Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace
The Feast of the Lord
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Pentateuch
Genre: Lessons with Q & A
Lesson: 62
Track: 62
Dictation Name: RR172AG62
Date: Early 70s
Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name, for the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting and His truth endureth to all generations.
Let us pray.
Oh Lord our God, who hast made all things for Thyself, and hast ordained that all things accomplish Thy purpose, we lift up our hearts unto Thee in joy and in thanksgiving, that it is Thy will that prevails, Thy government that rules and Thy counsel that shall stand. Make us strong in faith that in all things we may move with a holy confidence and might joyfully do Thy will, knowing that though the heathen rage and take counsel together against Thee, it is Thy Word that shall prevail. And Thou from Thy throne doest hold them in derision. Bless us now as we give ourselves to the study of Thy Word. In Christ’s name, amen.
Our scripture is Leviticus 23:33-44, “The Feast of the Lord.” Leviticus 23:33-44:
“33 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
34 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, the fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the Lord.
35 On the first day shall be an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.
36 Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord: on the eighth day shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord: it is a solemn assembly; and ye shall do no servile work therein.
37 These are the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord, a burnt offering, and a meat offering, a sacrifice, and drink offerings, everything upon his day:
38 Beside the sabbaths of the Lord, and beside your gifts, and beside all your vows, and beside all your freewill offerings, which ye give unto the Lord.”
Here, if I may interrupt, he is summing up in these latter verses a commandment that applies to all the festivals we have studied. The he goes on in verse 38 .
“39 also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days: on the first day shall be a sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a sabbath.
40 And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.
41 And ye shall keep it a feast unto the Lord seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations: ye shall celebrate it in the seventh month.
42 Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths:
43 That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
44 And Moses declared unto the children of Israel the feasts of the Lord.”
One of the first things, of course, that occurs when we read these verses is that obviously, the whole of the Arabian peninsula at that time was dramatically different from what it is now, because here they are to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, known also as the Feast of Booths and known by Jews to this day as Sukkot or Sukkoth. And they were to do what they did in the wilderness. Now, remember it is not called a desert in scripture (and that’s what it is now), it is called a wilderness. And here you had a tremendous population of people going through the wilderness and when they encamped in a particular area, they not only pitched their tents, but they built what is in English called ‘booths.’
Now, this is nothing unusual, nothing unique to these peoples of antiquities, it is still done by many peoples. When I was on the Indian reservation during their annual encampment on the 4th of July week, they for a week (and some would nostalgically linger on for a couple of weeks), meet all together, pitch their tents, and then build a little arbor in front, cutting down some willows or trees of one sort or another, erecting four poles in which they then hung boughs so that they’d have a shady area where they would sit, where they would eat, visit, and so on.
Now this is what the Feast of Tabernacles is about. They were once a year to revert to that. The details we don’t know beyond the requirement. Apparently in each community, they reverted to some such festival. But it was to remind them of the wilderness journey and how far they had come and how God had blessed them. Thus, the Law required a week of such living to remind them of the wilderness journey, the difficulties therein and how God provided in the face of all problems.
Ahead of them was the Promised Land, a place they had not yet seen. Now ahead of them was another promised land, the fulfillment of God’s kingdom and His eternal new creation. Again, a realm they had not seen, but one towards which they were to move in faith.
There are references to this festival in I Kings 8:2 and 65 and in Ezekiel 45:25. In Exoduse23:16 it is called the Feast of Ingathering, and the same term is also used in Exodus 34:22. It was harvest time, but it was also looking ahead to the ingathering of all nations into the faith. It was, thus, an annual dislocation of normal life. From living in stone houses, they now reverted for a week—8 days, really—to dwelling in tents. The contrast between tents and their stone houses would bring God’s work to mind.
It was also a time of community celebrations; eating, dancing and family reunions. In fact, it was also known simply as The Feast, so that very commonly, not even a name was attached to it, everyone knew when you spoke of The Feast you were speaking of the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths or Sukkoth. In fact, in John’s gospel, when you find references simply to The Feast, it is to the Feast of Tabernacles.
