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23
Religious celebrations
1 Yahweh said to Moses/me, 2 “Tell the Israeli people about the festivals that I have appointed, the days when you all must gather together to worship me.
The Sabbath
3 You may work for six days each week, but on the seventh day you must not do any work. You must rest. It is a sacred/holy day when you must gather together to worship me. Wherever you live, you must rest on that day.
The Festivals of Passover and Unleavened Bread
4 There are festivals that I have established/appointed for you. Those will also be sacred/holy days when you must gather together to worship me. 5 The first festival is ◄the Passover/when you remember that I spared your ancestors when I killed all the firstborn Egyptian sons►. That festival will begin at twilight/dusk/sunset on the appointed day ◄each spring/in March or April each year►, and end on the following day. 6 The next day, the Festival of Eating Bread That Has No Yeast will begin. That festival will continue for seven days. During that time, the bread that you eat must be made without yeast. 7 On the first day of that festival, you all must stop your regular work and you must gather together to worship me. 8 On each of the seven days, you must present to me several animals to be an offering/sacrifice to be completely burned on the altar. On the seventh day, you all must again stop your regular work and gather to worship me.”
The Festival of the Beginning of the Harvest
9 Yahweh also told Moses/me 10 to tell the Israeli people about other festivals. He said, “When you arrive in the land which I am giving to you, and you harvest your crops for the first time there, bring to the priest some of the first grain that you harvest. 11 On the day after the next Sabbath/rest day, the priest will lift it up high to dedicate it to me, in order that I will accept it as your gift. 12 That same day, you must sacrifice to me a one-year-old male lamb that has no defects. You must burn it on the altar. 13 You must also burn an offering of grain. That offering must consist of ◄three quarts/3.5 liters► of good flour mixed with olive oil. The smell of those things burning will be very pleasing to me. Along with that, you must also offer one quart/liter of wine, which will be a liquid offering. 14 Do not eat any bread or any roasted grain or unroasted grain on that day until after you have brought those offerings to me, your God. You must always obey [LIT] those commands, wherever you live.
The Festival of the End of the Harvest
15 Seven weeks after the priest offers that grain to me, 16 on the next/50th day after he offers it, each family must bring to me an offering from the new crop of grain. 17 From your homes, bring two loaves of bread to the priest. He will lift them up high to dedicate them as an offering to me. Those loaves must be baked from three quarts/liters of good flour that has yeast mixed with it. That bread will be an offering to me from the first wheat that you harvest each year. 18 Along with this bread, you must present to me seven one-year-old lambs with no defects, one young bull, and two rams. They must all be completely burned on the altar. All those offerings, with the grain offering and the wine offering, will be burned, and the smell of all those things burning will be very pleasing to me. 19 Then you must also kill one male goat to be an offering/sacrifice for your sins, and two one-year-old male lambs to be an offering to enable you to maintain fellowship with me. 20 The priest will lift up these offerings high to dedicate them to me. He will also offer the loaves of bread that were baked from the first wheat that you harvest. Those offerings are sacred to me, but they are for the priests to eat. 21 On that day, you must stop your regular work and gather to worship me. You must always obey those instructions/commands, and you must obey them wherever you live.
22 When you harvest the grain in your fields, do not harvest the grain along the edges of the fields, and do not pick up the grain that the harvesters drop. Leave that grain for the poor people and for the foreigners who are living among you. Do not forget that it is I, Yahweh your God, who am commanding those things!”
The Festival of Trumpets
23 Yahweh also told Moses/me 24 to give these instructions/commands to the Israeli people: “ Each year in September, on the day that I have appointed, you all must celebrate a day in which you will completely rest. You must not do any work on that day. When the priests blow their trumpets loudly, you all must gather together to worship me. 25 All of you must not do your regular work on that day. Instead, you must present offerings to me that will be burned on the altar.”
The Festival of Atonement
26 Yahweh also said to Moses/me, 27 “You must celebrate a day on which you request that I forgive you for the sins that you have committed. That day will be nine days after the festival when the priests blow the trumpets. On that day you must ◄fast/abstain from eating food►. You must gather together to worship me and present offerings to me that will be burned on the altar. 28 You must not do any work on that day, because it is the day when the priests will offer sacrifices to me to ◄atone for/ask me to forgive► your sins. 29 You must expel from your group anyone who does not ◄fast/abstain from eating food► on that day. 30 I will get rid of anyone who does any kind of work on that day. 31 You must not work at all! You must always obey those instructions/commands, and you must obey them wherever you live. 32 That day will be a day of complete rest for all of you, and on that day you must ◄fast/abstain from eating food► to show that you are sorry for having sinned. That day of rest and ◄fasting/abstaining from eating food► will begin on the evening before the day in which you ask me to forgive you for your sins, and it will end on the evening of the following day.”
The Festival of Shelters
33 Yahweh also said to Moses/me, 34 “Tell the Israeli people that each year they must also celebrate a festival of living in temporary shelters. That festival will begin five days after the day in which they request me to forgive them for their sins. It will last for seven days. 35 On the first day of that festival, the people must gather together to worship me, and they must not do any regular work on that day. 36 On each of the seven days of the festival, they must present to me an offering of animals that will be burned on the altar. On the next day, they must gather again to worship me and present to me another animal that will be burned on the altar. That also will be a sacred gathering, and they must not work on that day, either.
37 To summarize, those are the festivals that I have appointed. Celebrate those sacred festivals by gathering together to present to me all the various offerings that will be burned on the altar —animals that will be burned completely, and offerings of grain, and offerings to enable the Israeli people to maintain fellowship with me, and offerings of wine. Each offering must be brought on the day that I have indicated. 38 ◄Those festivals must be celebrated/You must celebrate those festivals► in addition to worshiping on the ◄Sabbath days/days of rest►. And all those offerings must be given in addition to the offerings that people personally decide to give, and in addition to the offerings that people make to accompany the solemn promises that they have made, or offerings that people make ◄voluntarily/because they themselves want to►.
39 Returning to my instructions about the Festival of Living in Temporary Shelters, you must celebrate this festival after you have harvested all the crops. On the first day and on the last day of that festival, you must rest completely. 40 But on the first day, you are permitted to pick fruit from trees. Cut palm fronds/branches and other leafy branches from trees or from bushes that grow by the streams, and make shelters/huts to live in for that week. Then rejoice in my presence for those seven days. 41 You must celebrate this festival for seven days every year. You must never stop obeying my commands/instructions for that festival. You must celebrate it in September. 42 During the seven days of that festival, all of you people who have been Israelis all of your lives must live in shelters/huts. 43 That will remind your descendants that their ancestors lived in shelters for many years after I rescued them from Egypt. Do not forget that I, Yahweh your God, am the one who is commanding this.”
44 So Moses/I gave to the Israeli people all those instructions concerning the festivals that Yahweh wanted them to celebrate each year.

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© 2008-2016 Ellis W. Deibler, Jr.