The Seven Feasts of Jehovah: Jewish Calendar

Feast Cycle and Calendar arrangement

Some notes on the characteristics of the Hebrew Calendar

The Jewish calendar is confusing because it initially followed the seasons and phases of the moon. Hence their names were just descriptions of what was happening  eg “Abib” meaning sprouting (corn), the first month, “Bul” meaning rain the 8th month. In Exodus 12:2 God demanded that the month of the Passover become the first month of the new year and was called Abib meaning “ear of corn” but after the captivity was called Nisan meaning ”beginning” e.g. Nehemiah 2:1. However, a glance at the Jewish calendar shows that new year (Rosh Hashanah) is celebrated in September or October in the month of Tishri. This is because there are two systems – one religious and one civil. This discord probably occurred after the exile. The beginning of each month was determined by the new moon and to account for the uneven number of lunar months in a year certain leap months were added periodically. This added further confusion, due to the complex rules applied to “leap months”.

Seven

The number seven is symbolic from the very first chapter of the bible and continues from the creation through to the judgements of God found in Revelation. Essentially it means completeness. Seven dominates our lives and dominated the lives of the Hebrews not only in their week, but also the Feasts that broke up the seasons. We see the Sabbath as being the seventh of the week, Pentecost is seven weeks after the beginning of the ceremonial year. The seventh month is the most sacred month celebrated by the Feast of Trumpets followed by the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles. Every seventh year is a Sabbath year, and the year of Jubilee year was seven lots of seven years (which apparently was never celebrated – see Daniel).

Cycles

The year was divided into two cycles, defined by the Feasts: Passover to Pentecost, Pentecost to The Tabernacles, with three annual visits to the temple (Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles). They needed to be present to offer a sacrifice and without being present the sacrifice could not be offered. However, since it was impossible for everybody to attend (except perhaps in the wilderness where the encampment was around the tabernacle) 24 ‘courses’ of men were set-up who represented Israel (1 Chronicles 23 etc).

Lunar years

The Hebrew calendar worked in lunar months, which if not corrected would have led to the month of Nisan not falling in Spring. Hence leap-months were introduced and from time to time, according to a set of practices, a thirteenth month (Ver-Adar) was inserted after the twelfth month and before the first. The practice ensured a Sabbatical year was never a leap year.

New Moons

The phenomena from which the days were counted was the appearance of the new moon. This allowed for the creation of a system to observe and declare the presence of a new moon, along with a communication system to ensure all, especially those in Jerusalem, learnt of it.