🔢WEB · Numbers 28:25
What does Numbers 28:25 mean?
"On the seventh day you shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no regular work."
— Numbers 28:25 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
and one male goat for a sin offering, to make atonement for you.
You shall offer these besides the burnt offering of the morning, which is for a continual burnt offering.
In this way you shall offer daily, for seven days, the food of the offering made by fire, of a pleasant aroma to Yahweh. It shall be offered in addition to the continual burnt offering, and its drink offering.
On the seventh day you shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no regular work.
“‘Also in the day of the first fruits, when you offer a new meal offering to Yahweh in your feast of weeks, you shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no regular work;
but you shall offer a burnt offering for a pleasant aroma to Yahweh: two young bulls, one ram, seven male lambs a year old;
and their meal offering, fine flour mixed with oil, three tenths for each bull, two tenths for the one ram,
Explanation
Numbers 28:25 comes at the close of the instructions for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the seven-day festival that immediately followed Passover. In plain language, the verse simply says that on the last of these seven days, the Israelites were to gather for a sacred assembly and were not to do their ordinary labor. It bookends the festival, since the first day of Unleavened Bread also carried this same command (Numbers 28:18). So the seven-day observance was framed by two "bookend" days of rest and holy gathering, with the days in between allowing for regular work alongside the continued eating of unleavened bread and offering of sacrifices.
The book of Numbers records instructions given through Moses to the people of Israel during their wilderness journey, and chapter 28 specifically lays out the calendar of offerings — daily, weekly (Sabbath), monthly, and at each of the appointed feasts. This section on the Feast of Unleavened Bread reinforces earlier instructions found in Exodus 12 and Leviticus 23, showing the priestly and liturgical detail behind Israel's worship life. The Feast of Unleavened Bread was tied directly to the exodus from Egypt: the removal of leaven recalled the haste with which Israel left Egypt, unable to let their bread rise (Exodus 12:39). By the time of Numbers, this historical memory was being formalized into an ongoing national pattern of worship, sacrifice, and rest.
Theologically, the command to cease work and hold a holy convocation underscores two intertwined
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