Commentaria in Leviticum
Chapter Twenty-three
God prescribes the feasts of the Hebrews: first, the Sabbath, ver. 3; secondly, the Pasch and the feast of Azymes, ver. 5; thirdly, Pentecost, ver. 15; fourthly, the feast of Trumpets, ver. 24; fifthly, of Expiation, ver. 27; sixthly, of Tabernacles, ver. 34; seventhly, the Assembly or Collection, ver. 36.
1. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 2. Speak to the children of Israel, and thou shalt say to them: These are the feasts of the Lord, which you shall call holy. 3. Six days shall you do work: the seventh day, because it is the rest of the sabbath, shall be called holy. You shall do no work on that day: it is the sabbath of the Lord in all your habitations. 4. These are therefore the holy feasts of the Lord, which you must celebrate in their seasons. 5. In the first month, the fourteenth day of the month at evening, is the phase of the Lord; 6. and on the fifteenth day of this month is the solemnity of the unleavened bread of the Lord. Seven days shall you eat unleavened bread. 7. The first day shall be most solemn unto you and holy: you shall do no servile work therein: 8. but you shall offer a sacrifice by fire to the Lord seven days: and the seventh day shall be more solemn and more holy: and you shall do no servile work therein. 9. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 10. Speak to the children of Israel, and thou shalt say to them: When you shall have entered into the land which I will give you, and shall reap your corn, you shall bring sheaves of ears, the firstfruits of your harvest, to the priest; 11. And he shall lift up the sheaf before the Lord, that it may be acceptable for you, on the morrow after the sabbath, and shall sanctify it. 12. And on the same day that the sheaf is consecrated, a lamb without blemish of the first year shall be slain for a holocaust of the Lord. 13. And the libations shall be offered with it, two tenths of fine flour tempered with oil, for an burnt offering of the Lord, and a most sweet odour: libations also of wine, the fourth part of a hin. 14. You shall not eat bread, nor parched corn, nor frumenty of the harvest, until the day that you shall offer of it to your God. It is an ordinance for ever throughout your generations and dwellings. 15. You shall count therefore from the morrow after the sabbath, wherein you offered the sheaf of the firstfruits, seven full weeks, 16. Even unto the morrow after the seventh week be expired, that is to say, fifty days; and so you shall offer a new sacrifice to the Lord, 17. Out of all your dwellings, two loaves of firstfruits, of two tenths of fine flour leavened, which you shall bake for the firstfruits of the Lord. 18. And you shall offer with the loaves seven lambs without blemish of a year old, and one calf from the herd, and two rams, and they shall be for a holocaust with their libations, for a most sweet savour to the Lord. 19. You shall offer also a buck goat for sin, and two lambs of a year old for sacrifices of peace offerings. 20. And when the priest shall have lifted them up with the loaves of the firstfruits before the Lord, they shall fall to his use. 21. And you shall call this day most solemn and most holy: you shall do no servile work therein. It shall be an everlasting ordinance in all your dwellings and generations. 22. And when you reap the corn of your land, you shall not cut it to the very ground; nor shall you gather the ears that remain, but shall leave them to the poor and to strangers. I am the Lord your God. 23. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 24. Speak to the children of Israel: In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, shall be a sabbath, a memorial, with the sounding of trumpets, and it shall be called holy; 25. you shall do no servile work therein, and you shall offer a holocaust to the Lord. 26. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 27. On the tenth day of this seventh month shall be the day of atonement, it shall be most solemn, and shall be called holy: and you shall afflict your souls on that day, and shall offer a holocaust to the Lord. 28. You shall do no servile work in the time of this day, because it is a day of propitiation, that the Lord your God may be merciful unto you. 29. Every soul that is not afflicted on this day shall perish from among his people; 30. And he that shall do any work, I will destroy that soul from among his people. 31. You shall do no manner of work therein: it shall be an everlasting ordinance to you in all your generations and dwellings: 32. It is a sabbath of rest, and you shall afflict your souls on the ninth day of the month. From evening until evening you shall celebrate your sabbaths. 33. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 34. Say to the children of Israel: From the fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles seven days to the Lord. 35. The first day shall be called most solemn and most holy: you shall do no servile work therein. 36. And seven days you shall offer holocausts to the Lord: the eighth day also shall be most solemn and most holy, and you shall offer holocausts to the Lord: for it is the day of assembly and collection: you shall do no servile work therein. 37. These are the feasts of the Lord, which you shall call most solemn and most holy, and shall offer in them oblations to the Lord, holocausts and libations according to the rite of each day, 38. Besides the sabbaths of the Lord, and your gifts, and what you shall offer by vow, or which you shall give to the Lord of your own accord. 39. Therefore from the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you shall have gathered in all the fruits of your land, you shall celebrate the feasts of the Lord seven days: on the first day and on the eighth shall be a sabbath, that is, a rest. 40. And you shall take to you on the first day the fruits of the fairest tree, and branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God; 41. And you shall celebrate his solemnity seven days in the year: it shall be an everlasting ordinance in your generations. In the seventh month shall you celebrate the feasts, 42. And you shall dwell in bowers seven days: all that are of the race of Israel shall dwell in tents, 43. That your posterity may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in tents, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. 44. And Moses spoke concerning the solemnities of the Lord to the children of Israel.
2. THESE ARE THE FEASTS OF THE LORD—these are the feasts on which one must abstain from all servile work and attend to divine worship. In Hebrew it is, these are the appointed feasts which you shall call miqra’e qodesh (the Septuagint, “called holy”), that is, holy convocations; for on these feasts the people were convoked to hear the law, and for sacrifices and prayers. Whence the wise men of the Hebrews said of them: “He who despises the solemnities, or the public assemblies of the Church, shall have no part in the world to come.”
Hence the Church, from the institution of Pope St. Sylvester, calls all days ferias: first, because the Christian ought to keep holiday from vices and cease from them every day; secondly, because, as to the ecclesiastical offices and the ministers of the Church, all days are feriae, that is, feasts; for they are to attend to nothing else but divine worship. So Abulensis. As the Gentiles, then, named the days from the seven planets, as if one of them ruled each day, so that they say the days of the Sun, Moon, Mars; and the Jews designated these days from the sabbath, so that they say the first, second, third, fourth of the sabbath, for the first, second, third, fourth day of the week: so Christians call their days feriae, so that they say the first, second, third, fourth feria.
In like manner Diogenes, seeing a host preparing himself with so great zeal for a certain feast, said: “Does not the good man reckon every day a feast? and indeed, if we live soberly, a most illustrious one. For this world is a most holy and most divine temple; into it man is brought at his birth, that he may continually behold not mute images, but living and moving forms, such as the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers, the plants, the animals,” etc. Plutarch is witness, in his book On Tranquillity of Mind.
How far, then, Christians stray from the purpose of feasts, who after the manner of the Gentiles keep holiday from labour on feasts and give themselves to luxury! The wise Epaminondas saw this, Gentile though he was: when the city was keeping a feast and all were given up to wine and banquets, he met a certain man, squalid and thoughtful; and being asked why, he said: “That it may be lawful for you to give yourselves to leisure and to feasting.” Plutarch is witness, in his Life.
he said, “is nothing else than to lay up in the mind some of those things that are firm and stable.”