Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation.
Leviticus 23:24 (KJV)
Blowing – The holy day in Hebrew is often referred to as Yom Teruah – Day of Sounding. But what sort of sound is going on here? We’re so far removed from the ritual practice of this day that many of us Christians probably wouldn’t realize the trumpet sound if we heard it.
So we need to read the Bible. We need to dig in and understand what God instructed through the Torah.
Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece shalt thou make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps. (Numbers 10:2)
There were two silver trumpets made. From these trumpets were to be two distinct sounds depending on what was happening. More detail is located in Numbers 10.
If the purpose was to gather the people, or the leaders, the bursts of sound would be long uninterrupted steady blows on the trumpets. These would signal the people to gather, or that there was a holy day happening. This was called a Tekiah.
The other sound is many short bursts on the trumpet. This was called an alarm. It was to dictate when people should rise up from their camps and begin walking in the desert, or it signaled an attack and preparation for war. This was called a Teruah.
So the day is referred to as Yom Teruah — it is the Day of Alarm. It is a day to stand up and move. Observe the signs and commit oneself to the path of YHVH. Walk in His ways, His Torah.
There are two ways we can look at this. The imperfect, interrupted bursts of the trumpet remind us that our lives are often interrupted with trials and tribulations. Challenges face us, and it is our call to overcome them. The second way to see this is that our complacency turns to atrophy as we sit too long in comfort. So YHVH instructs us to sound the alarm. Stand up and move. Either way, we look back to Mt. Sinai and reaffirm our commitment to God.