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Leviticus 23: What the Passage Says

152 claims across 44 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Leviticus 23 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Moses to give Israel the list of the LORD's appointed feasts, beginning with the weekly sabbath: Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month, the seven days of unleavened bread, the waving of the first sheaf of the harvest, and the count of fifty days to the offering of new grain, along with the command to leave the corners and gleanings of the field for the poor and the foreigner. In the seventh month come the day of trumpet blasts on the first day, the Day of Atonement on the tenth, and the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles from the fifteenth. Each feast is given with its date, its offerings, and its rules about work and rest, and the people are to live in booths during the last feast so later generations will know that God made Israel live in booths when he brought them out of Egypt. Moses then tells the people of Israel about the feasts of the LORD.

Claim by Claim

  1. 23:1
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to say the following.
  2. 23:2
    • The LORD told Moses to speak to the children of Israel.
    • The LORD told Moses to say to them concerning the appointed feasts of the LORD.
    • The Israelites are to proclaim these feasts as holy convocations.
    • The LORD says these are his appointed feasts.
  3. 23:3
    • Work is to be done for six days.
    • The seventh day is a sabbath of complete rest.
    • The seventh day is a holy convocation.
    • The Israelites are to do no work on the seventh day.
    • It is a sabbath to the LORD in all their dwellings.
  4. 23:4
    • These are the appointed feasts of the LORD.
    • These are holy convocations.
    • The Israelites are to proclaim them at their appointed times.
  5. 23:5
    • The LORD's passover falls on the fourteenth day of the first month.
    • The passover is at twilight.
  6. 23:6
    • The feast of unleavened bread to the LORD falls on the fifteenth day of the same month.
    • The Israelites must eat unleavened bread for seven days.
  7. 23:7
    • On the first day the Israelites are to have a holy convocation.
    • They are to do no laborious work on the first day.
  8. 23:8
    • The Israelites are to offer an offering made by fire to the LORD for seven days.
    • On the seventh day there is a holy convocation.
    • They are to do no laborious work on the seventh day.
  9. 23:9
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to say the following.
  10. 23:10
    • The LORD told Moses to speak to the children of Israel.
    • The Israelites will come into the land the LORD is giving them.
    • The LORD is giving them the land.
    • They will reap the harvest of that land.
    • They are to bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of their harvest to the priest.
  11. 23:11
    • The priest shall wave the sheaf before the LORD.
    • The waving is so that it may be accepted for them.
    • The priest shall wave it on the day after the sabbath.
  12. 23:12
    • On the day they wave the sheaf they shall offer a lamb.
    • The lamb is to be without blemish.
    • The lamb is to be a year old.
    • The lamb is for a burnt offering to the LORD.
  13. 23:13
    • The grain offering with it shall be two tenth parts of fine flour.
    • The fine flour is mixed with oil.
    • It is an offering made by fire to the LORD.
    • It is a pleasing aroma.
    • Its drink offering shall be wine.
    • The drink offering shall be a fourth part of a hin.
  14. 23:14
    • The Israelites shall eat no bread until that very day.
    • They shall eat no roasted grain until that very day.
    • They shall eat no fresh grain until that very day.
    • The day meant is the day they have brought the offering to their God.
    • This is a perpetual statute throughout their generations.
    • This applies in all their dwellings.
  15. 23:15
    • The Israelites are to count from the day after the sabbath.
    • That day is the day they brought the sheaf of the wave offering.
    • Seven complete weeks shall be counted.
  16. 23:16
    • They shall count fifty days up to the day after the seventh sabbath.
    • They shall offer a new grain offering to the LORD.
  17. 23:17
    • They shall bring wave loaves out of their dwellings.
    • There shall be two loaves.
    • The loaves are of two tenth parts.
    • The loaves shall be of fine flour.
    • The loaves shall be baked with leaven.
    • They are firstfruits to the LORD.
  18. 23:18
    • With the bread they shall offer seven lambs without blemish a year old.
    • They shall offer one young bull.
    • They shall offer two rams.
    • These shall be a burnt offering to the LORD.
    • Their grain offerings and drink offerings go with them.
    • It is an offering made by fire of pleasing aroma to the LORD.
  19. 23:19
    • They shall offer one male goat as a sin offering.
    • They shall offer two lambs a year old as a sacrifice of peace offerings.