Now harvest festivals are common in many, many cultures, including the Canaanite. And so it’s commonplace for scholars to show their wisdom by saying, ‘this was a Canaanite festival that Israel adopted.’ For that statement, there is no evidence. The obvious fact is the whole of the feast of ingathering, while a harvest festival, differs dramatically from other harvest festivals, in that it required going back to tents. It commemorated an historical event: the journey of Israel after its deliverance from Egypt to Canaan. Scholars seem to think that no one had minds before they were born and that therefor when they propound some absurdity, it is beyond question. We have a reference to this festival in Nehemiah 8:13-17. After the captivity beginning with Nehemiah’s time, the people were told to build their tents (for reasons of safety) on their flat rooftops or in their courtyards or if none of this could be done, to simulate the appearance of a tent or a booth in their house. And this is the way it is celebrated today. At this festival, also the needy and the poor were to be helped. Living in tents reduced the apparent differences in the peoples. It helped further community.
It is interesting that this festival was seen as messianic, from Old Testament times and among some Orthodox Jews, still is. The Church also recognized the messianic character of this feast. The sacrifices, beginning with Old Testament times, the sacrifices at this feast looked ahead to the atonement and redemption of all nations. In fact, the rabbis held there were 70 different peoples in the world, 70 classifications. And so there were 70 sacrifices at the Feast of Tabernacles for the redemption in the Messiah of all peoples.
On the other hand, very early, a heresy developed in Israel. At this time, they pleaded for their salvation, the merits of their saints, of the fathers: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as the ground for their peace with God. This also, appealing to the merits of the saints of the Old Testament was done in the prayers of Yom Kippur.
The shift, thus, in Hebraic thinking was from the grace of God and the Atonement by God to ancestral merits. And this was one of the things that destroyed Israel. This was one of the indictments of our Lord. They were always pleading the fathers and He said, ‘Your fathers stoned the prophets. What merit was there in that?’
However, in spite of this, even in the Talmud at a much later date, the festival was seen as looking to the redemption of all nations.
Another aspect of this festival, as Israel developed its meaning, is very well described by Eddersheim. “When the choir came to these words in the psalms, ‘oh give thanks to the Lord,’ and again when they sang, ‘oh work then now salvation Jehovah,’ and once again more at the close, ‘oh give thanks unto the Lord,’ all the worshipers shook their lullahs toward the altar. When therefore, the multitudes from Jerusalem, on meeting Jesus cut down branches from the trees and strewed them in the way and cried, saying, ‘oh then work now salvation to the Son of David.’ They applied reference to Christ what was regarded as one of the chief ceremonies of the Feast of Tabernacles, praying that God would now from the highest Heaven, manifest and send them salvation and connection with the Son of David which was symbolized by the pouring out of water. For though that ceremony was considered by the rabbis as bearing a subordinate reference to the dispensation of the rain, the annual fall of which they imagined was determined by God at that feast. Its main and real application was to the future outpouring of the Holy Spirit as predicted, probably in illusion to this very rite by Isaiah the prophet. Thus, the Talmud says distinctly, ‘Why is the name of it called the Drawing out of Water?’ Because of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, according to what is said, ‘with joy ye shall draw water out of the wells of salvation.’ Hence also the feast and the peculiar joyousness of it are alike designated as those of the drawing out of water, for according to the same rabbinical authorities, the Holy Spirit dwells in man only through joy.”
That last point is very important. This is why the festivals were seen as times of joy, and why it warped the festivals when (especially in the post-Christian era) Judaism turned some of them (feasts) into times of mourning and concentration on past sins. It was a violation of the biblical faith that the Holy Spirit dwells in man only through joy. Our Lord made use of this rite of the drawing out of water when at The Feast and with reference to Isaiah 12:13 and Isaiah 44:3, He said (in John 4:14 we also have a reference to all of this), but in John 7:37-39, “37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 39 (But this spake he of the Holy Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)”
Just as we have lost the connection between work and survival, how work then was associated with survival, with eating, so we have lost the connection between water and life. For modern man, water is transported from sometimes great distances. It comes from the Yosemite area to San Francisco, from the Owens Valley and the Colorado River to Los Angeles. Modern cities have their waters coming to them from a distance, and they do not appreciate that what they take for granted has come to them as a result of great work, and that without water, there is no life. The whole of the interior region of Australia, much of which is desert is very fertile if but water gets to it. And will blossom when, with desalinization, water can be brought to it. A healthy man can survive a few weeks without food but not more than three days without water. Jesus is the necessary “water of life” without whom men and cultures perish. This is why we are to be to our time and to our world, to our generation as waters of life out of whose belly shall flow rivers of living water. Men without Christ are deserts—places without water. So they and their cultures cannot live long. They are doomed. But we, because we are members of Christ who is the Water of Live, out of us flow to our cultures streams of living water.
