seekeroftruth
Well-Known Member
Exodus 34:21 “Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.
22 “Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year. 23 Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel. 24 I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the Lord your God.
25 “Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Festival remain until morning.
26 “Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.
“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
27 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.
22 “Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year. 23 Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel. 24 I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the Lord your God.
25 “Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Festival remain until morning.
26 “Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.
“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
27 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.
This is from the easy English commentary.
The Israelites must obey God’s commandments. So they must rest on the Sabbath day every week of the year. Even at the busiest times of the farmer’s year, they must remember to rest every Sabbath day. This showed whether the farmers trusted God. They must trust him to look after them. They wanted to prepare the ground and then to harvest their crops. But in the desert, God had given to them a double provision of food each week. This happened on the day before the Sabbath. God did that each week while they were in the desert. This showed them that they could trust him. God can provide. But his people must obey him, and they must put him first in their lives.
The Feast of weeks was the Feast of early harvest. Its other name is Pentecost. It came 50 days after the feast of Passover. The Israelites gave to God the first share of the harvest of the wheat. And the feast in the autumn was at the time when the Israelites harvested the fruit. They lived in temporary shelters during that feast each autumn. They remembered the time when their nation lived in tents in the desert. So its name was the Feast of shelters or the Feast when we have gathered everything.
God was establishing those feasts in order to remember the past. The Israelites must remember for always how he had rescued their nation from Egypt. All adult men must go to a special place to worship God together. They must go 3 times a year in the future. They must go at the time of those 3 feasts. Shiloh was one of the places where they could worship God (1 Samuel 1:3). But the journey to get there might take a long time. However, people need not worry that someone would try to steal their land in their absence. God promised that he would look after it for them. Stones marked the boundaries of the land (Deuteronomy 19:14). So if someone moved a stone they stole a person’s land.
Blood in an animal means that it is alive. And God makes people and animals alive. So people must not eat the blood of an animal in order to remain alive. They must not eat that blood in order to try to live for a longer time (Genesis 9:4-5, and Leviticus 17:11). Other people, who did not worship God, tried to increase their lives in that way. The Israelites might have some meat that they had not eaten in the meal. But they must not keep it until the morning. This law may have a practical reason. The meat might have a bad smell. It would be dangerous to eat it then. Or perhaps that law prevented them from evil things. Perhaps they might use the meat in Canaanite magic customs. To boil a young goat in its mother’s milk was probably a Canaanite custom too.
Moses had spent 40 days and 40 nights with God on the mountain previously. That was when Moses first received God’s 10 commandments (Exodus 24:18). God made that special promise (also called covenant or agreement) to all the Israelites. God spoke only to Moses. But Moses represented all the Israelites. ‘By means of these words’ means that the agreement included the other rules. Moses wrote down the 10 commandments. And he probably wrote the other rules in verses 12-26 at a separate time.
The Feast of weeks was the Feast of early harvest. Its other name is Pentecost. It came 50 days after the feast of Passover. The Israelites gave to God the first share of the harvest of the wheat. And the feast in the autumn was at the time when the Israelites harvested the fruit. They lived in temporary shelters during that feast each autumn. They remembered the time when their nation lived in tents in the desert. So its name was the Feast of shelters or the Feast when we have gathered everything.
God was establishing those feasts in order to remember the past. The Israelites must remember for always how he had rescued their nation from Egypt. All adult men must go to a special place to worship God together. They must go 3 times a year in the future. They must go at the time of those 3 feasts. Shiloh was one of the places where they could worship God (1 Samuel 1:3). But the journey to get there might take a long time. However, people need not worry that someone would try to steal their land in their absence. God promised that he would look after it for them. Stones marked the boundaries of the land (Deuteronomy 19:14). So if someone moved a stone they stole a person’s land.
Blood in an animal means that it is alive. And God makes people and animals alive. So people must not eat the blood of an animal in order to remain alive. They must not eat that blood in order to try to live for a longer time (Genesis 9:4-5, and Leviticus 17:11). Other people, who did not worship God, tried to increase their lives in that way. The Israelites might have some meat that they had not eaten in the meal. But they must not keep it until the morning. This law may have a practical reason. The meat might have a bad smell. It would be dangerous to eat it then. Or perhaps that law prevented them from evil things. Perhaps they might use the meat in Canaanite magic customs. To boil a young goat in its mother’s milk was probably a Canaanite custom too.
Moses had spent 40 days and 40 nights with God on the mountain previously. That was when Moses first received God’s 10 commandments (Exodus 24:18). God made that special promise (also called covenant or agreement) to all the Israelites. God spoke only to Moses. But Moses represented all the Israelites. ‘By means of these words’ means that the agreement included the other rules. Moses wrote down the 10 commandments. And he probably wrote the other rules in verses 12-26 at a separate time.
Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights without food or water while God gave him a refresher on the rules and regulations he had received the first time. I can't go a day without food.... That's pretty amazing to me.
