Nothing Says "Festival" Like Killing Your Livestock
Numbers 29: 12-40
We're still in rerun city. Moses rehashes the particulars of the Festival of Tabernacles. You can read our previous (and no less scintillating) discussion of it here: http://chiphall.blogspot.com/2010/03/table-or-booth-leviticus-23-33-44-five.html
This time through, Moses gives a little more detail (much less scintillating) about the particulars of each day's sacrifice schedule. Each day features a number of bulls, rams, lambs, and a goat to be sacrificed, as well as grain offerings. Each day the burnt offering requires one fewer bull as part of the requirement, but on the eighth day it jumps from seven bulls to only one.
Maybe the message here is that God is saying with each sacrifice, you get a little closer to being ok - a little more sin is wiped away. However at the end of the week, they are still required sacrifice, perhaps expressing the futility in wiping the slate clean. You can't sacrifice enough to undue your sin- your humanity. It takes the sacrifice of Jesus for that.
I'm not really happy with this interpretation as these sacrifices are burnt offerings and not sin offerings- maybe it's just God saying, you're wiping out your livestock- and while I appreciate the gesture- you need to have some left at the end of the week to be able to survive.
Either way- God is concerned with our well-being. And that should be a comforting thought.
Numbers 29: 12-40
We're still in rerun city. Moses rehashes the particulars of the Festival of Tabernacles. You can read our previous (and no less scintillating) discussion of it here: http://chiphall.blogspot.com/2010/03/table-or-booth-leviticus-23-33-44-five.html
This time through, Moses gives a little more detail (much less scintillating) about the particulars of each day's sacrifice schedule. Each day features a number of bulls, rams, lambs, and a goat to be sacrificed, as well as grain offerings. Each day the burnt offering requires one fewer bull as part of the requirement, but on the eighth day it jumps from seven bulls to only one.
Maybe the message here is that God is saying with each sacrifice, you get a little closer to being ok - a little more sin is wiped away. However at the end of the week, they are still required sacrifice, perhaps expressing the futility in wiping the slate clean. You can't sacrifice enough to undue your sin- your humanity. It takes the sacrifice of Jesus for that.
I'm not really happy with this interpretation as these sacrifices are burnt offerings and not sin offerings- maybe it's just God saying, you're wiping out your livestock- and while I appreciate the gesture- you need to have some left at the end of the week to be able to survive.
Either way- God is concerned with our well-being. And that should be a comforting thought.
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