Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Feast of Ingathering

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Feast of Ingathering

Genre:

Track: 57

Dictation Name: RR181AE57

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him. Exalt the Lord our God and worship in His holy hill, for the Lord our God is holy. Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him according to His excellent greatness. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we come once again to praise thee. We thank thee that, in a world of evil, thou art the ruler, that it is thy will that shall be done in thy kingdom, not the kingdom of man that shall prevail and shall govern. Give us grace to walk in this knowledge. Teach us, day by day, to cast our every care upon thee. Give us the knowledge, our Father, that our times are in thy hands, not in the hands of men, and thou wilt perfect that which concerneth us. How great and marvelous thou art, O Lord, and we praise thee. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is from Numbers 29:12-40. Our subject: The Feast of Ingathering. “And on the fifteenth day of the seventh month ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work, and ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days: and ye shall offer a burnt offering, a sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord; thirteen young bullocks, two rams, and fourteen lambs of the first year; they shall be without blemish: and their meat offering shall be of flour mingled with oil, three tenth deals unto every bullock of the thirteen bullocks, two tenth deals to each ram of the two rams, and a several tenth deal to each lamb of the fourteen lambs: and one kid of the goats for a sin offering; beside the continual burnt offering, his meat offering, and his drink offering.” Then we have a series of requirements for like offerings on the days that follow, until the eighth day, verse 35.

“On the eighth day ye shall have a solemn assembly: ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer a burnt offering, a sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord: one bullock, one ram, seven lambs of the first year without blemish: their meat offering and their drink offerings for the bullock, for the ram, and for the lambs, shall be according to their number, after the manner: and one goat for a sin offering; beside the continual burnt offering, and his meat offering, and his drink offering. These things ye shall do unto the Lord in your set feasts, beside your vows, and your freewill offerings, for your burnt offerings, and for your meat offerings, and for your drink offerings, and for your peace offerings. And Moses told the children of Israel according to all that the Lord commanded Moses.”

These verses are concerned with the last of the great feasts of the religious calendar of Israel. It is the last thanksgiving celebration at the end of the first harvest, and it goes under a variety of names. In Leviticus 23:33-36, it is called the Feast of Booths, also the Feast of Tabernacles. In Leviticus 23:39, it is called a feast unto the Lord, because thanksgiving is religiously so important to virtue. Man’s mind is normally fixed on what he wants today, and tomorrow, not on yesterday’s care and bounty, not on God’s blessings to us. So, we’re always telling God what we need, right now, not remembering to thank Him for what we received yesterday and over the years.

In John 7:37, this feast is referred to with respect to the last or eighth day as that great day of the feast. It was also known as the Feast of Ingathering. Now, this name tells us much. Just as a fruit harvest marked the occasion, so it was an ingathering of the fruits at the end of the season. So, in time, a harvest of all peoples and nations would take place, a great ingathering of the nations. Alfred Edersheim called attention to the form of its celebration at the temple in Christ’s day: “Indeed, the whole symbolism of the feast, beginning with the completed harvest, for which it was a thanksgiving, pointed to the future. The rabbis themselves admitted this, the strange number of sacrificial bullocks, seventy in all, they regarded as referring to the seventy nations of heathendom. The ceremony of the outpouring of water, which was considered of such vital importance, as to give to the whole festival the name of House of Outpouring, was symbolical of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. As the brief night of the great temple illumination closed, there was a solemn testimony made before Jehovah against heathendom. It must have been a stirring scene, when out from the mass of Levites with their musical instruments, who crowded the fifteen steps that led from the court of Israel to that of the women, stepped two priests with their silver trumpets. At the first cock crowing and the intimation of the dawn of morn, they blew a three-fold blast as they entered the court of the women, and still sounding their trumpets, they marched through the court of the women to the beautiful gate, here turning around and facing westward to the holy place. Our fathers who were in this place, they turned their backs on the sanctuary of Jehovah, and their faces eastward, for they worshipped eastward to the sun, but our eyes are towards Jehovah. Nay, the whole of this night and morning scene was symbolical. The temple illumination of the light which was to shine from out of the temple into the dark night of heathendom, then the first dawn of morn, the blast of the priest’s silver trumpets of the army of God, as it advanced, with festive trumpet sound and call to awaken the sleepers marching on to quite the utmost bound of the sanctuary, to the beautiful gate, which opened upon the court of the gentiles, and then again facing round to utter solemn protest against heathendom, and make solemn confession to Jehovah.”

Now, since the numbers seven and seventy were symbols of fullness, the reference to seventy nations was meant to include the totality of all nations, whatever their number. They were all to be brought into the kingdom. It was the giving of thanks to God for the harvest of good, and at the same time, a reminder of the necessity of the ingathering of all nations to the Messiah, and to celebrate that fact. Thus, we have to say Judea sinned with knowledge in rejecting Christ, because everything connected with the temple and its meaning pointed to Him, and to bringing in all the nations into the kingdom of the Messiah.

