Circumcision and the Gentile Believers

Baptisms in the Jordan River

[This article was written in response to a question I was asked: Should believers be circumcised?]

Circumcision was given to Abraham as a sign in Genesis 17. I read the torah weekly in the order given in the Parasha, so I read this earlier in the year. The particular set of readings also gives a New Testament reading or two – on that day, these were from Romans 3v19 – 5v6 and Galatians 3v15-18. There were other readings as well, but these are the ones I want to concentrate on in this brief study.

The first thing to notice is when and for what reason God gave the sign of circumcision to Abraham. When Abraham was 75 years old (Genesis 12v4), God told him to leave his home and go to a place God would show him, but God did not tell him where he was going (see Hebrews 11v8). In faith and obedience, Abraham set out, resting in the promise that God had given him, namely, that God said ‘I will make of you a great nation, I will bless you, and I will make your name great; and you are to be a blessing….and by you all the families of the earth will be blessed’ (Genesis 12v2-3). We see in these verses two distinct promises. The first promise is that God would make of Abraham a great nation (the other promises about blessing Abraham and his descendants are directly connected to this promise); the other promise is that all the families of the earth will be blessed because of Abraham. So one promise is to the physical descendants of Abraham; the other is to the nations that are not directly descended from him.

It wasn’t until 24 years later that God reiterated these promises and explained them more fully, when Abraham had reached the age of 99 years. God appeared to Abraham and said, ‘I am El Shaddai (God Almighty). Walk in my presence and be pure hearted. I will make my covenant between me and you, and I will increase your numbers greatly’. Abraham had already trusted God (faith) and left his country (obedience); here God reiterates that He wants Abraham to follow Him (‘walk in my presence’) and renews the promise to increase his numbers (ie give him many descendants). He also renews the other promise: ‘you will be the father of many nations (plural)’ (17v4). Furthermore, God says, ‘I am establishing my covenant between me and you, along with your descendants, generation after generation, as an everlasting covenant’ (here we see that the covenant is permanent, everlasting, forever, throughout the generations); God continues, ‘I will give you and your descendants after you the land’ (this is the promise that Abrahams physical descendants will inherit the land of Israel as their permanent/everlasting possession – as long as they keep the covenant).

The sign of that covenant was circumcision: ‘Here is my covenant, which you are to keep, between me and you, along with your descendants after you: every male among you is to be circumcised…this will be the sign of the covenant between me and you’ (17v10,11).

The sign is not only for Abraham, but for all his descendants and is firmly restated with regard to the promised son, Isaac: ‘I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him…I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this time next year’ (17v19,21). Abraham already had a son at this point – Ishmael. God repeated His promise to Abraham to reinforce the fact that the covenant whereby Abraham would become a great nation and his physical descendants would inherit the land of Israel was to be through Isaac. Abraham then went and circumcised his entire household, including his servants that he had bought (ie that literally belonged to him) and also his son, Ishmael (Isaac was not yet born). Nothing in this passage says anything about the nations round about. The promise that Abraham would be the cause of blessing other nations is not mentioned here.

[A brief aside about the servants being circumcised: when a person was ‘bought’ and therefore ‘owned’ by someone, they became more than just ‘property’. If the ‘owner’ had no children of his own, his chief servant stood to inherit all that he had. This is seen in Genesis 15v2, where Abraham states that ‘Eleazar of Damascus is my heir’. Abraham had no children of his own, so his servant Eleazar stood to inherit all that he had. The servants therefore were counted as ‘belonging’ in more ways than just because they had been bought with money – they were ‘family’ of a sort. It is because the servants were members of Abraham’s household that he had them circumcised. The matter of having these people circumcised says nothing about whether or not Gentiles should be circumcised].

So that is where circumcision is first given as a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham. God made two promises – firstly, that Abraham would be a great nation that would live in the land of Israel (the land God was giving him) and secondly, that all the (other) nations would be blessed through Abraham. The sign of circumcision was given when the promise of the land and being a great nation were reiterated.

So then we come to Romans and Paul’s commentary on this issue.

