Deuteronomy16chapter 16

Deuteronomy 16:1-2

Observe the month of Abib: Exodus 12:22 told Israel that none should go out of the door of his house until the morning, and Numbers 33:3 dates the departure to the morrow after the passover, while verse 1 here says the LORD brought thee forth out of Egypt by night. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the night as the hour Pharaoh's permission was extorted and the morning as the hour of the march, and both accounts stand in the canon as they are written. Verse 2 then says of the flock and the herd, where Exodus 12:5 required a lamb or a kid out of the flock. Keil and Delitzsch take the wider phrase to cover the festal offerings of the seven days, which verse 3 keeps distinct from the passover itself by the words with it.

Deuteronomy 16:3-4

Unleavened bread is given a name here, the bread of affliction, and a reason, that thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste. The command attached to it is remember, which falls fourteen times in this book and fastens every time on an event rather than a doctrine, and verses 3 and 12 are two of the fourteen. Verse 4 repeats the rule of Exodus 12:10 and Exodus 34:25 that nothing of the flesh remain all night, and Adam Clarke reads the plain taste of the bread as the thing that carried the memory.

Deuteronomy 16:5-7

The place which the LORD shall choose falls fifteen times in this book, all of them between chapters 12 and 26, and four stand in this chapter at verses 2, 6, 7 and 15 without the place ever being named. Exodus 12 kept the passover in the houses with the blood struck on the door posts, and here it may not be killed within any of thy gates at all. Albert Barnes takes that gathering of worship to one sanctuary as the point the whole chapter turns on, and the older commentators hold both accounts by reading Exodus 12 as the ordinance of the night in Egypt and this chapter as its standing form in the land. The Samaritan Pentateuch reads the phrase as a place already chosen and identifies it with Gerizim, which is the root of the question the woman raises at John 4:20.

Deuteronomy 16:8

Exodus 12:15 and Leviticus 23:6 give seven days of unleavened bread and this verse gives six, with a solemn assembly on the seventh. John Gill answers that the text does not say six only, and that the seventh day is counted apart because a day of assembly and rest was laid on it, rather than because the bread changed. The prohibition of work on that seventh day is the same one the sabbath carries.

Deuteronomy 16:9-10

The count begins from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn, which fixes this feast to the state of the harvest rather than to a fixed date. Leviticus 23:15-16 counts the same seven weeks from the sheaf of the wave offering and arrives at fifty days, and the Greek word for fiftieth gives the day the name Pentecost that Acts 2:1 uses. The offering is called a tribute and a freewill offering in one breath, owed as tribute and measured by the giver according as the LORD thy God hath blessed thee, and Gill sets 1 Corinthians 16:2 beside it for the same way of reckoning.

Deuteronomy 16:11-12

Rejoicing is commanded three times in this chapter, at verses 11, 14 and 15, and here it is commanded in company. The list runs to son, daughter, manservant, maidservant, Levite, stranger, fatherless and widow, so the people with no land of their own are named at the feast beside the household that holds some. Verse 12 gives the ground for that in one line, thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, which is the second of this chapter's two calls to remember. Adam Clarke reads the whole festal meal as a thing eaten with friends and shared with the poor rather than consumed by the family that brought it.

Deuteronomy 16:13-15

Leviticus 23:42-43 gives the reason for this feast as the booths, that your generations may know that God made the children of Israel to dwell in booths when he brought them out of Egypt. Deuteronomy names no booths here and dates the feast by the barn and the winepress instead, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine, which is why Exodus 23:16 can call it the feast of ingathering. Verse 15 then makes the blessing the ground of the joy rather than its result, because the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Matthew Henry reads that order as joy resting on a promise as much as on a harvest already gathered.

Deuteronomy 16:16-17

The same three pilgrimages are commanded at Exodus 23:14-17 and again at Exodus 34:23, and here the spring feast is named by its unleavened bread rather than by the passover. What is required of the men is attendance and a gift, and the amount of the gift is left open, since every man shall give as he is able. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown observe that no command was laid on the women, and the narrative has them going up all the same, with Hannah at Shiloh in 1 Samuel 1:7 and the family of Jesus at Jerusalem every year in Luke 2:41.

Deuteronomy 16:18-19

Exodus 18:25 and Deuteronomy 1:15 set rulers over thousands and hundreds in one camp, and this verse plants judges and officers in all thy gates, which puts a court in every town of a people about to be spread over a land. Adam Clarke reads the officers as the men who carried out the sentence and checked the weights and measures in the markets, so the office covers enforcement as well as judgment. Verse 19 names the three ways a court fails, wresting judgment, respecting persons and taking a gift, and it argues the third rather than merely forbidding it, for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise. Cases too hard for a local bench go up to the place which the LORD shall choose under 17:8-13.

Deuteronomy 16:20

The Hebrew doubles a single word here, and John Gill renders it justice, justice, where the King James carries the force of the repetition with altogether just. The verb behind follow is closer to pursue than to keep, so the court is sent after justice rather than told to wait for it to arrive. What hangs on the charge is tenure, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, which ties Israel's hold on the ground to the conduct of its own courts.

Deuteronomy 16:21-22

These two verses turn from the courts back to the altar, and 17:1 carries the same subject on with the rule about a blemished sacrifice. Grove translates asherah, which names a Canaanite goddess and the wooden pole that stood for her, and the King James follows the Septuagint in rendering it by the plantation around the shrine. Image in verse 22 is the standing pillar, which Jamieson, Fausset and Brown give as the sense, and it is the same word used of the stone Jacob set up and anointed at Genesis 28:18 and 35:14. What one patriarch raised as a memorial is here a thing which the LORD thy God hateth, and Clarke reads the ban on both as keeping the worship of God in open sight.