  20. 23:20
    • The priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits as a wave offering before the LORD.
    • The waving is with the two lambs.
    • They shall be holy to the LORD.
    • They shall belong to the priest.
  21. 23:21
    • The Israelites shall make a proclamation on that same day.
    • That day shall be a holy convocation for them.
    • They shall do no laborious work on it.
    • This is a perpetual statute in all their dwellings throughout their generations.
  22. 23:22
    • When they reap the harvest of their land, they shall not reap the corner of the field completely.
    • They shall not gather the gleaning of their harvest.
    • They shall leave them for the poor.
    • They shall leave them for the resident foreigner.
    • The LORD says he is the LORD their God.
  23. 23:23
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to say the following.
  24. 23:24
    • The LORD told Moses to speak to the children of Israel.
    • On the first day of the seventh month they shall have a day of rest.
    • That day is a memorial of loud blasts.
    • That day is a holy convocation.
  25. 23:25
    • They shall do no laborious work on that day.
    • They shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD.
  26. 23:26
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to say the following.
  27. 23:27
    • The tenth day of this seventh month is the day of atonement.
    • It shall be a holy convocation for them.
    • They shall afflict their souls.
    • They shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD.
  28. 23:28
    • They shall do no work on that same day.
    • The reason is that it is a day of atonement.
    • The day is for making atonement for them before the LORD their God.
  29. 23:29
    • Any person who is not afflicted on that same day shall be cut off from among his people.
  30. 23:30
    • Any person who does any work on that same day will be destroyed by the LORD from among his people.
    • The LORD says he will destroy that person.
  31. 23:31
    • They shall do no work of any kind.
    • This is a perpetual statute throughout their generations.
    • This applies in all their dwellings.
  32. 23:32
    • It shall be a sabbath of complete rest for them.
    • They shall afflict their souls.
    • They shall keep their sabbath from the evening of the ninth day of the month.
    • They shall keep it from evening to evening.
  33. 23:33
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to say the following.
  34. 23:34
    • The LORD told Moses to speak to the children of Israel.
    • The fifteenth day of this seventh month is the feast of booths.
    • The feast lasts seven days.
    • The feast is to the LORD.
  35. 23:35
    • On the first day there shall be a holy convocation.
    • They shall do no laborious work on it.
  36. 23:36
    • For seven days they shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD.
    • On the eighth day they shall have a holy convocation.
    • They shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD on the eighth day.
    • The eighth day is a solemn assembly.
    • They shall do no laborious work on it.
  37. 23:37
    • These are the appointed feasts of the LORD.
    • The Israelites are to proclaim them as holy convocations.
    • Their purpose is to offer an offering made by fire to the LORD.
    • The offerings include a burnt offering and a grain offering.
    • The offerings include a sacrifice and drink offerings.
    • Each thing is to be done on its own day.
  38. 23:38
    • These are in addition to the sabbaths of the LORD.
    • These are in addition to their gifts.
    • These are in addition to all their vows.
    • These are in addition to all their freewill offerings.
    • The gifts, vows, and freewill offerings are what they give to the LORD.
  39. 23:39
    • On the fifteenth day of the seventh month they shall keep a feast to the LORD.
    • This is when they have gathered in the produce of the land.
    • The feast lasts seven days.
    • The first day shall be a day of rest.
    • The eighth day shall be a day of rest.
  40. 23:40
    • On the first day they shall take fruit of goodly trees.
    • They shall take fronds of palm trees.
    • They shall take boughs of leafy trees.
    • They shall take willows of the brook.
    • They shall rejoice before the LORD their God for seven days.
  41. 23:41
    • They shall keep it as a feast to the LORD seven days in the year.
    • This is a perpetual statute throughout their generations.
    • They shall keep the feast in the seventh month.
  42. 23:42
    • They shall dwell in booths for seven days.
    • All the native-born in Israel shall dwell in booths.
  43. 23:43
    • The purpose is that their generations may know something.
    • The LORD made the children of Israel dwell in booths.
    • The LORD did this when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.
    • The LORD says he is the LORD their God.
  44. 23:44
    • Moses declared the appointed feasts of the LORD to the children of Israel.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