Abraham was declared righteous because of his faith. This faith preceded circumcision and preceded the giving of the law at Sinai through Moses. Abraham’s faith resulted in his obedience, but the promises were not given on the basis of obedience, but on the basis of his faith: ‘the account of someone who is working [works of obedience] is credited not on the ground of grace but on the ground of what is owed him. However, in the case of one who is not working but rather is trusting in Him who makes ungodly people righteous, his trust [faith] is credited to him as righteousness’ (Romans 4v4-5 CJB). So we see that Abraham was declared righteous by God not on the grounds of his works, or his obedience, or his status with regard to circumcision, but on the ground that he believed God/had faith in God/trusted God. Paul points out that Abraham was declared righteous *before* he was circumcised: ‘but what state was he in when it was so credited – circumcision or uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision!’ (4v10). He then goes on to say, ‘he received circumcision as a sign, as a seal of the righteousness he had been credited with on the ground of the trust [faith] he had while he was still uncircumcised’ (4v11).

Now this is where Paul brings together the two promises. Remember that God promised Abraham that his physical progeny would be great in number and would dwell in the land God was giving them and also that the nations would be blessed through Abraham. Paul explains that the reason God declared Abraham righteous *before* he was circumcised was in order that Abraham could be ‘the father of every uncircumcised person who trusts [has faith] and thus has righteousness credited to him’ (4v12) and also at the same time, be the father of those who were physical descendants and had received the sign of circumcision, but who also followed in the footsteps of the faith Abraham had when he was still uncircumcised himself (4v12b). In other words, a Gentile (person ‘of the nations’) who has faith though uncircumcised will be declared righteous by God just as a person who has faith and has been circumcised is declared righteous. Paul was expressing the fact that it is not by being Jewish (either by birth or conversion) that makes a person righteous, but it is faith and trust in God. We are Abraham’s children because of our faith, not because we have become legally Jewish by conversion and circumcision. And this, Paul continues, is the explanation of the statement back in Genesis that Abraham will be the father of many nations – not just Jews, but Gentiles (people of the nations) too.

And this is the exact point Paul is making in Galatians. There were some believers (most likely believers, though some suggest they might have been Jews who were concerned about the influx of Gentiles into the synagogues after they had believed in Messiah) who, being more strict in their observation of Judaism, were telling the Gentile converts in Galatia, that faith was not enough – they needed to be circumcised. Being circumcised was not just the medical procedure; it was shorthand for converting to Judaism. The Jews in the first century believed that salvation was the exclusive province of Jews. In order to be accepted by God, to inherit eternal life, you had to be a Jew. If you were not born a Jew, then you had to convert – and that meant, you had to be circumcised. So when Paul is writing to the Galatians, he is not speaking of mere physical circumcision, but the process of converting to Judaism. This is why he is saying that if a person is circumcised, they have ‘fallen from grace’ – they were seeking another method to be acceptable to God – that of being declared a legal Jew. It is *that* issue against which Paul speaks.

So where does that leave the issue of circumcision for Gentile believers? Physical circumcision was a sign to Abraham for his physical descendants; it is still a sign today for ethic Jews. However, my view (and I know it will not be accepted by everyone) is that Gentile believers do *not* need to be circumcised physically – we have actually been circumcised because of our faith: ‘It was in union with him [Messiah] that you [writing to a Gentile population] were circumcised with a circumcision not done by human hands, but accomplished by stripping away the old nature’s control over the body. In this circumcision done by the Messiah, you were buried along with him by being [baptised]…You were dead because of your sins, that is, because of your ‘foreskin’, your old nature’ (Colossians 2v11-13). The Berean Study Bible translates these verses: “And you have been made complete in Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority. In Him you were also circumcised in the putting off of your sinful nature, with the circumcision performed by Christ and not by human hands. And having been buried with Him in baptism, you were raised with Him through your faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.”

In Romans 2, Paul makes further commentary on the necessity of physical circumcision: ‘True circumcision is not only external and physical. On the contrary, the real Jew is one inwardly; and true circumcision is of the heart, spiritual not literal’ (Romans 2v28-29).

This was not some new teaching that Paul dreamt up. Jeremiah speaks of those who are ‘circumcised yet uncircumcised’ (Jeremiah 9v25). He can only be speaking of those who have been circumcised physically, yet are not ‘real Jews’ as Paul put it. Furthermore, Jeremiah also speaks of circumcising the heart: ‘Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and remove the foreskins of your heart’ (Jeremiah 4v4).

