Exodus 23:10-19 - Arthur Peake's Commentary on the Bible

Exodus 23:10-19 E. Calendar and Rules for Worship. This passage may originally have followed Exodus 23-26 in the Covenant Book. It has been expanded, Exodus 23:13 being a conclusion (perhaps displaced from after Exodus 23:19), and Exodus 23:15 b, Exodus 23:17, and Exodus 23:19 copied by a harmonist from Exodus 34:18; Exodus 34:20; Exodus 34:23; Exodus 34:25 J. Every seventh year the land (i.e. probably each owner's, not the whole country at once) was to be fallow, not from a religious or agricultural motive (as Leviticus 25:1-7 *, Leviticus 25:20-22 *), but on charitable grounds (Exodus 23:10 f.). The origin of the custom probably lay in the ancient rights of the village community as distinct from those of its members (p. 102). The weekly Sabbath also is enjoined on social grounds, for the ease and refreshment of cattle, slaves, and foreign hirelings. Field work seems mainly in view. Next are named the three times (Exodus 23:14, lit. feet, i.e. footprints in the sands of time) in the year when each Israelite was to keep a pilgrimage-feast (hag). See on these, pp. 102- 1 04. The spring festival was mazzoth or unleavened cakes, when the barley harvest began in late April or early May, the idea possibly being to ensure the fertility of the seed for the next harvest, and the absence of leaven being due to the stress of work (but cf. Exodus 12:34; Exodus 12:39 J). The completion of wheat harvest in June was to be marked by the harvest festival proper (in E and D, feast of weeks), when the worshipper presented the firstfruits of (his) work on the land (Exodus 23:16 a), the year being crowned by the feast of ingathering in autumn, when threshing was over and the juice pressed out from grapes and olives (Exodus 23:16 b). This was the grand occasion in the year for festivities, lasting seven days, spent by custom in booths (AV tabernacles), whence came a common title for it. Leavened bread must not accompany a sacrifice, being regarded as unsuitable because unknown in primitive times when the only bread was like the dampers of the Australian bush, or because more liable to corruption (Exodus 23:18 a); and the fat, the portion best esteemed, must be consumed while fresh in sweet smoke as an offering. A kid might not be seethed in its mother's milk, but it is not clear for what reason. [The prohibition was hardly inspired by the sentimental desire to keep the feelings delicate and refined; it was aimed presumably at some religious or magical practice. Goat's milk was used as an agricultural charm to produce fertility. But this does not explain this special injunction. Robertson Smith connects it with the taboo on blood as food, and thinks milk may be regarded as a substitute for blood. This hardly explains why the kid is specially selected for mention, nor yet the mother. He supposes, with several scholars, that mother's milk simply means goat's milk. This is very dubious; and if we interpret the term strictly of relationship we get a clearer light as to the meaning. Goat's milk possessing a magical quality, we might infer that a sucking kid would possess the same quality, and this would be intensified if the two were united, especially when the relation was already so close as between the kid and its own dam. We have to do, then, with a charm to which a peculiar magical efficacy was attributed. Probably it was originally a pastoral charm designed to secure the fertility of the flocks. It was natural that it should survive as an agricultural charm when the nomad tribes settled down to till the soil. A. S. P.]