and with everything typical ceased to have significance or further use.
The festival sabbaths of the first and eighth days of certain feasts derived their force from the ceremonial law and ceased when that law ended at Christ's death, and they are not the enduring Sabbath commandment. The annual feast-day Sabbaths are distinct from the Sabbath instituted at creation and were repealed through Christ's death on the cross. The moral law including the weekly Sabbath, proclaimed by the Lord's own voice and written in stone by His own hand, remains holy and just and good, vindicated in Christ's flesh, established by faith, and giving knowledge of sin.
The feast days do not prove Sunday sacredness, for the Jewish month counted from the first appearance of the new moon put these yearly Levitical sabbaths on different days of the week rather than on a fixed Sunday or weekly Sabbath. The eighth day named in the chapter is the day of the feast, not a day of the week and not Sunday, and the chapter contains nothing about reckoning the days of the week, so using it to support Sunday-keeping rests on an unwarrantable assumption and falls to the ground. Pentecost was counted from the annual Passover Sabbath, not from the weekly Sabbath, so it could fall on any day of the week and its date does not show that God specially honored the first day. An annual Sabbath could fall between two seventh-day Sabbaths, so a Sabbath between weekly Sabbaths need not be a first-day Sabbath. The people of God for ages held holy convocations on days besides the seventh day, so meeting for worship on a day does not make that day the rest-day or Sabbath, and a meeting day with no servile work did not itself replace or cancel the command to work six days and rest on the seventh.
The days over which one esteems one day above another in Romans 14 are the feast and fast days and yearly sabbaths with meats and drinks and carnal ordinances of the Jewish ritual given through Moses, not the weekly Sabbath. Their observance is a matter of indifference and Christian liberty so long as men do not seek justification through them and thereby reject the sacrifice of Christ, and is no ground for judging another believer, while the Sabbath remains of lasting obligation. Observance of ceremonial days such as Passover or the Day of Atonement is therefore not grounds for judging another, and the Sabbath is not included among the days that may be treated as ordinary days.
The annual festivals rested on their own specific commands, not on the Fourth Commandment, so their observance did not make that commandment a general rule requiring observance of whichever day God appointed. The Sabbath day begins at evening, at sunset, and is to be observed from evening until evening, and the same beginning applies to every day, so the whole seventh day — not part of it — must be kept as holy time.
The weekly Sabbath is a memorial of creation sanctified before sin entered, not a type pointing forward to redemption, and it is the Sabbath unto Jehovah in all dwellings and the only Sabbath mentioned as the Sabbath of the Lord. The yearly ceremonial sabbaths and feast-days named after verse 3 through verse 38 stand in contradistinction to the Sabbath of the Lord, being declared to be besides the Sabbaths of Jehovah, and they came in because of sin, had to do with sin and the putting away of sin, and pointed forward to Christ who takes away sins. They were typical and shadowy and were lost in Him as a shadow is lost in the substance, expiring when fulfilled, so Christians are released from observing them as sacred days because their meaning is fulfilled in Christ, while the Lord's Sabbath remains a memorial of creation and a sign of His redeeming power.
Worship Practice and Connections
The Feast of Tabernacles gives the pattern for gatherings devoted to God's glory and the good of His cause, calling all of God's people to come together to a camp-meeting and remain until its close. The gathering at Wolcott is called by that name, with believers urged to come prepared to labor for the Lord, and a proposed five-day gathering of Sabbath-keepers after harvest follows the same model for prayer, social worship, and preaching. Provision is made for the temporal wants of man and beast at such meetings.
Such gatherings prepare believers for the ripening time of the harvest of the earth by seeking the power and Spirit of God to overcome tendencies to wrongdoing. They serve for spiritual renewal through maturing more fully the graces of the Spirit and being brought into condition to be perfected by the latter rain soon to be poured out.
The regulations belong to Israel's three annual gatherings before the Lord, with this section connected to the third gathering, the feast at the harvest ingathering in the seventh month. At that time the people brought produce from their land and labor, along with pledged and freewill offerings for the support of God's cause.
The sanctuary services were given with purpose and not in vain, as part of Scripture profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, written for learning to give hope. They serve as an object-lesson of God's way in the sanctuary and Christ's priestly service in the heavenly temple. The yearly round reaches its closing service on the tenth day of the seventh month, the day of atonement, when sins transferred into the sanctuary all year by the daily service in the first apartment are cleansed with final riddance of sin. The high priest casts lots over two goats, kills the Lord's goat as a sin offering for the people, sprinkles its blood before and upon the mercy-seat and upon the horns of the altar to make atonement and cleanse the sanctuary, then bears the sins from the sanctuary and lays them upon the head of the scapegoat, which is sent away into the wilderness to perish with them, so that sin is finally removed from the people and the sanctuary every year, revealing God's way of life and salvation and His power and glory, and giving understanding of the end of those who obey not the Gospel.
The feast days of the chapter are the feasts of the Lord meant by Paul's reference to a feast, not the seventh-day Sabbath of the Ten Commandments. They are linked to ceremonial offerings, including drink-offerings prescribed for particular days. The chapter lists several ceremonial Sabbaths coming every year, distinct from the weekly seventh-day Sabbath kept every seventh day and distinct from the Sabbath of the land coming every seventh year, yet weekly, yearly, and seventh-year Sabbaths together are included in the Sabbaths of Leviticus 26:34. The annual feasts of the Levitical service are distinct from the weekly Sabbath, so the day of the weekly Sabbath is not lost in the Old Testament by mixing it with those annual feasts, and festival-day passages are distinguished from weekly-Sabbath references, with festival sabbaths expiring by limitation at the cross.
The ceremonial sabbaths and solemn feasts are distinguished from the Lord's Sabbath and could be taken away from the wicked by judicial sentence, as exclusion from the Lord's Supper could be imposed. The chapter lists seven annual sabbaths whose observance was not pleasing to God when accompanied by the people's sins.
The instruction regarding the yearly feasts is somewhat parallel with Deuteronomy 16. The record of holy days in the seventh month shows that certain days of that month were holy, not that the entire month was kept as a Sabbath. The annual feast days and their sabbaths belong to the ritual system, expire with it, and are distinct from the Lord's weekly seventh-day Sabbath, contradicting the claim that the Lord's Sabbath and the Jewish sabbaths are the same.