From today, we’re going to be talking about the festival of Shavuot or as the gentiles call it “Pentecost”.
Shavuot begins seven weeks from the day of the ceremonial first cutting of the harvest (which is why it’s also called the “Feast of Weeks”).
This “ceremonial first cutting” takes place sometime during the springtime festivals when Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Firstfruits are held.
That’s right.
The day is NOT fixed.
According to the Torah, there is no specific day set for the festival of Shavuot.
Every year the day will be different because it is impossible to predict when the Barley harvest will actually take place.
From BOTH a technical and scriptural perspective, the 50-day period will shift around by about seven days or so yearly.
Let me remind you that although AVIV 16 is considered the day of Firstfruits when the first sheaf of barley is waved, Firstfruits does NOT signify the beginning of the harvest.
Instead, when the priests at the Temple waived a sheaf of unripened Barley (while its color was still green), what they were doing was petitioning the Lord to make the harvest an abundant one.
In other words, we’re talking about a pre-harvest ceremony going on here.
Since the day of Firstfruits changed every year, correspondingly, so did the summertime festival of Shavuot.
These two festivals were linked to each other in this sense.
Here’s how the day was calculated all the way up until the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D.
Starting with the first day after the 7th day Shabbat that occurs before Firstfruits, count forwards exactly 50 days and that will tell you when Shavuot occurs.
Was the wording confusing?
Let me try and say it in a different way.
On AVIV 14 and AVIV 15 you respectively have the day of Passover and the 1st day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, right?
Next, from AVIV 15 we fast forward to the very next SHABBAT (Saturday).
Then using the day after SHABBAT which is Sunday as the starting point, we count forwards exactly 50 days and BOOM, you arrive at Shavuot.
Again, this is how it was calculated BEFORE the Temple was leveled to the ground by the Romans in 70 A.D.
After the Temple was destroyed, as I think I mentioned in an earlier article, the Rabbis took control of Judaism and made what I think was a wise decision (especially for those Jews who weren’t living in the Holy Land) in fixing the days when Firstfruits and Shavuot would be observed.
As a result of their decision, this is how things are done even to this very day.
There’s another Biblical reality we have to contend with concerning Shavuot.
Shavuot is the second of the three annual feasts that required all Israelite males to journey to the central sanctuary starting from the reign of King David when the sanctuary was situated in Jerusalem.
However, as time passed by, the Israelites not only became scattered over thousands of square miles inside the the land of Israel, they were dispersed over millions of square miles throughout Asia and later the Roman Empire.
Therefore, depending on where you were living, the harvest would occur at widely varying times.
This meant that if Israel was to stick to the way things were always done with the day of Shavuot changing every year, the date would been different for every group of Hebrews depending on what region of the world they were living in.
We’re talking about mass confusion here folks.
So again, the Rabbis decided, to make BIKKURIM (Firstfruits) the starting countdown day when the first sheaf of barley would be waived.
Once the decision was made, from that time onwards, that day served as the launching point from when 50 days would be counted forwards to Shavuot.
Although this was not Scriptural, I don’t think it goes against Scripture.
This is a good example of Rabbinical Tradition coming up with a good and practical solution to a thorny problem and I think they succeeeded spectacularly.
This is also how we are apply Scripture to those challenges and problems we encounter in our lives where there always isn’t an easy and black-and-white solution.
I’m done.
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