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.