D16-20: The Difference Between The Jewish And Christian Understanding Of Shavuot (Pentecost)

“You are to count seven weeks; you are to begin counting seven weeks from the time you first put your sickle to the standing grain.  You are to observe the festival of Shavu‘ot [weeks] for Adonai your God with a voluntary offering, which you are to give in accordance with the degree to which Adonai your God has prospered you.“-Deuteronomy 16:9-10

We’re now in the midst of studying about the summertime feast of Shavuot.

This is the holiday that the Christians call “Pentecost” which is just the Greek translation for Shavuot.

The gentile church’s perspective of this event is that it was the day that the Holy Spirit came in power enabling all those Jews in the upper room who had accepted Yeshua as the Messiah to begin speaking in foreign tongues they had never studied before.

However, let’s get this straight.

Pentecost was NOT a day the Christians created to commemorate the so-called coming of the Holy Spirit.

Nope…by Yeshua’s time, Pentecost was already a 1300 year old established holy day and we’re reading about it right here in Deuteronomy.

There are two main ways the Jewish perspective of Shavuot differs from the Christian viewpoint.

One is based on Torah and one is based on tradition (not necessarily wrong or bad).

First, the Torah perspective could also aptly be called the agricultural perspective because it moves in sync with the timing of the barley and wheat harvests.

Let me explain.

The nearly two-month grain harvesting period from the time of BIKKURIM (Firstfruits) to the time of SHAVUOT (Feast of Weeks) actually covers two harvests.

It covers the barley harvest and it covers the wheat harvest.

Firstfruits represents the start of the harvesting of the Barley which would take place within a few hours or a few days.

And Shavuot represents the conclusion of the wheat harvest.

To break it down for you, the Barley harvest kicks off around the time of Firstfruits and then will finish about four weeks later.

Soon after, the wheat harvest will begin, continue for about three weeks and then end at Shavuot about seven weeks later.

Got it?

So that’s the agricultural and Torah-based perspective of Shavuot.

Next, the other perspective of Shavuot for Israel is that it was a celebration of when Moses received the Law from HASHEM on Mount Sinai.

This is because the Scriptures tell us that it was around 50 days after Israel left Egypt that Moses received the Torah from God.

However, keep in mind, that the Torah does not give us a specific timeline.

Therefore, this understanding is more based on tradition rather than being connected to an indisputable part of Scripture.

We’ll talk about this some more the next time we meet.