Children are to be obedient to their parents, ver. The fear here required includes inward reverence and esteem, outward respect and obedience, care to please them and to make them easy. God only is to be worshipped, ver. Turn not from the true God to false ones, from the God who will make you holy and happy, to those that will deceive you, and make you for ever miserable. Turn not your eyes to them, much less your heart. They should leave the gleanings of their harvest and vintage for the poor, ver.
Works of piety must be always attended with works of charity, according to our ability. We must not be covetous, griping, and greedy of every thing we can lay claim to, nor insist upon our right in all things. We are to be honest and true in all our dealings, ver.
Whatever we have in the world, we must see that we get it honestly, for we cannot be truly rich, or long rich, with that which is not so. Reverence to the sacred name of God must be shown, ver. We must not detain what belongs to another, particularly the wages of the hireling, ver. We must be tender of the credit and safety of those that cannot help themselves, ver. Do no hurt to any, because they are unwilling or unable to avenge themselves.
We ought to take heed of doing any thing which may occasion our weak brother to fall. The fear of God should keep us from doing wrong things, though they will not expose us to men's anger. Judges, and all in authority, are commanded to give judgment without partiality, ver. To be a tale-bearer, and to sow discord among neighbours, is as bad an office as a man can put himself into. We are to rebuke our neighbour in love, ver.
Rather rebuke him than hate him, for an injury done to thyself. We incur guilt by not reproving; it is hating our brother. We should say, I will do him the kindness to tell him of his faults. We are to put off all malice, and to put on brotherly love, ver.
We often wrong ourselves, but we soon forgive ourselves those wrongs, and they do not at all lessen our love to ourselves; in like manner we should love our neighbour.
We must in many cases deny ourselves for the good of our neighbour. They must be grossly ignorant who ask, What harm is there in these things? Just as God wanted the physical nation of Israel to be kept separate from the nations around it, we are to maintain spiritual separation from the sin that surrounds us.
For this reason, Israelites were not to mix wool and linen, nor mix physically with those around them. With this understanding, we can bring the principle to the New Testament and apply it under the New Covenant:. Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?
And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? It is not true that it was a different day. He eat the passover on the day prescribed by the law. On the other hand even the Jews that had played their part in seizing the Lord with a view to His crucifixion, according to Jewish reckoning eat the passover on the very same day. Though it was our next morning, it was their same day. Christ died before that day was over. If we hear the law, all these three facts which were severed by a considerable length of time really happened on one and the same day according to God's method of counting the day.
Similar difficulties have been made about the resurrection, it may just be observed in passing. It is only noticed in order to help the Christian in reading God's word. The truth is that the subject has been confused by the very men who ought to be a help. There are none who have more embroiled the subject than the commentators. It would be hard to name a single one that has rightly used the light of the scriptures on this point.
To me this seems humiliating; for the true solution lies on the surface of scripture both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. What we need is more thorough confidence in the unerring word of God, all of which if read in simple faith will be found to convey nothing but light. Our Lord then died on the due day according to the passover regulations.
So He rose on the first day after the sabbath, when the priest waved the sheaf of corn that had been cast into the ground and died and had sprung up again. Christ was as much the waved sheaf as the paschal lamb. In this case you will observe that, when it was offered, there was a lamb without blemish for a burnt-offering, and a meat-offering of two tenth deals of fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto Jehovah for a sweet savour, with its appropriate drink-offering but nothing more: there was no sin-offering.
Whenever Christ appears in that which is brought before us, there is none required, He Himself in fact being the true sin-offering for others. The sheaf of first-fruits became thus a type of Him who knew no sin. It was Christ risen from the dead, just as the passover pointed to His death. This day becomes the point of departure from which to reckon the morrow after the sabbath; as it is said, "Ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave-offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete: even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days.
Perhaps there is scarce one here present who does not know, by the clear light of the New Testament, that it was Pentecost. The new meat-offering on that day ought to call for few words of explanation, not because it lacks interest, but because we at least, all the children of God, ought to know its bearing well.
It is the beautiful type, not of Christ, but of those that are Christ's, of those called according to that name which was given to Himself, the true sheaf of first-fruits with its burnt-offering and meat-offering and drink-offering.
