When most Christians think of the “holiday season,” they think of the Christmas season—the stretch of time beginning around Thanksgiving and ending with the New Year. But for Jews, “holiday season” comes a bit earlier in the year: the High Holy Days, a period of repentence and reflection that includes the holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. These Jewish holidays aren’t usually observed by Christians, but rooted as they are in the text of Scripture, they’re nonetheless rewarding for Christians to study and understand.

This year, we’re running a special two-week devotional during the High Holy Days: Holy Land Moments, which explores the Jewish understanding of the holiday period and the Scripture passages on which they’re built. Do you know the Bible stories on which these holidays are based? Let’s take a moment to briefly look at the the High Holy Days and the Bible verses that instituted them.

Rosh Hashanah

Rosh Hashanah—the holiday that opens the High Holy Days—is a celebration of the Jewish New Year. It calls people to consider God’s judgement, and is associated with the shofar horn. There’s no single verse in the Old Testament that institutes this holiday as it’s practiced today, but it evolved from the holy day mentioned in verses like Leviticus 23:24-25:

Speak to the people of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of solemn rest, a memorial proclaimed with blast of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work, and you shall present a food offering to the Lord.

You can find a similar command in Numbers 29:1-2.

Over the centuries, Jewish tradition has connected Rosh Hashanah with many different themes and ideas, from the creation of Adam to God’s judgment of good and evil people. Because the holiday isn’t described in any detail in the Bible, we don’t know for certain what its theological meaning was to its earliest observers. But its call to remember God’s work in the past, and to reflect on our own behavior in light of God’s laws, is one that any Christian can answer.

Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the culmination of the “High Holy Days” that begin at Rosh Hashanah, and has a more direct link to Scripture. It’s described in Leviticus 16, where it’s instituted by God as a day of sacrifice and atonement for sin. It’s one of the most significant days of the year for Jews, and Christians believe it to be a clear foreshadowing of the saving work of Jesus Christ. Here’s what the Reformation Study Bible (one of the free study Bibles available in the Study This sidebar on Bible Gateway) has to say about Yom Kippur:

For the high priest, the most important aspects of the ceremony were his entry into the Most Holy Place with the blood of the sin offerings and the dispatch of the scapegoat into the wilderness. These actions atoned for the sins of repentant Israelites….

The scapegoat ceremony was also unique to this day. By placing his hands on the goat’s head and confessing the nation’s sins, the high priest transferred those sins to the goat. The goat then symbolically carried the people’s sins away into the wilderness. Christians have long regarded the scapegoat as a type of Christ. The New Testament makes many comparisons between the Day of Atonement and the death of Christ (Heb. 9:6–28; 13:11–13). That Christ was delivered to the Gentiles and killed outside the walls of Jerusalem indicated that He was sent “outside the camp” like the scapegoat of old.—from the Reformation Study Bible commentary on Leviticus 16

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are not the only things that Jews will be commemorating over the next month. But they are two of the most culturally important—and they also have strong connections to a Christian understanding of Scripture. If you’re interested in further exploring the points of connection between Jewish and Christian approaches to Scripture, we encourage you to sign up for Holy Land Moments, which begins today and continues for two weeks into October. And of course, whether or not you sign up for the devotional, this Jewish holiday period is a great excuse to read through the Bible passages noted above and gain a better understanding of the holy days of the Old Testament!