Holy Days 1 - Leviticus 23:1-14

What is interesting about chapter 23 is that it is long, 44 verses, but pretty boring honestly, and the IM explanation is short. The IM summarizes chapter 23 saying, “The Lord indicated five holy days or feasts that were to be observed by all Israel.” That’s it, that’s what this chapter talks about, so I was surprised when I saw that TB did 3 hour long lectures about this chapter. I’m not sure how much detail I am going to go through and I’m only through the 2nd hour of TB’s lecture on this chapter so I’ll do this bit tonight and then if there’s something else that’s interesting to comment on tomorrow I’ll come back and add more. But I just realized that there are only a few chapters left in Leviticus so there’s an excellent chance I could be done with Leviticus and moved on to Numbers by the end of my work week. It also just occurred to me that I’ve been in the Old Testament for almost 3 years now and am only just now finishing the 3rd book. I made it through the New Testament in 5 years so at this pace I will be in the OT for like 15 years. To be fair, in those 3 years I got my daughter launched into adulthood, got a Bachelors degree, a Masters degree, and had my whole life flipped on it’s head in a horrible way that I never could have anticipated, so it’s been a lot. I guess when I look at it that way, maybe I should be proud of myself for even making it through 3 books in 3 years. Just looking at the number of lectures there are for the rest of the OT, maybe I could make some goals for myself, try to make it to Ruth by the end of 2026, make it to Ezra by the end of 2027, and then finish the OT by 2028. That will be 6 years in the OT, 15 years of the blog all together and then I will circle back around again and start with the Book of Mormon all over. That will be such an interesting journey, starting to analyze the Book of Mormon again but with 15 years of knowledge and growth, I wonder what insights I will have that are new compared to last time. That’s a pretty exciting prospect actually.

The IM lists the “holy days or feasts” as:

1. The Sabbath – an important distinction that TB makes here is that the word in English is Sabbath which to us means Sunday, or whatever day we use to worship God. The first holy day is Sabbath, which was the 7th day of the week that was given in the 10 commandments and referenced all the way back in Genesis. This is the holy day that happens once a week and the Hebrew word used to describe it is Shabbat. The important distinction comes in these other holy days or feasts, there are days called “Sabbath” that are not the designated 7th day of the week, but are also meant to be days where there is no labor performed and the focus is to be on God. So non-7th days of rest during these other holy days to focus on God, but in the Hebrew translation it is not Shabbat (which designates specifically the 7th day of the week) but kodesh mikra which is to just designate rest days. Another interesting factor here is what is defined as “labor” for both Shabbat and kodesh mikra. In the English Bible, the distinction is sometimes made as THE Sabbath (Shabbat) and A sabbath (kodesh mikra). The Sabbath is the set day during the week where ordinances are done, and labor is prohibited and A sabbath is a day during a holy feast where no labor is to be performed either and all focus is to be on God. In fact, TB says that there is one holy day discussed in this chapter where there can be 4 sabbaths during the 7 day long event.

I was raised in a way where “keeping the sabbath day holy” had very pharisaic interpretations, like we couldn’t buy anything from the store because we weren’t supposed to spend money, and interestingly, my kids were taught the same thing in the ward when they were growing up because I never taught them that it was about spending money because I knew that that wasn’t what keeping the sabbath day holy meant, but they still heard it in primary because several times they had come up with schemes to still do stuff but that was free and they argued that they weren’t going to spend money so it was ok. Anyway, TB gave a good definition that I liked about what was considered labor that would break the sabbath as something along the lines of doing work that you normal do that would bring you income. So like if you were a carpenter and you carved wood that you would later sell, that would be considered breaking the sabbath. It would be impossible to not do any work on any day because people have to eat every day, people have to be cared for everyday, if you live on a farm it’s not like you can just NOT milk your cows or feed your animals because it’s sabbath. I work in a hospital and people don’t just magically get cured every Sunday and get sick again on Monday, people need to be taken care of every single day. So we just do our best with what we have. I try to observe the sabbath by preparing the day before, getting gas, making sure I have what I am going to eat at the house already, stuff like that, but I still have to go to work and if I’m there for a long time, which I often am, then I’ll go to the cafeteria and I feel no guilt about that.

