Introduction
RESTATEMENT OF THE FEAST STATUTES.
The subject being the same in this chapter as in the preceding one, there is no reason for its separation from the last chapter. The offerings described are those pertaining to the feast of trumpets, the day of atonement, and the feast of tabernacles.
CONCLUDING NOTES.
(1.) “We notice the connexion of the three great feasts the passover, the feast of weeks, and that of tabernacles agriculturally (and, in that respect, socially) as those at the beginning of the barley harvest, of the wheat harvest, and at the completion of all marking, at the same time, that the agricultural character of all the great festivals points to a primitive condition of the nation very different from the complicated relations of later times. The same connexion appears from the historical point of view; the passover pointing to the exodus, the feast of weeks to the legislation at Sinai, and the feast of tabernacles to the wanderings and the rest of Israel. Lastly, typically: The passover had its reality in the death of our Lord; the feast of weeks in Pentecost; and that of tabernacles in the final ingathering of all nations the great harvest feast of the Church. In truth, the feast of tabernacles is the only unfulfilled type of the Old Testament, although each missionary festival may be described as a commemoration of it.” Edersheim.
(2.) From an inspection of these two chapters it will be found that the number of animal victims offered by Israel, aside from countless multitudes of individual offerings, was as follows: Lambs, 1,101; bullocks, 132; rams, 72; kids, 21; goats, 15; total, 1,341. We have no data by which to estimate the number of private sacrifices. When Cestius, the Roman general, at one of the passover feasts, asked the priests how many persons had come to Jerusalem at their annual festivals, they multiplied the number of paschal lambs by ten, and replied 2,565,000. Hence there were 256,500 paschal lambs.
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