The Three Annual Festivals
The Three Annual Festivals
In the light of Israel’s closeness to the soil as a farming community, it is not surprising that their three annual festivals had an agricultural as well as a religious significance. In them they worshiped the God of nature and the God of grace as the one God, Lord of the earth and of Israel.
The Feast of the Passover, followed immediately by the Feast of Unleavened Bread, commemorated primarily Israel’s redemption from Egypt. But it also took place about the middle of April when the first sheaf of ripe barley could be waved humbly and gratefully before the Lord.
The second was the Feast of the Firstfruits or Harvest, also called the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost because it was celebrated seven weeks or fifty days after the Passover—that is, at about the beginning of June. It was a thanksgiving for the completed grain harvest—wheat as well as barley. Later it came to be regarded also as commemorating the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, perhaps because in connection with it Israel was told:
Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and follow carefully these decrees. (Deut. 16:12)
The last of the three annual festivals was the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. For seven days the people had to dwell in booths made out of tree branches. God’s purpose in requiring this was clear:
So your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt. (Lev. 23:43)
But this festival was also known as the Feast of Ingathering, for it took place in mid-October, six months later than the Passover, by which time each year the produce of vineyard and olive yard as well as grain field had been gathered in.
The observance of these three annual festivals was obligatory. God had said:
Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to me. Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread…. Celebrate the Feast of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field. Celebrate the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field. (Exod. 23:14–16; cf. Deut. 16:16–17)
From one point of view these festivals commemorated the signal mercies of the covenant God of Israel who first redeemed his people from their Egyptian bondage, then gave them the law at Sinai and then provided for them during their wanderings in the wilderness. From another point of view the three feasts were all harvest festivals, marking respectively the beginning of the barley harvest, the end of the grain harvest, and the end of the fruit harvest.
So Israel was taught to honor Jehovah both as God of creation and as God of salvation. The two themes were brought together in what the people of Israel were to do when they had come into the land of promise:
Take some of the firstfruits of all that you produce from the soil of the land the LORD your God is giving you and put them in a basket … and say to the priest …, “I declare today to the LORD your God that I have come to the land that the LORD swore to our forefathers to give us … and now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, O LORD, have given me.” … and … you shall rejoice in all the good things the LORD your God has given to you and your household. (Deut. 26:1–11)
Here was rich symbolism indeed. The basket of fruit was a token of “all the good things” which God had given Israel. It was the fruit of the ground, fruit which God had caused to grow. But from what ground? From ground which God had also given them, as he had sworn to their fathers. The fruit was a sacrament of both creation and redemption, for it was the fruit of the promised land.