Laws about the Sabbath and Festivals (Exodus 23:10-19)

10 “For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, 11 but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat. You shall do likewise with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard. [Israelite cultivation must include a regular pattern of noncultivation. It is an ecological-humanitarian provision, not for increasing productivity. Did cultivation just stop every seven years?]

12 “Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman, and the alien, may be refreshed. [Not only is the Sabbath a covenant sign but also beneficial to people and animals who work.]

13 “Pay attention to all that I have said to you, and make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips. [God alone is to be worshiped. Calling on other gods by name is essentially worship and obedience.]

14 “Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me. 15 You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread [Passover]. As I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time [when?] in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed [as a food offering is required, dedicated to God and, by implication, partly eaten by the worshipers in his presence]. 16 You shall keep the Feast of Harvest [Feast of Weeks/Pentecost—50 days after Passover], of the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the Feast of Ingathering [Feast of Tabernacles/Booths or Succoth, which followed the Day of Atonement by five days] at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor. 17 Three times in the year shall all your males [heads of families] appear before the Lord God. [Biblical worship is always corporate. Yes, individuals can worship alone, but God repeatedly declares that people come together for worship. All three feasts occur during “downtime” agriculturally. No one could have the excuse that his job prevented him from worship and worship was thus always associated with a time of joy with fulfilment of cultivating the land and reaping its benefits. The full explanation of how offerings are to be given to God comes in Leviticus.]

18 “You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the fat of my feast remain until the morning [mirrors the rule against the preservation of manna]. [People understood life to be in the blood of an animal, seeing it die as blood ran out of it. Pagans would drink this blood to increase their longevity, transferring the life of the animal to themselves. Because blood was so unpalatable, they often mixed it into various breads. Of note, Jesus allowed the drinking of blood symbolically in the observance of the Lord’s Supper combined with bread, although it was unleavened bread. The Eucharist is a purer symbol of the transfer of life from the sacrificial lamb (Jesus) to the worshiper than any sacrifice in the Old Covenant could be, in which the lamb’s death was understood as a substitute for that of the worshiper, without the aspect of transfer of life.]

19 “The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. [One had to bring in the whole of a live lamb for sacrifice, and this law reminds people not to leave the best of produce behind, which would be relatively easy to do.]

“You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. [Canaanite fertility religion had a folk theory that the mother’s milk employed in the process of a sacrifice would somehow impart strength to the goat flock.]