Rosh Hashanah and Christian Faith

Rosh Hashanah is a very important festival celebration for the Jewish people around the world. It is New Year’s Day on the civil Jewish calendar, which signals the beginning of the High Holy Days of biblical religious observance. This day is considered to be a memorial of the creation of the universe because, according to tradition, God began his creative action on Rosh Hashanah. It is also the beginning of the Ten Days of Awe wherein the Jewish people engage in introspection and repentance in preparation for the highest and holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), that falls on the tenth day of this month (Tishri).

A Festival of Trumpets

Rosh Hashanah is described in the bible as Yom Teruah, which literally means “the day of blowing [of shofars].” Leviticus 23:24: “In the first day of the month you shall have a Sabbath rest, a sacred assembly commemorated by trumpet blasts.” It was on this day that God commanded the Jewish people to “hear” the sound of the shofar. The common name for the festival day, Rosh Hashanah, was added in post-biblical times.

More often than not, the biblical trumpet was the shofar, the ram’s horn (which included sheep, goats, and other similar animals. (Only a cow horn may not be used because of the Israelite sin with the golden calf.) The use of the ram’s horn in Jewish ritual has always been associated with the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, when Abraham offered his son as a holocaust sacrifice to God on Mt. Moriah. This was the profound event when God provided a ram caught by his horns in the thicket of a thorn bush when the angel stayed Abraham’s hand from literally sacrificing Isaac unto the Lord. For centuries, the Jewish people viewed the Akedah as a vicarious sacrifice for all the descendants of Abraham; therefore, the ram’s horn had even greater significance because it harked back to the Moriah event that was so foundational to biblical faith, the faith of Abraham.

Soul Searching: Days of Awe

The blowing of trumpets on Rosh Hashanah served to call the Israelite nation to attention so that they could begin preparation for the Day of Atonement. This included the intensification of the soul searching that had begun a month earlier and had lasted for the entire thirty days of the month of Elul. The first ten days of Tishri were added to the thirty days of Elul to make a total of forty days which served as a reminder of the forty days which Moses spent on Mount Sinai when he received the Torah.

The Ten Days of Awe that were ushered in by the Day of Blasting of Shofars served a time for self-evaluation and reflection so that every member of the chosen community had an intense time for looking inward to see if sin had been committed against God or against another person. Repentance and restitution were featured during this entire Ten Days of Awe to be concluded on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the annual day for fasting, prayer, and repentance.

Celebration of Joy

Five days after Yom Kippur, the most festive celebration on the biblical calendar began when God summoned the people to construct temporary shelters and to live in them for eight days during which time they celebrated the “Festival of Joy,” the “Feast of Tabernacles”(Leviticus 23:34) or the “Feast of Ingathering” (Exodus 23:16). After the completion of the Ten Days of Awe and the Day of Atonement, this was the festival of great rejoicing wherein the Jewish people celebrated with great intensity the blessing of God’s provision of grace and mercy and the abundance of the fruit of the land.

This was the great festival wherein Jesus joined the festivities of his people at the temple in the city of Jerusalem when the Holy City was all aglow with the brilliant light of countless menorahs and torches and the people were joined together in ecstatic worship of the God of heaven and earth. Jesus taught a wonderful object lesson by using as a metaphor the celebration of the High Priest that occurred on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles wherein a spectacular water libation was offered to God. As the priest poured out the water that he had taken from the Pool of Siloam on the altar and as all the people shouted, “Hoshanah, Hoshanah,” Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:37-38).

For Christians!

Rosh Hashanah is a wonderful time on God’s calendar for Christians to remember that God himself will blow the trumpets (shofars) at the end of the age when the time comes for the Messiah to return. About that great coming event, the Jesus said, “They they will see the son of man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory, and he will send forth his angels with a great trumpet, and they will gather together his elect from the four winds” (Matthew 24:29-30). Paul further declares regarding this great day:  “We will not all sleep,  but we will all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).

The last trumpet will make this proclamation: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). The great hope of the Gospel, therefore, is connected with the imagery of the blowing of shofars as on Rosh Hashanah. The seventh of the seven trumpets,  “the last trumpet,” will signal the coming of Jesus and the initiation of God’s dominion on the earth.

Christians can also profit from the process that Paul described as self-examination: “Everyone should examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink of the cup . . . if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged” (1 Corinthians 11:28, 31). And again, “Test yourselves to see whether you are in the faith: examine yourselves” (2 Corinthians 13:5). This is in perfect context with King David’s prayer: “Examine me, O Lord: test my mind and my heart” (Psalm 26:2).

What a wonderful opportunity God has given both Christians and Jews to be called to repentance by the solemn, piercing sound of the shofar so that they may examine themselves and seek the mercies of God. And, Jesus promised, “the one who comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37).