“Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me.
Moses mentions only the principal feasts here, not every observance, the feast of trumpets and day of atonement had their place, but these three journeys to God's presence carried the greater honor. The three holidays clustered in the seventh month were nearly continuous, so some relief was granted lest the people be absent from home the entire season; one journey, named after the most remarkable day, could encompass them all.
AI summary
God commanded the land to rest every seventh year to show Israel both His abundance and their dependence on Him alone. This was no mercy to the soil but a test of their obedience in the very matter that touches their purse, whether they would trust His Providence as surely as the sixth day's manna served for two days' meat.
AI summary
Commenting on Exodus 23:10-19
The feast of harvest came fifty days after barley harvest, the feast of weeks, when the firstfruits of wheat labor were brought before God. The feast of ingathering closed the year when all fruits were gathered in: corn, wine, oil, every crop. This was the feast of tabernacles, and there the people rejoiced greatly, as they ought.
AI summary