Spring Rehearsals (Feasts, Festivals)
Page 6
Attached to and immediately following the Passover evening is the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread which ends at the sunset beginning of the third-quarter-moon Sabbath, the twenty-second day of the first month. Yehuveh is excplicitly clear about the timing of this feast: “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even. Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses.” “On the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto Yehuveh: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread. In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto Yehuveh seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.” “Six days thou shalt eat unleavened bread: and on the seventh day shall be a solemn assembly to Yehuveh thy Elohim.” The final day of this Feast, clearly specified to be kept as a convocation with no servile labor just as is every Sabbath, falls the day before the next seventh-day Sabbath, creating a pleasant double-day time for rest and instruction. What an awesome way to conclude this very special appointment with Yehuveh! Exodus 12:18; Leviticus 23:6-8; Deuteronomy 16:8. [Carefully, prayerfully study every one of these Scriptures for the expanded details regarding this feast: Exodus 12:14-28, 43-39; 13:6, 7; 23:15; 34:18; Numbers 9:2-14; 28:16-25; Deuteronomy 16:1-8; Joshua 5:10-11; 2 Kings 23:21-23.]
Servile work is simply any labor to produces a service or product with which we support ourselves and our families. Scriptures are explicit that all such work was to be suspended the first and last days of this Feast. “In the first day there shall be an holy convocation, and in the seventh day there shall be an holy convocation to you; no manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done of you.” From this, some conclude that it is acceptable to continue their regular life-supporting-work during the intervening days of this Feast. There is no Scriptural statement directly forbidding such a choice, and we must never add to Yehuveh’s words by making such an assertion. But the command to “offer an offering made by fire unto Yehuveh seven days” and the very nature of the festivals for our instruction and restoration implies that we will spend these days with Him. Yehuveh need not command those who love Him to leave their common labor behind, for they will so covet this precious interchange with Him as to do so naturally. Nothing will be as important to them as the opportunity to spend these days in His presence. They will joyfully accept Yehuveh’s invitations: “Come now, and let us reason together.” “Gather Me the people together, and I will make them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.” “Gather the people together, men and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear Yehuveh your Elohim, and observe to do all the words of this law.” “It shall come to pass, if they [Israel’s “evil neighbors”] will diligently learn the ways of My people, to swear by My name, Yehuveh liveth; . . . then shall they be built in the midst of My people.” Exodus 12:16; Proverbs 30:6; Isaiah 1:18; Deuteronomy 4:10; 31:12; Jeremiah 12:16.
A holy convocation is a personal meeting with Yehuveh, not a local or national assembly, as discussed in the notes on the the seventh-day Sabbaths. and the Day of Restarting (Atonement). Bread, our most basic food, symbolizes spiritual nourishment. Unleavened bread is literally sweet or un-soured bread indicating that there is no fermentation (yeast) in the bread. The Scriptures are our primary source of this nourishing “bread.”
Yehuveh’s requirement that we guard this seven-day feast is a request that we spend these seven days simply reading the Scriptures by ourselves or together with our families and taking their nourishment for ourselves, “unfermented” by human opinion or commentary. A week of enjoying the simple Scriptures will refresh us and make us “know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of Yehuveh doth man live.” This is individual work and we are not to gather or assemble until the final day. Even then the gathering is for instruction directly from Yehuveh’s word and should be kept very simple, without humanly-appointed speakers, but with the asistance of any Yehuveh-trained instructors who can “read in the book in the law of Elohim distinctly, and [give] the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.” Deuteronomy 8:3; Nehemiah 8:8.
Gael Bataman
Originally Written: 4 October 2005
Latest Update: 28 November 2009
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