Ezra 3:4

The Feast of Tabernacles

4. They kept also the feast of tabernacles, as it is written The manner of keeping the feast of tabernacles is described in Leviticus 23:34-42; Deuteronomy 16:13-15.

It was the autumn or vintage feast, the most joyous of all the great annual festivals. It commemorated the wanderings in the Desert. It would henceforth commemorate also the return from the Exile.

At this festival Solomon dedicated his Temple, 1 Kings 8:65; and with this festival was connected the reading of the Law by Ezra under Nehemiah (Nehemiah 8:14-16).

-As it is written", a shorter phrase for that which occurs in Ezra 3:2. Cf. 2 Chronicles 30:5; 2 Chronicles 30:18.

by number, according to the custom, R.V. ordinance] The words in the original are clearly a reference to the passage in Numbers 29. where the sacrifices for the feast of tabernacles are detailed, i.e. 13 young bullocks &c. on the first day, 12 &c. on the second, 11 &c. on the third, and so on. It is to be regretted that the same English words -according to their number, after the ordinance", which occur as a kind of refrain in that chapter (Numbers 29:18; Numbers 29:21; Numbers 29:24; Numbers 29:27; Numbers 29:30; Numbers 29:33; Numbers 29:37), were not either exactly reproduced here by the R.V., or altered there to -by their number, according to ordinance". The attention of the reader would then have been drawn to the echo given by this phrase to the phraseology of the Pentateuch.

(Yet another rendering of the same phrase appears 1 Chronicles 23:31 - in number according to ordinance".)

as the duty of every day required because the number of the sacrifices altered every day during the Feast of Tabernacles. Literally, -the thing of the day in its day": the same phrase is rendered -every day a portion", 2 Kings 25:30; Jeremiah 52:34: -as every day's work required", 1 Chronicles 16:37.