More on the sabbath and the festivals:
We finally get a command to do something on the Sabbath - sacred assembly. Interestingly, the Sabbath is always calculated by counting off 6 work days, and the next is the seventh, the Sabbath. Obviously, the Jews put this as Saturday. Our typical American calendar has the seventh day as Saturday. In some places in Europe, the calendar is different, where the seventh day is Sunday.
Barring the original Jewish interpretation that the seventh day is Saturday and that we look back on this through the bias of the New Testament, there is no requirement that I found in the Bible thus far that the Sabbath must be on Saturday. However, if the people are all to go to a worship assembly together, then as a community they need to pick the day to do it.
The other feasts:
Passover and unleavened bread
Offering of the first fruits
Festival of Weeks (Pentacost)
Feast of Trumpets
Day or Atonement
Feast of Tabernacles
Throughout these, the pattern emerges of offerings, plus it incorporates days of "rest", which it translates as "no ordinary work". But they presumably would be allowed to the alternative - non-ordinary work. I know the 7th day sabbath is not discussed here, but we see a definition of non-ordinary work being integrated into a "rest." This is one of the reasons why I think that the Sabbath commandment was in part institutionalizing what we take for granted today - a weekend.
The day of atonement really stands out. It is a day of fasting. Uh oh
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