Bible in a Year Feb 21: Numbers 29:1 – 31:47

 

Feb 21: Numbers 29:1 – 31:47

Today’s text continues a list of required offerings and actions for festivals. The three festivals listed, Feast of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, and Feast of Tabernacles all take place in the seventh month of the Jewish calendar, Tishri, which occurs in our September/October timeframe. Out of those 30 days, 9 of them were times of required sacred assembly and no work. On the day of Atonement people were also to deny themselves, which amounted to fasting.  These festivals are still celebrated by the Jewish people today.

The Feast of Trumpets is celebrated as the two day holiday Rosh Hashanah and still involves the blowing of the shofar. The first ten days of the seventh month are seen as days of repentance leading up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This is the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people, a day of prayer and complete fasting – no food or water – and involve lengthy prayer services. The Feast of Tabernacles (or Booths) is called Sukkot, and commemorates the time the Israelites spent in the wilderness.  Full participation in this festival requires people to set up booths or tents and live outside for seven days.

The text ends with vengeance on the Midianites. The five kings of Midian are killed, along with Balaam the seer. There are some hard elements of this battle – although all women and children were originally taken as captives, God required that the boys and all women who weren’t virgins to be killed. I imagine that was difficult for many of the warriors to do. In all, 32,000 women and girls survived and most likely became slaves. All plunder that was captured had to be purified with fire if possible or at least washed with the water of cleansing (remember, that had the ashes of the red heifer in it).

It is hard to imagine the emotions of all players on those days.

TOMORROW’S TEXT: Numbers 31:48 – 33:56