In it there could be no question of defilement; but in the first-fruits which followed fifty days after, when the new meat-offering was offered, another provision tells its own tale: "Ye shall bring out of your habitation two wave-loaves.
The two wave-loaves may possibly indeed refer to the two houses of Israel, out of which were called such as should be saved, and in an ulterior sense perhaps to Jew and Gentile. At any rate there was no proper sign of that which is so characteristic a feature of the church, namely, the one body of an exalted and heavenly Head.
This could not yet come into view. But the two wave-loaves of two tenth deals were to be brought out of their habitation; they were to be of fine Hour, but expressly baken with leaven a surprising feature when we bear in mind Leviticus ; and the more as they are said also to be the first-fruits unto Jehovah.
What was true of Christ is true also of those that are Christ's. They were first-fruits to Jehovah. But then there was this difference, that as they were baken with leaven to show the evil still existing in the nature of those that compose the Christian body, so there is the need of a sin-offering to put away that evil, and confess withal the sense and the judgment of it before God.
At the same time there is the witness of the communion into which we are brought, founded upon the blessed sacrifice of Christ. This was not the case with what represented Christ. And ye shall proclaim on the self-same day, that it may be an holy convocation unto you: ye shall do no servile work therein: it shall be a statute for ever in all your dwellings throughout your generations.
It is much to be noted that here closes all reckoning of time from the sacrifice of Christ and that new meat-offering which followed it on the day of Pentecost. There is a break. Undoubtedly a quite new set of feasts begins afterwards, and a marked lapse now comes before us. Thus the wisdom of God provided for a mighty work to be founded on the death and resurrection of Christ, setting forth, as far as this could be without revealing the mystery, a place of association with Christ of the nearest kind, though there is the most careful guard against confounding the Christian with Christ.
Whatever may be his union with Him, still there is care to hold up the unsullied purity of Christ. The Christian has Him for his life, as we know; but there is the most distinct confession that his nature needs the sacrifice for sin to meet it.
Then follows, it is true, a little glance at the harvest before the new course. This is brought forward in a remarkably mysterious way. There will be a peculiar testimony of God in the end of the age. The heavenly people will be taken into the garner, but there will be a remnant in the field left who will be really of Himself.
The gleanings are left, as it is said here, for the poor and the stranger. The Lord will maintain His testimony even in the darkest times, and in the most peculiar way. This however is lightly passed over, because it does not belong to the properly economic dealings of God. The recommencement is very significantly set forth by a new beginning in verse "And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, In the seventh month. It is no longer a sheaf waved before Jehovah, but the attention of men is drawn in a most striking manner.
The public dealings of God for the earth now openly begin. Though Jesus was presented to man's responsibility, God knew perfectly that the offer of the kingdom in His person as Messiah would break down through the unbelief of man; and nothing shows more clearly than these types how well it was known all along.
Man never surprises God; nor is there any after-thought on His part. All was known and settled beforehand, while man thoroughly manifests what he is. How the light will burst on Israel when their eyes are opened to it in the day that is coming! How they will beat their breasts in amazement and sorrow for their blindness of unbelief! God will work in their consciences, and they will bow at length to the grace of their glorified Lord. They will sorrow indeed, but it will not be mere unavailing sorrow; it will be holy gracious sorrow, not without shame as far as they are concerned; but none the less will there be the simple enjoyment of the mercy of God toward their souls.
In the seventh month then, and on the first day of it, there is the feast of trumpets. No servile work again is to be done, "but ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto Jehovah. Leviticus But here we have it in sole connection with the earthly people. For the time is now come for man, the Jew, to have his sins covered before God; and therefore, as we are told, "there shall be a day of atonement: it shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire unto Jehovah.
For whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day," etc. Thus we find two great truths to which prominence is given. It is a day when God will bring His people into a real divinely-taught knowledge of the work of expiation for their sins the death of Christ; but for this reason two things are coupled with it: they judge themselves, taking the place of sinners on the day which is the witness of their sins for ever gone.
Sense of grace in redemption, which puts away our sins, is the best, truest, and only trustworthy means of making our sins really felt. When it is not so, it is an abominable abuse of the grace of our God and of the work of Christ. It was never done to make us judge sin lightly, but to enable us to look at sin, and hate sin, as God does not meaning of course according to His depth of holiness, but in our measure on the same principle.
