Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 23:16
And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labors, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, [which is] in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labors out of the field.
16a. The second pilgrimage, the Feast of Harvest, celebrating the completion of the wheat harvest (Exo 34:22), in June, and marked by the offering of firstfruits from the ripened grain (in Exo 34:22 ‘the firstfruits of wheat harvest ’ takes the place of ‘the firstfruits of thy labours ’ here). The term ‘Feast of Harvest’ is found only here: in Exo 34:22 and in Dt. (Deu 16:10; Deu 16:16) it is called the Feast of Weeks, on account of its being kept seven weeks after the sickle was first put to the corn, Deu 16:9, or (in H) after the first sheaf of the year’s harvest had been presented to Jehovah as a wave-offering, Lev 23:15 (see v. 10); and in Num 28:26 (P) the Day of firstfruits. For the regulations in the other codes, see Deu 16:9-12; Lev 23:15-21 (H and P: in H loaf of fine flour, baked with leaven, is to be ‘waved’ as firstfruits to Jehovah; in a gloss (based on Num Exo 28:27-30) the required sacrifices are prescribed); Num 28:26-31 (P).
labours ] work, as v. 12 (G.-K. 93ss); cf. 1Sa 25:2 Heb. The following words explain what is meant: (even) of that which thou sowest would be clearer.
(even) of the firstfruits &c.] Heb. bikkurim (cognate with b e kr, ‘firstborn,’ ‘firstling’), denoting properly firstripe fruit (including cereals) in general (as Nah 3:12 lit. ‘figtrees with bikkurim ’), but used specially of those portions of the ‘firstripe fruit’ which were presented to Jehovah. Bikkurim occurs besides v. 19 (and the || || Exo 34:22; Exo 34:26), Lev 2:14; Lev 23:17; Lev 23:20, Num 13:20; Num 18:13; Num 23:26, 2Ki 4:42 (‘bread of firstfruits’ brought to Elisha), Neh 10:35; Neh 13:31, Eze 44:30 . Cf. p. 246.
No historical significance is in the OT. attached to this festival; but by the later Jews it was regarded as commemorating the giving of the law ‘in the third month’ of the Exodus (Exo 19:1), which was supposed to have taken place 50 days after the 15th of the first month (Lev 23:6; the morning after the Passover on the 14th, Exo 12:18).
16b. The third pilgrimage, the Feast of Ingathering, held at the end of the year, in September, when the threshing was finished, the vintage over, and the juice pressed out from the grapes and olives (Deu 16:13 ‘when thou gatherest in from thy threshing-floor and from thy wine-vat ’). It is called the ‘Feast of Ingathering’ also in Exo 34:22 : in Dt. (Deu 16:13; Deu 16:16, Deu 31:10) and P (Lev 23:34), as also in later writers generally (Ezr 3:4, 2Ch 8:13, Zec 14:16; Zec 14:18-19 ), it is called, from the custom of dwelling at the time in booths made of the branches of trees (Lev 23:40; Lev 23:42 [H]; Neh 8:14-17), the Feast of Booths. This feast, according to Dt. (Deu 16:13; Deu 16:15), H and P (Lev 23:34; Lev 23:39, Num 29:12), lasted for 7 days (cf. Neh 8:18). It was an occasion of hilarity (cf. Deu 16:15 end, Lev 23:40 b): in Jdg 9:27 a festival is mentioned, which seems to have been its Canaanite counterpart. Cf. also Jdg 21:19; Jdg 21:21. Comp., in the other codes, Deu 16:13-15; Lev 23:39-43 (mostly H); Lev 23:33-36, Num 29:12-38 (both P). In Lev 23:43 (H) the custom of dwelling in booths is explained as commemorating the fact that the Israelites dwelt in ‘booths’ after their departure from Egypt. ‘Booths,’ or huts, are not however the same as tents: and the actual origin of the custom is more probably to be found in the fact that those employed in gathering the fruit-harvest would sleep at the time in huts in the vineyards and olive-gardens (cf. Isa 1:8). Afterwards, however, the ancient practice had a commemorative meaning attached to it (cf. on vv. 14 17); and it was treated as a reminder of important events.
at the going out of the year ] The old Hebrew year ended, with the agricultural operations for the year, in autumn: cf. on Exo 12:2.
labours ] lit. work here of the product of the year’s work in agriculture.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Exo 23:16
The feast of harvest.
