On the Jewish calendar, it is Erev Rosh Hashanah, the eve of Rosh Hashanah. In the evening at sundown, the Jewish Holy Day of Rosh Hashanah begins, marking the start of a new year.
Rosh Hashanah is a two-day celebration which begins on the first day of the Jewish month known as Tishri. On this day, the people of Old Testament Israel turned aside from their work and gathered for a full day of sacrifice and worship, Leviticus 23:23-24 /Numbers 29:1-6.
Barnes, in his commentary, says the following.
‘There is no mention of trumpets in the Hebrew text of the Law in connection with the day. However, there is no reason to doubt the tradition that the day was distinguished by a general blowing of trumpets throughout the land, and that the kind of trumpet generally used for the purpose was the curved horn of an animal or a cornet of metal, such as was used at Sinai, Exodus 19:16, and on the Day of Jubilee, Leviticus 25:9. It must have differed in this respect from the ordinary festival of the New moon when the long straight trumpet of the temple alone was blown, Numbers 10:2 / Exodus 25:23.’
Once again, we are reminded that they can work, but no regular work was to be done, Leviticus 23:25 / Leviticus 23:21 / Leviticus 23:7-8 / Leviticus 23:35-36. The seventh month was important because it also included two major holy days, the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles.
The blasting of trumpets, or shofar, announced the commencement of this special month. According to the Mosaic Law, the first month of the Israelite calendar is Nisan in the spring, Exodus 12:2.
However, in post-exilic Judaism, the first day of the seventh month, Tishri, has become Rosh Hashanah, ‘New Year’. To look at it another way, the first day of Nisan begins the religious New Year, and Rosh Hashanah starts the civil New Year. Rosh Hashanah is marked by the sounding of the shofar, a hollowed-out ram’s horn.
Although not taught in Scripture, Jews believe that on Rosh Hashanah, God sits in judgment of the whole universe. Like sheep passing before a shepherd, who decides which ones will live and which ones will be slaughtered, on this Day of Judgment, God evaluates the merits of people and nations. He rules which nations will have plenty and which will lack, which will have war, and which will know peace.
The judgment on Rosh Hashanah does not decide a person’s eternal destiny; it is for judgment concerning earthly matters. Jews believe that the judgment handed down on that day, with its subsequent recording in the Book of Life, decides a person’s fate in this life for the coming year.
In Israel, there is the Jerusalem Archaeological Park, which is located in the southwest corner of the Temple Mount. You can climb up the original steps of the two-thousand-year-old Hulda Gates that led to the Temple Mount during the Second Temple period.
Three hundred feet north of the corner is the part of the Western Wall where locals and tourists pray. Here at this corner lies a reminder of something Jesus predicted thirty-seven years before the temple’s destruction.
The southwest corner of the Temple Mount is filled in with the rubble of the Second Temple’s destruction by the mighty Roman legions in A.D. 70. You can see a thirty-three-foot-wide first-century street that was laid with thick stone slabs. Jesus predicted this destruction on His last visit to the Temple, Matthew 24:1-2.
In A.D. 70, four Roman legions surrounded Jerusalem and began to slowly squeeze the life out of the Jewish stronghold. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus claimed that Titus, the Roman general, did not want to destroy the Temple. Archaeologists have removed most of the rubble, but they left one pile of stones just as they found them. The street is still depressed from the force of the impact.
One of the reasons people like to return to this corner of the Temple Mount is because of one particular stone that lies on the street far below where it originally stood. Shaped as a corner piece, the stone bears the Hebrew inscription: ‘To the place of trumpeting.’
Flavius Josephus, the Jewish priest and historian, spoke about the very place where this stone used to stand. Josephus records that this is ‘where one of the priests stood of course, and gave a signal beforehand, with a trumpet, at the beginning of every seventh day, in the evening twilight, as also at the evening when the day was finished, as giving notice to the people when they were to leave off work, and when they were to go to work again’. War 4:582.
This stone was at the pinnacle of the Temple Mount at the southwestern corner of the Temple. It was the place where priests would overlook Jerusalem as they blew trumpets to announce the Sabbath and the start of festival days. It was from here that Rosh Hashanah was announced.
Before it was sounded in those days, Psalm 47 was recited seven times. God originally intended the trumpets to call His people together in preparation for the fall festival of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, where the Lord would forgive sins on the basis of shed blood, Psalm 81:3.
The blowing of the trumpets was a plea to God to remember Israel, Numbers 10:10. At His return, Jesus ‘will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God,’ 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.
Sometimes in Jerusalem today, you can hear a shofar echo across the city. I think of the Lord’s promise of His return when He calls His people to Himself, 1 Corinthians 15:50-52 / 1 Thessalonians 4:16.
I consider the grace that the shofar’s call represents, urging worshippers to come before the Lord who forgives sins on the basis of sacrifice, Leviticus 16:29-30. We know that the ultimate sacrifice was God’s own Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.