Encyclopedia › Feasts and festivals
Feasts and festivals
Feast of Weeks
Hebrew Shavuot · Greek pentēkostē, “fiftieth” · late May or June, wheat harvest
The Feast of Weeks came seven weeks after the first sheaf of barley was offered at Passover time — on the fiftieth day, which gave it its Greek name, Pentecost (Leviticus 23:15–16). It marked the end of the barley harvest and the start of the wheat harvest, so the texts also call it the Feast of Harvest and the day of firstfruits. Two loaves of fine flour, baked with leaven, were brought as a wave offering, with seven lambs, a young bull and two rams. It lasted one day, a sacred assembly without regular work.
Weeks was one of the three pilgrimage feasts. Deuteronomy calls for a freewill offering and a feast shared with servants, Levites, foreigners, orphans and widows (Deuteronomy 16:10–11). When to begin the count was later disputed: by one view the “Sabbath” of Leviticus 23 was the first day of Unleavened Bread, by another the weekly Sabbath. Later Jewish tradition linked the day with the giving of the law at Sinai. In Acts, Jews from many lands were in Jerusalem at Pentecost, and Paul hurried to reach the city by that day (Acts 20:16).
Key verses
And you are to celebrate the Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year.From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, you are to count off seven full weeks. You shall count off fifty days until the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the LORD.Bring two loaves of bread from your dwellings as a wave offering, each made from two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour, baked with leaven, as the firstfruits to the LORD.And you shall celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the LORD your God with a freewill offering that you give in proportion to how the LORD your God has blessed you, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God in the place He will choose as a dwelling for His Name—you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levite within your gates, as well as the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widows among you.Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus to avoid spending time in the province of Asia, because he was in a hurry to reach Jerusalem, if possible, by the day of Pentecost.Sources
Adapted and shortened from the Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0
Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary © 2023 Tyndale House Publishers · CC BY-SA 4.0 — Pentecost; Weeks*, Feast of; Feasts and Festivals of Israel: Seasonal Festivals; Calendars, Ancient and Modern: Jewish Festivals
Adapted from Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary: articles chosen, shortened and retold in our own words (history, nature and daily life only) and, in languages other than English, machine-translated. The original work by Tyndale House Publishers is available for free at tyndaleopenresources.com.