The feast of harvest
I. The instruction it communicates
1. It exhibits the wonderful power of God.
2. We have an establishment of the faithfulness and truth of God.
3. We have a manifestation of the goodness and bounty of God.
4. It displays the mercy and forbearance of God.
5. It shows us the connection between means and the end.
II. What feelings it should produce. It should produce feelings–
1. Of deep humiliation.
2. Of heartfelt gratitude.
3. Our constant dependence upon God.
4. A constant desire to please Him.
III. What practical influence the subject should exert upon us.
1. To labour for the provision suited to our souls.
2. To do good in our respective spheres and stations in life.
3. Prepare for the final harvest.
Application:
1. Let us gratefully enjoy the bounties of Providence. Many are abusing, many forgetting, etc.
2. Let us be especially anxious about the blessings of eternal life.
3. Let us always act in reference to the final harvest of the world. (J. Burns, D. D.)
Pilgrimage feasts
I. Religious feasts are memorials.
1. Of Gods past dealings.
2. Of our dependence on Gods care.
3. Of our present condition. Pilgrims. This earth is not our rest.
II. Religious feasts are not to interfere with the duties of life.
III. stated religious feasts are helpful to a religious spirit.
IV. Religious feasts must promote the social and benevolent instincts of our nature.
V. The offerings at religious feasts must be–
1. Pure,
2. Of the best. (W. Burrows, B. A.)
The feast of harvest
This was their Pentecost; so called from a Greek word signifying fifty–because it occurred on the fiftieth day from the feast of unleavened bread. It was, properly, a harvest festival, in which the Jew offered thanksgiving unto God for the ripened fruits of the earth. To understand the peculiar interest the Jew took in this holiday, you must remember that the Israelites, after their establishment in Canaan, were almost entirely a nation of farmers. The peasant and the noble, in their respective spheres, were alike husbandmen. And the whole land of Israel was in the highest state of cultivation. Now, to such a people, inhabiting such a country, the feast of harvest was necessarily a grand festival.
1. We, too, want great national and religious holidays, to keep in mind great national providences.
2. We need them, moreover, as verily as the Jews, for their conservative political influence–to counteract the sectional and unsocial tendencies of our great tribal divisions. If we could come up nationally to such Pentecosts, then no living man would ever again dare breathe of discord and disunion–for chords, tender as our loves and stronger than our lives woven of religion and holy with old memories, as the memorial festivals uniting Judah and Ephraim, would bind us together and bind us to God!
3. Meanwhile we need such pentecostal holidays for those personal advantages which they brought to the Hebrews. They furnish that harmless relaxation so constitutionally necessary to our highest well-being. Real pleasure, as well physical as moral, is always the true law of life. True virtue is genial and joyous, walking earth in bright raiment, and with bounding footsteps. And the nervous, restless, unreposing, devouring intensity of purpose wherewith our men follow their business, is as disastrous to the nobler moral bloom and aroma of the heart, as a roaring hurricane to a garden of roses. Above all, our religious nature needs them. The true joy of the Lord is the Christians strength. Cheerfulness is a very element of godliness.
4. This is our Pentecost–our feast of harvest. And even in its lowest aspect, as a grateful acknowledgment of Gods goodness, in preserving for our use the kindly fruits of the earth, it is a fitting occasion of thankfulness. It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the importance of agriculture. It surpasses commerce and manufacture, as a cause is superior to its effects–as an inner life is of more moment than its various outward functions. Meanwhile, the reflex influences of industrial agriculture on our physical and social well-being are as well incalculable. After all, the finest products of our farm-lands are found in our farm-houses. Things better than corn and cabbages are grown on plough-ground–bone, muscle, sinew, nerve, brain, heart; these all thrive and strengthen by agriculture. The specimens of strong, hale, common-sense manhood seen at our annual fairs are a finer show than all the fat cattle and sheep, and noble horses, and the brave array of farm-fruits and implements. Agriculture purifies morals, chastens taste, deepens the religious element, develops the individual man.
