2. Feasts of the Lord. The annual “set feasts” (Num. 29:39) are six in number: (1) the Passover (Num. 28:16); (2) the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Num. 28:17); (3) the “feast of harvest,” the “feast of weeks” (first fruits), or Pentecost (Ex. 23:16; 34:22; Num. 28:26; Acts 2:1); (4) the Feast of Trumpets (Num. 29:1); (5) the Day of Atonement (Num. 29:7); (6) the “feast of ingathering,” the “feast of tabernacles” (Ex. 23:16; Lev. 23:34; Num. 29:12).
With these six feasts are seven days of “holy convocation”; the first and last days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Num. 28:18, 25); the day of first fruits (Num. 28:26); the Feast of Trumpets (Num. 29:1); the Day of Atonement (Num. 29:7); the first and last days of the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev. 23:35, 36).
The word translated “feast” in this chapter is from one or the other of two Hebrew words: (1) Mo‘ed, an appointed meeting (used, for example, in Lev. 23:2, 4, 37; Num. 29:39). (2) Chag, a festival (used, for example, in Lev. 23:6, 34, 39, 41; Num. 28:17; 29:12). The two words are sometimes used interchangeably, though mo‘ed stresses the time of the feast, “set feasts” (Num. 29:39); chag, the character of the feast. Chag is derived from a verb that has, as one of its possible meanings, “to make a pilgrimage,” “to take a journey to an object of reverence.” The related Arabic word haj describes the sacred Moslem pilgrimage to Mecca. In the listing of the annual “set feasts,” chag, significantly, is used only of three, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of First Fruits, and the Feast of Tabernacles. “Three times shalt thou keep a feast [chag] unto me in the year” (Ex. 23:14). To celebrate these three feasts all males were to “appear before the Lord in the place which he shall choose” (Deut. 16:16). They were to “make a pilgrimage.”
There is therefore no contradiction between the statement in Exodus, that the Israelites were to “keep a feast” “three times” “in the year” (Ex. 23:14), and the listing, in Leviticus, of six annual feasts (see also Num. 28, 29). Each of these six feasts is described as a mo‘ed, but three of them are also designated chag. In other words, there were six mo‘ed but only three chag. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia describes these three as “pilgrimage festivals.”
Though the Passover may be properly listed as a separate “appointed meeting,” a mo‘ed, it may also be considered a part of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The Passover lamb was slain on the 14th of the first month and eaten that night, in the beginning of the 15th, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The Passoverand the Feast of Unleavened Bread were really two parts of one whole, and in some instances were thus considered (see Exe. 45:21). In view of this we might speak of five, rather than six, annual feasts.