Three times every year a journey was to be made, and not empty handed, to the place, once more mentioned, where the Lord their God set His Name. These occasions were the passover (verses 1-8); the feast of weeks, or pentecost, (verses 9-12), the feast of tabernacles, (verses 13-15). In two other passages of Scripture these and other services of God appear. (Leviticus 23; and Numbers, chapters 28-29.
The passover was at the beginning of the year, the constant reminder of redemption, —God’s foundation act for His people, —and in the place which He should choose to place His Name there (verses 2, 6 and 7), the redeemed ones were to be found, celebrating the great deliverance He had made for them, having put away sin from their dwellings. It was truly a time of remembrance, looking back to the day when they came forth out of the land of Egypt. So the Christian is enjoined, in the touching words of his Lord, “This do in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24-25), to recall the vastly greater work of Christ in the one offering of Himself on the cross of Calvary.
When seven weeks had passed after the beginning of the harvest, the feast of weeks brought all the males, as representing the hosts of Israel, in case all the family could not come, again to the place which the Lord their God had chosen to place His name there. It was now a free will offering, as He had blessed them (verse 10), and all are seen there, —the heads of the families, their sons and daughters and their servants, the Levites too, and the, stranger, the fatherless and the widow were to be brought there to the place of God’s appointment. This is a forecast of the beginning of Christianity on the principle of redemption and a new covenant.
Lastly, after the gathering in of the grain and the grapes, the people are to meet again in the appointed place, now to celebrate the full joy of God’s grace to Israel in the land.
This in its true meaning has not come to pass yet, for there must be first, God’s gathering in of His own (the grain), before the storm of judgment breaks, and treading down His enemies in the wine-press (Revelation 14:14-20; Isaiah 63:1-6), and these events cannot take place before the close of the present day of grace.
Where, we may ask, in the language of 1 Peter 4:18, shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Trusting in themselves, and indifferent to God, they will be eternally lost.
O, dear children, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” 2 Cor. 6:2.
We here open the third section of the book; we have been studying the things that belonged to the religious life of Israel, and now begin upon the ordinary affairs of the people.
Judges and officers were to be provided in plenty, to deal justly in every matter that came up. No groves of trees might be planted near the altar of God, nor might a statue or image be set up, because both of these things led to idolatry. They were thus to avoid the appearance of evil such as marked the nations around. Sacrifices to God could not include any blemished animals. (See Malachi 1). The idolater should be put to death. Two or three witnesses were needed, —the word of one person not being sufficient.
When there were disagreements too. difficult to settle, they were to take them to God—to the place which the Lord their God should choose, there to inquire, and they who abode in His presence, would show what was of Him in the matter. He who refused that judgment should die; he presumed against God. There was no thought here of going to law before the world (1 Cor. 6:1-9), for everything was settled within the assembly of God. Surely it should be no different today!
The last section of the chapter relates to the choosing of a king to rule over the people. God knew they would want a king and here tells them what he must be, and what he must not be. Perhaps it is enough to say here. that all that he should not do, as we here learn, Solomon did; and that which he should do, told here, Solomon failed in, and he was the greatest king in point of splendor of his court, and the works he did, and in wisdom, of all the kings of Israel and Judah.
Man always fails in that which God trusts to him. God is the alone one in whom we can fully trust. Has He your trust, reader, for eternity?
“Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.” Romans 4:7.
This begins a new subject; the last part of the sixteenth chapter should be read with the seventeenth.
There are those who think people are all naturally good; God evidently did not consider this to be true, for judges and officers had to be appointed in all the cities of the country; and they needed to be told to judge rightly too. What a reader of men’s hearts He is, as we may see from verse 19: “Thou shalt not wrest judgment” (turn away from the right, or force a wrong judgment); “thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift.” There is no respect of persons with God, (Romans 2:11; Ephesians 6:9; and Colossians 3:25), but it has ever been found among men (1 Samuel 8:1-3; Luke 18:2-6; James 2).
There was great danger of idol-worship coming in; the nations of the world in general worshiped idols, and the ways of the world very easily become the Christian’s ways. Accordingly, no groves of trees might be planted near the altar of the Lord their God. These groves were not simple rows of trees; they are thought by some to have been not trees at all, but images or pillars, or were stems of trees set in the ground. They were places for idolatry and other wrong things.