The Feast Of Trumpets Series

Feast of Israel

Rosh Hashanah

The Feast of Trumpets

This upcoming Saturday begins the biblical feast, “Rosh Hashanah,” or “The Feast of Trumpets.” It marks the beginning of ten days of consecration and repentance to get a person ready for God’s Feast of “Yom Kippur,” or “The Day of Atonement.”

Rosh Hashanah is also known as the Jewish New Year. And Jews greet each other with the words, “Shana Tova,” or “Good Year,” which is the shortened form of the complete greeting, “May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.” It is a greeting to wish one another good so that their names could be written in the Book of Life for the upcoming year. It is also customary to eat sweet foods, usually apples, honey, chocolate, and also to give gifts.

The feast is the beginning of the Jewish High Holy Days, which is announced through the blowing of the ram’s horn, or the shofar, calling the people to repent from their sins.

This Holiday, or as I like to call it, a Holy Day, falls on the first day of Tishri, the seventh month of the Jewish calendar, which corresponds to either September or October of our Gregorian Calendar.

All over the world, the Jewish people go to their synagogue, recite prayers, confess their sins and pray that God would inscribe them in His book for the coming year.

However, this is not the biblical New Year. The biblical New Year for Israel is the first day of the month called Nisan in the Jewish Calendar, which was commanded by God when He set them free from their Egyptian bondage, which has been celebrated ever since as Passover.

The Lord said, “This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.” (Exodus 12:2 NKJV)

However, in Judaism there are two New Years Days, the biblical one, which is the month of Nisan, which is where the feasts of Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits are celebrated, and then what is known as the civil New Year, or the month of Tishri, which is where the feasts of Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles are celebrated.

Further, the Bible never refers to these months by name, like Nisan, or Tishri. These have their roots in the language of the Chaldeans, or from Babylon. The Bible merely refers to them as the first month, and the seventh month.

And while the biblical New Years Day is the first of Nisan, the Jews celebrate Tishri, and the Jewish feast of Rosh Hashanah as the New Years Day. This move to Tishri came around the tenth or eleventh century.

The reason for this change is that the rabbis believe the Lord God created the world during the month of Tishri. It was also on the first day of Tishri that Ezra gathered the people to hear the book of the Law being read (Nehemiah 8:2)

But, as I said earlier, this feast begins the Jewish High Holy Days through the blowing of the ram’s horn, or the shofar, calling the people to repent from their sins.

It is a solemn day of soul-searching, forgiveness, repentance, and remembering God's judgment, as well as a joyful day of celebration, looking forward to God's goodness and mercy in the coming New Year.

Rosh Hashanah provides God's people with a time to reflect on their lives, to repent and turn away from sin, where they will then be considered to be righteous. The trumpet sound upon this day was therefore a call to repentance for the people of God. It is to awaken them to remember their Creator, forsaking their evil ways and returning to Him.

In Judaism it is often believed and promoted that a person’s good and bad deeds are weighed on the scales during this time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in order to see if someone is good enough to be written in the Book of Life.

But there is a sad reality in this Jewish celebration in that it is believed that the people can turn away from their sins through doing good deeds. These good deeds are meant to give them a more favorable chance of having their names sealed in the Book of Life for another year.

I mean, how sad is that, they never have assurance that they are written in God’s book of life, and if they are lucky enough to have their names in God’s book of life, it is only for a year at a time.

In Luke 10:20, Jesus alluded to the Book of Life when he told the disciples to rejoice because "your names are written in heaven." Whenever a person becomes a believer in Jesus Christ by accepting His sacrificial atonement for sin, Jesus fulfills for them personally, the Feast of Trumpets.