(21).And ye shall proclaim on the selfsame day.--This proclamation was made to the people by the priest with trumpet blasts.

Ye shall do no servile work.--For what constituted servile work, see Leviticus 23:7.

A statute for ever . . . . --See Leviticus 23:14, Leviticus 3:17; Leviticus 7:23-25. In accordance with this declaration, and with the fact that the Jews during the second Temple regarded it as the day on which the Decalogue was given, the Israelites to this day sacredly keep this festival on the 6th and 7th of Sivan, i.e. between the second half of May and the first half of June. From their circumstances, however, the harvest character of the festival is now subordinate, and more prominence is given to its commemorating the giving of the Law on Sinai. Still the synagogues and the private houses are adorned with flowers and odoriferous herbs. The male members of the community purify themselves for its celebration by immersion and confession of sin, and many of them spend all night in their respective places of worship.

23:15-22 The feast of Weeks was held in remembrance of the giving of the law, fifty days after the departure from Egypt; and looked forward to the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, fifty days after Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. On that day the apostles presented the first-fruits of the Christian church to God. To the institution of the feast of Pentecost, is added a repetition of that law, by which they were required to leave the gleanings of their fields. Those who are truly sensible of the mercy they received from God, will show mercy to the poor without grudging.And ye shall proclaim on the selfsame day, that it may be an holy convocation unto you,.... This proclamation was made by the priests with the sound of a trumpet, that the people might observe that this fiftieth day, or day of Pentecost, was devoted to sacred service, and that they were called to holy exercises in it:

ye shall do no servile work therein; what was not necessary for food, as Ben Gersom observes, but what was necessary on that account, as kindling a fire, &c. might be done, see Leviticus 23:7; for this was to be kept in like manner as the first and seventh days of the feast of unleavened bread; the general design of which was to express thankfulness for the appointed weeks of the harvest, and to honour the Lord with the firstfruits of the increase of the earth: and the Jews say, as Ben Gersom observes, that this fiftieth day, being reckoned from the sixteenth of Nisan, fell upon the sixth of Sivan, on which day, they say, the law was given, which is another reason for the observance of it: and it is remarkable, that on this same day the Word of the Lord went out of Zion, and the law or doctrine of the Lord, even the everlasting Gospel, went out of Jerusalem, published by the apostles of Christ to the people of all nations, Acts 2:14; when they were favoured with the firstfruits of the Spirit, after our Lord's ascension to heaven, and receiving gifts for men, which he now in an extraordinary manner bestowed on his disciples, Acts 2:1; and which were the firstfruits of all others, after to be given forth in the course of time, and of the effusion of the Spirit in the latter day; and when there was a number of souls converted, as the firstfruits of after conversions among Jews and Gentiles, Acts 2:41; and particularly of the conversion of the Jews in the latter day, and of the harvest of souls in the end of the world, Matthew 13:30,

it shall be a statute for ever all your dwellings throughout your generations; so long as they dwelt in the land of Canaan, and had their harvest in it, even until the Messiah came, in whom all those types and figures had their accomplishment.