Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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feasts. Some read it, These are my assemblies, but that is co-incident with convocations. I would rather read it, These are my solemnities; so the word here used is translated (Isa 33:20), where Zion is called the city of our solemnities: and, reading it so here, the day of atonement was as great a solemnity as any of them.
2. They are the feasts of the Lord (my feasts), observed to the honour of his name, and in obedience to his command.
3. They were proclaimed; for they were not to be observed by the priests only that attended the sanctuary, but by all the people. And this proclamation was the joyful sound concerning which we read, Blessed are the people that know it, Ps 89:15.
4. They were to be sanctified and solemnized with holy convocations, that the services of these feasts might appear the more honourable and august, and the people the more unanimous in the performance of them; it was for the honour of God and his institutions, which sought not corners and the purity of which would be best preserved by the public administration of them; it was also for the edification of the people in love that the feasts were to be observed as holy convocations.
A repetition of the law of the sabbath in the first place. Though the annual feasts were made more remarkable by the general attendance at the sanctuary, yet these must not eclipse the brightness of the sabbath, Le 23:3. They are here told,
1. That on that day they must withdraw themselves from all the affairs and business of the world. It is a sabbath of rest, typifying our spiritual rest from sin, and in God: You shall do no work therein. On other holy days they were forbidden to do any servile work (Le 23:7), but on the sabbath, and the