Customs
Daily-life practices the Bible assumes you already know.
10 customs
Yom Kippur — the most solemn day of the year. The high priest enters the Most Holy Place to sprinkle blood on the mercy seat, and a second g…
On the day after the Sabbath of Passover week, the priest waves a sheaf of the first cut barley before the Lord. The first of the harvest be…
The seven-day festival joined to Passover. From 15 to 21 Nisan no leaven may be found in any Israelite home — a memorial to the haste of the…
The hospitality act of washing the dust off a guest's feet on arrival. In a society of dusty roads and open sandals, it was a basic kindness…
The eight-day winter festival that remembers the rededication of the Temple in 164 BC, after Judah Maccabee cleansed it from pagan defilemen…
A small clay bowl with a pinched spout, filled with olive oil and a wick. It burned slowly through the night, giving off the light of a smal…
The spring festival commemorating Israel's deliverance from Egypt. A lamb is slain at twilight and eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened br…
The Feast of Weeks, fifty days after Firstfruits. Israel brings two loaves of leavened wheat bread as the firstfruits of the wheat harvest —…
The seven-day autumn harvest festival. Israel leaves the house for a week of living in a sukkah — a temporary booth roofed with branches — r…
A wide wooden fork used to toss threshed grain into the air. The wind carries the chaff away; the heavier grain falls back to the floor.