February 24: Leviticus 23:1 – Leviticus 25:23

Feasts of the Lord – Leviticus 23

• God tells Moses to instruct the Hebrew people that they are to celebrate His holy feasts:

1. The Sabbath: The people are to work for six days and rest on the Sabbath.
2. The Passover: On the fourteenth day of the first month, Passover is to be celebrated.
3. The Feast of Firstfruits: When the people come into the Promised Land, they are to celebrate this feast. It begins with waving sheaves and ends with burnt offerings.
4. The Feast of Weeks: It begins fifty days after the sheaf of the wave offering is brought to the priests, and is celebrated to recognize the Lord as the giver of all crops.
5. The Feast of Trumpets: On the first day of the seventh month, the trumpet is blasted and the people prepare for the most holy month of the Hebrew calendar.
6. The Day of Atonement: On the tenth day of the seventh month, the people are to afflict themselves and present a food offering to the Lord.
7. The Feast of Booths: On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the people are to begin a weeklong feast celebrating their salvation from Egypt. No work is done so the people can worship the Lord.

The Lamps – Leviticus 24

• God tells Moses to instruct the people to bring pure oil from beaten olives for the lamp so that the light can be kept burning regularly (evening to morning).

Bread for the Tabernacle

• The people are to bake twelve loaves of fine flour, with two-tenths of an ephah in each loaf. The loaves are to be arranged in two piles of twelve on the table in the tent of meeting. Every Sabbath they will be arranged on the table, and Aaron and his sons will eat of it.

Punishment for Blasphemy

• The son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian man blasphemes God's name and is brought to Moses. God tells Moses to bring the man out of the camp, let all who heard him curse lay their hands on his head, and then have the people stone him to death. Moses is then to tell the people that blasphemers will be put to death.

An Eye for an Eye

• God gives the decree that whoever takes a human life is to be put to death. Injuries are to be punished by repeating the injury on the offender—an eye for an eye, etc. This applies to both the native and the sojourner.

The Sabbath Year – Leviticus 25

• God tells Moses to instruct the people that when they come into the Promised Land, they are to work the land for six years and the seventh year will be a Sabbath year for the land.

The Year of Jubilee

• On the fiftieth year in the Promised Land, they will sound the trumpet on the Day of Atonement and celebrate the Year of Jubilee. People would be returned their lands, those who had sold themselves as indentures would be released and sent home, and the land would not be worked for the forty-ninth and fiftieth year. (This law prohibited the amassing of large estates, which would reduce many of the people to tenant status).