And we can afford to do it, inasmuch as Christ has taken all its consequences upon Himself, and has borne it away from us as a matter of eternal judgment. But there is a second element, besides this moral judgment of self, which is the necessary working of the Spirit of God in every one to whom the atonement of Christ is truly applied.
Man has absolutely no part in the task. None but the Saviour can work for it, and He in suffering for us.
For whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off from among his people. On the fifteenth day of the same month begins the final festival of the Jewish year the feast of tabernacles.
This does not call for any considerable length of remark. It was the shadow of coming glory, but presented in a singular manner, especially in Leviticus. On the first day shall be an holy convocation. Ye shall do no servile work therein. Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord; on the eighth day shall be an holy convocation unto you, and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto Jehovah.
It is a solemn assembly, and ye shall do no servile work therein. Resurrection points to heaven, and can never satisfy itself except in heavenly places; and therefore a link is here intimated with glory on high, whilst there is the fullest possible recognition of a day of rest and blessedness for the earth and the Jewish people.
As we are told here in the latter part of it, they were all to keep this feast with gladness and joy. We understand it now from the New Testament, where all is clearly brought out.
In point of fact the testimony of the New Testament is fullest on that which is but an added circumstance here. In short our proper hope is in the heavens; and accordingly the New Testament makes this the prominent truth, as it was according to the wisdom of God it should be.
But for the earthly people we find the prominent place given to the earthly part of it, although the heavenly part is not forgotten. In Leviticus injunctions and circumstances are introduced in a very peculiar manner. First a command is given to the children of Israel to give "pure oil-olive beaten for the light. Along with this there was to be the keeping up of the witness of Israel after the flesh, though not without Christ and the fragrance of His grace before God.
And thou shalt put pure frankincense upon each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, even an offering made by fire unto Jehovah. Every sabbath he shall set it in order before Jehovah continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant. Thus we have provision that there shall be always a testimony, although there may be an interruption, as we know alas!
Still God will infallibly maintain what is suitable to His own character; and, as we know too, a heavenly testimony is precisely what comes in when the course of the earthly economy has been broken.
Thus, although this might seem to be strangely brought in here, its wisdom, I think, will be apparent to any reflecting mind. The great High Priest keeps up the light during the long night of Israel's history. At the same time we have a contrasted fact: "And the son of an Israelitish woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel: and this son of the Israelitish woman and a man of Israel strove together in the camp;" and in the strife he blasphemed the name [of Jehovah].
This fact, I am persuaded, is purposely preserved along with the former. Israel themselves as a whole have fallen under this dreadful curse. Therefore what might seem to be a singular connection, more particularly after the feasts of Jehovah, exactly suits the situation.
That is, we have the solemn fact that the people, who ought to have been the means of blessing to all others, have themselves passed under the curse, and been guilty, in the most painful form, of blaspheming "the name. We know well how Israel, yielding to thoughts of the world as it is said here, the son of an Israelitish woman whose father was an Egyptian , having fallen thoroughly a prey to carnal wisdom as to the Messiah, were guilty of rejecting God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and of blaspheming the name.
Accordingly they have fallen under the curse, which would be final but for the grace of God, who knows how to meet the most desperate case. But indeed, as far as regards the mass of the nation, that judgment is definitive. It is the remnant that will become a strong nation in the day that is at hand. On the apostates wrath will come to the uttermost. The judgment of this evil doer brings in some necessary distinctions, and the solemn truth of retribution is added as closing the rest of the chapter.
Jew or stranger, the guilty in their midst must alike suffer. In Leviticus another trait is laid down to complete the picture; that is, the regulation of the principle of the sabbath, not merely for the people, but for the land; not only a sabbatical year, but the full jubilee all on the same present principle of a sabbath. The neglect of the sabbath not only in its weekly form, but on a larger scale for the land was indicated of God as a matter of fact in the history of the chosen people.
The truth is that it pervades the Hebrew Scriptures from Genesis to Daniel, in whose prophecy Daniel we have the same principle in another and original shape. And this is the more striking, because there was so thorough a change from the pastoral character of the wandering fathers to the agricultural connection of the feasts when fully celebrated by the sons of Israel in Canaan, after they had been impressed by God in the times of the legislator with a profoundly historical stamp, the shadow of good things to come.
