The Reading of the Law

Notes

1. The marginal reading of this verse in the Revised Version is as follows: "And they read in the book, in the law of God, with an interpretation; and they gave the sense, and caused them to understand." Owing to a difference in language it was necessary that some one should interpret the reading to the people so that they might understand it. This verse has no special reference to the excellence of the reading in the ordinary sense.

2. "The Feast of Tabernacles was not only commemorative, but typical. It not only pointed back to the wilderness sojourn, but as the feast of harvest, it celebrated the ingathering of the fruits of the earth, and pointed forward to the great day of final ingathering, when the Lord of the harvest shall send forth His reapers to gather the tares together in bundles for the fire, and to gather the wheat into His garner. . . . The people of Israel praised God at the Feast of Tabernacles, as they called to mind His mercy in their deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, and His tender care for them during their pilgrim life in the wilderness. They rejoiced also in the consciousness of pardon and acceptance, through the service of the day of atonement, just ended. But when the ransomed of the Lord shall have been safely gathered into the heavenly Canaan,—forever delivered from the bondage of the curse, under which 'the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now,'—they will rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Christ's great work of atonement for men will then have been completed, and their sins will have been forever blotted out."—"Patriarchs and Prophets," pages 541, 542.

"Well would it be for the people of God at the present time to have a Feast of Tabernacles—a joyous commemoration of the blessings of God to them. As the children of Israel celebrated the deliverance that God had wrought for their fathers, and His miraculous preservation of them during their journeyings from Egypt, so should we gratefully call to mind the various ways He has devised for bringing us out from the world, and from the darkness of error, into the precious light of His grace and truth."---"Patriarchs and Prophets," pages 540, 541.