CRITICAL NOTES.—
Exodus 23:19. Thou shalt not seethe, &c.]—This command, taken in connection with the preceding one, justifies the explanation of ancient commentators that it was given to banish a pagan rite, in the offering up as an harvest thanks-offering of a kid seethed in its mothers milk. With the milk of this oblation the fields, gardens, and orchards were sprinkled, in the belief that favour of the deities for a good harvest in the coming year would be thus secured. This commandment may, however, also imply a prohibition against cruelty and outrage of nature. Rabbinism took occasion to adduce from this commandment injunctions of an extensive culinary kind, according to which every Jew was strictly prohibited, not only from using milk, butter, or cheese with meat, but he is obliged to keep separate sets of kitchen utensils for each of those two classes of food.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Exodus 23:14-19
PILGRIMAGE FEASTS
The three feasts referred to in this passage are—The Feast of the Passover, the Feast of Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles or ingathering; and may be regarded as the pilgrimage feasts. We do not consider them to be of patriarchal origin. They evidently refer not to a pastoral but to an agricultural state of society. The offerings are such as an agricultural people might be expected to present. They are indicative of the fact that the people were not mere keepers of sheep, but tillers of the land. Our religious feasts must be appropriate to our conditions. Our religious offerings must be characteristic of our state, and proportioned to our means. God requires from us only that which we are able to give. Let each give according to that which he has received from the great Giver.
I. Religious feasts are memorials. The feasts of this world very often are made only for empty laughter, and too frequently the laughter is turned into mourning. Many of those who give feasts give them in order to minister to the desire of display, or for the purpose of gaining some advantage. For this reason our blessed Lord tells the givers of feasts to call in the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind. But the feasts appointed to be observed by God are memorials. These three feasts are—
1. Memorials of God’s past dealings. The word Passover indicates the nature of the feast of unleavened bread. It is a memorial, not of the fact that the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea; but of the fact that the destroying angel passed over the abodes of the Israelites. It is a memorial of a wonderful Divine deliverance. Of all the feasts of the Jewish economy, this is the one great feast which has been brought into prominence by the observance of the feast of the Lord’s Supper. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” This great memorial feast of the Jews was typical and prophetical. It pointed onwards through the intervening centuries to the greater feast of the Lord’s Supper. The one feast celebrated the deliverance of the natural Israel, while the other celebrates the deliverance of the spiritual Israel. The one feast has become absorbed and lost in a greater feast; but the other feast will be perpetually celebrated. We shall pass away from drinking the symbolical wine of earth to the glorious privilege of drinking the new wine in our Father’s kingdom. The one feast was local, but the other was intended to be universal. It is a significant fact that the feast of the Lord’s Supper has been so widely observed. Churches that have departed from the faith and lapsed into idolatry have stuck to this Christian ordinance. And we may consider it prophetical of the destined universality of Christ’s kingdom.
2. Memorials of our dependence upon God’s care. While the feast of unleavened bread brings into prominence the lesson that God is a deliverer to His people, the feasts of harvest and of ingathering bring into prominence the lesson that God is a provider and a sustainer. They make impressive, and teach by appropriate symbolism, the utterance of the great singer of the Israelitish Church—“He maketh peace in thy borders, He filleth thee with the finest of the wheat.” They have a manifest tendency to raise the heart in adoring gratitude to “God, who gives rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, and fills our hearts with food and gladness.” Let us never forget that it is God who makes the earth fruitful. While some keep their feasts in honour of “natural causes,” the “uniformity of Nature’s laws,” and a “fortuitous concourse of atoms,” let us keep our feasts to celebrate the goodness of Him who is the first cause of all so-called natural causes, the Giver and Enforcer of Nature’s laws, and the Glorious Designer who causes the atoms to consort together, so as to produce the useful and the beautiful.
3. Memorials of our present condition. Not only and merely in the sense of being dependent creatures, but that while in this world we are but pilgrims. The feast of ingathering was the feast of tabernacles. During this festival, the Jews were to dwell in tents or booths. It was a reminder of their wilderness life. Even in our feasts let there be the chastening thought that here we have no continuing city. Our feasts are but temporary as were the booths in which the Israelites dwelt. The only perpetual feast is that which shall be celebrated in heaven. This earth is not our rest.
II. Religious feasts are not to interfere with the duties of life. The wisdom of Divine arrangements is seen in the appointment of these feasts. The Passover was observed in the month Abib—the month of the ears of corn; the Feast of Pentecost, after the corn had all been safely gathered; and the Feast of Tabernacles, after the vines and fruit-trees had been stripped, so that no feast interfered with those times when work was most pressing. Diligence in business is, or may be, religious worship. God may be honoured by the work of this life. Those are divine who do lowliest acts in a divine spirit. The Jew was religious, not only when he brought the first-fruits of his labours as an offering to God, but when he ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, that he might have first-fruits to place upon God’s altar.
III. Stated religious feasts are helpful to a religious spirit. “Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto Me in the year.” “Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord God.” There are some who object to set times, and say that set times develop mere empty formalism, and that we ought always to be in a religious spirit. The Divine Legislator did not follow this method. And while the gospel sets us free from the trammels of the law, it nevertheless shows the propriety of stated religious observances. And we are “not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together.” The more loyal a man is, the more he will rejoice in stated seasons for the expression of his loyalty. The more spiritual a man is, the more thankful will he be for opportunities of public worship, to break up the course of his earthly life, and to develop his spiritual nature.