On what basis, what authority, was Jeremiah (and later Paul) able to say these things? In Deuteronomy 30v6 we have the mention of circumcision of the heart being done not by human hands: ‘Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.’ So we can see that God predicted a time when He Himself would circumcise the heart, of which physical circumcision was a symbol. Paul in Romans, Colossians and Galatians was simply expounding on an already existent theme and declaring that the time had arrived when the prophecy of Deuteronomy 30 was being fulfilled.

Can a Gentile who becomes a believer in Israel’s Messiah go ahead and be circumcised simply because they want to and wish to be obedient to God? There is nothing actually stopping a person from doing so, but I do not believe it is a requirement. Also such a person needs to examine their motives very carefully. It is tempting to think that if God is the God of the Jews, then we really ought to be Jews – and that means being circumcised. But the scriptures tell us that faith is sufficient. With faith, we are circumcised in our heart. If we seek to become ‘more Jewish’, then are we, as the Galatians were in danger of doing, making an addition to the gospel itself? Are we saying we need to be ethnic Jews or at least legal Jews (ie Jews by conversion/proselytisation) in order to be accepted by God? If so, then we are in danger of substituting ‘another gospel’ and ‘falling from grace’. We are saved by grace, not because we are physically circumcised: ‘if the uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the torah, wont his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision?’ (Romans 2v26).

Firstfruits, Pentecost and the Counting of the Omer

Leviticus 23 deals with the regulations pertaining to the weekly Sabbath and the annual “feasts of the Lord” (v2, 4). The list begins with the weekly Sabbath (v3), then moves on to Passover (v5), Unleavened Bread (v6), firstfruits (v10), the feast of weeks (v13), the feast of trumpets (v23), the day of atonement (v27) and finally, the feast of Tabernacles (v34) – eight in all, including the weekly Sabbath. Four of these occur in the spring; the other three occur in the autumn.

The feast of weeks is the last of the spring festivals. It is known in Hebrew as ‘Shavuot’ (meaning ‘weeks’); the English name, Pentecost’, is derived from the Greek word, meaning ‘fifty’. The Hebrew term derives from Deuteronomy 16v9: ‘Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee: begin to number the seven weeks (shavuot) from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn’; the term Pentecost (fifty) is because it is to be held fifty days after ‘the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering’ that is, 'the morrow fater the seventh Sabbath shall ye number fifty days' (Leviticus 23v16).

So what was the ‘wave offering’? in Leviticus 23v10-11, God tells Moses to speak to the Israelites and say, ‘When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest. And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord.’ From this we can deduce that the feast of Shavuot was to be fifty days after the feast of firstfruits. But when was the feast of firstfruits to be held? V11 gives the answer: ‘on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.’ The most obvious understanding of ‘the morrow after the sabbath’ would therefore be Sunday, or the first day of the week. Sabbath is Saturday, or the seventh day of the week. But is it as simple as that? And in any case, there are approximately 52 Sabbaths and Sundays in a year – which one starts the count? The matter is further complicated by the fact that the seven special feast days are also designated as Sabbaths – days when no work is to be done (see vv 7, 8, 24-25, 28, 35, and 36). One definition of a Sabbath day is that no work is to be done: ‘But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work…for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth…and rested the seventh day’ (Exodus 20v10). The word ‘sabbath’ means ‘rest’; therefore the seven feast days where work is forbidden are de facto ‘rest days’ and therefore have been designated ‘sabbaths’. These are known as the seven annual Sabbaths and are celebrated as Sabbaths along with the weekly Sabbath.

In the Scripture, order is considered important. Leviticus 23 lists the weekly Sabbath and the seven annual feast days in order. The weekly Sabbath is placed first, showing its pre-eminence among the Lord’s appointed times. The other days are listed in date order, from the beginning of the year. Passover comes first and occurs ‘on the fourteenth day of the first month’, in line with God telling Israel when He led them out of Egypt that ‘This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you’ (Exodus 12v2). Next comes the feast of unleavened bread ‘on the fifteenth day of the same month’ (Leviticus 23v6). The feast of unleavened bread lasts seven days and on the first and last days work is forbidden, and have therefore been designated ‘sabbaths’. Because the feast of unleavened bread is a week long, there will also be a weekly Sabbath during the festival, making a total of three Sabbaths within a week. As the feast of firstfruits is mentioned next, it is rightly assumed that the ‘morrow after the Sabbath’ therefore must mean one of these three Sabbaths during the week of unleavened bread. Obviously the reference to ‘the morrow after the Sabbath’ refers to a specific Sabbath and not to just any Sabbath during the year. But which one? And can we know for certain? It is clear it has to be one of the three at the feast of unleavened bread, but again, which one?