That one mind could be none less than divine. May we be willing to unlearn in order to learn! What is the result in God's hand? Supposing by any iniquity the land passed from those to whom God assigned it, the jubilee was God's principle for preserving His own rights intact. For in truth Israel were but tenants; Jehovah was the landlord.
Jehovah therefore retains the earth in His own possession. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.
A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed. For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession.
The land must revert to the landlord. He was perfectly entitled to it, and surely would maintain His own right for the blessing of His own people.
Such is ever the way of grace. Thus we see that righteousness, so terrible a word to guilty man, when wielded by divine grace becomes the only hope for the ruined. God will maintain them in His mercy, and will use them so for the people in the future day of glory. The law of jubilee is a remarkable instance of the bearing of Jewish ordinances on moral conduct.
Thus a Jew might take advantage of it to exact a price for his land out of proportion to its value, which depended on distance from the fiftieth year. Hence it is written "And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest ought of thy neighbour's hand, ye shall not oppress one another: according to the number of years after the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbour, and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee: according to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee.
Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am Jehovah your God. To the Christian the coming of the Lord is always at hand, and he, if faithful, will measure all according to that standard.
I grant that there is a still deeper and more searching power in keeping Him before us who makes that day to be what it is; but He Himself has marked the danger of saying in our heart "The Lord delayeth his coming. We cannot then but love the appearing of the Lord Jesus when He will bring in deliverance to man and creation from their long and groaning slavery under Satan's power and the blighting effects of the curse. For the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.
We shall be manifested in glory along with Him, and shall enjoy that mighty and blessed change over the face of the universe to the praise of His name and the honour of the God who sent Him, the Second Man. Meanwhile the Jew need not be troubled, any more than the Christian now, like Gentiles who know not God. And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety. And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store.
The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourner with me. And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land. It is of the deepest interest to notice how compassionately God in the rest of the chapter verses Leviticus dwells on all possible vicissitudes of Israel in distress.
There is first the brother waxen poor, who sold away some of his possession verse Leviticus et seqq. May we never forget the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich! Assuredly, if we follow thus in His steps, not only shall we have joy and refreshment in the Lord now, but He will repay in that day.
What a contrast, save in the close, with the jubilee! I shall not of course enter on its details. Suffice it to say that God does not close this searching word of His without the remembrance of His covenant, as it is said, with Jacob, and His covenant with Isaac, and His covenant with Abraham. He speaks here in this unusually emphatic way of His covenant with every one of them; so that even from His mouth, against whom they had so long and deeply sinned, there should be a threefold witness for His mercy in that day.
And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am Jehovah their God. But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am Jehovah. But whatever may be the necessary changes in the government of God because of a people changing alas!
Thus, as it is one of their assumptions that there is no such thing us prophecy they must lower the age of such a chapter as Leviticus to a date that would put the supposed writer the pseudo-Moses on the same level historically with the events he professes to predict.
Such a ready imputation of imposture to the sacred writers is a gauge of their moral condition. People are apt to judge of others by themselves. Do not plant two kinds of seed in the same field. Do not wear clothes made of two kinds of material. Never crossbreed different kinds of animals. Never plant two kinds of crops in your field.
Never wear clothes made from two kinds of material. International Standard Version "Observe my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind; thou shalt not sow thy field with two kinds of seed; neither shall there come upon thee a garment of two kinds of stuff mingled together. Literal Standard Version You keep My statutes.
You do not cause your livestock to mate [with] two kinds; you do not sow your field with two kinds; and a garment of two kinds, mixed material, does not go up on you. NET Bible You must keep my statutes. You must not allow two different kinds of your animals to breed, you must not sow your field with two different kinds of seed, and you must not wear a garment made of two different kinds of fabric.
New Heart English Bible "'You shall keep my statutes. World English Bible "'You shall keep my statutes. Young's Literal Translation My statutes ye do keep: thy cattle thou dost not cause to gender with diverse kinds; thy field thou dost not sow with diverse kinds, and a garment of diverse kinds, shaatnez, doth not go up upon thee.