Leviticus 23:24 “Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation.'”
Our interest is focused on the words “a memorial of blowing of trumpets.” I can remember looking up the word “trumpets” in Young’s Concordance, and being perplexed at not finding it there. It took some time before I solved the problem, this time by looking up “blowing” instead. I found that the Hebrew word for “blowing of trumpets” was TERUAH, which Young said meant “shouting.” There is nothing in the original text to warrant the translation in terms of “trumpets”. Strictly it should read “a memorial of shouting.”
The word “memorial” is ZIKRON, meaning “remembrance”. Now we are in full possession of the facts, and it’s time to find out what God intended His people to remember on this auspicious day.
Let’s have a look at the Calendar. This day was the 1st of the 7th month. But the Calendar had been changed at the Passover. Originally the 7th month (Tishri) had been the 1st month. Therefore we are looking at something corresponding with the 1st day of the 1st month. Surely this must have been a remembrance of creation, because the ancient Hebrew Calendar would have started on that day.
What needed to be remembered on that day? What was all the shouting about? In the last article we looked at Job 38, where the Lord reminded Job that at creation, all the stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy. Here then is the answer. The “sons of God” were pre-existent human beings, and the Lord was asking His people, each year on this commemorative date, to remember the time when they had been “shouting for joy” at His great creative act.
To clinch this I looked up “shouted” in Job 38:7, and found the Hebrew word came from the same root as that in Leviticus 23:24.
