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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ezekiel 45:21 - 45:21
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Sacrifices at the Passover and Feast of Tabernacles
Eze 45:21. In the first (month), on the fourteenth day of the month, ye shall keep the Passover, a feast of a full week; unleavened shall be eaten. Eze 45:22. And the prince shall prepare on that day for himself and for all the people of the land a bullock as a sin-offering. Eze 45:23. And for the seven days of the feast he shall prepare as a burnt-offering for Jehovah seven bullocks and seven rams without blemish daily, the seven days, and as a sin-offering a he-goat daily. Eze 45:24. And as a meat-offering, he shall prepare an ephah for the bullock, and an ephah for the ram, and a hin of oil for the ephah. Eze 45:25. In the seventh (month), on the fifteenth day of the month, at the feast he shall do the same for seven days with regard to the sin-offering, as also the burnt-offering, and the meat-offering, as also the oil. - In the words, “shall the Passover be to you,” there lies the thought that the Passover is to be celebrated in the manner appointed in Ex 12, with the paschal meal in the evening of the 14th Abib. - There is considerable difficulty connected with the following words, חַג שְׁבֻעֹות יָמִים, which all the older translators have rendered “a feast of seven days.” שָׁבֻעֹות ”.syad neves fo signifies periods of seven days or weeks. A feast of heptads of days, or weeks of days, cannot possibly mean a feast which lasted only seven days, or a week. חַג שָׁבֻעֹות is used elsewhere for the feast of weeks (Exo 34:22; Deu 16:10), because they were to reckon seven weeks from the second day of the Passover, the day of the sheaf of first-fruits, and then to keep the feast of the loaves of first-fruits, or the feast of harvest (Deu 16:9). Kliefoth retains this well-established meaning of the words in this passage also, and give the following explanation: If the words חַג stood alone without יָמִים, it would mean that in future the Passover was to be kept like the feast of seven weeks, as the feast of the loaves of first-fruits. But the addition of יָמִים, which is to be taken in the same sense as in Dan 10:2-3; Gen 29:14, etc., gives this turn to the thought, that in future the Passover is to be kept as a feast of seven weeks long, “a feast lasting seven weeks.” According to this explanation, the meaning of the regulation is, “that in future not only the seven days of sweet loaves, but the whole of the seven weeks intervening between the feast of the wave-sheaf and the feast of the wave-loaves, was to be kept as a Passover, that the whole of the quinquagesima should be one Easter חָג, and the feast of weeks be one with the Passover.” To this there is appended the further regulation, that unleavened bread is to be eaten, not merely for the seven days therefore, but for the whole of the seven weeks, till the feast of the loaves of first-fruits. This explanation is a very sagacious one, and answers to the Christian view of the Easter-tide. But it is open to objections which render it untenable. In the first place, that יָמִים, when used in the sense of lasting for days, is not usually connected with the preceding noun in the construct state, but is attached as an adverbial accusative; compare שְׁלֹשָׁה in Dan 10:2-3, and שְׁנָתַיִם יָמִים in Gen 41:1; Jer 28:3, Jer 28:11, etc. But a still more important objection is the circumstance that the words שִׁבְעַת יְמֵי הֶחָג in Eze 45:23 unquestionably point back to חַג שְׁבֻעֹות יָמִים, as there is no other way in which the article in הֶחָג ni elcitra eht h can be explained, just as בַּיֹּום הַהוּא in Eze 45:22 points back to the fourteenth day mentioned in Eze 45:21 as the time of the pesach feast. It follows from this, however, that שְׁבֻעֹות יָמִים can only signify a seven days' feast. It is true that the plural שְׁבֻעֹות appears irreconcilable with this; for Kimchi's opinion, that שְׁבֻעֹות is a singular, written with Cholem instead of Patach, is purely a result of perplexity, and the explanation given by Gussetius, that Ezekiel speaks in the plural of weeks, because the reference is “to the institution of the Passover as an annual festival to be celebrated many times in the series of times and ages,” is no better. The plural שְׁבֻעֹות must rather be taken as a plural of genus, as in עָרֵי, Gen 13:12 and Jdg 12:7; בָּהֵן, Gen 19:29; or בָּנִים, Gen 21:7; Isa 37:3; so that Ezekiel speaks indefinitely of heptads of days, because he assumes that the fact is well known that the feast only lasted one heptad of days, as he expressly states in Eze 45:23. If this explanation of the plural does not commend itself, we must take שְׁבֻעֹות as a copyist's error for שְׁבֻעַת, feast of a heptad of days, i.e., a feast lasting a full week, and attribute the origin of this copyist's error to the fact that חַג שְׁבֻעַת naturally suggested the thought of חַג שָׁבֻעֹות, feast of weeks, or Pentecost, not merely because the feast of Pentecost is always mentioned in the Pentateuch along with the feasts of Passover and tabernacles, but also because the only singular form of שָׁבֻעֹות that we meet with elsewhere is שָׁבוּעַ (Dan 9:27), or in the construct state שְׁבֻעַ (Gen 29:27), not שְׁבֻעָה and שְׁבֻעַת.