Originally, this feast was celebrated in tents, or booths, made of branches. This was to remind them of their origins and the long wilderness march from Egypt to Canaan. Then, some boughs were put up in their dining room to make it resemble a booth or an arbor created outside, and that is still done by orthodox Jews.

It stressed, also, the transitory nature of life. Their goal was a world kingdom under the Messiah, a future order. Hebrews 11:8-10 stresses that this movement towards the kingdom of God has marked God’s people from Abraham’s day, we are told; “By faith, Abraham.” When he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed, and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith, he sojourned in the land of promise, as an estranged country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise, for he looked for a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God. What God purposes was spelled out over the centuries. Not only by the prophets, but by the rituals.

Therefore, we have to say that, in this feast, the people celebrated both their beginnings and their future under God. We are told that in John 7, that this Feast of Ingathering, our Lord declared himself to the people, and the chief priests and Pharisees, according to John 7:43-46, sought to have him arrested. The officers sent to arrest Jesus came back, having done nothing, and they said, “Never spake man like this man.” The answers of the Pharisees is like that of our modern intellectuals and rulers. They asked, “Have any of the rulers of the Pharisees believed on him?” In other words, it was not respectable to believe in Jesus Christ, and it still is not.

More sacrifices were offered at this feast than any other. On the first day, thirteen young bullocks were offered, on the second day, twelve bullocks, on the third day, eleven, on the fourth day, ten, on the fifth day, nine, on the sixth day, eight, on the seventh day, seven, on the eighth day, one. Thomas Scott said of this, “The decrease of the number of bullocks which were sacrificed on the several days of this feast until on the last and great day only one was offered, is the most observable circumstance in this law, and the reason of this regulation is not evident unless it be intimated that the Mosaic institution would gradually wax old and vanish away when the promised Messiah came.” Apart from those offered on the eighth day, the sacrifices totaled seventy bulls, fourteen rams, ninety-eight yearling rams, and seven he-goats.

We have a very important reference to this festival in Zechariah 14:16-21. It declares that those who depart from this feast and all its implications will face God’s judgment and drought. Beside a lack of rain, there will be plagues on all who fail to become a part of God’s kingdom, and to make all things holiness unto the Lord. Zechariah 14:16-21 declares, “And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain. And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not, that have no rain; there shall be the plague, wherewith the Lord will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness Unto the Lord; and the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts: and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them, and seethe therein: and in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts.”

What Zechariah tells us it this: in the Christian era, the kingdom of God, the true Jerusalem, will either be the center and totality of the lives of men and nations, or God will judge them radically and at the same time, proper His true kingdom.

We are told in reports that are not publicized, that portions of the world are facing drought more severe than ours, others floods. I read yesterday the International Conference on AIDS by the World Health Organization, feels that perhaps by the end of this century or soon thereafter, one billion will be dead of AIDS, of AIDS alone. It used to be when disaster struck, nations proclaimed days of prayer for drought, for anything. Now, that’s forgotten as having ever been done in this country or elsewhere.

Thomas Moore, more than a century ago, about a century and half ago, said of Zechariah’s prophesy, that it was a prediction concerning the theocracy. The distinction between the sacred and the profane was introduced by sin, but God’s regeneration will obliterate that fact by making all things holy to His people. As Moore said, “All shall be happy because all shall be holy. Sorrow shall cease because sin shall cease. The growing earth shall be mantled with joy because the trail of the serpent shall be gone, and the Eden of the future make us cease to look back with longing at the Eden of the past. If then a man would have the beginnings of heaven, it must be by this absolute consecration of everything to God on earth. For precisely as holiness to the Lord is upon the bells of the horses, shall their melody have the ring of the golden harps. That man’s life be a liturgy, a holy service, an act of worship, and his death shall be a sweeter melody than the fabled song of the dying swan, and his eternity the song of Moses and the Lamb.”

It’s hard to realize now that the thinking of men like Moore, whom I just cited, is a powerful factor in the early years of the American Republic.

Morgan’s comments on this festival is worthy of attention. He said, “The whole year was covered and conditioned by these solemn religious rites and ceremonies. Every day as it broke and passed, every week as it began, every month as it opened both as it commenced and closed, was sealed with a sacred matter whichever spoke to the people of the relations they bore to God as based on sacrificed, and expressing itself in service.” Well, rituals and holy days are very much eroded in our time. Biblical holy days in the Christian calendar have given way to statist holiday and now these are losing their meaning as anything more than a day off from work, or to watch sports on television.

Rituals and observances go out of life when meaning disappears from life, and meaning has gone out of life now for most people. It is interesting that a Nobel prize in literature was given in 1981 to Elias Canetti, who fathered absurdist literature in Germany, the whole point of which was and is that life has no meaning, that there is nothing more silly or insane than to look for meaning in anything, or to have a meaningful relationship, such as love or marriage.

