Numbers 29 - Introduction

XXIX.

(1) And in the seventh month... — This chapter contains an account of the days which were to be observed as religious ordinances in the seventh or Sabbatical month — a month which contained more of those days than any other month in the year.

It is a day of blowing the trumpets unto you. — Literally, of loud or joyful clang. The silver trumpets were blown at every new moon (Numbers 10:10), but the first day of the seventh month was emphatically the day for blowing of trumpets — “a memorial of blowing of trumpets,” which, according to Jewish writers, was continued from sun-rising to sun-setting. (See Leviticus 23:24, and Note.) The word “trumpets” is not expressed either in Leviticus 23:24, or in this place; and in Psalms 81:3, which is used at the Feast of Trumpets in the modern Jewish services, the word used is shophan — a word which is interchanged with keren (the cornet, or ram’s horn) — not hazozerah, the straight silver trumpet mentioned in Numbers 10:2. The word teruah, which is here rendered “blowing the trumpets,” is coupled with shophar in Leviticus 25:9 — “the trumpet of loud clang or joyful sound.” The details of the fire offering prescribed in Leviticus 23:25 are here given.