IV. Religious feasts must promote the social and benevolent instincts of our nature. All are to appear together before the Lord God. The separateness brought about by daily pursuits is to be broken up. There is to be a commingling of feeling and sentiment. This is an Old Testament provision which is greatly needed in these times. Cold isolation pervades the business, the social, and the religious worlds. We do not appear together before the Lord God. None are to appear empty before the Lord. The grasping spirit of selfishness must not be allowed to move on without being disturbed. The best way to uproot selfishness and to develop benevolence is to give unto God’s cause.
V. The offerings at religious feasts must be—
Exodus 23:1. Pure. No leavened bread is to be eaten. Nothing that savours of corruption. We must seek for purity of motive in our religious feasts. They must be free from heathen luxury, or heathen magical arts. “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.” Arabs boil the flesh of kids in sour milk. A delicacy for the feast. Or to scatter the milk on the field for the production of a good harvest.
2. Of the best. The best of the first-fruits. The best in the Old Testament, and surely the best in the New Testament. Such offerings are productive of prosperity. The very effort to secure a surplus will promote care and develop provident habits. Nothing that is given to God can be lost.—W. Burrows, B.A.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
GOD’S PROVISION FOR HIS PEOPLE’S ENJOYMENT.—Exodus 23:14-16
We remark—
I. That seasons for rejoicing were commanded. Let those who think that the old dispensation was gloomy remember that there was Divine injunction for joy and feasting three times a year.
II. That these seasons for rejoicing were conveniently appointed. Not in winter, but—
1. In spring, Passover.
2. Summer, first-fruits.
3. Autumn, ingathering.
III. That these seasons for rejoicing had a religious basis.
1. The feasts were “unto God.”
2. Were in remembrance of Divine services which made rejoicing possible.
IV. That these seasons for rejoicing were connected with religious acts, Exodus 23:17 to Exodus 19:1. Personal dedication.
2. Sacrifices.
V. That seasons of rejoicing must not engender slovenliness and uncleanness, Exodus 23:18.
VI. That seasons of rejoicing must not be desecrated by unnatural or superstitious ceremonies, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk;” an outrage on nature and connected with witchcraft. In conclusion—
If Judaism was a religion of joy, much more so is Christianity. The latter—i. was inaugurated as “glad tidings of great joy.” ii. Its leading fact and doctrines are grounds of joy (1 John 1:1-4). iii. Its great central and fundamental principle is an occasion of joy (Romans 5:11). iv. The “fruits of the Spirit are joy.” v. It provides an eternity of joy. vi. But remember the joy of the Lord is your strength, and it is only “in the Lord” that we can rejoice evermore (Philippians 4:4).
—J. W. Burn.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WILLIAM ADAMSON
Mosaic Morals! Exodus 23:1-19. A modern jurist, Hennequin, says: “Good right had Moses to challenge the Israelites, what nation hath statutes like yours? a worship so exalted—laws so equitable—a code so complex?” A Frenchman and an infidel, he observes that, compared with all the legislations of antiquity, none so thoroughly embodies the principles of everlasting righteousness. Lycurgus wrote, not for a people, but for an army: It was a barrack which he erected, not a commonwealth. Solon, on the other hand, could not resist the surrounding effeminate influences of Athens. It is in Moses alone that we find a regard for the right, austere and incorruptible; a morality distinct from policy, and rising above regard for times and peoples.
“But what could Moses’ law have done
Had it not been divinely sent?
The power was from the Lord alone,
And Moses but the instrument.”
—Newton.
Festival Functions! Exodus 23:14-17. The Israelites were to be peculiar people. They existed not for themselves, but they had a function to fulfil towards all mankind. In order to fulfil this function, it was needful that they should be for a time a people separate and self-contained, singular in their usages, and sequestered in their dwellings. In order to fix them down to one spot, they had their local worship. It was a law that all the men amongst them should rendezvous at the central shrine three times a year. Thus foreign settlements and distant journeys were made impossible more or less. The Hebrew home must be within a short and easy radius round the Temple; and if he went abroad, he carried this tether, and was pulled back again by the Passover or some other feast.
“Where’er I roam, whatever realms I see,
My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee;
Still to Mount Sion turns with ceaseless strain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.”
—Goldsmith.
Humanity and Heathenism! Exodus 23:19. Various explanations have been given of this precept. It may have been intended, like Leviticus 22:28, to enforce humane feelings towards animals. But probably the forbidden dish was connected with idolatry. Thomson says that the Arabs are fond of it, highly seasoned with onions and spices. The Arabs call it “Lehn immû.” The Jews will not eat it, because they say that it is an unnatural and barbarous dish. It is also a gross and unwholesome dish, calculated to kindle up animal and ferocious passions. It is associated with immoderate feasting, and was connected with idolatrous sacrifices. As the Abyssinians are fond of slicing the shoulders and hips of living animals, and as other civilised and semi-civilised heathen are addicted to boiling and roasting animals alive, there may have been a similar practice extant among them in the time of Moses of shearing the kid, and seething it alive. M‘Cheyne, when in Poland, offered a Jewish boy some bread-and-butter. Though he looked eagerly at it, he laid it aside for some hours, remarking that he had just eaten flesh, and if he had immediately tasted butter, it would have been a violation of Exodus 23:19.
“Verily, they are all thine; freely mayest thou serve thee of them all;
They are thine by gift for thy needs, to be used in all gratitude and kindness.”
—Tupper.