5. Our thanksgiving is partly in view of the ripened fruits of the earth; but mainly in view of other and higher blessings. And in this regard as well, it is properly–a feast of harvest. In respect of all things–not merely the natural fruits of the earth, but all great human interests, political, intellectual, religious–we may be said to live in the worlds great harvest time. We have reaped, and are reaping, the ripened and ripening fruits of all earths past generations. Consider this a little.
(1) First: This is true–politically. Philosophically considered, the grand end and aim of all civil progress is human freedom–the highest development and culture of the individual and free manhood. Monarchy the one-man-power, oligarchy the few-men-power, are but the successive stages of the growing life, up to the ripened product of the true democracy–the all-men power. To this end hath tendered all political progress; and beyond this there is no progress. This is the harvest of earths long political husbandry, and we are reaping it.
(2) Then passing from the political, the same thought is true in regard of the intellectual. It is a thought well worthy our pondering, on an occasion like this–that we live in the harvest-time of mind and thought! Carefully considered, the development of the mental follows the law of material development. First, the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. Genius is first poetical, then practical. First, the flaunting blossom; then the substantial fruit. From the beginning, mans law of intellectual progress has been from the abstract to the practical–from ideas to facts. The practical, being the fruit of the imaginative, as the ripened corn is the fruit of the plants inner life. In past generations, intellect has been busy in a rudimental husbandry–felling the great forests; draining the low marshes; subduing the rugged soil; scattering the seed; and watching and waiting for the increase. The old philosophy; the old civilization; the old polities, civil and ecclesiastical; the old chivalry; the old poetry–these were the thought-germs, the thought-leaves, the thought-blossoms, which have ripened, and are ripening around us into Gods glorious fruit! We live in earths prodigal and luxuriant autumn–in times when marvellous things are the rule, and mean things the exception–in an economy of prodigies, each one a seeming miracle to mens earlier comprehension, and yet all, only the ripened development of their own thought-germs. And if the law of all husbandry be to sow in tears and reap in joy, then our thanksgiving, that we live in these eventful times, should be unto God, this day, a great feast of harvest!
(3) Passing this, we observe once more, and finally, That this same law of development we have been tracing through the political and intellectual, will be found to rule in the spiritual–and in this regard should we mainly rejoice that we live in lifes harvest-time.
6. In respects, then, like these, political, intellectual, religious, we live in times of unexampled blessedness. We have come up to Zion from hills purple with vintage, and valleys golden with corn, in the rapturous harvest-home of the mortal! And it becomes us to keep festival before God as the old Jew kept his Pentecost. As men, as patriots, as philanthropists, as Christians, our cup of joy mantles brightly. What more could God have done for us that He hath not done? What people can be happy before God, if we are not happy? Living here, in this nineteenth century, free men–free Christians–we seem to stand on the very mount of God, flung up in the waste of ages, for the enthronement of His great man-child! We look backward, and lo! all the past has been working together for our national and individual beatitude. Patriarchs, prophets, bards, sages, mighty men, conquerors, have all been our servants. Generation after generation, that have lived and died–great empires, that have risen and flourished, and trod imperial paths, and passed away for ever–seem to rise from their old death-dust, and march in vision before us, laying down all their accumulated thoughts, and arts, and honours–all the trophies of their mighty triumphs, in homage, at our feet! We look forward, and the eye is dazzled with the vision of the glory about to be accorded to Gods kingly creature, man! when standing upon this redeemed world, he shall assert his birthright–a child of God here! an heir of God for ever! Verily, we have cause for thanksgiving. The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Let us give, then, free course to our grateful emotions! Thankful for the present, trustful for the future, let us rejoice before God with the joy of harvest. (C. Wadsworth.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
The feast of harvest, i.e. of wheat harvest, for barley harvest was before this time. This feast was otherwise called pentecost.