There are several views on this. I have come across one view which suggests that the relevant Sabbath is the seventh day of unleavened bread. From there, you count seven full weeks (as per Deuteronomy 16) and then, at the end of those seven weeks, you count another fifty days from the following day, making a total of 100 days between the feast of unleavened bread and the feast of weeks. I believe this can be discounted immediately. The two festivals (firstfruits and Pentecost) celebrate the barley harvest and the wheat harvest respectively. If the celebration of the wheat harvest (when the first of the wheat is brought to the priest) is delayed for 100 days, the wheat would be rotting in the ground! That is far too long to wait between one harvest and the next. That does not discount the possibility of starting the count on the seventh day of unleavened bread, but it does discount the notion that you count seven weeks, one day, then a further fifty days. I have not come across any other suggestion that the Sabbath concerned refers to the seventh day of unleavened bread.

The second view is the one favoured by the Jews and that is, the count starts on the day after the first day of unleavened bread. To understand this, it is important to remember that the Jewish day stars at nightfall, or sunset of what we would call the previous day. Instead of the day starting at midnight, it begins at approximately 6pm. Passover always occurs on 14^th Nisan (the first month of the Jewish religious calendar); the Passover lamb was slaughtered in the late afternoon of 14^th Nisan (‘between the evenings’) – that is, just before the day becomes Nisan 15. The Passover meal was consumed at nightfall, at the beginning of Nisan 15. Nisan 15 is also the first day of unleavened bread, when work is forbidden, and is designated a Sabbath. Even to this day, the Jews start the count of the omer from the day after the Sabbath on the first day of unleavened bread, Nisan 16.

Because Passover is tied to a specific date, this means it can fall on any day of the week, just like, for example, January 1^st in our Gregorian calendar can be any day of the week. If Nisan 14 is on any day of the week, then so too is Nisan 16: if Passover was on a Monday, then Nisan 16 would be on a Wednesday and so on. That means that Shavuot/Pentecost would also be on a Wednesday, as it is exactly 50 days later, or seven weeks plus one day. This way of calculating relies heavily on the reference in Deuteronomy where the count is ‘seven weeks’ (shavuot), but it ignores the reference in Leviticus that says ‘count seven Sabbaths’ (sabbatown). The words are similar, but come from different roots. Leviticus 23v15 is the only place in the whole of the Scriptures where the word ‘sabbatown’ is used and it simply means ‘sabbaths’ (it is the plural of sabbat). There are some translations which have actually changed the Leviticus reference to ‘weeks’ rather than sabbaths’, stating that the word ‘sabbaths’ can also be translated ‘weeks’. I think this is disingenuous and is not a true translation. The word is quite clearly ‘sabbaths’ (sabbatown) not ‘weeks’ (shavuot).

This misuse of the wording is not the only issue, but we will come to that later. It is therefore my intention to show that ‘the morrow after the Sabbath’ referred to in Leviticus 23v15 and 16 is in fact the weekly Sabbath and can be no other. To begin with, let’s look closely at the wording of the passage in Leviticus 23:

          “And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven Sabbaths shall be complete: 16Even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number fifty days” (Leviticus 23v15, 16)

We have already seen that ‘the day of the sheaf of the wave offering’ refers to the feast of firstfruits. We have also seen that the feast of firstfruits occurs in close proximity to the feast of unleavened bread. Unleavened bread lasts for seven days; the first and last days are designated Sabbaths, because no work is permitted on those days. That means there are a total of three Sabbaths during the week long festival of unleavened bread.

The count of fifty days begins on the ‘morrow after the Sabbath’, a term used twice in these two verses. As I have just noted, there are three possible Sabbaths that could be the one after which the count begins – the first day, the seventh day and the weekly Sabbath.

The verses also tell us that the feast of Shavuot/Pentecost falls fifty days after the day the count begins.

Deuteronomy 16v9 tells us that they must count seven weeks (shavuot – the plural of ‘week’ in Hebrew), but doesn’t mention Sabbaths at all. There is also no mention of fifty days or ‘the morrow after the seventh’ week or Sabbath. The count starts from ‘such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn’ (wheat, in this case). Taking this reference, the Jews begin the count on 16^th Nisan, using the first day of unleavened bread as the designated Sabbath after which to begin the count. This is only possible if you accept the idea that ‘seven weeks’ is the same as ‘seven sabbaths’ in Leviticus 23; that actual ‘sabbaths’ do not matter, as long as you have seven weeks plus a day.

