Numbers 29

This festival takes place in September or October. Many Jewish people today still observe the festival. They call it Rosh Hashanah, which means “head of the year.” It’s the Jewish New Year, a sacred two-day event. See Leviticus 23:23-25.

A “burnt offering” is the most common of the sacrifices. It’s one that consumes the entire animal and pays the price for sin, atoning for sin, and getting people back on good terms with God. Laws related to the burnt offering are in Leviticus 1.

Grain offerings were an expression of gratitude for a harvest and for the way God takes care of the Israelites. People offered the grain in several ways: ground to fine flour, presented as baked, fried, cooked, or roasted with olive oil.

Six dry quarts of flour is about 6.6 dry liters, which would be about an eight-pound bag of flour (3.6 kg).

A sin offering refers to something the people of Israel brought to God after they realized they had accidentally broken one of God’s laws earlier. Some scholars say a better translation is the opposite of “sin” because the sacrifice is intended to “un-sin” people, to purify them. So those scholars call it a “purification offering.”

September or October, Israelites followed a calendar based on the movement of the moon instead of the sun, which we follow. The Day of Atonement, known today in Hebrew as Yom Kippur, is the most solemn day on the Jewish calendar. In Bible times, the high priest appealed for the forgiveness of sins that the people of the nation had committed in the past year. Jews today typically fast all day, attend synagogue services, read Scripture and pray.

“Humble reflection and fasting” is one word in the original Hebrew language: ʽānâ. It’s a word that depends a lot on the context of the words around it. That’s because writers used it in many contexts with lots of different meanings: humble, self-denial as in fasting all day, humiliated, mistreated, dishonored. In the context of atoning for sin in the presence of God, fasting might seem most appropriate because that’s what people of faith often do when they’re afraid of what’s coming, or when they ask for forgiveness for a big sin.

Known as Festival of Shelters or Festival of Booths or Festival of Tabernacles, or Succoth, the Hebrew word for “shelters.” Once a year, when observing this festival, Israelites were to build temporary living quarters to commemorate the exodus out of Egypt, when Israelites lived in tents and similar shelters. See Leviticus 23:33-44.