Quest. How were these the first-fruits, when a sheaf was offered to God in the feast of the passover?
Answ. That sheaf was generally of barley, which was less considerable than their wheat; but this was the first-fruits of their wheat, which was their principal grain, and they had no bread before this time from the growth of that year.
The feast of ingathering, to wit, of all the rest of the fruits of the earth, as of the vines and olives. This was also called the feast of booths, and of tabernacles. See Lev 13:43; Num 29:12; Deu 16:13. All their three feasts had a respect to the harvest, which began in the passover, was carried on at pentecost, and was fully completed and ended in this feast.
In the end of the year; of the common or civil year, which began in September, as the sacred year began in March.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And the feast of harvest,…. This is the second feast, the feast of wheat harvest, between which and barley harvest were fifty days; or between the firstfruits of the one and the first fruits of the other were seven weeks, as Aben Ezra observes, and was sometimes called the feast of weeks; at which feast were to be brought,
the first fruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field; the two wave loaves or cakes, made of the first new wheat, which was the effect of their labour in tilling the field, and sowing it with wheat, and reaping it:
and the feast of ingathering, [which is] in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field; this is the third feast in the year to be kept, and was kept at the close of the year, at the revolution of it, when a new year began that is, according to the old account, which made Tisri the month in which this feast was kept, the first month of the year; whereas, according to the new count, it was the seventh month from the month Abib, now made the first of the months upon the Israelites coming out of Egypt in that month: this is the same feast with the feast of tabernacles, but here called the feast of ingathering, because at this time of the year all the fruits of the earth were gathered in; the corn, and wine, and oil, and all other fruits, on account of which there was great rejoicing, as there ought to be.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(16) The feast of harvest.It was calculated that the grain-harvest would be completed fifty days after it had begun. On this fiftieth day (Pentecost) the second festival was to commence by the offering of two loaves made of the new wheat just gathered in. On the other offerings commanded, see Lev. 23:18-20. The Law limited the feast to a single daythe day of Pentecostbut in practice it was early extended to two days, in order to cover a possible miscalculation as to the exact time.
The feast of ingathering.Elsewhere commonly called the feast of tabernacles (Lev. 23:34; Deu. 16:13; Deu. 16:16; Deu. 31:10; 2Ch. 8:13; Ezr. 3:4; Zec. 14:16-19, &c.). Like the feast of unleavened bread, this lasted for a week. It corresponded to a certain extent with modern harvest-homes, but was more prolonged and of a more distinctly religious character. The time fixed for it was the week commencing with the fifteenth and terminating with the twenty-first of the month Tisri, corresponding to our October. The vintage and the olive-harvest had by that time been completed, and thanks were given for Gods bounties through the whole year. At the same time the sojourn in the wilderness was commemorated; and as a memorial of that time those who attended the feast dwelt during its continuance in booths made of branches of trees. (See Lev. 23:40; Neh. 8:14-17.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Exo 23:16. And the feast of harvest Concerning this feast, otherwise called the feast of weeks, or of pentecost; see Deu 16:9-12 and Lev 23:15; Lev 23:44.
And the feast of in-gathering Concerning this feast, commonly called the feast of tabernacles; see Deu 16:13-15. Lev 23:34; Lev 23:44.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Exo 23:16 And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, [which is] in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.
Ver. 16. And the feast of harvest. ] Pentecost, when their wheat harvest came in.
In the end of the year.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Exodus
THE FEAST OF INGATHERING IN THE END OF THE YEAR
Exo 23:16
The Israelites seem to have had a double beginning of the year-one in spring, one at the close of harvest; or it may only be that here the year is regarded from the natural point of view-a farmer’s year. This feast was at the gathering in of the fruits, which was the natural close of the agricultural year.
