There are delicate differences and suggestive shades of beauty in the various names given to the subject of our present study–thus, The Feast of Weeks, Chag Shavuot, stresses the lessons which we learn in our times of waiting (Ex. 34:22; Deut. 16:10, 16; 2 Chron. 8:13).
“The Firstfruits of thy labors” reminds us that no spiritual experience need ever be sterile (Ex. 23:16).
“The Feast of Harvest,” Chag-Hakazir (Ex. 23:16), bears the heart onward to days when Christ and we shall see, side by side, the travail of our souls, in satisfaction.
The Jewish name, used by the Talmud and Josephus, is Asartha (the conclusion) but our interest lies in the hallowed word, Pentecost, the fiftieth day, which gathers up and treasures all the earlier titles.
The ritual of Pentecost may be considered under two headings, namely, “the new meal offering” in itself, and then its attendant sacrifices.
The Deuteronomic law laid down that seven weeks must be calculated, beginning from the day when the sickle first touched the standing corn, and at the expiry of that term, a tribute of a free-will offering had to be brought to Jehovah, first as a thanksgiving for freedom from Egypt, and secondly, as a recognition of the mercy of God in giving a good harvest. (See Deut. 16:9-12).
Probably the praise-song of the farmer would be sung, and his basket of first-fruits brought, at the expiry of the seven weeks (Deut. 26:5-10).
The law of Leviticus sets the whole matter in another frame, and lifts it to a level far above harvest joy or personal gratitude, as in Isaiah 9:2, or Jeremiah 5:24 (in Hosea 9:4 we have the opposite emotion in the plaint of an exiled Israelite eating his bread of mourning).
From the standpoint of the Sanctuary, material prosperity is secondary, and hence in Leviticus 23:15-17, the chief feature of the ritual is a “fiftieth” day, a new start (as to which Deuteronomy says nothing) and the bringing of a formal “gift,” in which the Crown rights of the divine Land-lord are clearly confessed (Lev. 25:23, etc.).
This tribute consisted of two wave loaves made of just double the usual quantity of flour used for the daily Meal or Cereal offering; the whole community must identify itself with the gift, and it is noted that it must be “baken with leaven.”
This latter detail connects these loaves with the “thanksgiving” offering of Leviticus 7:13, and reminds us that the arresting touch of fire (Acts 2:3) has fallen upon the saints, and that henceforth the swiftly moving pervasive activities of man’s restless mind must be checked and subdued by the gracious Guest who dwells within the Church.
The controversy as to the date of Pentecost has raged for over two thousand years and, like the angels, I “fear to tread” this trampled battlefield–others may rush in, if they please.
The case stands thus–if we read the “sabbath” of Leviticus 23:16 as referring to a “seventh” day of the week, then the day of Pentecost will change every year, according to the day of the week on which the Passover would fall.
If we understand the “sabbath” to mean a festival day (as in Lev. 25:2, etc.) then we must read it as a fixed date; but here two alternatives confront us; are we to calculate from Nisan 15 (the wave sheaf) on “the morrow after the Sabbath” (Lev. 23:11) or from the seventh day of the Passover feast (Nisan 21) which was also a sacred day?
I am not aware that we have any record of the celebration of any Pentecostal feast in the Old Testament; and indeed the only reference to it is a passing allusion in 2 Chronicles 8:13 in which we find the grouping of the “set times” at which every male Hebrew was summoned to the central shrine.
This silence is precisely what one would expect; since the chief value of Pentecost lies within the limits of Church history and does not closely affect the Jew.
The scroll of Ruth was read at each annual “Pentecost,” and the suitability of this record of a sacred “barley harvest” needs no argument.
The New Testament allusions to our feast are found in three passages:
(a) In Acts 20:16 Paul travels in such haste that he passes by his well-loved Ephesus so that, if possible, he may be at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.
The haste evaporated long before Paul reached his goal (Acts 21:4, 10) but I think Luke would remind his readers that it is well at times to return in spirit to the holy memories of early days of power.
(b) In 1 Corinthians 16:8, the servant is surveying the wide fields of opportunity and notes two contrasted facts; a “great door effectual” stands open, but also “there are many adversaries.”
This suggests to Paul that Ephesus, the meeting place of so much Satanic power and divine support, will be a suitable spot at which to celebrate his Pentecost.
But the key and fortress of our understanding of the “feast of weeks” lies in the record of Acts 2.
The “beloved physician” offers to us a detailed exposition of all the main features of the Old Testament ritual, and this may be exhibited as follows:
1. The date given, fifty days after harvest (Lev. 23:15-16). This answers to Acts 2:1, from which we learn that seven weeks after Christ had conquered the grave and risen from the harvest fields of death, He shed forth the gift of His Spirit.
2. The wheat harvest of Exodus corresponds with the glorious reaping time under the ministry of Peter (see Acts 2:41; 4:4).
3. The two wave loaves are best understood as answering to the gracious and sympathetic spirit of fellowship which marked the early Church.
Peter also divides the beneficiaries of Christ’s legacy of power into two classes; On the one hand, “you and your children,” and on the other, “to all that are afar off” (2:39).
To this agrees the argument of Paul in Ephesians 2:11-22 in which the apostle asserts seven times over, that Calvary and the Spirit have welded into one the hostile and conflicting interests of the Hebrew and Gentile camps.
To such a man as Paul this result of the Cross was not a by-product but the very heart and marrow of his message; he writes: “the mystery of Christ (is) that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs and fellow-members of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”
4. The Old Testament strongly insists that the Feast of Weeks must be celebrated, in common with its companions, at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose (Deut. 16:2, 6, 7, 11, 15, 16).
In exact conformity with this, it appears that the Blessed Spirit descended from heaven to an Upper Chamber in the Temple at Jerusalem. The author of “Acts” expressly tells us that the “early brethren” frequented and held their meetings within the Temple precincts, both before and after Pentecost (Luke 24:52-53; Acts 1:14; Acts 2:46), and Jeremiah bears witness to the existence of such upper chambers within the house (Jer. 35:1-4).
I wonder whether the Rechabites refused the tempting pots full of this world’s wine in the same chamber in which the “new wine” of the Spirit was poured out and gladly drunk by the apostles and their friends. The word for “upper chamber” in Acts 1:13 is not the same as that used in the Gospels; in the former the word suggests “a place of prayer,” in the latter it is simply a guest or festal room.
5. The Law ordained that certain cereal and annual sacrifices should accompany the feast, and a comparison between the lists given in Numbers 28:26-31 and Leviticus 23:18-20 should be of interest.
In the Handbook for the Wilderness eleven sacrifices are commanded, viz., two young bullocks, one ram, seven he-lambs of the first year and one he-goat, “to make atonement for you.”
Here we find that the bullock heads the list as representing Christ’s service in power for us; then the ram (His active devotion to God) the lambs (His passive subjection to the hands of lawless men, His shearers from Rome and Judea) and finally the he-goat, the customary sin-offering.
The careful reader will note that in this one case, the usual formula “for a sin offering” is omitted, since at Pentecost the emphasis lies upon the full glory of a completed sacrifice. Contrast Numbers 28:30 with vv. 15, 22; 29:5, 11, 16, 19, etc.–in all these latter cases the formula “for a sin-offering” is found, but it is dropped, in the first reference given we read simply “to make six–in each.”
Reprinted from the Believer’s Magazine, 1929.