23:1
Where the text prints LORD in capital letters it stands for the personal name of God in Hebrew, four letters usually written YHWH. Jewish tradition avoided pronouncing that name aloud and said "Lord" instead, and English translations from the King James onward preserved the custom by printing LORD in capitals.
23:2
"Feasts" here translates a Hebrew word meaning appointed times, fixed dates in the calendar, not banquets, though several involved eating. A "holy gathering" (KJV "holy convocation") was a summons for the people to assemble; the announcement was made publicly so everyone knew the date had arrived.
23:3
The sabbath is the seventh day of the week, from a Hebrew verb meaning to stop or cease. "Wherever you live" marks it out from the other feasts: it needed no sanctuary and no priest, so it was kept in every household rather than at one central place.
23:5
The first month is the spring month later called Nisan (earlier Abib), falling in March or April. Passover takes its English name from the account in Exodus of the night in Egypt when Israelite houses were passed over. The Israelite day ran from sunset to sunset, so "in the evening" is the beginning of the fourteenth day's close and the start of the fifteenth, which is why the seven-day feast in the next verse begins on the fifteenth.
23:6
Bread without yeast is flat and quick to make, since it needs no time to rise. Exodus connects it with leaving Egypt in haste. Yeast was kept going from batch to batch as a lump of old sour dough, so "removing the yeast" meant throwing out that starter and beginning again.
23:7
"Ordinary work" (KJV "servile work") translates a phrase meaning laborious or occupational work, the tasks of one's trade. It is a narrower ban than the total prohibition on "any work" that applies to the weekly sabbath and to the Day of Atonement in verse 28.
23:8
An "offering made by fire" is one burned on the altar rather than eaten. The chapter names the offering type without giving the quantities; those are set out in Numbers 28–29.
23:10
Firstfruits are the earliest part of a crop to ripen, presented before any of the rest is used. The harvest here is barley, the first grain to ripen in spring. A "sheaf" is a bundle of cut stalks, tied together as reapers worked.
23:11
The wave offering was a ritual gesture of presentation, the offering was lifted and moved before the altar to mark it as handed over to God. Which sabbath "the day after the sabbath" means was disputed already in ancient times: some read it as the weekly sabbath falling in the festival week, others as the festival day of verse 7 itself, and the two readings put the count of verse 15 on different dates.
23:12
A burnt offering was burned whole on the altar; none of it was eaten. "With no flaw in it" means physically unblemished, animals with defects were disqualified.
23:13
"Two tenths" means two tenths of an ephah, the standard dry measure; the unit is left unstated in the Hebrew. That is roughly four liters, about seven pints of flour. A hin was a liquid measure of about three and a half liters, so a quarter hin is close to a liter, or a pint and a half. The KJV's "meat offering" means a food offering of grain, in 1611 "meat" meant food in general, not flesh.
23:14
The rule bars eating any of the new crop until the offering has been made. "Roasted grain" is fresh grain parched over a fire, a common field food at harvest time; "fresh grain" is grain eaten straight from the ear.
23:15
"Seven sabbaths" here means seven weeks, each ending on a Sabbath. The count links the spring barley festival to the summer wheat festival fifty days later, so the two are deliberately tied together as a beginning and an end of one harvest season.
23:16
Seven weeks plus a day gives fifty; this festival was known as the Feast of Weeks, and Greek-speaking Jews called it Pentecost, from their word for fiftieth. It falls at the wheat harvest, seven weeks after the barley offering of verse 10.
23:17
Baked with yeast is unusual: grain offerings burned on the altar were normally unleavened (Leviticus 2:11). These loaves were waved and given to the priests to eat rather than burned, and represent ordinary bread as households actually baked it.
23:18
A ram is a full-grown male sheep. A bullock is a young bull. These were valuable animals, not spare ones.
23:19
A sin offering (also translated purification offering) dealt with impurity and unintentional wrongdoing. A peace offering, or fellowship offering, was shared out and eaten, part burned, part to the priests, the rest to the worshipers.
23:20
The priests had no farmland of their own, so fixed portions of the offerings were their livelihood. "Holy to the LORD" marks the food as set apart, which is why only priests could eat it.
23:22
Gleaning: harvesters were to leave the field edges uncut and not go back for stalks they had dropped, so that people with no land could gather food by working the leftovers themselves. "The foreigner living among you" means a resident outsider without tribal land rights. The book of Ruth turns on this practice. The law appears here, in the middle of the harvest festivals, rather than with the other agricultural laws.
23:24
The seventh month is the autumn month later called Tishri, falling in September or October. The trumpet is a ram's horn, sounded in loud blasts. The text does not say what the day is a memorial of. In later Judaism this day became Rosh Hashanah, the new year.
23:27
Atonement is the removal of accumulated impurity and guilt so that the sanctuary and people can remain in God's presence; the full ritual is described in Leviticus 16. "Humble yourselves" translates the KJV's "afflict your souls", a Hebrew phrase for self-denial, understood from early times to mean fasting.
23:29
"Cut off from his people" is a fixed legal formula in these laws. Its exact force is disputed: it may mean expulsion from the community, or death, or the ending of a person's family line, the texts do not spell it out.
23:32
This fixes the reckoning of the day: it begins at sunset, so the fast starting on the evening of the ninth covers the whole of the tenth day.
23:34
"Booths" (KJV "tabernacles") are temporary shelters of branches, of the kind built in fields at harvest time. The festival is known in Hebrew as Sukkot.
23:36
"Solemn assembly" translates a Hebrew word meaning a closing or restraining, a concluding gathering that rounds off the festival. The eighth day stands slightly apart: it follows the seven days rather than belonging to them.
23:37
A drink offering was wine poured out at the altar alongside the animal and grain offerings.
23:38
Gifts, vow offerings and freely given offerings were voluntary, brought when someone chose to, or to fulfill a promise made earlier. The point is that the festival offerings are additional to all of these, not a substitute for them.
23:39
This is the autumn ingathering, when grapes, olives and the late fruit crops were brought in, the end of the agricultural year.
23:40
The Hebrew of the first phrase says "fruit of splendid trees," which the KJV renders as boughs; both branches and fruit have been understood. In later Jewish practice these four kinds became the citron and the bound bundle of palm, myrtle and willow carried during the festival. "Willows from the streambed" are trees growing along a wadi, a watercourse dry for much of the year.
23:42
Living in a booth for a week meant leaving a solid house for a makeshift shelter. "Everyone born an Israelite" is the wording of the command; it does not state what was required of resident foreigners.
23:43
The stated reason is the wilderness period after leaving Egypt, when the people had no permanent houses, so the shelters recall that time, not merely the harvest season in which they were built.

Read Leviticus 23