Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
Three Times in the Year
Deuteronomy 16:9-17
9 You shall count for yourselves seven weeks. From the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain you shall begin to count seven weeks. · WEB
Two harvest feasts are commanded, and both guest lists put the landless beside the household that owns the harvest.
The second feast is dated by the work rather than the calendar. Seven weeks are counted from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain Deuteronomy 16:9. Every farmer starts his own count, and the date moves with the season.
The offering matches the same principle. It is a free will offering of your hand, which you shall give according to how Yahweh your God blesses you Deuteronomy 16:10. No fixed sum. A man measures his gift by his harvest, which means the rich give more without the poor being shamed.
Then the guest list, and it is given twice, once for each feast, in almost identical words. Son, daughter, male servant, female servant, the Levite who is within your gates, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow Deuteronomy 16:11 Deuteronomy 16:14.
The last four are the four who own no land. At a festival celebrating a harvest, the people who had no harvest are named in the command, and the household that reaped is not permitted to celebrate without them. The instruction is not to give them something afterward. It is to have them at the table.
And the reason is the one this book always gives: you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt Deuteronomy 16:12.
The third feast comes after everything is gathered in — from your threshing floor and from your wine press Deuteronomy 16:13 — when the year's work is finished and the result is known. The promise attached is generous and the wording is worth keeping: you shall be altogether joyful Deuteronomy 16:15.
That is a command to rejoice, issued to people who will be tired.
The summary requires three journeys a year to the chosen place Deuteronomy 16:16, with one condition: they shall not appear before Yahweh empty. And the measure is stated so that nobody is excluded by it — every man shall give as he is able Deuteronomy 16:17.
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