Trumpets

The Festival of Trumpets

The Calendar

In the Jewish calendar there were no festivals between the third month and the seventh month. In the seventh month came the Tabernacles group of three festivals. The first of these, on the first day of the month, was the Festival of Trumpets.

Trumpets were sounded before each individual festival and at the beginning of every month. The Festival of Trumpets is therefore a very special blowing of trumpets additional to these two requirements. It is itself a festival, but it is also a preliminary to two greater festivals.

It is followed by the Day of Atonement on the 10th day of the 7th month, which in turn is followed by the Festival of Tabernacles from the 15th to the 22nd. These two festivals are so important that they require the Festival of Trumpets to announce them. The Festival of Trumpets calls us to advance into these two festivals that follow it.

The Jewish religious year began in the spring, but they also had a civil or agricultural year that began in the autumn. (In England, of course, our academic year begins in September and our tax year begins in April.) This civil year began on the first day of the seventh month of the religious calendar. This means that the Festival of Trumpets was at the start of the civil year. This makes it a time of fresh beginnings for us in God.

For people of the world, the new year is often a time of making resolutions to improve their habits or way of living. These resolutions seldom last for long as human will-power is usually too weak to sustain them.

For the people of God a new year can be a time of repentance for the past and rededication for the future. The Day of Atonement, on the 10th of the 7th month, was a time for forgiveness of sin. The trumpets therefore are a call to repentance and heart-searching in preparation.