Jacob Isaac said of Canetti’s novel, “It has wisdom and fairness, lunacy and comic invention on a grand Satanic scale.” That’s why it was given a prize. Canetti’s vision is of a humanity living on an animal level with no consciousness of death or of the possibility of death. That is, to live like animals for the moment only. Ernest Waldinger’s words, “All this is in praise of Canetti. Here, as in anything of a religious character, the thought of a concept of death seems to play a part in Canetti’s concept. Man, as he will be in the future, according to Canetti, has no ego consciousness, and thus a personal death is unknown to him, while the crowd, the true unit of humanity is immortal, however much single individuals may come and go.” It’s Whitman’s dream, to live like cattle without knowing that you can die or that there is any reality other than your appetites.

Another scholar, Peter von Haselberg, regards Canetti’s novel as the first step beyond James Joyce’s Ulysses, because it obliterates the boundaries between real happenings and fantasies. For this, he got the Nobel Prize, which is a vast sum of money. For this, he is proclaimed the true prophet of our age. According to Canetti himself, “God was a mistake, but it is difficult to tell whether it was too soon or too late.” Well, without holy days and holy living, all our days become a Canetti lunacy. We become members of his world, fit only for men like himself; placeless, meaningless, and deracinated, and this is what is held up for admiration. This is what is considered great literature. This is the philosophy that governs statist education today the world over. Their contempt for the rest of us is very clear, but their ingathering is no feast, but death and hell. God will have His ingathering or harvest one way or another, someday. We live in one of His times of judgment. Therefore, rejoice. God is moving against the Canetti’s of this world and they are all around us. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee that the lunacy of our world is not the lunacy of our lives, for thou hast made us in thine image and redeemed us through Jesus Christ, so that every atom of our being, every second of our lives has meaning in terms of all eternity. Strengthen us therefore, to rejoice in thee, to know that we are a part of thy ingathering in Christ, and to rejoice in our eternal destiny in Him. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now on our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] With the philosophy of Canetti himself is probably God’s curse upon him for disobeying God’s laws.

[Rushdoony] Yes. They are their own curse. In fact, the founder of Existentialism, Kierkegaard, a century and a half ago or more, almost two centuries, believe all his days and he was a theologian, a churchman, that he was really cursed, that he was damned, and with good reason. At least as the founder who thought through the implications, he was ready to face up to what he was, and Camu, more recently, a great Existentialist, made it very clear, that because God is good we must choose evil, and he denied that there was a single moment of time or a single fact in the universe with meaning. They are at war with meaning because if they accept a world of meaning, that means judgment upon them. That means they are evil. Yes?

[Audience] Looking into the personalities of some of these people, whether it’s the polyard{?} or {?}, they’re all miserable people. You know, the gal who had started this movement, Betty Friedan, every single one of them, their lives have just been destroyed and they’re unhappy people. You see pain in their face. You see anger and rage in their face, and their really distorted, convoluted faces full of rage, and they’re all unhappy people. The common denominator among these philosophers, as well as some of these exponents of these positions today.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I have read the biographies of some of these people, and it’s like reading the accounts of the lives of madmen, and the books have been written by people who are very favorable to them, and really they are, because when you abandon God, you abandon reason, meaning, sanity. Yes?

[Audience] Did God harden the hearts of every man, woman, and child on earth in the Old Testament except for those of His people, {?}

[Rushdoony] When scripture says God hardens their hearts, in the ultimate sense that’s what He does. In the proximate sense, it means that sin so totally blinds people, that their hearts are hardened, they cannot see, two and two will not make four to them because everything leads to God. You see, when Dorothy first read with me some years ago, and she’s remarked on this many, many times, Albert Camu’s book, The Rebel, she kept saying, “It’s impossible to understand how this many was not a Christian, because he saw the issues so clearly, where it all led, but once you abandon God, where it all led? To the abyss, to meaninglessness, to suicide, to everything evil.” A Christian couldn’t have stated it as baldly because they would have turned on him with rage for saying the kind of thing that Camu did, and De Sade lived it out, and they regard him now as the prophet of the modern age.

[Audience] Do you know, {?} with that would be the Philistines captured the ark. It destroyed their God. It destroyed their people. It did everything, they gave the ark back because they were in such fear, the strength of God, and to turn around and give trespass offerings of mice and, golden mice, and emeralds, and all these things and still not{?} say, “This must be the God of the universe.” They still went back to the wrong god.

[Rushdoony] That’s right. The blindness of those who will not believe is incredible. Very often, some of the ungodly will see some of the monstrosities more clearly than Christians who just go along casually, but that doesn’t wake them up to the truth, because the truth is the one thing they will not have. Just as when the officers of the Sanhedrin went out to arrest Jesus and came back and said, “Never spake man like this man,” and their response was, “What important people believe in Him?” That’s still the standard. Does it have intellectual respectability. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee that thy feast of Ingathering is underway, that is will accomplish thy purpose, that all the kingdoms of this world shall be the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, that everything shall be made holy unto thee. Give us grace to rejoice, to know the certainty of thy victory, and day by day, to walk in that holy confidence. 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.

End of tape