Yom Teruah

Yom Teruah means the Day of Shouting or the Day of the Blast. The word teruah comes from the root resh-vav-ayin, meaning to shout, to raise an alarm, to sound a blast. Leviticus 23:24 prescribes it as a day of rest, a memorial of teruah, and a holy convocation. It falls on the first day of the seventh month (Tishrei). The shofar is blown. The alarm is raised. Something is coming. The identity of what is coming is embedded in the fall feast sequence: Yom Teruah is the alarm, Yom Kippur is the judgment, Sukkot is the dwelling. Trumpet. Judgment. Tabernacle. In that order.

Jewish tradition renamed this day Rosh Hashanah, the Head of the Year, and built an elaborate New Year observance around it. The Torah never calls it Rosh Hashanah. The Torah calls it Yom Teruah: the day you blow the shofar and wake up. The prophetic implications are staggering. Sha'ul writes that "the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout (keleusma), with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet (salpinx) of God" (1 Thessalonians 4:16). A shout. A trumpet. That is Yom Teruah. The day the King returns is not a surprise to anyone reading the feast calendar. It is the next unfulfilled appointment.

The KJV, ESV, NASB, and NIV translate Yom Teruah as "Feast of Trumpets" and treat it as a minor Old Testament holiday. They never connect it to Sha'ul's trumpet in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 or 1 Corinthians 15:52, or to the seven trumpets of Revelation. The English reader sees isolated trumpet references scattered across the New Testament. The Hebrew reader sees them all pointing to one day on HaShem's calendar: the day the shofar sounds and the King descends. The spring feasts were fulfilled to the day. There is no reason to believe the fall feasts will be any different.