2. Passover and the feast of unleavened bread – These are named separately, and when TB made his introduction to the chapter he said that there were 7 holy days or feasts and the IM only notes 5 and I think this is one of the reasons, the IM groups these two together and TB does not, even though by his own admission they are linked. It appears that they are linked because even though Passover if just a one day event, the 7 days after Passover is the “Feast of Unleavened Bread.” The Feast of unleavened bread starts with a cleaning out of the house of all leavening agents, which TB says was by tradition very tedious, like there couldn’t be a speck of yeast in the house AT ALL. Why unleavened bread? There are a couple of reasons, first as far as I understand it was to symbolize the fact that when the Hebrews fled Egypt they did so in such a hurry that they didn’t even have time to let their bread rise. Second, TB says is because leavening agents work in such a way that they cause decay in the materials around them, and that’s their purpose. Yeast causes decay of the bread dough which is what makes the bread rise. Decay agents are also what makes grape juice into wine and ferments food. The purpose of this, according to him, is that Jesus’ body in the tomb didn’t decay because he was without sin. Decay is caused by sin and because Jesus didn’t have any sin, his body didn’t decay in the tomb and he was resurrected. I don’t necessarily agree with that because Jesus could have been resurrected regardless of the physical state of his body so I don’t think that that mattered much, but I’m not married to that opinion either.

What was interesting about the lecture on Passover was TB’s reminder that these holy days weren’t just to celebrate or be reminded of God but where specific acts that were meant to teach specific lessons, and correspond with actual events that had and would take place. For instance, Passover specifically was a commemoration of the time when the Hebrews painted the blood of lambs over their door posts so that the destroying angel would pass over them in Egypt. Just like Jesus Christ would be crucified on Passover day and His blood would be made to cover us so that the destroying angel of death (spiritual and physical) would pass over us and we would be spared the consequences of sin and separation from God. There is actually a VERY interesting timeline set forth comparing the ritual of the Passover sacrifice and what exactly was happening with Christ as he was crucified on that same day and it is very clear that the whole thing was set up to show that He is the sacrificial lamb in that scenario. TB talked about it briefly and it was such an interesting topic that I might go back and look into it more later and maybe do a special post about it, but the correlation between timelines is fascinating.

Just as a side note, something I just thought of while writing about the crucifixion on Passover day was the thought of Mary sitting at the foot of Jesus’ cross on the day of Passover when he died and how she must have felt. Logically I’ve always imagined that she must have been devastated by what was happening but emotionally now having gone through what I went through I see it a little bit more in depth now. Like my experience doesn’t hold a candle to hers but I think maybe I thought that she knew and understood the plan more than she actually did. Jesus knew that he would be crucified and die and he even knew exactly when and even when he told his disciples repeated, in explicit detail about what was coming, they didn’t understand. Maybe he tried to prepare her, maybe not, but I’m sure she didn’t comprehend exactly what was going to happen. She had probably spent the week that Jesus was in town leading up to Passover cleaning her house of leaven, she probably spent the day before, cleaning and cooking and getting ready for the event like she had so many times before. Someone probably ran to tell her in the morning that Jesus had been arrested, tried and sentenced to crucifixion just hours before his death. Maybe she was asleep when they woke her up to tell her and she ran out of her house to go sit at his feet while his blood ran down the cross. She went to sleep the night before living one life and when she went to sleep the next night she had to live a new life, after watching her son be suddenly and violently taken from her. I can imagine a little bit of what she must have felt like and it’s horrible. I always just assumed that she knew what was going to happen, that she accepted and understood it beforehand, but I really don’t think that she did. I don’t think that anyone did. I thought they were just sad because he suffered so much beforehand and were sad that he was going to be gone on a different mission. But I now don’t think that any of them understood what was happening. I think that they all had an idea of what was going to happen, how the rest of the ministry was going to play out and then Jesus died and their worlds were rocked.