And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles,
At the end of every seven years ... thou shalt read this law. At the return of the Sabbatic year, and during the feast of tabernacles, the law was to be publicly read. This order of Moses was a future and prospective arrangement; for the observance of the Sabbatic year did not commence until the conquest and peaceful occupation of Canaan.
Some think that this order for the public rehearsal of the law was addressed to the priests, particularly the high priest, and the prevailing opinion is, that the office was performed by them; while others maintain that it was on the temporal rulers the duty devolved (2 Kings 23:2; Nehemiah 8:1). The passage seems to bear that both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities were taken bound to see the injunction duly attended to.
This ordinance, for the solemn septennial reading of the law in the audience of all the people, was subservient to several important purposes. For, while the people had opportunities of being instructed in it every Sabbath, and daily in their own homes, this public periodical rehearsal at meetings in the courts of the sanctuary, where women and children of twelve years were present, as they usually were at the great festivals, was calculated to produce good and pious impressions of divine truth amid the sacred associations of the time and place; besides, it formed a public guarantee for the preservation, integrity, and faithful transmission of the sacred book to successive ages.
'Among the various wise reasons for choosing this period of seven years, one most principal one appears to be its being the year of release, when the general abolition of debts and discharge from personal slavery periodically took place; circumstances which would necessarily secure constant attendance to this solemnity, and contribute to ensure the observance of this command. Thus closely were the religious and civil parts of the Mosaic code connected' (Graves' 'Lectures on the Pentateuch,' 2:, p. 20).