Numbers29chapter 29

The tenth day is the day of atonement, and afflict your souls is the one fast the law commands. Leviticus 16 gives the ceremony with the two goats and the entry behind the veil, and Numbers gives the burnt offering that goes beside it, the same bullock, ram and seven lambs brought on the first of the month. Verse 11 then asks for a kid of the goats for a sin offering beside the sin offering of atonement, so a sin offering is required on the day the nation's sin is put away. Hebrews 10:1-4 takes up that repetition by name and says the blood of bulls and of goats cannot take away sins.

On the fifteenth day of the seventh month: The feast of tabernacles opens on the fifteenth and runs seven days, and its burnt offering is the largest in the calendar. Thirteen bullocks come on the first day, against the single bullock of the first of the month and the single bullock of the day of atonement. From here the bullocks fall by one each day down to seven on the seventh, while the rams hold at two and the lambs at fourteen every day, so the descent belongs to the bullocks alone. Numbers gives no reason for it.

From the second day the meat and drink offerings stop being itemised and are given as a rule, according to their number, after the manner, which reaches back to the rate fixed at Numbers 15:4-12. Numbers 7 had written twelve identical offerings out in full rather than abbreviate, and this chapter abbreviates because here the quantity changes daily while the rate per animal does not. The wording for the sin offering alternates from verse 22 onward between one kid of the goats and one goat, and the animal itself stays at one on every day of the seven while the burnt offering shrinks.

Leviticus 23:39-43 says what the seven days are for, that Israel dwells in booths so the generations may know he made their fathers dwell in booths when he brought them out of Egypt. Numbers 29 carries none of that and gives the animals, the flour and the oil. The division holds across both chapters of this calendar, which is written for the altar while Leviticus 23 is written for the household, so the booths, the branches and the rejoicing sit there and the count of bullocks sits here.

The seventh day closes at seven bullocks, and the week comes to seventy bullocks, fourteen rams, ninety-eight lambs and seven goats. Adam Clarke counts the seventy and remarks on what the week cost a nation that paid no other tax. The Babylonian Talmud at Sukkah 55b reads the seventy bullocks as offered on behalf of the seventy nations of Genesis 10, which is a reading carried in Jewish tradition and stated nowhere in Scripture.

The eighth day stands outside the seven and carries its own name, a solemn assembly, which Leviticus 23:36 gives it as well. Its offering falls from seven bullocks to one, the same bullock, ram and seven lambs brought on the first of the month and on the day of atonement, so the month ends with the sacrifice that opened it. Albert Barnes reads the whole month as one arc closing where it began. John 7:37 has Jesus crying out on the last day, that great day of the feast, and readers divide over whether that day is the seventh or this eighth one.

Verse 39 keeps the set feasts beside your vows, and your freewill offerings, so the fixed calendar sets a floor and leaves voluntary worship standing on top of it. Verse 40 is the only line of narrative in the calendar, which opened at Numbers 28:1 as a single speech and ends here with Moses telling Israel all of it. The men who hear it are the second generation, numbered in chapter 26 after every man of the first had fallen, and the feasts they receive are feasts to be kept in a land none of them has yet entered.