There were two important aspects of this Feast of Tabernacles which were not of Mosaic origin, but which were very much in terms with the meaning of the Feast of Tabernacles. These were
1. The pouring out of water, which our Lord made reference to.
2. The illumination of the temple.
Both represented tremendous insights into the meaning of this festival and of Christ and of His coming. All the lights were put out in Jerusalem; all the fires, so that the whole city was plunged into darkness. Then all the fires were lit as people came and took fire from the altar, from Christ as it were. With this in mind, our Lord declares, “I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.” The apostle John in John 1:4-9 stresses this same fact. This is the light, the light of God which came into the world and the darkness cannot put it out (or it can also be read), cannot comprehend it! So our Lord took both these aspects of The Festival which were prophetic additions and insights and commented on them and pointed to Himself as the meaning of this festival.
Other festivals and days were added to the religious calendar of Israel which were not required by scripture:
The Feast of Candles for the dedication of the temple
The Fast for the Siege of Jerusalem which came in the post-Christian era
The Fast of Esther
Purim
…and so on
Of course, one that is biblical, the New Moons, was observed monthly. But the last biblical festival in the annual calendar of Israel was the Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkoth.
The sacred calendar was to govern people. This was true in Church history, but unfortunately in our day, the calendar is secularized, as is time. But there is no experience by the dead, of time. The dead have dropped out of the calendar. They have dropped out of time. Growth and change and movement are beyond the dead. Our Lord declares, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” And men and nations who abandon Christ abandon time and life. This is the last festival of the Hebrew calendar, and it is so prophetic of Christ’s work and kingdom that it can be called the Feast of the Lord. It is also the Fountain of Missions and much more.
But men without a holy calendar have lost a sense of time. The calendar now is civil, essentially civil. We have the birthday of national leaders. We have the commemoration of important days in American History, like Independence Day. We commemorate groups like labor and mothers and so on. But a civil calendar looks to the past. It has no vision of the future. And a true view of time means that we recognize the importance of the past and the present and of the future and of a conclusion, a solution, a culmination that has meaning in terms of past, present, and the future.
But today, because the calendar is civil, it is meaningless. It has no true vision of the future except of power, except of control by the State. And in spite of all the trappings and the names given, “The Great Society,” “The Great Community,” “Communism,” and so on, Orwell was right. These visions of the future are only of a boot stamping on a human face forever. Man loses his wisdom when he departs from God, from Christ, from a sacred calendar.
In the last century, a very powerful congressman commented at one time about his fellow congressman. He said it was impossible for members of congress to open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge. Well, this is what happens when men lose their vision in terms of a biblical faith. We read ii Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Which can be stated more literally, where there is no prophetic ministry of the Word of God, the people run naked. They’re insane. They’ve lost direction, meaning in their life, and that’s why they perish. Because having lost all sense of direction, having no vision of what God requires, like madmen they run around naked, unable to provide or care for themselves. These are men and nations now, without Christ.
That we are called to be a source of living water unto the world, and to be the light of the world, our Lord in His Sermon on the Mount, again refers to this aspect of the Feast of Tabernacles. “Ye are the light of the world.” This is our calling.
Let us pray.
Lord, fill us ever with the joy of Thy Holy Spirit and make us mindful that it is the joy of the Lord which is our strength. We thank Thee for Thy Word and for the vision it gives unto us. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Are there any questions now?
Yes.
[Audience] There’s a lot of smiling nowadays, but not much joy.
[Rushdoony] Very good point, yes. Joy is something that comes from within.
Any other comments or questions? Well if not, let us conclude with prayer.
Lord, we pray that time, the calendar and the world may be reclaimed for our Lord. Use us to this end. Fill us with joy and the confidence of Thy Word. Make us more than conquerors in Jesus Christ. And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.