And ye shall proclaim on the selfsame day, [that] it may be an
holy convocation unto you
This proclamation was made by the priests with the sound of a trumpet, that the people might observe that this fiftieth day, or day of Pentecost, was devoted to sacred service, and that they were called to holy exercises in it:
ye shall do no servile work [therein];
what was not necessary for food, as Ben Gersom observes, but what was necessary on that account, as kindling a fire might be done, see ( Leviticus 23:7 Leviticus 23:8 ) ; for this was to be kept in like manner as the first and seventh days of the feast of unleavened bread; the general design of which was to express thankfulness for the appointed weeks of the harvest, and to honour the Lord with the firstfruits of the increase of the earth: and the Jews say, as Ben Gersom observes, that this fiftieth day, being reckoned from the sixteenth of Nisan, fell upon the sixth of Sivan, on which day, they say, the law was given, which is another reason for the observance of it: and it is remarkable, that on this same day the Word of the Lord went out of Zion, and the law or doctrine of the Lord, even the everlasting Gospel, went out of Jerusalem, published by the apostles of Christ to the people of all nations, ( Acts 2:14-36 ) ; when they were favoured with the firstfruits of the Spirit, after our Lord's ascension to heaven, and receiving gifts for men, which he now in an extraordinary manner bestowed on his disciples, ( Acts 2:1-13 ) ; and which were the firstfruits of all others, after to be given forth in the course of time, and of the effusion of the Spirit in the latter day; and when there was a number of souls converted, as the firstfruits of after conversions among Jews and Gentiles, ( Acts 2:41 ) ; and particularly of the conversion of the Jews in the latter day, and of the harvest of souls in the end of the world, ( Matthew 13:30 Matthew 13:39 ) ;
[it shall be] a statute for ever all your dwellings throughout your
generations;
so long as they dwelt in the land of Canaan, and had their harvest in it, even until the Messiah came, in whom all those types and figures had their accomplishment.