The word הַפֶּסַח is used here as in Deu 16:1-2, so that it includes the seven days' feast of unleavened bread. The Niphal יֵאָכֵל is construed with the accusative in the olden style: mazzoth shall men eat. - In Eze 45:22 and Eze 45:23 there follow the regulations concerning the sacrifices of this festival, and first of all concerning the sin-offering to be presented on the fourteenth day, on the evening of which the paschal lamb was slaughtered and the paschal meal was held (Eze 45:22). The Mosaic legislation makes no allusion to this, but simply speaks of festal sacrifices for the seven days of mazzoth, the 15th to the 21st Abib (Lev 23:5-8; Num 28:16-25), with regard to which fresh regulations are also given here. The Mosaic law prescribes for each of these seven days as burnt-offerings two bullocks, a ram, and seven yearling lambs, as a meat-offering; three-tenths of an ephah of meal mixed with oil for each bullock, two-tenths for the ram, and one-tenth for each lamb, and a he-goat for the sin-offering (Num 28:19-22). The new law for the feasts, on the other hand, also requires, it is true, only one he-goat daily for a sin-offering on the seven feast days, but for the daily burnt-offerings seven bullocks and seven rams reach; and for the meat-offering, an ephah of meal and a hin of oil for every bullock, and for every ram. In the new thorah, therefore, the burnt-offerings and meat-offerings are much richer and more copious, and the latter in far greater measure than the former. - Eze 45:25. The same number of sacrifices is to be offered throughout the feast of seven days falling upon the fifteenth day of the seventh month. This feast is the feast of tabernacles, but the name is not mentioned, doubtless because the practice of living in tabernacles (booths) would be dropped in the time to come. And even with regard to the sacrifices of this feast, the new thorah differs greatly from the old. According to the Mosaic law, there were to be offered, in addition to the daily sin-offering of a he-goat, seventy bullocks in all as burnt-offerings for the seven days; and these were to be so distributed that on the first day thirteen were to be offered, and the number was to be reduced by one on each of the following days, so that there would be only seven bullocks upon the seventh day; moreover, every day two rams and fourteen yearling lambs were to be offered, together with the requisite quantity of meal and oil for a meat-offering according to the number of the animals (Num 29:12-34). According to Ezekiel, on the other hand, the quantity of provision made for the sacrifices remained the same as that appointed for the feast of Passover; so that the whole cost of the burnt-offerings and meat-offerings did not reach the amount required by the Mosaic law. In addition to all this, there was an eighth day observed as a closing festival in the Mosaic feast of tabernacles, with special sacrifices; and this also is wanting in Ezekiel. - But the following is still more important than the points of difference just mentioned: Ezekiel only mentions the two yearly feats of seven days in the first and seventh months, and omits not only the Pentecost, or feast of weeks, but also the day of trumpets, on the first of the seventh month, and the day of atonement on the tenth; from which we must infer that the Israeli of the future would keep only the two first named of all the yearly feasts. The correctness of this conclusion is placed beyond the reach of doubt by the fact that he practically transfers the feasts of the day of trumpets and of the day of atonement, which were preparatory to the feast of tabernacles, to the first month, by the appointment of special sin-offerings for the first and seventh days of that month (Eze 45:18-20), and of a sin-offering on the day of the paschal meal (Eze 45:22). This essentially transforms the idea which lies at the foundation of the cycle of Mosaic feasts, as we intend subsequently to show, when discussing the meaning and significance of the whole picture of the new kingdom of God, as shown in Ezekiel 40-48.