Deuteronomy
Chapter 16
Feasts of the Lord
Observe the month of Abib and celebrate the Passover in honor of the Lord since it was in this month that the Lord, your God, brought you out of Egypt by night.
On the Passover, you shall sacrifice oxen and sheep to the Lord in the place he has chosen for his Name to dwell.
For the Passover supper, you are not to eat leavened bread, but for seven days, you shall eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, because you left Egypt hastily. So you shall remember all the days of your life, the day on which you left Egypt.
For seven days, no leaven shall be seen throughout your territory; nor shall any flesh you sacrifice on the evening of the first day be left for the following day.
You may not offer the Passover sacrifice in any city that the Lord gives you,
but only in the place chosen by the Lord as the dwelling place for his Name. Sacrifice the Passover in the evening, at sunset, when you came out of Egypt.
You shall roast it and eat it in the place chosen by the Lord, your God. And then, in the morning, you shall return to your house.
You shall eat unleavened bread for six days, and on the seventh, you shall celebrate a solemn assembly in honor of the Lord, and you shall not work.
You shall count seven weeks from the day you start cutting the standing wheat.
Then you shall celebrate the Feast of the Seven Weeks for the Lord, your God, making a voluntary offering from your harvest in proportion to how the Lord, your God, blesses you.
At the place the Lord has chosen as the dwelling place for his Name, you shall feast, you and your children, your servants, the Levite who lives in your cities, the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow who live among you.
Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and be careful to put these precepts into practice.
Celebrate the Feast of the Tents for seven days after gathering the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress.
Rejoice during this feast—you and your children, your servants, the Levite, the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow who live in your city.
You shall feast for seven days in honor of the Lord at the place chosen by him; because the Lord will bless you in all your produce and all the work of your hands, so that your joy may be complete.
Three times a year, all your men shall present themselves before the Lord, your God, in the place chosen by him: on the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of the Tents. And you shall not present yourselves empty-handed,
but each one will offer in proportion to what he has, according to the blessing that the Lord has bestowed upon you.
The Judges: Administration of Justice
Appoint judges and secretaries for your tribes in every city the Lord gives you, that they may judge the people according to justice.
You shall not bend the law or show partiality. Do not accept gifts because gifts blind the eyes of the wise and subvert the cause of the righteous.
Justice! Seek justice if you want to live and inherit the land which the Lord, your God, gives you.
Do not plant any tree or sacred pillar near the altar of your God.
Do not put up the sacred stones that the Lord hates.
Commentaries
Feasts of the Lord.
Immediately after the law concerning the consecration of the firstborn animals, we see the guidelines for the religious calendar, which mainly focus on dedicating time. Thus, the “Passover” (1-8) commemorates the departure from Egypt and the liberation from slavery. Similarly, Passover is connected to the law of the “Unleavened Bread” feast (Ex 3f.8), marking the start of the grain harvest.
The next festival is the “Weeks.” Seven weeks or fifty days after the start of the harvest (9-12), a celebration occurs at the central sanctuary (11), symbolizing another pilgrimage similar to Passover and Unleavened Bread (cf. Lv 23:15-21; Nm 28:26-31). It is emphasized that the offerings should be eaten “in the presence of the Lord” and in a familiar, social setting that includes emigrants, orphans, widows, and Levites (11).
The third feast, which also involves a pilgrimage to the central sanctuary, is that of the “Shacks” (13-15), another ancient peasant tradition initially linked to the grape harvest (see Lv 23:33-36, 39-43; Nm 29:12-38).
For Israel, time is not just the continual recurrence of months and seasons. It is not a quantitative concept of time (“kronos”), but a qualitative one (“kairos”) that embodies a salvific event realized within the context of celebratory festivities.
The Judges: Administration of Justice.
The final verses of chapter 16 (18-20) establish the core principles for how judges and officials—who were supposed to exist during the tribal period—are to administer justice. The oldest traditions about the Exodus describe Moses’ decision to share governing and judging responsibilities for the people’s disputes among seventy elders. This same tradition is presented in the introductory discourse of 1:15-18 and is referenced again here. The authority of the people depends on judges and officials who cannot act solely on their judgment but must follow a standard of justice reflecting God’s will, which the judge and magistrate are responsible for embodying in their actions.
Let’s remember that this text also stems from a need to address judge corruption and the neglect and contempt for the weak and poor (cf. 1 Sm 8:1-3). Although the guideline appears like a plan for the future, “when you enter the land…”, in reality, the people have already experienced a period of decay in their institutions. The text, therefore, looks back at the past and recognizes that such decay and injustice happened because of a lack of a more substantial commitment to the terms of the Covenant, which included righteousness in judgment (cf. Ex 23:6-8).