Exodus 23:14-16

14-16. Three times… a feast unto me in the year These three great annual festivals, ordained for Israel, are here called the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of harvest, and the feast of ingathering. They are more fully described in other passages, but when the entire arrangement for the three is considered as a whole, it exhibits a magnificent scheme of national festivity, naturally and beautifully connected, and wisely adapted to serve as a great national bond. “Whoever has a thorough knowledge of these festivals,” says the learned Ewald, “will be persuaded that they have not arisen by slow degrees from the blind impulse of external nature, nor from the history of the people, but are the product of a lofty genius.” These festivals were arranged on a system of sevens, as if growing out of sabbatic ideas. The feast of unleavened bread is more commonly known as the passover, instituted at the Exodus, and described in Exodus 12:1-28; Exodus 12:43-51; Exodus 13:3-10, where see notes . It was to be a feast of seven days’ duration, and to commence on the fifteenth day of the first month, (Abib,) that is, after twice seven days from the beginning of the year. This occurred at the time when the firstfruits of the barley harvest could be waved as an offering before Jehovah. Leviticus 23:10-12.

The feast of harvest was observed seven weeks after the offering of the wave-sheaf of the passover, that is, on the fiftieth day thereafter, (Leviticus 23:15-21,) whence it obtained also the names of “Pentecost,” (Acts 2:1,) and “the feast of weeks . ” Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:10. This was the time of the wheat harvest, so that passover and Pentecost enclosed the harvest season, which in Palestine extends from March-April into June-July. The feast of in-gathering is more commonly known as “the feast of tabernacles,” (Leviticus xxiii, 34-41; Deuteronomy 16:13-15,) and occurred in the end of the year, that is, of the agrarian year, “after thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine.” Deuteronomy 16:13. This end, or going forth, ( צאת ,) of the year, (in Exodus 34:22, called the תקופה , circle of the year,) occurred in the seventh month, (September-October,) which was observed as the sabbatic month . Its first day was signalled by the blowing of trumpets, (Leviticus 23:24; Numbers 29:1;) the tenth, was the great day of atonement, (Leviticus 16:29-34; Leviticus 23:27-32;) after which, on the fifteenth, (the day following the twice seventh from the feast of trumpets, which opened the sabbatic month,) the feast of tabernacles commenced and continued seven days, and the eighth was also consecrated as a sabbath. Leviticus 23:39. The sounding of the trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month of the fiftieth year (the one following seven times seven years) was the proclamation of the year of jubilee, and of “liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Leviticus 25:10. Thus all the great Hebrew festivals were linked by a system of sevens, and form one complete plan .