This festival of ingathering was the Feast of Tabernacles. It is remarkable that the three great sacred festivals, the Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, had all a reference to agriculture, though two of them also received a reference to national deliverances. This fact may show that they were in existence before Moses, and that he simply imposed a new meaning on them.
Be that as it may, I take these words now simply as a starting-point for some thoughts naturally suggested by the period at which we stand. We have come to the end of another year-looked for so long, passed so swiftly, and now seeming to have so utterly departed!
I desire to recall to you and to myself the solemn real sense in which for us too the end of the year is a ‘time of ingathering’ and ‘harvest.’ We too begin the new year with the accumulated consequences of these past days in our ‘barns and garners.’
Now, in dealing with this thought, let me put it in two or three forms.
I. Think of the past as still living in and shaping the present.
But there is a deeper truth in the converse thought that the apparently transient is permanent, that nothing human ever dies, that the past is present. ‘The grass withereth, the flower fadeth,’-yes, but only its petals drop, and as they fall, the fruit which they sheltered swells and matures.
The thought of the present as the harvest from the past brings out in vivid and picturesque form two solemn truths.
The first is the passing away of all the external, but of it only. It has all gone where the winter’s cold, the spring rains, the summer’s heats have gone. But just as these live in the fruitful results that have accrued from them, just as the glowing sunshine of the departed ardent summer is in the yellow, bending wheat-ear or glows in the cluster, so, in a very solemn sense, ‘that which hath been is now’ in regard to every life. The great law of continuity makes the present the inheritor of the past. That law operates in national life, in which national characteristics are largely precipitates, so to speak, from national history. But it works even more energetically, and with yet graver consequences, in our individual lives. ‘The child is father of the man.’ What we are depends largely on what we have been, and what we have been powerfully acts in determining what we shall be. Life is a mystic chain, not a heap of unconnected links.
And there is another very solemn way in which the past lives on in each of us. For not only is our present self the direct descendant of our past selves, but that past still subsists in that we are responsible for it, and shall one day have to answer for it. The writer of Ecclesiastes followed the statement just now quoted as to the survival of the past, with another, which is impressive in its very vagueness: ‘God seeketh again that which is passed away.’
So the undying past lives in its results in ourselves, and in our being answerable for it to God.
This metaphor is insufficient in one respect. There is not one epoch for sowing and another for reaping, but the two processes are simultaneous, and every moment is at once a harvest and a seed-time.
This fact masks the reality of the reaping here, but it points on to the great harvest when God shall say, ‘Gather the wheat into My barns!’
II. Notice some specific forms of this reaping and ingathering.
It is quite possible that in the future it may embrace all the life.
‘Chambers of imagery.’
2 Habits and character. Like the deposit of a flood. ‘Habitus’ means clothing, and cloth is woven from single threads.
3 Outward consequences, position, reputation, etc.
III. Make a personal reference to ourselves.
But remember, that while this law remains, there is also the law of forgiveness, ‘Go in peace!’ and there may be a new beginning, ‘Sin no more!’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
feast of harvest: Exo 22:29, Exo 34:22, Lev 23:9-21, Num 28:26-31, Deu 16:9-12, Act 2:1
ingathering: Exo 34:22, Lev 23:34-44, Num 29:12-39, Deu 16:13-15, Neh 8:14-18, Zec 14:16-19, Joh 7:2, Joh 7:37
Reciprocal: Lev 23:10 – and shall Lev 23:17 – the firstfruits Lev 23:39 – when Deu 26:2 – That thou shalt Deu 31:11 – to appear 2Ki 4:42 – bread Ezr 3:4 – the feast Jer 2:3 – the firstfruits Act 2:5 – were Rom 11:16 – if the firstfruit 1Co 16:8 – Pentecost
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
23:16 And the {h} feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the {i} feast of ingathering, [which is] in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.
(h) Which is Whit Sunday, in token that the law was given 50 days after they departed from Egypt.
(i) This is the feast of tabernacles, signifying that they lived for 40 years in the tents or the tabernacles in the wilderness.