It is my intention to show that this is a mistake and that in fact, the count starts after the weekly Sabbath and not one of the annual Sabbaths that fall in the week of unleavened bread, for the following reasons:

1. Always on a Sunday. ‘Seven Sabbaths shall be complete: even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath’ (v15,16). As I said earlier, if Nisan 16 falls on a Wednesday, then so too does Shavuot/Pentecost. Can that in any way be called ‘the morrow after the Sabbath’? can a Tuesday ever be a Sabbath? Well, yes it can – there are seven annual Sabbaths during the year – two during unleavened bread, Shavuot itself, the feast of trumpets, the day of atonement, and two during the eight day festival of tabernacles. Do any of these fall on the day before Shavuot? No. unleavened bread is approximately 50 days earlier and trumpets is in the autumn, in the seventh month of the Jewish calendar. The only Sabbaths that fall anywhere near Shavuot/Pentecost are the regular weekly Sabbaths. This means that the only day that can be called a Sabbath anywhere near the feast of Shavuot/Pentecost is a Saturday and therefore, the only day that can rightly be called ‘the morrow after the Sabbath’ is a Sunday. It is my contention that Shavuot/Pentecost is always on a Sunday. If that is the case, then the only day the count can begin is also a Sunday – the morrow after the weekly Sabbath during the week of unleavened bread. Is that enough reason to claim that the count begins on a Sunday? There are other reasons.

2. Vague. The second reason I do not believe the count should start on Nisan 16 is the distinct absence of the words ‘Sabbath’ or ‘rest’ from the description of the special days of unleavened bread – or indeed anywhere in the chapter apart from the feast of trumpets and the weekly Sabbath.

At the start of Leviticus 23, God sets out the rule for His Sabbath, ‘six days shalt thou labour, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest…it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings’ (v3). The only other mention of a Sabbath in the entire chapter is in v24, speaking of the feast of trumpets: ‘In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, ye shall have a Sabbath.’ None of the other feasts mentions a Sabbath, only that work is forbidden on those days. It is therefore an assumption that these days are designated ‘Sabbaths’. In other words, it is man’s idea to call them Sabbaths, not God’s. That is not to say they were wrong to call these days Sabbaths; it is simply to point out that God did not refer to them as Sabbaths in this chapter. If He referred to the feast of trumpets as a Sabbath, then why not call the others Sabbaths too? God is not the author of confusion, therefore I believe it is significant that the word Sabbath is absent from six of the feasts, just as it is significant that it is included for the feast of trumpets.

Furthermore, when speaking of the weekly Sabbath, the scripture uses the definite article; the Sabbath; when referring to the feast of trumpets, it uses the indefinite article: a Sabbath. In vv 15 and 16, the definite article is used: the Sabbath, when referring to which day to begin the fifty day count. Now I accept that this might simply mean a specific Sabbath, rather than just any Sabbath in the year, but I believe it is more than that. Coupled with the absence of the word Sabbath to refer to the first and last days of unleavened bread, the use of the definite article refers us back to v3 where God is giving instructions about the weekly Sabbath: the Sabbath. The fact that the indefinite article used in v24 implies that this Sabbath is different from the weekly Sabbath and may or may not fall on the same day (Saturday, by the Gregorian calendar). The only Sabbath that could be referred to as the Sabbath during the feast of unleavened bread therefore is the weekly Sabbath.

3. The sign of the prophet Jonah. My final reason for believing the Sabbath referred to in vv15 and 16 is the weekly Sabbath takes us into the New Testament. The Pharisees approached Jesus and demanded a sign to prove He was the Messiah. His response was: an “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas” [Matthew 16v4]. What did He mean? In fact, He explained the comment Himself: “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” [Matthew 12v40]. What does this have to do with the calculation of Shavuot/Pentecost?

We can surmise from 1 Corinthians 15v20 that Jesus rose from the dead on the feast of firstfruits: “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep”. He died at Passover as our Passover lamb and was raised three days later, on the feast of firstfruits.

