Weeks (Pentecost)
Overview
- Testament: Both
- Book: Leviticus, Acts
- Chapters: Leviticus 23:15-22; Acts 2
- Summary: The harvest festival celebrated fifty days after Firstfruits; fulfilled in the New Testament by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Details
The Feast of Weeks (Hebrew: Shavuot; Greek: Pentecost, “fiftieth”) fell fifty days after the Firstfruits wave-offering. The ceremony included waving two loaves of leavened wheat bread — the only offering in the Levitical calendar that included leaven, suggesting the incorporation of ordinary human life into the offering. Two lambs, a bull, rams, and goats accompanied the grain offering.
The feast also had a social justice dimension: the command was repeated that field edges must not be reaped and fallen grain left for the poor and sojourner (23:22).
In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples gathered in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, fifty days after the resurrection (which, on the traditional reckoning, fell on the Feast of Firstfruits). The connection is deliberate: Christ as firstfruits is followed fifty days later by the Spirit as the earnest of the coming harvest. The gathered crowd included devout Jews from every nation — a reversal of Babel.
Cross-References
- Firstfruits — The wave offering 50 days earlier
- Feast Days Appointed — The full calendar
- Related books: Leviticus, Acts 2, 2 Corinthians 1:22
Notes
- The rabbinic tradition that Shavuot commemorated the giving of the Torah at Sinai makes Acts 2 even richer: the old covenant was given in fire and thunder; the new covenant is given in fire and wind.
- The leavened loaves at Shavuot are sometimes interpreted as representing the gathered community (Jew and Gentile) in their ordinary humanity.