34. The fifteenth day of this seventh month. It is shewn in the end of the chapter why God instituted the Feast of Tabernacles, viz, that the children of Israel might remember that they dwelt in tents in the desert, when they had no certain dwelling-place, but, as it were, passed a wandering life. The Passover shewed how they were marvellously rescued from immediate death by the hand of God; but by this other day God magnified the continuous and daily flow of His grace; for it would not have been enough to acknowledge His power in their actual departure, and to give Him thanks for their momentary deliverance, unless they reflected altogether on the progress of their perfect deliverance, which they had experienced during forty years. In allusion to this the Prophet Zechariah, when he is speaking of the second redemption, enjoins upon all the nations which should be converted to God’s worship, that they should go up every year to celebrate this day. (Zechariah 14:16.) And why this rather than the other festivals? because their return from Babylon by a long and difficult journey, endangered by the violent assaults of enemies, would be equally memorable with the passage of the people from Egypt into the Promised Land. Hence we gather that, though the ceremony is now abolished, yet its use still exists in spirit and in truth, in order that the incomparable power and mercy of God should be constantly kept before our eyes, when He has delivered us from darkness and from the deep abyss of death, and has translated us into the heavenly life. But it behooved that the ancient people in their ignorance should be thus exercised, that all from youth to old age, going forth from their homes, should be brought, as it were, into the actual circumstances, and in that spectacle should perceive what would have else never sufficiently penetrated their minds; whilst at the same time they were instructed for the time to come, that even in the land of Canaan they were to be sojourners, since this is the condition prescribed to all the pious, and children of God, that they should be strangers on earth, if they desire to be inheritors of heaven. Especially, however, God would stir them up to gratitude, that they might more highly estimate their quiet occupation of the Promised Land, and the comfort of their houses, when they recollected that they were brought hither by His hand out of the desert, and from the most wretched destitution of all things.