The Feast of Trumpets

Sacrifices & Feasts of the Old Testament collection. Tishri 1, opening the seventh month. Three verses and no explanation. Popular name Rosh Hashanah is a later development that the Torah doesn't use (worth knowing as some build their eschatology on it).

Requirements

• Tishri 1, first day of the seventh month.
• Holy convocation with a partial work prohibition - distinguishing it from the total cessation of the Sabbath and the Day of Atonement.
• Trumpet blasts. Hebrew zikrôn tĕrû'â, "a memorial of blowing." Sklar translates "a reminder proclaimed with trumpet blasts" - and the reminder is before the Lord, not for the people (Exod 28:12, 29; Num 10:9-10).
• Sacrifices (Num 29:1-6): one bull, one ram, seven yearling lambs (burnt) with grain and drink offerings, plus one male goat (purification) - all additional to the new moon offerings and the continual tāmîd.
  • Ashley notes the layering: Tishri 1 was also a new moon, so the day carried daily + monthly + festival offerings stacked on each other.
• Which instrument? Sklar flags the ambiguity. Modern practice uses a shofar, "but cf. Num. 10:2, 10 for the possibility that silver trumpets were originally used."

A Musical Prayer

Sklar's reading turns on two things:

1. When the Lord "remembers" someone, He shines His favour on them (Gen 30:22; Num 10:9) and affirms His covenant faithfulness (Gen 9:15-16; Lev 26:42, 45).
2. When trumpets are blown, it's to acknowledge and request the Lord's help (Num 10:9-10).

The blowing of the trumpets was therefore a musical prayer acknowledging and requesting the Lord's favour. And since the Lord is the one commanding them to do this, it is his assurance that he will hear their prayer.

• Jay Sklar, Leviticus (TOTC)

• God commanding a prayer is God guaranteeing an answer. He doesn't instruct people to ask for something He doesn't intend to give.

Positioned before the Day of Atonement

• The placement is functional - the assembly on Tishri 1 gathers Israel "apparently to prepare the people for the all-important Day of Atonement" nine days later. Then, forgiven, they keep Booths.
• Emotional arc of the seventh month: summons, cleansing, joy.
• Ashley: the seventh month is more sacred than the others in the same way the seventh day is more sacred than the other six, with no fewer than three feasts or fasts in it.

On Rosh Hashanah

• The Torah does not call this New Year's Day.
• Sklar reports the debate: "while there is debate as to whether early Israelites thought of this day as New Year's Day, it was celebrated as such from at least the fourth century BC."
• Block: "the First Testament religious calendar did not include a New Year festival."
  • The phrase rōʾš haššānâ occurs once in the OT, at Ezek 40:1, where it refers to the springtime new year and carries no hint of a festival.
  • Israel appears to have run two reckonings - cultic calendar from Nisan in spring, agricultural from Tishri in autumn.
  • "The origins of the autumnal New Year as recognized by Jews today are unknown, but by the time the festival had become a significant event, the position of the New Year had shifted 180 degrees."
• A good deal of popular teaching builds elaborate eschatological schemes on Rosh Hashanah as the biblical new year. The biblical text doesn't allow that.

New Testament Fulfilment

No NT writer connects the Feast of Trumpets to Christ or to a specific eschatological event.

• The dispensational scheme that aligns Trumpets with a rapture, Atonement with Israel's national repentance, and Booths with the millennium is imposed on the calendar rather than drawn from any NT text.
• What the NT does carry forward is the trumpet as an image, and the OT background matters for reading it well.

The Old Testament Range

• Beale: "a warning to repent, judgment, victory or salvation, enthronement of Israel's king, eschatological judgment or salvation, or the gathering together of God's people." Meaning is set by context, not by the instrument.
• Vos traces the eschatological line to its root:

The figure of the trumpet… has its root in what the Pentateuch relates of a trumpet blown at the giving of the Law: 'There were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and a voice of the trumpet exceeding loud' (Ex. 19:16). According to Isa. 27:13, a great trumpet will be blown to gather the scattered people of God from Assyria and Egypt and summon them to the holy mountain of Jerusalem… From the standpoint of the Old Testament this is already eschatological.

• Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology

• Heb 12:19 then picks up the Sinai trumpet "via oppositionis," as Vos puts it - the setting and apparatus are the same but the significance and effects are opposite. You have not come to a mountain that may be touched, and to the sound of a trumpet, but to Mount Zion.

The Last Trumpet (1 Cor 15:51-52)

Vos corrects a common misreading of "last,":

The adjective 'last' in this phrase is usually misunderstood. The Apostle's meaning is not that during the ages of the world's history many trumpets have in succession been blown, but that this one, as marking the close of all history, will be the last one to sound. 'Last' does not here signify 'final' in a chronological sense. It is a technical eschatological term, which does not indicate plurality, but duality; there is one at the beginning, and there will be another, corresponding to it at the end.

• Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology

• One trumpet at Sinai, one at the consummation, and the whole of history between them.
• Also removes the exegetical foothold for schemes that count trumpets in sequence to locate the church in a timetable.
• Same imagery: 1 Thess 4:16; Matt 24:31 (angels gather the elect at a great trumpet, echoing Isa 27:13).

The Trumpets of Revelation

• The background is Jericho. Seven trumpets blown by seven priests in Josh 6; seven blown by seven angels who are priestly figures in Revelation. Ark present at Jericho and, in heavenly form, in Rev 11:19. Silence precedes the climactic trumpet judgment in both.
• Two conclusions follow:
  1. Primarily judgment rather than warning. "The trumpets blown by the priests, like the plagues on Egypt, are not warnings at all, but indicate ultimately only judgment."
  2. The first six are preliminary to a decisive seventh, exactly as at Jericho - so the seventh trumpet is the last judgment (Rev 11:15-19).
• Beale adds an Exod 19:16 pattern: a loud trumpet summons Israel to Sinai to acknowledge God's kingship after the plagues of Egypt are executed. "This OT pattern of destructive plagues followed by the peace of kingship has been partially formative for John's introduction of the end-time kingship of God in 11:15-19."

What's Left Behind

• If the trumpet in Israel's calendar was a musical prayer asking God to remember His people with favour, and if the command to blow it was itself the guarantee of an answer - then the NT's trumpet is the answer arriving.
• Thematic rather than typological, and worth being honest about that distinction.
• Israel blew a horn on the first of Tishri and asked to be remembered. At the last trumpet, the dead are raised. Whatever else that is, it is God remembering His people with favour.