We also know that He was raised on the first day of the week, before sunrise. When the women came to the tomb early on the first day of the week, to attend to Jesus’ body, He was already risen, [see John 20v1; Mark 16v2].

Furthermore, Jesus was crucified at the time of the slaughter of the Passover lambs, which was Nisan 14. If firstfruits is, as the Jews claim, on Nisan 16 (the day after the Sabbath on the first day of unleavened bread), there cannot be three days and three nights between Jesus’ death and resurrection. Does it actually matter? Is the expression ‘three days and three nights’ merely idiom, as some claim?

A Friday crucifixion?

Well yes, it is idiom. That is, because of the way the Jews count things, ‘three days and three nights’ does not mean a literal or exact 72 hours. But because Jesus actually mentioned ‘three days and three nights’, we cannot discount this and say well it was some period of time that could be as little as two days and one night, but it must not exceed 72 hours in total. Jesus emphasised the word ‘three’ by using it twice – once in relation to days and again in relation to nights. Therefore, we have to assume that He meant what He said and while the period need not be exactly 72 hours, it does have to include three days and three nights or part thereof. In Jewish ‘inclusive counting’, part of a day or night is representative of the whole, so an hour on Tuesday afternoon immediately before the new day began at sunset, would mean that Tuesday would be counted as a day. Working backwards therefore, we see that we cannot include Sunday as a day, for He arose before the sun was up. We do include Saturday night as the third night, because whatever time during the night the resurrection occurred, He was still in the grave part of that night. The third day, therefore, would have been daytime on Saturday (the weekly Sabbath). Could the weekly Sabbath and the annual Sabbath of unleavened bread have coincided the year Jesus died? Well again, yes it could. But did it? Continuing with our backward count: the second night would have been Friday night; the second day would have been Friday daytime; the first night would have been Thursday night; the first day would have been Thursday daytime, or the latter part of it where Jesus was buried shortly after His death. We already know that the day He died was Nisan 14; that means, for Him to have risen before dawn on Sunday, and to have been in the grave three days and three nights, the resurrection occurred on Nisan 17 not 16. This means that Nisan 14, when the Passover lambs were slain, was on Thursday, Nisan 15, the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, was from Thursday at sunset to Friday. The day from Friday evening to Saturday was the regular weekly Sabbath, on the 16^th Nisan; and the resurrection occurred on the 17^th Nisan, which as we already know was the feast of firstfruits, as Jesus arose on the feast of firstfruits.

If Jesus rose on the feast of firstfruits, and if He was in the grave three days and three nights (or part thereof), and if He was crucified on Nisan 14 when the Passover lambs were slain, then in order to accommodate the three days and three nights, the resurrection happened on Nisan 17.

Conclusion.

In summary:

The count for the fifty days begins on the feast of firstfruits, which falls some time during the week of unleavened bread.

The period between the feast of firstfruits and the feast of Shavuot/Pentecost is fifty days Leviticus 23v16b).

Deuteronomy 16v9 confirms this by telling us that the count is ‘seven weeks’. Technically, if we rely on this verse alone, we could say that Shavuot/Pentecost actually falls only forty-nine days after the feast of firstfruits and no Sabbath is intended.

According to Leviticus, however, those fifty days are marked by the count of seven Sabbaths (not just ‘weeks’), the following day being the feast of Shavuot/Pentecost: ‘the morrow after the seventh Sabbath’ (Leviticus 23v15b).

The feast of Shavuot/Pentecost must be on ‘the morrow after the Sabbath’ (Leviticus 23v16). There are no Sabbaths other than the weekly Sabbath that occur in that time period; therefore Shavuot/Pentecost must fall on a Sunday, as that is the only day that can be described as ‘the morrow after the Sabbath’. Shavuot/Pentecost is therefore always on a Sunday.

If Shavuot/Pentecost falls on a Sunday, then it follows that the fifty day count must of necessity also start on a Sunday. Therefore the feast of firstfruits is always on a Sunday.

Finally, if Jesus was in the tomb three days and three nights, and if He was crucified on Nisan 14 (which we know He was), then He cannot have risen from the grave until Nisan 17, or else we need to ignore the word ‘three’ in Jesus’ statement about the sign of the prophet Jonah.

The conclusion therefore is that the counting of the fifty days, known as ‘the counting of the omer’, must begin on ‘the morrow after’ the weekly Sabbath and not either of the Sabbaths of unleavened bread.