NOTES for Num 28:1-31

The Book of Numbers often mentions the same sacrifices discussed in Leviticus. So it is in today's passage: it mentions Passover, the first day of the month, and the Sabbath. On the Sabbath day and on the first day of the month, sacrifices were to be offered, and at Passover there were to be two: at the beginning of the festival week and at its end.

The mention of these three feasts may seem strange at first glance. Passover is one of the four great feasts of the year, alongside Shavuot, Sukkot, and Yom Kippur in scale and significance. The Sabbath is a weekly feast prescribed by the Decalogue, a day of rest, a day spent with God, in God's presence. As for the first day of the lunar month, it was a somewhat less significant feast compared with those listed, but still important enough: it sanctified the coming month, just as Passover sanctified the coming year and the Sabbath the coming week.

So the logic of mentioning these three feasts becomes clear: this is about sanctifying the week, the lunar month, and the year as a whole, the segments of time on which the ancient Jewish calendar was based, like the calendars of all the neighboring peoples. One could say that the Jews adopted the custom of sanctifying the week, month, and year precisely from their neighbors, since the cycle of feasts and the calendar that we find in the Pentateuch appeared among the Jews only after the conquest of Palestine and the transition to settled life, when they became familiar with the culture and way of life of their neighbors.

In antiquity, the main cosmic cycles and rhythms were considered sacred in themselves, and the worship of the cosmos with its rhythm and harmony was one variety of paganism. It may seem that Yahwism simply borrows this tradition, sanctifying what people had been accustomed to sanctify in the names of pagan gods. In reality, however, everything is deeper than it appears.

The cosmos truly was created by God, and its harmony is only a reflection of God's wisdom. God does not abandon the world He created. He is present in it; the change of weeks, months, and years takes place with His participation, not by itself, in automatic mode, as it may seem at first glance. This conscious invitation of God into the cosmos, this call for Him to enter the cosmic cycle and make it the place of His presence, is what the practice of sanctifying the year, month, and week reflects.